The Unnatural History of the Sea: The Past and Future of Humanity and Fishing

by Callum Roberts

Professor Callum Roberts Unnatural History of the Sea (Paperback 2007) There is a crisis evolving because of over-fishing. Some predict that at current levels, all major fish stocks will have collapsed by 2050.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, History, Nature, Environment, Animals, Natural History

Paperback

First published July 14, 2007

About the author

Recently named in the Times as one of the 100 most influential UK scientists, Prof Callum Roberts is an award-winning expert on Marine Conservation.

His main research interests include documenting the impacts of fishing on marine life, both historic and modern, and exploring the effectiveness of marine protected areas. For the last 10 years he has used his science background to make the case for stronger protection for marine life at both national and international levels. His award winning book, The Unnatural History of the Sea, charts the effects of 1000 years of exploitation on ocean life.

He lectures throughout the US, UK and Europe, and is frequently called on to give government briefings to the US Congress and Senate, as well as Whitehall.

Callum is a WWF UK Ambassador, trustee of Seaweb, Fauna and Flora International and Blue Marine Foundation, and advisor to Save our Seas.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book left me too angry and depressed to write coherently, so instead here's a brief glossary of terms which I hope might give you some idea why:

    trawling (technol.): a type of fishing in which the ocean floor is scraped clean, not only of fish, but of every living thing—vertebrate and invertebrate, coral, even chunks of the reefs themselves. An industry which extracts fish as a non-renewable resource, like coal or oil. Underwater strip-mining on a near-global scale.
    ghost fishing (technol.): the stuff of nightmares. A process whereby a length of abandoned gill-netting, perhaps miles long and either lost during fishing or deliberately dumped overboard at the end of a trip, continues to fish. It stands upright on the seabed snaring everything which swims, floats or crawls into it—fish, turtles, dolphins, everything. Eventually the sheer weight of corpses forces the net down flat. The bodies then rot and are scavenged by crabs until, released, the netting stands back up again. The whole process is then repeated, again and again...indefinitely. Losing and dumping fishing gear is routine, so the world's oceans are littered with these perpetual death-traps.
    inrage (psychol.): similar to, but the opposite of, outrage; what happens inside your head at the precise moment you read about trawlermen complaining that their nets are often damaged by coral reefs.
    dodo (zoolog.): an extinct species of flightless bird, wiped out in a manner which we moderns condemn while, simultaneously, treating the entire biosphere with the same ignorance and contempt.
    bluefin (zoolog.): a species of tuna, formerly abundant, but now rapidly following the dodo into oblivion. So scarce and valuable has it become, that it is now worth using sonar, helicopters and even spotter planes to locate individual fish then guide the boats in for the kill. As Callum Roberts puts it: "This isn't fishing any more, it's the extermination of a species."
    money (econ.): the system of exchange responsible for this madness: as a commodity becomes ever rarer, so its price rises to ridiculous levels. The last bluefin tuna of all—worth millions—will also be the most ruthlessly pursued.
    growth (econ., as in economic growth):the process by which everything shrinks except the size of the human population.
    marine nature reserves (ecolog.): one of the most bizarre concepts ever devised by the imagination, apparently—politicians in particular find it utterly incomprehensible.
    shifting environmental baselines (psychol.): the conceptual flaw at the heart of this apocalypse. Each fresh generation of Homo sapiens sees only its own small section of the decline; there's little perception of the longer-term depletion, and none whatever of the original superabundance (at times "more fish than water") which existed back at the start before human beings began plundering it. This flaw is found even amongst ecologists who study what is left of these ecosystems; thus conservationists work back to "baselines" which aren't meaningful baselines at all, just slightly earlier points back up the slope—points which, moreover, creep downhill from one decade to the next.
     Homo sapiens (zoolog.): arguably the least intelligent of the primates; the only one, arboreal or otherwise, currently sawing through the very branch it is sitting on.
    Earth (astron.): third planet of eight orbiting a G-class main-sequence star midway between 61 Cygni and Sirius. An ocean planet (71% of its surface area). Abundant life, but currently in the throes of its sixth (and primarily marine) mass-extinction event.
    The Unnatural History of the Sea by Callum Roberts (bibliog.): a meticulously detailed—and relentless—book by a leading authority on the subject. Reduced this reader, during its second half in particular, to despair.
    despair (psychol.): a state of mind, impossible to express in a mere book review (perhaps impossible in words at all), in which you find you no longer care what happens to the human race, but that what is being done to the beautiful Earth fills you with sorrow.

