All at Sea

All Aboard

Welcome to the blog series All at Sea!

The oceans are the last frontier on Earth. We know more about the surface of Mars. Yet our survival depends on one considerably more than the other. The oceans shape the global climate, fill the atmosphere with oxygen, and contain a bounty to feed entire civilizations. In short, they make this planet inhabitable. Indeed, it is being stated with increasing certitude that ancient, shallow seas served as the crucible for life’s humble origins.

It fosters equal parts surprise and alarm, then, to discover that so much of the aquaitc realm remains a mystery. Where did the water come from? How do species evolve beneath the waves? What fantastical, undiscovered, unimagined creatures lurk in the deep? Here, we will set sail on a quest for answers, a great voyage that will take us from the inlets of Argyll to the coral reefs of Zanzibar, shedding light on humanity’s inseparable connection to water worlds. For this series at least, call me Ishmael.

Contents

1. Batten Down the Hatches
2. Making Hand Over Fist
3. Overhauling
4. Three Sheets to the Wind
5. Turning a Blind Eye

Batten Down the Hatches

A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

High and Dry

The vomit streams from my mouth like a fire hose onto the decaying wooden boards of the pier. As soon as the crab stick registered on my taste buds I knew I was in trouble. Undoubtedly the previous hour of funfair rides and blinding arcade lights did not help the situation. My senses were overloaded. In hindsight it was a perfect storm. But I was only 7 years old, and thus still found it difficult to successfully predict the consequences of my actions. But once bitten, twice shy – I have never eaten imitation seafood since.

This formative experience took place in Brighton, on the south coast of England. Just an hour’s drive from my childhood home, trips to the seaside were a staple of my youth. Despite the occasional mishap, I have extremely fond memories from those family vacations. Fossil hunting on the Jurassic coast, eating dinky donuts on the Worthing promenade, rock pooling in Lyme Regis. England has the best beaches; England has the worst beaches. Devoid of sand or sun for the most part, this is not the Caribbean. Picture more grey skies, the threat of rain, as people try to lay down beach towels onto the gravel without them being carried away in gale force winds. Also, the seagulls are unaccountably menacing. This is an England beach. Yet they have a charm beyond compare. And of course, if you are judicious, access to the most delicious, fresh seafood, straight off the dock. Prawns, cod, haddock, plaice, mussels. And to go with it some tartar, mushy peas, curry sauce. Our love of fish and chips is not unfounded. After all, England is a small island, you are never more than 70 miles from the coast. Seafood is the local delicacy. But this was something I took for granted as a kid. Clearly, I was eating fake crab. But I paid the price, and I learned my lesson.

Almost two decades later I emigrated to the United States to pursue my graduate education. I found myself in southwest Virginia, in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. Stunningly beautiful – dense hardwood forests that stretched for miles, with endless peaks tinted blue in the morning mists. Paradise. But no saltwater in sight. You had to drive at least 5 hours before the Atlantic honed into view. It was only here that I realized what I had left behind. When you are surrounded by something you are blind to it. But then my eyes were opened. There are many who live far enough away from the ocean to where it doesn’t feature in their day-to-day existence. I was now one of those people, and it made me bereft. I didn’t know what I had until it was gone.

As I write, the seafood industry has a sustainability crisis. Overfishing and global change are threatening food supplies and livelihoods. In the not-too-distant future, it may not matter whether you live a stone’s throw from the coast or in the heart of a continent, the ocean’s coffers will run dry. One day, we will all lament our complacency, we will all long for what we once had.

Learning the Ropes

Physics has laws. Universal truths that all physical bodies obey. The law of gravitation is followed by grains of sand and galaxies alike. As a Zoology undergraduate at the University of Sheffield, I quickly learnt that things are not so simple in the biological world. There are no laws that all living things rigidly adhere to. Cat owners are well aware of this fact. There are no forces, no set of equations, that fully describe the menagerie of behaviors exhibited by Earth’s biodiversity. The best we can do in Biology, therefore, are rules. General truisms or conventions, patterns that are pervasive enough in nature to be notable, but far from universal.

The species-area relationship is one such rule, whereby larger areas tend to contain more species. This is a very intuitive idea, one that is borne out by common sense and personal observation. And yet, a million and one caveats and qualifications emerge that prevent this observed trend from being an immutable law. Different ecosystems of the same size – a desert and a tropical rainforest, say – can contain vastly unequal species’ richness. Species communities on islands are subject to atypical dispersal and colonization dynamics that prevent a direct comparison with continental landmasses. Someone counting beetles will come up with a different result from someone counting butterflies. And the list goes on. Even if you manage to avoid all these confounds, limiting your investigation to one group of organisms in one ecosystem on one continent, you will still find small areas with a surprisingly large number of species and large areas maddeningly empty. There are always exceptions to rules.

