National Geographic

It is easy to get depressed some days. I recently picked up the April issue of National Geographic because I was drawn by the cover story "Saving the Sea's Bounty". If you click on the title you can read the story, which is about the overfishing of bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean. There are other articles in the issue, one dedicated to a New Zealand marine reserve but all of them deal with the issue of the saving the ocean.

One of the difficult things to understand is that few people understand how interlinked the world has become. Japan loves sushi. So, are their tuna stocks in peril? No, but because they are willing to pay high prices for quality tuna, the Mediterranean is overfished. The result? The poorer countries in the Mediterranean will suffer. I think that is what depresses me. It won't be the people who rape the ocean, or the people that demand it that suffer. It will be innocents whose greatest crime is being poor.

There is also an excellent multimedia presentation at National Geographic. Click here to view it. Yes, take the 10 minutes because it is worth it.

I really feel at a loss to know what we should do to help the people with the power who can make drastic changes wake up and act. Secondarily, I don't want to be an alarmist, because I feel it will take years before overfishing's effects are felt. Having said that, we cannot wait, as we say in Oklahoma, until the horse has gone to shut the barn door.

Websites of note: Ocean Legacy and Oceana.