[Viola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plašs pētījums par rūpnieciskās zvejas attīstību un arī to postu, ko tā nodarījusi pasaules jūrām un okeāniem. Daudz interesantu faktu, piemēram, pamācošs stāsts par Stellera jūras govi, kas tika atklāta 1741.gadā, bet jau 1768. gadā izmirusi. Un šis nebūt nav vienīgais gadījums.
Man īpaši patika nodaļas par vaļu medībām ( note to myself - laikam jāpārlasa Mobijs Diks) un dziļūdens zveju ( okeāna dzelmju iemītnieki patiesi ir kā atnācēji no citām galaktikām, aicinu ieguglēt kā izskatās Goblin Shark).

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went back and forth on whether or not to give this book five stars. I'll start with the reason I didn't though: it's not particularly well written. Roberts beats the same point to death in chapter after chapter early in the book. That point is that mankind has systematically, all over the world, devastated the oceans and seas to brink of exhaustion. Time after time and in location after location.

This criticism made the book a fairly slow read, in addition to the fact that I felt terrible every time I ate any seafood. On the other hand, the book is the single most powerful thing you will read about the ocean. It is well researched, persuasively argued, and leaves no doubt about the devastating impact man has had on the seas. It more than adequately explains how man's hubris can push a species to the brink of or all the way to exhaustion. It also shows how this isn't a battle of fishers against conversationalists but of man against his excesses. If we do not change our actions, fishing won't exist as a profession.

For anyone who likes to eat seafood, fish recreationally, or just enjoys being in or near water, this book should be required reading.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a very fact and eyewitness-account-filled book, but it ultimately paints a vivid picture. Roberts aims to expand the baseline back towards the dawn of commercial fishing, and tries to document the sea's more natural state as best he can. The writing of early observers is often vague, but the scope of the ocean's original wealth grows clear. Then we have tales of overfishing, which relate to technical developments and legal failures. It's far more about documentation than entertainment, but maybe that's what it takes to hammer home the horror of scraping the floor of every continental shelf and seamount down to flattened-out rubble, largely stripped of vegetation or "obstructive" coral and mollusk reefs. Finally, the rather difficult read gets richly rewarding as Roberts documents little miracles of recovery in spots around the world, where a reprieve from trawlers and purse seine nets allows patches of seabed to bloom again. Maybe the book has had some influence, because soon after it's publication the movement for vast new marine parks started to take off, with millions of square miles protected in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
2 people found this helpful

[Kieran · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a Bible for any marine biologist, historian, diver, seafood lover, environmentalist, fisherman or anyone who is interested in marine life. Roberts' book is perhaps the best effort I have ever come across for putting ocean life today into context - he has made a tremendous effort to find obscure and esoteric records of fisheries and ocean life dating back as far to the first settlements in America, medieval fisheries, and some of the first ever accounts of fishing in the world . It isn't really fair to consider ocean ecosystems today without the knowledge that Roberts has so meticulously collected, and written about so well. I would say this is probably the best book about marine life I have ever read, and would highly recommend it.