I first heard about the temperature-size rule whilst studying salamanders in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. Most of the salamanders live in the foothills and are no bigger than your pinky finger, but there are a few species that you can only find living at the tallest peaks, specially adapted to the harsher winters at higher elevations, and those salamanders are big, or at least as big as your thumb. The temperature-size rule describes how living things tend to grow differently when it’s hot versus when it’s cold. When it’s hot, individuals grow faster early in life, but mature at a younger age, such that they ultimately reach a smaller maximum size when fully grown. Over 80% of species studied have exhibited these patterns in growth, from seahorses to seaweed. And again, whilst some physical scientists may balk at 80% as a mere statistical aberration, in biology, four out of every five species following the same pattern is almost unheard of.

This ubiquity, however, generates a new problem, namely, why does this rule exist? Alternatively, why are such a menagerie of species affected by temperature in the exact same way? Some have proposed that temperature only impacts an organism’s growth indirectly through its impact on ecosystem productivity and hence food availability. However, the pattern persists in laboratory studies where food is controlled. This has led some to conclude that temperature directly impacts growth by influencing the rate of metabolic processes at the cellular level. The speed of the chemical reactions that take place within cells is intrinsically linked to temperature. At sub-optimal temperatures, cell division (i.e., growth) proceeds slowly.

The effects of temperature on growth and development, whilst well established in the lab, have never been formally tested on wild populations. I had originally planned to test these theories in Virginia, including predicting whether salamanders might shrink under climate change, but could never get the project funded. It was not until I moved to Wisconsin, to a fisheries department, that the ideas gained traction; unsurprisingly, there is a lot more money available to study the things that we eat. Testing the temperature size rule in Haddock or Herring, say, can be framed as an issue of food security or economics. Smaller fish = less meat = lower profit margins = lost livelihoods. My goal was to test whether these concerns were warranted.

In agriculture, environmental change is less at the forefront of people’s minds. For thousands of years, we have selectively bred crops and livestock to tailor them to our desires. And we can design climate-controlled barns and greenhouses to effectively isolate and buffer farm life from external conditions and the vagaries of weather. Through these efforts, dairy cows produce milk year-round, seedless fruit varieties abound, and meat animals are big. Commercial chickens are now so big they can barely walk. Our intentional influences on farmyard life easily overwhelm any of the marginal effects of global warming.

In fisheries however, we do not have the power to select genetic strains that attain larger body sizes to combat climate-induced shrinking. In fact, over centuries of exploitation, we have achieved the opposite. Fishing imposes higher mortality rates on adult fish. In evolutionary theory, this high mortality regime favors a ‘live fast die young’ life-history strategy. If there is a concern that you will not survive until next year, it is safer to mature earlier and pump out babies while you can. One consequence of this strategy is smaller average body sizes. For one, individuals are afforded less time to grow, and for two, energy is diverted from growth and allocated towards reproduction much sooner in the life cycle. Cod in the North Sea for example, now mature two years earlier than they did at the start of the 20th century, at half their former size. For populations already struggling to keep pace, continued warming could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

I partnered with employees at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, who have spent decades surveying fish in thousands of lakes across the state. This intensive monitoring provides the necessary data to track changes in growth across time and space in response to changing temperatures. Of the seven species we looked at, all but one showed the expected pattern of shorter lifespans and earlier maturity at warmer temperatures. For the one species that did not show any response to temperature, Northern Pike, Wisconsin represents the southern tip of its range. As such, every lake we had growth data from is close to the upper thermal limit for Pike, and therefore every population has low survival and early maturity – fringe populations are, by definition, at the limit.

At Loggerheads

Fish are rapidly adapting to the dual pressures of human harvest and warming waters. But evolution can only compensate for so much. Fish populations at the southern edge of their range are faced with two options - go extinct or move north. Fishers, in turn, face a similar dilemma. Once where fish were abundant and coastal towns supported entire communities of fisheries, the coffers have run dry.

