political or social, to manage space-ship earth.

so population and pollution will be controlled in the 'natural way', where mass death, environment crashes, even extirpation of life as in venus, is possible.

one more generation, two perhaps, can live as we have been doing, then the fire. do your grandkids a big favor, and sterilize your children.

Most of the breeding and nursery grounds for the great majority of shellfish, crustaceans, saltwater and anadromous fish (the ones that swim upstream to spawn) are found within a few miles of the shore- ecosystems associated with estuaries, bays, free-flowing rivers, coastal mangrove thickets, coral reefs...I think the statistic is that something like 70% of the biomass of the ocean is nurtured in those shallow-water littoral zone habitats, where the fresh waters from rivers and rain meet and mix with the salty oceans.

ALL of these ecosystems have been ignored, polluted, over-developed, malignantly treated, and abused- particularly over the past 60 years or so. It's disgraceful. They're richer than the richest farmland.

The deep ocean macrofauna food fish (bluefin tuna, marlin, swordfish, cod, etc.) and the scarce populations of deep ocean fish like Chilean sea bass, which weren't even on the menu anywhere in the world until about 25 years ago, really have been or are being, overfished.

But for most fish species, overfishing is secondary to the massive loss of habitat attendant to hbitat destruction from pollution and overdevelopment. My God, consider what's happened to the Gulf of Mexico, with its dead zones, devoid of anything but decaying plankton and algae from the boom and bust cycle of nutrient blooms and oxygen starvation. The Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuarine body of water on the planet, has been suffering with similar crises for more than 25 years now. So, for that matter, has the Mediterranean Sea. And scientists who specialize in studying these vital natural resources have been issuing the most dire and earnest warnings about their deteriorating circumstances for several decades, at this point.

We aren't talking about global warming, here. While I personally am inclined to grant credence to the warnings about global warming due to overuse of fossil fuels, I'm willing to grant some latitude for skepticism. But the predictions on habitat destruction and overfishing of marine habitats are different. They already have an unfortunate track record of being proven out with a terrible accuracy.

The concerns about the fate of marine habitats and overfishing rely on a much broader data base than computer projections, elaborate mathematical modeling, or future speculations on disasters that haven't yet occurred. The evidence is most often hard data, and all too often damningly conclusive. Thinking people need to begin paying attention and getting real about this subject.

agore, I've read enough of your comments to know that you're a reasonably intelligent person- but could you please provide yourself with at least a reasonably solid layperson's background in the life sciences- particularly aquatic biology and ecology? Learn about ecological features like the role of dissolved oxygen in water; species-specific spawning habitats; phytoplankton and benthic material; the effect of pollution and accumulations of toxins on the food chain...

I'm not completely opposed to fish farming under some conditions- but it's a travesty to treat species like salmon as a domesticated species to spawned in hatcheries and farmed with pellets. The intensive farming practices used create the same sort of problems with huge densities of waste as are found on factory farms on the land- pollution from excrement and over-nutrient production, with attendant problems like oxygen starvation, devastation of the sea floor below the fish pens, the growth of disease bacteria, pathogens and parasites- not to mention the fact that the pelletized food meal given to grow the fish evidently contains huge amounts of heavy metals and PCBs, as any comparison of pen-raised salmon versus wild-caught salmon conclusively document.

The answer is to put time and funding into habitat restoration. In return, what humans reap is a self-sustaining food source that requires only a regulated harvest. The salmon are gone from most of the rivers of the West Coast because of logging practices that eroded the steep river valleys, silted up the spawning beds, destroyed the shelter of shade and the nutrients from tree and leaf debris, and warmed the water to the point where- even if unpolluted- it no longer retains sufficient dissolved oxygen to support any species except for minnows. This has been an even more important factor in destroying the salmon runs than the large dams and impoundments on major West Coast rivers. And it was all unnecessary- the only "defense" for the travesty that occured is Profit Maximization- as if the landowners- people like Charles Hurwitz, may his name live in infamy- owed nothing to the forested hills and the stream valleys but to rip, rape, cash in, and run.

The same scenario has played out anywhere that mangrove swamps has been bulldozed for miles on end to create someone's second-rate "shorefront experience" by razing the local ecosystem. I'm not completely anti-shoreline development, but the golden goose of wild natural diversity has been trashed time and again, on behalf of ignoramuses with fat wallets.

Something is seriously going wrong, here. There ought to be enough healthy breeding food and forag fish populations to support an abundant harvest of protein and healthy nutrients for hundreds of millions- even billions- of people, without running what should be a sustainable concern into the ground win a matter of only a few decades.

e 70% of the biomass of the ocean is nurtured in those shallow-water littoral zone habitats

I'm referring to shellfish and fish, here. I suppose that if one decides to include algae, dinoflagellates, and jellyfish as "biomass" or even "food species", the percentage is altered significantly.

And that's "the future", if that's really what you want- or if you simply don't care, because the ocean is just something to look at for you, from your vantage point on that high-dollar shorefront square footage- an ocean full of red tides and stinging nettles as the prevailing life forms, all that's left of what used to be a cornucopia of a nearly endless variety of marine life.