Most people are aware of overfishing, and the fact that animals like turtles and whales are endangered, but most people probably aren't aware of the abundance they once existed in; Roberts mentions pre-exploitation numbers of 100 million green turtles in the Caribbean, and many million of whales before whaling almost drove all of them to extinction. He goes into detail about the degradation of pretty much all major rivers, which once had tremendous fertility that will seem surprising today. The unique historical context that Roberts provides is this book's most valuable asset.
The prose is surprisingly literary for a book about science, and contributes to the impassioned, often depressing and at many times horrifying line of argument. Despite this, Roberts is a scientist, and does not give the stereotypical 'save the Earth' type monologues; all assertions are backed up with credible and meticulously evaluated scientific and historical evidence.
With the context of the distant past established, Roberts describes the further onslaught of new technologies on the sea, goes into great detail about long-forgotten efforts from Thomas Huxley & Co. to establish if it was a cause for concern, and the establishment of (and lack of) sufficient laws to make fishing sustainable. He makes analogies to life on land, and highlights the often poorly highlighted fact that seafood is wildlife, and is as fragile as any equivalents on land to exploitation.
The context of the past gives new light to his accounts of the state of today's fisheries, and how many have completely eradicated populations of species, and continue to do so. The Anthropocene Extinction is ongoing today as much as it is a thing of the past. Bluefin tuna, despite being a critically endangered species (making it more endangered than the Bengal tiger, White rhinoceros and many whales and sea turtles) is still commercially fished on an industrial scale. This is only one example in a comprehensive account of mass extinction.
Despite all the depressing detail, Roberts describes the sea's resilience and its ability to recover, and sets out the steps that need to be taken for fishing and seafood consumption to continue.
I thought this book was really interesting, informative and enjoyable to read

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been zealous about my campaign to spread awareness about the emptying seas for many years now, but I didn't realize until I read this book how under-informed I really was on the subject.

Here I thought that commercial fishing was a new phenomenon, and that rapidly declining fish populations started halfway through the 20th century! How wrong I was. Our baselines have been shifting for centuries. Mega-fauna have been systematically stripped from the ocean everywhere humans have encountered it. Capitalism dictates that, if you find creatures that are as easy to kill and valuable as seals or otters or Steller's sea cows or giant tortoises, you kill them all, quickly, until there are no more left to kill (the word "capitalism" certainly never appears in this book, this is my own extrapolation). Our hunt for oil, pre-petroleum, took us to the seas and humans ruthlessly hunted sea mammals. But we also fished relentlessly. As happens time and time again, first local freshwater was overfished to the brink, and then the fishing moved out to the oceans. When the New World was discovered by Europeans, its Eden-like population of sea life seemed utterly inexhaustible. But, of course, the unbridled and wasteful extraction of life from the seas soon made the New World's waters a as barren as Europe's.

So what did people do? We improved our methods of emptying the sea. Here I thought bottom trawling was a fairly new obscenity. Not so! Turns out trawling first started some seven centuries ago! And, just like now, people were NOT happy about it. Fishermen recognized that it was wasteful and harmful right from the start. In the year 1376 there was a complaint made to English king Edward III about it. As a result, they got a committee together to "study" it, but, incredibly, the committee decided that dragging giant wooden trawls along the ocean floor, then opening up giant nets, and bringing absolutely everything up to the surface, much of it dead or dying from the sudden change in pressure, was a GOOD thing, and would positively affect sea life, as plowing the land helps farms grow. It is a truly tragic moment in the world's history, that, had it turned out differently, might have set a precedent that would have prevented the ecological problems we face as a result of trawling.

Now, trawls have become more effective, more destructive, and all the ocean has been touched by it. In all my railing against trawling, I don't think I ever really understood just how destructive of a force it has been. Imagine if some alien decided to catch life in, say, a rainforest, by putting heavy metal beams on the earth, expanding them along the surface, and then pulling a net containing every plant, tree, and animal up to them. Imagine the immense damage to the landscape, and how utterly impossible it would be to ever fix the problems it caused.

But, onto the positive. Although I've been advocating for marine reserves like all good, reasonable people (and, also, George W. Bush -- wtf? Well, OK, he didn't advocate for them, but at the end of his presidency, he did, like, the only good thing he ever did: Largest Marine Reserve Declared; Home to Mariana Trench) I actually didn't realize until reading this book exactly how freaking awesome marine reserves are, and how much, if people understand it, it would be relatively easy to get others on board with it (including George W. Bush -- wtf? That man decided to do something good for the world? I'm not gonna hate, THANK YOU FOR THAT, DUBYA.) See, even fishers love marine reserves! Why? Because if you have areas that are protected against all fishing, life just freaking explodes there. It's amazing and a miracle. And then what happens is that fish leave the reserves, because, you know, they don't know they're living in a marine reserve, they just go where they like. And then, outside the reserve, fishers are able to catch more fish and bigger fish than ever before in their lifetime!!!! It's so awesome! Roberts advocates for at least 30% of the world's seas becoming marine reserves, and I think that's brilliant. It would be so good for everybody. For fish, for fishers, for people who like to eat fish, for everybody! So let's all advocate for marine reserves, shall we, people? Cool, thanks.