Summer Flounder were once abundant in the Chesapeake Bay near Washington DC and represented the second most profitable fishery in Virginia. Now, however, they have largely disappeared from these waters due to rising temperatures that have shifted the species range northwards. A small contingent of Virginia trawlers now travel hundreds of miles up the coast to New Jersey to land their quotas. This, however, comes at great financial cost – diesel is not cheap. At a certain point, the enterprise becomes too expensive; in the last 20 years, many of Virginia’s Summer Flounder operations have folded.

The Summer Flounder fishery highlights the shortcomings of current management regulations for US fisheries. In the US, stock assessments for commercially targeted species are performed every five years. As a result, catch limits reflect past abundances and distributions. The quota for Virginia is still quite high, despite there no longer being any fish to catch. The quota for New Jersey is still quite low, causing ire amongst the local fishers that feel the regulations are now unnecessarily strict. Essentially, the wheels of big government turn too slowly to keep up. The degree to which people adhere to regulations depends on how much they trust them. If ruling bodies are slow to update regulations, people will start to ignore them. For species that are already struggling, a loosening of the grip of managing agencies is the last thing they need.

Walleye, a popular sportfish in the upper Midwestern United States, resembles the plight of the Summer Flounder. Populations in lakes at the southern edge of their range have seen dramatic declines. Given the modern ease of driving hundreds of miles for a weekend fishing trip, we are seeing the same phenomena of fishers chasing the remaining Walleye populations further and further north. The state department is gradually imposing stricter regulations, but the result seems to be increasing animosity from the public to local government. Fish populations continue to collapse.

Compounding the plight of Walleye is increasing competition with species adapted to warmer climates. Largemouth Bass, a warmwater species from the central United States, has itself been shifting poleward and encroaching on Walleye territory. Where it was once too cold for Largemouth Bass, they now thrive. Although the increasing overlap of Bass and Walleye is cause for concern, it presents an interesting alternative path for how humans might respond to climate change impacts on fisheries. Rather than chasing Walleye north, sport fishers may instead opt to stay local and fish for something else. I have shown in my work that this dynamic behavior might be the most effective way to curb Walleye declines; by reducing the fishing pressure on the struggling species, whilst also suppressing the population of the competitive species, the benefits are twofold. Given the proclivity for fishers to ignore strict regulations, a more prudent management strategy might be to encourage the public to diversify their target species. Only a small change in the behavior of the angling community can have a dramatic impact on the persistence of vulnerable species like Walleye.

Modern fishing regulations have been designed to limit harvest pressure to levels that species can compensate for. These regulations, however, do not account for environmental change. There is a need therefore, for agencies that manage fisheries to adapt. Current practices are far from new - setting lower harvest limits and banning certain types of nets in response to low fish abundances is documented from medieval Europe, as are instances of animosity toward authority for such regulations. However, in the theatre of climate change, these methods may be insufficient. Indeed, in the Middle Ages, the Baltic Sea’s Herring fishery, a fishery that had been operational for over four hundred years, unexpectedly collapsed at the onset of the Little Ice Age. Novel problems require novel solutions.

On the Horizon

To ensure commercial fisheries are sustainable industries we must accept their dynamic nature, as well as the dynamic nature of our planet, and focus our efforts on building resiliency to change. We are still in the early stages of understanding how fishing communities will respond to climate-induced changes in fish distribution and abundance. In contrast to the well-documented ecological impacts of climate change, we know very little about how people will react. But it is precisely how people react that will determine a fisheries’ fate. A change in the fish triggers a change in the fishers, which in turn will lead to further change in the fish, and so on. Only by understanding this feedback loop can we take steps to safeguard fisheries from extinction. And we must accept the ‘human’ element of fisheries in its entirety. It is human to defy authority. Particularly in the face of perceived unfairness or overreach, people are apt to scoff and skirt around the powers that be.

My journey in science - my quest to find inscrutable facts and concrete numbers - has led me to conclude that the way you sell an idea is often as important as the idea itself. For the sustainability of fisheries, public awareness may be just as impactful as tight, top-down regulations. After all, true sustainability can only be achieved if people alter their behavior willingly; if by force, then the system is only sustainable for as long as the regulating body maintains power. For many, changes don’t come easy, regardless of whether they come about through encouragement or force; old habits die hard. But the writing is on the wall. Something has to give. If not, then there is a distinct possibility that, someday, we will be left with nothing but imitation crab sticks on our dinner plates. Even the thought makes me sick.

Making Hand over Fist

Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition
~ Hermann Melville

Slush Fund

The gunshots ring out all around, thunderclaps ricochet off the canyon walls, making it impossible to tell from precisely which direction they come. Interspersing the explosions are periodic shouts and the dull thudding of hundreds of hooves galloping in the soft sandy soil. The stampede is reaching its destination.

