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Mother Davis takes her snorkel out of her mouth to say,

It’s easy to walk along the beach and feel at peace with the beauty of the ocean waves. It’s more disquieting to take a look at what’s happening underneath the surface. That pretty sunset hides an ecological disaster in the making.

Over the past few years, many scientific studies have independently arrived at the same conclusion: Up and down the food chain, the Earth’s oceans are rapidly being depleted of fish. Even the once-ubiquitous cod is now in danger. Some scientists estimate that if nothing is done to change current industrial fishing practices, the cod could go extinct within 10 to 20 years. Think of the cod as the marine buffalo, being wantonly slaughtered on underwater plains.

A new study released just this week brings us a different kind of alarm - this time a warning about declines in the diversity of the oceans predatory fish - species like marlins and tuna. Scientists measured species diversity in marine hot spots. These hot spots are places in the oceans where fish concentrate because of abundant resources.

What they found was that only five healthy marine hotspots remain on Earth - two of these in the territorial waters of the United States. Even at these oceanic hotspots, the number of species represented is dwindling, particularly among large predator fish like tuna and billfish. The diversity in these species has been cut in half over the last 50 years.

The oceans can be a treasure trove of food, but only if we treat them with respect. Unfortunately, respect for the limits of oceanic prosperity is not being observed. At the same time as humans are dumping record amounts of pollutants into the oceans, we are using desperate measures to scoop every last bit of edible flesh out of the oceans as we can. Long gone are the times when we had access to anything like a bounty of food from the oceans. Though our fishing technology keeps improving, our harvests of fish keep on getting smaller and smaller because there are so fish left. It is no longer at all accurate to say that there are plenty of fish in the sea.

Ironically, the very fish that we Americans have the greatest hunger for are the ones that prove most deadly to us. Because fish like tuna and swordfish are predatory, they are like ecological dead-ends for all the poisons we dump into the oceans. Mercury that comes from human sources, for example, gathers in increasing concentrations as it goes up the food chain, accumulating in predator fish in concentrations that could make a person insane - literally, if that person is particularly fond of fish. There’s a reason that they tell pregnant women not to eat seafood.

It doesn’t have to be this way, of course. We can make more efficient use of our agricultural resources on the land, replacing industrial agriculture that enriches a few corporations with sustainable agriculture that keeps rural communities strong. We could also replace the huge areas devoted to growing animal feed with fields growing food for human consumption. Getting those calories direct to the human stomach would dramatically increase the effective nutritional yield per acre and reduce the need to dredge the seas clean of protein for our dinner plates. The resulting shift in diet would also create a healthier population, saving the United States economy huge amounts of money in lost income and expenses related to lifestyle illnesses. I’m not suggesting that all Americans become vegetarians. A small adjustment in the amount of meat eaten by the average could have dramatic effects.

Of course, all this depends upon the ability of the average American to give a damn enough to want to do something about the problem. It is not at all certain that Americans really do care very much about the oceans that surround their nation. Most Americans think of the oceans as a great place to get a tan, or to surf, and those recreational activities would not be harmed in the slightest if the ocean were completely devoid of fish.

Looking out on the waters from the shoreline, very few people could tell the difference between a healthy ocean and an ocean stripped bare of life. As long as they have a DVD of Finding Nemo to watch, most Americans might not notice the death of the Earth’s oceans at all.

Feeling cheery about that indifference,
Mother Davis