It is really tempting for me to write more about all the things I learned from this book and how absolutely essential it is, and how much it makes Paul Greenberg's book "Four Fish" look like a goddamned wimp of a book, but I'll let this come to a fairly abrupt end. Read this book! It is so incredibly important and enlightening. And if you're into history, it's got some great history lessons in it, with unaltered quotes from texts where they wrote things like:

wee are sett downe 80. miles within a River, for bredth, sweetnes of water, length navigable upp into the contry deep and bold Channell so stores with Sturgion and other sweete Fishe as no mans fortune hath ever possessed the like, And as wee think if more maie be wished in a River it wilbe founde, The soile [is] most fruictfull, laden with good Oake, Ashe, wallnutt tree, Poplar, Pine, sweete woodes, Cedar and others, yett without names that would yeald gummes pleasant as Franckumcense.

Lol. People in the olden days were so cute.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roberts is the Rachel Carson of the world's ocean wildlife and this book is his Silent Spring. Interestingly, in some cases we don't realize the extent of damage done to the world's dramatically depleted fish stock because of "baseline creep," our inability to remember or believe in stories of teeming ocean fisheries and long lost monster catches. In other cases, the apparent damage is more sudden, as when rapid technological innovations enable huge increases in our capacity to fish wider and more diverse areas only to have the numbers of available fish collapse over just a single season or two. Huge schools of cod used to be common. More recently, it seemed like every restaurant served the slimehead fish known as Orange Roughy, only to nearly eliminate most members of this deep sea, slow growing species in a matter of a decade. The examples go on and on, in painfully depressing detail. This book is testament to the tragedy of the commons.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roberts looks at original sources for descriptions of what the oceans were really like, what abundance once blessed the earth. He reviews the technology that humans have devised to harvest the bounty of the oceans, and how each innovation has soon reduced formerly plentiful fish and other marine critters.

It's truly shocking to realize how devastating the impact has been, from millions and billions of fish down to countable numbers, and how the remaining sea creatures have adapted to the changed world we have left them.

This book won the Rachel Carson Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists' recent annual meeting. I'll write a review of it for SEJournal.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is a compelling story of how we have arrived at our current, overfished, state and what we can do to reverse the trend. I liked this book so much I am using it as a centerpiece of a course on historical ecology I designed.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened as an audio book and it is entertaining both because he always, and I mean always, provides both metric and American measures, and because the quotes are done in character voices that are entertaining in and of themselves.

The story is a bit repetitive and depressing, but I ended the book feeling a bit more knowledgeable and a lot more concerned.

Having spent some time in the sea in a few different tropical places, I can only imagine what it was like hundreds of years ago.

[Mimi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The perfect book to have read after Migrations set when there almost no fish left in the ocean. This book explains how that has been happening with overfishing for centuries, made much worse with modern equipment. The author has suggestions for stopping this, hopefully people will care enough to listen. 4.5

[Shyttha Wattimena · Rating 5 out of 5]

An ocean of words in an ocean of words with meaning without words. Perfect.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most depressing books I've ever read yet so necessary. The author permitted no optimism until the last three chapters, with the first 85% of the book being just chapter after chapter of "here is how we fished out this population of species using these new methods." Despite the depression, amazingly well written and incredibly researched and sourced. Just a wealth of knowledge and a clarion call for the sea. Highly, highly recommend reading it. You'll never think the same about the seafood you eat again or our fishing practices. Support sustainable fishing practices, support ocean reserves, and know where your seafood is coming from.