The cowboys have spooked some wild horses, and are driving them southward, through the brush toward the awaiting corral. Here the Mesa narrows, forming a natural funnel, less than seven car lengths across, bordered on either side by sheer cliffs. On this table top mountain, the odds quickly swing in favor of the pursuers; only a handful of men can corner the entire herd and block their retreat. Suddenly the horizon in front of the lead horse opens up, the ground falls away. Pawing at the escarpment, sending rocks tumbling down into the canyon below, it senses the end of the road. They are trapped.

The cowboys peruse the spoils of their labor. They select the healthiest looking mustangs, rope them, and drag them away to be broken in. The rest of the herd is left on the mountain. With no water source at this altitude, and no sense of direction home, they will quickly perish.

Dead Horse Point, as it came to be known, is in the heart of the desert southwest of North America. Now, with the cowboy era well and truly behind us, this place is managed by the state department as an area of outstanding natural beauty. Often overshadowed by Utah’s National Parks, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion, the big five as they are colloquially known, Dead Horse Point is nonetheless one of the most stunning natural landscapes in the world.

I am here in the spring of 2025, doing a classic all-American road trip. I have spent several weeks travelling through Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, and of course Utah, to marvel at the geology, topography, and downright majesty of this arid world. Up until this point, I had never been to a desert before, and to be surrounded by vast empty expanses of nothing is something close to a spiritual experience.

Even flying in I got goosebumps. Descending towards Las Vegas international airport, the sight through the small porthole window is something to behold. It feels like you are about to land on Mars. And from this height, the true scale of the region is revealed. Parched earth, desolate ranges, barron peaks, as far as the eye can see, lifelessness stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction. But that is not to say there is nothing to see here. On the contrary, from the lookout at Dead Horse Point, my eyes are bombarded with colors and shapes in unimagined combinations, the likes of which I have never seen.

Setting my gaze in any direction, I am confronted with crags and bluffs, and ridges and palisades, buttes and tors. And each one is a work of art, a masterclass in the medium of color. Only Turner has ever come close to capturing the world as it presents itself before me, but even he cannot hold a candle; nature has the broadest palette. The rocks are streaked with shades of bronze and burgundy, of crimson, copper, carmine, and claret, of taupe and umber, of chestnut and mahogany. Seemingly random, irregular bands of a hodgepodge of hues, yet the vertical strata, the full composition, is flawless.

But there is one color missing: green. And it is here that you realize, it is the lack of green that tricks your mind into thinking you are not on earth. Images from the surfaces of other planets are, without exception, similarly devoid of greenness. Were one to ascend to the summit of Scafell Pike in northern England, whilst they would undoubtedly be filled with a sense of awe, they would never mistake what planet they were on. England is a green and pleasant land, and even at its highest peaks, grass carpets the ground. Green is the color of life. And it does not take a forest - a small patch of lichen, or smear of algal slime, is reassurance enough that you remain on the third satellite from the sun. But here, in the Utah wastes, there is naught, and the captivating beauty is tinged with an uneasiness that stems from the disquieting notion in the back of your mind that the place you are standing is, to all intents and purposes, inhospitable.

Walking around the mesa top, there are several lookout points where you can, squinting, trace the outline of a narrow canyon that snakes through the landscape below and stretches uninterrupted from horizon to horizon. Here, if you were able to descend and venture down to the canyon floor, you will find the secret of life.

Several hundred meters down, largely out of sight, flows the Colorado River, which for the last million years has been carving itself into a narrower and narrower channel, further and further out of view. Here, in the cool shade of the canyon walls, is the only place you will find green. Cottonwood, rabbitbrush, seepwillow, columbines, horsetails, all emanate from the banks. For what permits a patch of green slime or a hectare of forest are one and the same – water. The life-giving power of water is most evident in the desert. It takes its absence for one to fully appreciate its impact. I felt the same many years ago on the Nile. A cradle of civilization, a megalopolis built on its banks that has lasted 6000 years, but stray more than a few miles from the shoreline and you are met with sand, endless, incessant sand.

These mighty rivers exemplify tenacity, as they wind through the most uninviting landscapes on the planet without any hesitation. And through their bold, pioneering travels, they expand the frontier of life. This truly is the edge of the world.

