Empty Seas

We really ought to worry about our influence on our precious Mother Earth. I take this very serious, because I believe our world is sacred. The main problem is that we do not understand fully the impact of our actions.

However, since this is the case, I tend to scrutinize all warnings and all solutions. Of course, I do not nearly have enough knowledge of the subject to come up with solutions myself, let alone penetrate the complexity of all consequences. The reason I write this is not to cause doubt, on the contrary! I want to spread awareness of the problems we are facing and show that we should not make rash decisions.

Lately people started warning us for the danger of empty seas: our pollution and our fishing may very well tip the population size of fish, causing them to spiral to extinction. This also may cause famine between animals such as sea birds and dolphins. I strongly hope that fishing becoming unprofitable because of the small catches, will happen before fish population levels dropping below a critical sustainable level. Even then there is hope: from that point on, fish population may reach a new 'stable region' (I mean in phase space, not in the waters of the Earth).

At first I had hoped that fish in the oceans may migrate vertically: they may adapt and start to live at depths where they are save from fishing nets. (I have to find out: Will there be enough nutrients and inflow of energy to sustain a new ecosystem on that depth?) Unfortunately, deep seas are already targeted by trawlers, that can easily catch fish at depth at over 1km.

Who knows, maybe fish will become extinct locally or even globally. That would be terrible. If 'only' certain regions of oceans will become completely depleted, new pioneer species may step in, followed by others. Or maybe, the extinction of fish will cause algae and plants to flourish enormously in the oceans, resulting in a gigantic increase of CO2 absorption from the atmosphere thus relieving part of the climate problem. On the other hand, maybe there will be collapse of the global ecosystems causing the world to wander on a chaotic path. Who knows where that will end up.