[Olli Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

More page-turning than most fiction

[Tony duncan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a devastatingly detailed book about how we are raping, pillaging, and destroying the oceans, and have been for a long time.
I have known about this for quite awhile, but this book just lists fact after fact after fact about almost every category of seafood. This is one reason I don't eat fish, and now I have a book to recommend to others.

This book is a MUST read. As I said I have known about this for a long time but i was unaware of the incredible extent of the devastation. if I wasn't so numb about all the other things that are ruining this world and our country and that the vast majority of citizens are unwilling to take a few minutes a day to stop the most heinous crimes being perpetrated by the human race I would be in tears.

Roberts goes into detail describing not only how western capitalism is totally destructive when it comes to resource utilization, but he puts in clear context why, in each case the arguments that economic forces will make sure that total devastation of particular fish populations will not occur are almost always proven false. he also shows how easy it is for fishing interests to lie and wait out restrictions in order to maintain short term profit that ulitmately puts all their employees out of work, location by location. The most common argument is that at some point stocks will be so low that the cost of fishing that particular species will not be economically feasible, It will stop being targeted and then stocks wiil rebound. This doe NOt take into account biological factors such as mating> and it doens;t take into acoount the wholesale gratuitous killing of millions of fish in nets that are just considered. it also deosn't consider the degree of demand that can exist at exhorbitatly high porces by the rich, amking it increasingly worth the effort to catch down to literally the last indivudual. He sites case after case where this happens and has happend since the 10th century Ad

he also points out how much of the great increases in fishing catches in recent years have been because of increased capacity, exploiting the the last and most populous habitats ans the rapacious competition between countries based on fishing.

He saves the most horrendous accounts fot he end of the book, in case you start geting sanguine about all the billions of fish that have been wiped out by describing moderm methods of fishing that involve 100 mile long "fishing" lines with 10's of thousands of hooks that catch all sorts of sea life (including devastating Albatross and other seabirds) and drift nets up to a hundred miles that kill almost all forms of life to get the small percentage that are the target fish.
THEN he goes into detail about the trawlers that basically scrape the bottom of the ocean and destroy the entire habiat that much of ocean life is based on. A huge percentage of the ocean sea floor has basically been ripped apart almost always destroying ecosystems that take hundreds or thousands of years to mature.

We are clear-cutting the ocean in a way that would never EVER be tolerated by ANYONE if it was above ground, but because people like fish and will pay for it, our grandchildren may never know what an incredible universe of life the oceans holds. Or held

A major and depressing point of his book is that what people, even well informed marine biologists and fishery experts consider to be the base standard for what are normal populations are off by 900% or more because people emotionally consider the quantity of fish they are used to seeing as being what is the normal carrying capacity of the sea, and then he presents historical evidence to show just how incredibly rich the seas were before 1000 years ago. So that efforts to support sustainable populations of fish, are, at their stating point often 1/10 or less what was actually historically the norm. So even conservation plans that are being considered, and are being broken are woefully inadequate from biological point of view

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had previously read The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson, which had by far the deepest impact on me of any book about the ocean I have ever read, and revolutionized the way I perceived the ocean. I had also previously read Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them, which introduced me to the Great Garbage Patch and many other negative impacts humans have had on the ocean, so this book was not quite the shock to me that it appears to have been to many other reviewers. However, it is considerably blunter than either of the other two, and becoming livid with outrage over the atrocities perpetrated against the ocean and its life would not be an unreasonable reaction to reading it. I would definitely recommend it for the complacent and people who just don’t know, as well as for those interested in “natural” history.

Roberts gives a fine portrayal of the disastrous human interaction with oceanic life throughout history and even prehistory, and I was surprised to learn how far back overfishing and over-exploiting the ocean really goes. Before I read this I thought of overfishing as having begun in the twentieth century, or maybe a little earlier if whaling is included. I had no idea that whaling had begun as early as the Neolithic – there are rock carvings in South Korea dating from 6000 to 1000 BC that portray people in boats pursuing whales in enough detail that individual species can be identified. The overfishing of European waters began during the Middle Ages, and because of factors as diverse as Viking invasions, the dietary requirements of the Catholic Church, the clearing of land for agriculture, and the damming of rivers for gristmills and aquaculture. Meanwhile, governments tried to ban or at least decrease overfishing as early as 1289, using surprisingly modern reasoning. King Phillip IV of France cited a mixture of health, economic, and environmental concerns in his decree against it: “the fish are prevented by them [the fishing industry] from growing to their proper condition, nor have the fish any value when caught by them, nor are they good for human consumption, but rather bad, and further it happens that they are much more costly than they used to be…”