Chock-a-Block aka Close Quarters aka No Room to Swing a Cat

On the way back to Las Vegas, I stopped at Lake Mead. Lake Mead is not a natural feature, and indeed it emerges in the desert as entirely out of place. In an alien landscape, it somehow manages to be the most incongruous feature. In 1931, as great desperation grew in the wake of the great depression, people began pouring thousands of tons of concrete into the Black Canyon of eastern Nevada. Their goal was to barricade the Colorado River. And with its path blocked, the water slowly began to rise, higher and higher up the canyon walls, until eventually it spilled over, flooding an area of desert more than 200 square miles. The erection of Hoover dam took five years. One hundred construction workers lost their lives. Clearly, someone thought this undertaking was worth considerable toil. Standing on top of Hoover dam, one is overcome with an appreciation for the power of water, and of the lengths humanity will go to harness that power, if even a fraction. Our economies hinge on the availability of water. Most utility bills, the manufacturing sector, food prices - the cost of everything is determined in large part by water. Americans in the 1930s knew this, and in damming the rivers sought prosperity amidst the dust bowls and destitution.

Fishing is a multi-billion dollar industry. Half of humanity relies on seafood - Abalone, Barramundi, Black Sea Bass, Bream, Cockles, Clams, Crab, Dab, Dorado, Eel, Flounder, Grayling, Huss, Haddock, and Hake, John Dory, Kippers, Langoustine, Lingcod, Lemon Sole, Mussels, Mullet, Octopus and Oysters, Pilchards, Prawns, Plaice, Red Snapper, Rockfish, Scallops and Skipjack, Squid and Skate, Trout, Turbot, Whelks, Whitebait, Yellowfin - we pilfer the oceans, the lakes, the rivers. We set lines baited with a thousand hooks, stretching for miles below the surface, we drag nets that could swallow cities, over every square inch of water. The resources we extract from the water prop up nations, literally. Yet there are even those that are not satisfied. Not satisfied with the bounty that the world’s oceans cough up, or not satisfied with the increasing costs required to recover it. Sturdy sea-faring vessels, hardy crew members, umpteen barrels of diesel; fishing isn’t cheap. If there was a way to domesticate and farm fish, then you could save a pretty penny. And indeed, yes, aquaculture, as fish farming is known, generates three quarters of the total net profits from global fishing. This is where the real money is made.

Farming can be traced back thousands of years, with the domestication of plants and animals occurring coincidentally in parts of the Middle East, China, and the Andes Mountains of Peru. In places where water was reliable enough, or could be manipulated for irrigation, people began cultivating wild species and selectively breeding those species over many generations to produce more desirable characteristics. These advances coincide with the establishment of civilizations. Farming allows you to generate a food surplus, a store for the winter. Prior to this, humans were forced to be largely nomadic for their survival. But as the Ice Age came to a close and the glaciers retreated, the agricultural revolution began, and villages sprang up. This was the dawn of humanity as we know it.

In contrast, fish farming is a relatively modern endeavor. For example, Bibury trout farm in the heart of the Cotswolds, proudly claims to be the oldest fish farm in England, yet it was only established in 1902, after the invention of the radio. Owing to its recency, we are still very much working out the kinks. Disease, for example, is rife in aquaculture facilities. Farmed fish are concentrated into unnaturally tiny areas, much like battery farming, to save on housing costs. Literally packed like sardines, transmission rates skyrocket. Bacterial infections, fungal pathogens and protozoan parasites are responsible for the death of millions. Disease prevalence on fish farms is particularly concerning when considering the often porous nature of aquaculture facilities. Fish farms are usually situated adjacent to natural habitats. It is much easier to build enclosures in situ that already have the appropriate water chemistry and features, than to be tasked with mimicking natural conditions from scratch. However, with this you run the risk of some farmed animals escaping and interacting with wild populations. Unfortunately, breakouts are commonplace. Not only will fugitives introduce novel diseases to the wild, they will also introduce undesirable genetic information. Domesticated animals are selected for captivity; they lack a lot of the fortitude to survive in the wild. Most farm animals are also extremely inbred. Any cross-mixing between wild and domestic animals therefore, is likely to compromise population health. When motivated by cutting costs and cutting corners, fish farming is a poisoned chalice. You cannot cheat nature. In the long run, our hubris will not go unpunished.