I also thought of trawler fishing as a twentieth-century development, but it began in the 1300’s, and as early as 1376 there were petitions to ban the practice in English waters. The efforts were in vain, and trawler fishing continues to be used today even though it is vastly destructive to the ocean floor, and has been compared to strip mining. Roberts doesn’t stop there, stating that trawling is “leveling unknown Yellowstone Parks.”

However, the book closes on a note of hope, which I believe as very important because a lot of times hope is what keeps people going. And there is some reason for it, especially if we can constructively channel our outrage over how the ocean has been treated in the past, and start recognizing the ocean as the extraordinary place it really is.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

When people talk about overfishing and exploitation of the ocean, it's implied that they're talking about recent exploitation (within the last century, maybe two). Roberts completely decimates that thought by making the argument that humans have been altering the ecology of the oceans (and rivers and estuaries and...) for as long as humans have been around as a species and the current circumstances - most notably, ocean ecology in crisis and possibly at the point of no return - are not the result of a century or two of exploitation, but the pinnacle of literally thousands of years of overexploitation and the knock-on effects of overexploitation.

Roberts does this going back to the source material available (records, books, travelogues, journals, etc) and deliberately not looking at all these writers from different time periods and different places writing for different reasons to different audiences as if their accounts could only be exaggeration. The documentation of the same or similar phenomena from so many varying sources serve to help corroborate one another for those who are willing to see the evidence of the historical record with an open mind, despite the fact that it paints a grim picture.

Individual chapters tend to pick a topic (such as a fishing practice, a location, or type of marine wildlife) to focus and build a coherent and educational narrative around. In the course the book, the reader is walked though different times and places and actions, and traced their effect on the environment. I, for one, learned a lot that I'd had no idea about in the process. For example, I thought bottom trawling was a relatively new invention, and that was part of the reason it is controversial. In reality, bottom trawling has been around much longer and has been known to be harmful as early as the 1300s. In fact, the first known reference to the practice is a petition lodged in Britain during that century, trying to get the practice banned specifically citing that it was harmful to the ocean and fish populations. Roberts goes much farther than this, explaining in detail that is almost excruciating to read, just how and why bottom trawling is terrible to marine ecosystems and ocean environment as a whole, but the historical detail that is weaved in gives the science a breadth and depth that it could not have achieved on its own.

This is the kind of book I was looking for when I nearly put down Four Fish and thought Cod was boring. Roberts does an excellent job of blending historical narrative with explaining the implications of that narrative, creating a book that is as compelling as it is informative. (He also doesn't indulge in long passages that read like they should be in memoir, as the other two books do. I appreciate the author informing readers a bit about their background and experience with a given topic, especially if it's relevant, but huge chunks of a science or history shouldn't read like a memoir.) As much as this book was disheartening and somewhat difficult to read - as one can surmise, almost nothing Roberts had to say is good news - this is a topic that is extremely important, and thus necessary to learn about. I also appreciated that Roberts included, in his final section, a series of reasonable recommendations that would help the ocean and the people who need it for their sustenance and economic survival. Excellently written and amazingly informative, this is a book that I will recommend to others.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bleak. Depressing look at the natural world. I've never really enjoyed fishing, and this book helps explain why it is much less appealing today than it was for previous generations.

Overfishing has been a problem for a long time. The book starts by showing very old examples of government decrees to stop people from overfishing. In Bermuda, limitations on hunting turtles was passed in 1620. Even further back, in 1376, there was a complaint to King Edward II of England to limit trawling (scraping a net against the bottom of a body of water, which destroys the entire ecosystem).

We've known about this problem for a long time. The book goes through chapter after chapter showing how we've ignored the problem and taken species down to anywhere from 1% of their original levels to extinction: we walk through the overfishing of New England cod, oysters in Chesapeake Bay, abalones in California, and finally bluefin tuna in the vast open oceans. These acts unfortunately disproved the statement by Thomas Huxley that fishing would become uneconomical before animals became depleted; instead, as fish grew rarer, their prices went up, so it is worth it to catch them in hard places (in the case of bluefin tuna today, they have been caught by helicopter).

Overfishing is such a problem that I don't think my generation realizes it. One scientist in the book, Daniel Pauly, is quoted: "We are eating today what our grandparents used as bait." No wonder fishing is so much less fun now. It's not that we like sitting inside playing video games. It's because all the big fish are gone, and there's nothing to catch. The author continues to paraphrase Pauly: "In due course, we will end up consuming plankton directly, drawn from seas without fish." The author states (p. 332): "Unwittingly, we are recreating seas that resemble the heyday of microbes in the Precambrian era, before the rise of multicellular life."

The author ends the book with a few chapters on how we might get out of this. But after reading all the earlier chapters where people have failed, it's hard to think we'll get out of this mess.

[YHC · Rating 5 out of 5]

3 parts of this book showed us very difference pictures of our marine lives. From abundance (first part) of pre-industrial era; scarcity of post-industrial revolution.( second part) till Modern days and future fish business management. (3rd part). The invention of Fishing dredge was far dated 14th century, while some visionaries already predicted the fatal damage of this method of fishing would drain out the resource and caused extinction. Meanwhile, we humans of all over the world increased the harvest with better technologies and greedier appetite. We thought this resource would never run out as long as we keep going further. We are so wrong.
The legacy of homo sapiens on this planet is responsible for the massive extinction of various species. Even when these so called advanced countries like Japan, Western countries, checking the oceans around them, checking the sea floor all over the world, disastrous! Why?? just because they could, just because they have technology: Fishing dredge with bigger ship.

The only hope to make marine life recover will be strictly define the protection zone not just 0.6 % of all oceans, most people think 5% to 10 % will do, but if we want to restore the real recovery of the marine ecosystem, 20% to 40% is actually necessary, the question is it won't happen, we have so many fishermen, so many fish consumers waiting to eat fish.

The ironic thing mentioned in this book is the only short period for fish to recover is actually during 2 world wars. Nobody wants world wars, but because the damage on "Humans" are too high. However that seems to be the only break time for other animals to breathe.

[Andrew Thomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.
Few books have ever caused me such intense emotional turmoil as this. This book pulled at my heartstrings more effectively than any that I have ever read on the topic, it led me to a place of despair and then finally instilled hope that we might yet save our seas.

I have partially in jest and partially seriously said that there should be nationally required reading of nonfiction books for high school / university students and if such a list were to exist, this would have to go one the list.

Many are aware that humanity has caused damage to our oceans and many believe we are doing a lot to remedy this. This book will destroy these misconceptions, educate you on the history of marine life, paint a most dire picture of global marine populations, and then show you how we can still ensure that Earth's most important and biodiverse ecosystem will not only survive but thrive for the benefit of those who call it home and humanity alike.


A must read.

[Brendan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a masterpiece. It chronologically describes the destruction of the creatures of the sea. I thought I was somewhat aware - but this really opened my eyes. Humanity started in local rivers and estuaries and moved gradually outwards, now plundering the deep, deep sea. As technology increased, so did our capacity to plunder. The description of the changing baseline, the idea that each new generation creates a new baseline of what is 'normal' in the sea. Even experts in the area underestimate previous fish stocks due to poor to no records (except anecdotal) before the twentieth century. Today, we only see but a glimpse of what our ancestors once saw. Roberts does offer hope, but I wonder whether governments have the foresight to take such actions, with outcomes not evident for years or decades, well beyond the electoral cycle. One only has to look at the plight of the Bluefin Tuna, to look at the complexities and challenges facing governments. It is quite Northern-Hemisphere focused but did contain a page on my beloved home of Tasmania - I was embarrassedly unaware of the boom and bust orange roughy commercial fishery in my home state. Roberts has a great love for the sea, and the majestic creation of its inhabitants. His passion for the subject has rubbed off on me. It is a brilliant book.