Below Board

Fish are farmed to boost production and make a quick buck. For modern humanity, nature often fails to provide enough supply to satisfy demand. Indeed, today we have become so efficient at plundering the earth’s resources, we must self-impose restrictions on what and how much we allow ourselves to harvest. Governments collaborate internationally to set fishing quotas, marine protected areas, and moratoriums for species on the brink of extinction. Hence, if you can farm it, you avoid so much in the way of rules and red tape. Many species however, do not find themselves amenable to captive propagation. Low survival in transit, habitat requirements that cannot be sufficiently replicated in an artificial setting, or simply being too big for the tank, can all result in a species effectively being ‘untamable’. In such instances, people can either obey the laws regarding wild populations, effectively reduce their efforts to comply, or try to fly under the radar.

Capitalism fosters a culture that rewards those who put profit above all else. Whether it be through desperation or greed, when there is money to be made, you can bet there is an illegal trade. In fisheries, this can take a variety of forms. Illicit activities can be as subtle as cooking the books; many fish that are legally allowed to be caught and sold are done so, but harvest levels exceed the legal quotas and landings are simply underreported. Modern fishing practices - long lines, trawlers, etc. - are so efficient and effective, it is almost impossible to not catch more than you are supposed to. If you exceed your catch quota, you are legally required to discard the surplus. Often this surplus is thrown back into the ocean dead, so even when the law is followed to the letter, it can present a problem, but it at least attempts to disincentivize excess. But of course, many fishers are reluctant to throw away good money, and attempts to smuggle the illicit cargo back to shore are rampant. Trawling also generates a vast amount of bycatch, non-target species that are often not legally tradable. One surprisingly successful trick to circumvent the regulators is to pass off bycatch as something you’re allowed to sell. When a fish is descaled, gutted, and fileted, it can be difficult to distinguish a sea bass from a sea bream. For fish that have differing regulations across their range, it can be particularly challenging; it is impossible to differentiate a cod captured in the Labrador Sea, for which there is a complete ban on cod fishing, from a cod captured in the North Sea, where some harvest is permissible. Such mislabelling of seafood flows from the ports all the way to the restaurant tables and supermarket aisles.

The materialism that stems from a capitalist society also fosters an infatuation with rarity. Demand, and therefore value, increases when something is rare. Gemstones, comic books, misprinted pennies, it doesn’t matter. If there are few in existence, there will be those willing to pay obscene amounts of money to be part of a small cadre of people in possession. It is elitism, but it is a very attractive elitism, because it is tied to some degree of permanence; the member’s circle can never expand, so to speak. Seafood delicacies like shark fin soup, caviar, and eel all fit this elitist paradigm. They are expensive, they are considered delicacies, because they are rare. The closer these species get to extinction, the more prized they will become. Selfishness and status chasing must be one of the most deplorable reasons for the loss of biodiversity. Perhaps an even more visible manifestation of this phenomenon comes from the exotic pet trade. When species get listed as endangered, and in theory afforded more protection by conservationists and environmental laws, demand from the pet trade skyrockets. The animal doesn’t need to be cute, or affectionate, or even easy to keep alive in captivity; if it is rare, people want one. Quack medicine is fueled by the same mindset. Powders and oils crafted from rare species, despite carrying no proven benefits, unfailingly fetch a high price. No one is clamoring for the ground up bones or pancreatic extracts of common species. Who ever heard of a pigeon or a house mouse curing cancer? Don;t be silly.

Ultimately, it is the perverse ideology of wanting to have more than you have, and importantly, more than what your neighbor has, that drives the machine forward. When, as a society, we champion competition and individual success, we should not be surprised when our modus operandi descends to what is in essence, an infantile game of one-upmanship. There is of course only one direction for the game to go. Harvest restrictions and conservation protections are enacted for rare species because there is a clear and present danger. When rarity bestows some kind of tantalizing allure, the problem is only exacerbated. We have driven the horses to the cliff. They peer over the ledge, and contemplate the fatal drop. Turning back they see us baying and salivating. In all directions there is oblivion.

Overhauling

Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.
~ Henry of Huntingdon

Mainstays

We are staggering along a pockmarked sidewalk in downtown Portland, Oregon. The roar of interstate traffic masks all other noises; it somehow both disorientates us in our inebriation and acts as white noise to calm our minds. We spent the evening in a trendy Japanese whiskey bar, and it has taken its toll. The taster flights were our downfall. Generously poured snifters of Akashi, Hakushu, Yamazaki, Miyagikyo, and Komagatake - single malts that rival the finest to come out of Speyside and Islay - went down easily and perhaps too quickly. The call to retire was a mutual one after only a couple of hours. The journey back to the Palms Motel is less than a mile, but in our drunken state the relativity of distance is clearly felt. The effect of intoxication on foot is either to slow down time or stretch out yards, or both. Consequently, the giant neon flamingo that serves as the motel’s beacon to draw in weary travellers provides untold solace. Staggering turns to hurried stumbling as we traverse the parking lot toward our room. Upon entering, my then boss collapses face first onto the bed and is instantly asleep. She has had a stressful week.