[Lynne Hinkey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most well-written, fast-paced depressing book you'll ever read. Roberts' meticulous and comprehensive research into the history of fishing and its impacts could have ended up a dry tome of doom and gloom, but in Roberts' expert hands, it becomes fascinating (although still depressing.) That Roberts can maintain his positive outlook toward humanity's ability to bring sea life back from the brink shows what a dedicated and determined scientist he is. Most people, knowing what he knows about our past efforts to manage fish stocks and the health of the marine environment, would throw their hands in the air and give up. Roberts continues to champion the cause of Marine Protected Areas--proven strategies to help maintain and even recover (somewhat) deppleted fisheries. If only people would listen...

Share this book with everyone! Especially anyone you know in a position to help pass and promote sound fisheries policies before it's too late to act on Roberts' voice of reason and sound approach to the changes we need in fisheries and marine resource management!

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice read of the history of fishing - going way, way back! I was really impressed with just how far back Roberts traced fishing efforts and technologies, and to learn that similar conversations about exploitation and damage were occurring - if going unheeded - centuries ago.

The first parts of the book are historical in nature, followed by more modern case studies - all following the same unfortunate trajectories - of different regions and fisheries. The book finishes with recommendations and thoughts for the future.

The minuses: It dragged a little in parts and was repetitive at times, though that’s perhaps hard to avoid when chronicling fisheries - it really is the same story repeated over and over. Roberts’ extensive use of direct quotes and passages from his sources did get tedious at times too; some were good and worth including, but most could’ve been shortened, if not paraphrased altogether.

All in all, a fascinating history and well worth the read.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

the last book I read was Bottomfeeder and this one is excellent and very detailed history of our human atrocity against pretty much all the living organisms on the ground and especially in ocean..in modern days, humans still accept the fact to eat cows and pigs in huge onslaught...yet, we never look back nor seldom to look into the fact that praising the development of our technologies, whether it is directly apply nor widespread application, on the society as a whole, has such a huge direct destruction of our sea organisms: so vast, so many, so precious....and humans are so selfish to always, to repent on what we have done in the last minute, when the matters became critical, and irreversible...

[Alex Tilley · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a scientific account of what has been taken from the world's oceans, and the extent to which technology has obliterated the idea of sustainable fisheries this book is fantastic. I only dock it one star as I felt it lacked fluidity in places, tending towards dry facts at times rather than weaving a story. However, there is so much research and information in this book, that it should be read by anyone vaguely interested in the sea or sustainable use, as it illustrates so clearly that our idea of pristine marine environments are an illusion, and merely reflect an already highly degraded system on the point of collapse.

[James Kinsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Depressing reading, unsurprisingly. But the extent of the problem, and the extent to which the fishing industry is bent on its own destruction, is mind blowing. Things like the drop in the size of fish, and the fact that the baselines many want to preserve are already way below what would actually be natural, add to the horror. Some hope, but the book is a decade old, so I now want to find something more contemporary. Nevertheless, I'd implore people to read it.

[MarcoAurelio1991 · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must for everyone interested on the history of the fishing pressure over the last millenium and how it influenced the exploration and colonization of New World, how badly alters the sea ecosystems and how it threatens to end with the worldfisheries if no actions are taken. Offers vivid accounts of how plenty of life were the seas and freshwater, and how it gradually was being destroyed over the time. Sad history with provided solutions.

[Alexandria Marquardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worthwhile read that is equal parts eye opening and heartbreaking. The history of exploitation of our oceans is long and bleak. Learning this history is frustrating and so important. Reading this book is important for ocean lovers, biologists, fish/shellfish eaters & harvesters, marine recreationist (scuba etc) and more!

[Dean Jorgensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you eat anything from or connected to the oceans of the world and you have any concern for the future of life, even if only the lives of your descendants, then you would benefit from reading this book.

[Emma Bothwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Amazing detail and incredibly relevant information for conservation - just didn't catch my interest for some reason.