I am in Portland, for the annual meeting of the Ecology Society of America. I must confess, however, I have spent relatively little time at the convention center. This is one of the largest ecological conferences in the world - thousands of academics and government scientists all gathered to present new findings, rekindle old scientific partnerships and network. For me, still just a student, freshly landed in the United States, the experience is overwhelming. I give a talk on statistical techniques to model the growth of amphibians across their life cycles, field a few pointed questions, and then melt into the background. My only cherished memories from the trip were times away from the conference, developing the friendship with my graduate advisor, and taking excursions into the natural areas on the edge of town. As with many cities in the pacific northwest, Portland is surrounded by beauty. Temperate rainforests, dominated by giant redwood trees; cold, fast-flowing mountain streams lined with moss-banketed boulders. To hike in this part of the world is to step back in time. And to the north of the city, the Columbia River meanders its way through the Cascades to the ocean, as it has done for millions of years. The gorge it has carved over eons is now over one thousand meters deep in some places and the view from the rim of the conifer-dappled slopes, jagged outcrops, and raging torrents is enough to make the heart joyous.

These views however are few and far between in the modern era. Widespread deforestation has denuded the foliage on even the steepest, most inaccessible slopes, and dams have stymied the river’s flow, such that torrents have become trickles. The river has been rendered impotent, its power held back by concrete and caprice. The Columbia River is the most dammed river in the world. Over 400 artificial structures inhibit the movement of water within the watershed, equating to a blockage every couple of miles. For animals that rely on the river, and its capacity to unify summit and sea, these blockages resemble clogged arteries that, left untreated, induce certain death. The pacific northwest harbors the largest populations of Chinook, Coho, and Sockeye salmon. Historically, these fish undertook great migrations from the heart of the pacific ocean to their freshwater spawning grounds hundreds of miles inland. A single dam is enough to render this life cycle defunct. Here, a conundrum for humanity (or at least its current capitalistic form) presents itself; removing the dams that provide hydroelectric power to millions would come at too great an economic and social cost, and allowing the salmon to slowly drift toward extinction would likewise.

The fish ladder is perhaps one of the most convolutedly pragmatic inventions of modern civilization. A series of stepping-stone pools, many resembling spiral staircases, allow fish to make a series of sequential, manageable jumps, to reach the top of the dam wall and continue their journeys upstream. A marvel in over-engineering, the ladder permits humanity to have its cake and eat it too. When it comes to nature conservation, greed is the mother of invention. To save concrete, fish cannons have recently been invented to supersede ladders, literally firing individuals up over the dam wall at rates of one fish every thirty seconds. Whilst clever, neither contraption takes into account the fact that fish need to be able to move downstream as well as up. Freshly hatched salmon in the rivers headwaters, or adults of species that undertake multiple breeding attempts in their lifetime, derive no benefit from ladder or cannon. Many of these fish in their migration to the sea swim off the edge of the dam or get sucked into turbines. Fisheries globally continue to struggle, and the reasons are well known. Yet, there remains a general reluctance to remove man-made structures. But one day the stone obelisks of dams and fish ladders will lie in ruins, and nothing besides will remain.

In the Offing

It is April in northern Florida. I am walking through meadows of wiregrass, palmetto, and blueberry bushes. The wetter parts of the landscape are marked by giant pitcher plants and cypress knees. And all around, the longleaf pine tower overhead, their needly crowns barely disrupting the blazing sun. A fire has recently burned through this section of forest; the ground is blackened, and the trunks of most trees are charred from the base up to head height. In one patch, the vegetation appears unscathed. The understory is much denser, a tangle of vines and woody shrubs. This floral curtain on the landscape bespeaks of an ephemeral wetland. A shallow depression that fills with water during torrential winter downpours and evaporates in the unforgiving midsummer heat.

But this year the water levels are receding early. It has been an unseasonably dry winter, and the wetland has already been reduced to a mosaic of hummocks and puddles. In each puddle, thousands of tadpoles jostle for space and food. They are in a race against time. Most amphibians must reach a certain size before they have built up enough energy reserves to proceed through metamorphosis. The adult frogs opted to lay their eggs in this wetland because its ephemeral nature meant that it was free of predatory fish. But the riskiness of such a strategy is becoming realized. At the margins of the puddles, some tadpoles have already succumbed, muscled out by their kin and baked in the sun. With each passing day, the inundated area shrinks. With less volume to dissipate heat, the temperature of the water rises, denuding it of oxygen, and the tadpoles gasp writhe and gasp for air at the surface. Eventually, the last drop of water takes its leave, and the corpses of an entire generation are left to shrivel and putrefy on the parched earth.

Whilst not uncommon in the amphibian life cycle, these scenes have become increasingly so with changes to the global climate. Rising temperatures and less predictable patterns of rainfall have driven many species to the brink. Again the solution from humanity is not the obvious one. Rather than cutting back use of fossil fuels to undo or slow down the havoc we are wreaking on global weather, we instead turn to roundabout feats of engineering to heal ourselves from our self-inflicted wounds. Conservationists are currently trialing a range of experimental groundwater pumps that tap reservoirs deep in the earth to artificially manipulate the water levels of water bodies on the surface. Extending the hydrology by even a couple of weeks could spell the difference between prosperity and extinction. But we must be careful not to overdo it. A permanent pond would not suit amphibians any more than a puddle. When water is present, plants in the wetland basin are sheltered from fire and can therefore grow uninterrupted. In the absence of fires that penetrate the temporarily dry basins, the plants eventually become weeds and choke the wetland out of existence. Therefore in wet years the pumps must be set to reverse, in order to dry out the wetlands lest they become overgrown. This is a Goldilocks operation that requires careful planning and execution.

We spend the entire summer excavating and installing the pumps. A four-person crew toiling under the Floridian sun; chainsawing in the early hours to clear the brush that has accumulated in the wetland basins; digging for hours on end into the baked earth; hauling pipework from the back of a pickup truck several miles through the forest. At last the work is complete. The wells reach the water table below ground, and after several days of teething issues and malfunctions, we have them set up to control, and ultimately extend, the surface hydrology. We now have an anxious wait before the next breeding season, when amphibians will return to this wetland, laden with eggs, and try their luck. Three months feel like an eternity. We busy ourselves with data entry, tortoise surveys, and habitat restoration. But nothing can wholly distract us from the trial date, the commencement of an outlandish experiment to challenge fate and the heavens. This is the fuel that drives scientists forever into the unknown.

Failure. We are met with failure. Like most endeavours in science. The equipment holds, the pumps successfully transfer meaningful amounts of water into the drying wetlands, but their biological impact is impossible to discern. In what is supposed to be the peak time for amphibian migrations, few have arrived. Where one expects to hear a cacophony of voices, the myriad songs of frogs in full chorus, there is silence. With the target of these herculean efforts in absentia, the pumps sit unused, untested. We walk in defeat, and trudge back to the car, chafing in our waders with each despondent step.

As we reach the road, we are provided with an explanation that further compounds our misery. Strewn across the asphalt are the flattened remains of an entire generation of frogs. A population lost under the tires of speeding commuters. Roadkill is a leading cause of declines in amphibians that undertake breeding migrations. Sluggish from their winter slumber, frogs, toads, and salamanders don’t stand a chance against the onslaughts of traffic. This is why even at pristine wetlands amphibian populations are still struggling. Human development destroys habitat, and even minor constructions - culverts, fences, ditches - create barriers to movement. In the case of roads, the barrier presents a gauntlet of death. Again, for most, the direct, simple solution is not tenable. Reducing the number of vehicles on roads, promoting public transport options, or protecting larger areas from human development, are all resoundingly ignored and passed over. Instead, conservationists must consign themselves to designing wildlife tunnels and bridges, terrestrial analogs to fish ladders, that permit safe passage either under or over roads. It can be depressing to contemplate that nature preservation in the 21st century amounts to limiting the carnage.

Even in the open ocean, the last frontier on Earth, wildlife must constantly weave in and out of traffic. Shipping lanes extend across every inch of the seven seas, with huge freighters, tankers, cruise liners, and barges, incessantly carving through the water, to-and-fro from port to port. Despite a complete moratorium on whale hunting, several species have failed to recover, largely due to the not infrequent deaths brought by boat collisions. Here, tunnels and bridges will not save us from our destructive tendencies. In fact, due to the difficulties in monitoring and policing activities in the high seas, mitigation strategies have seldom been sought. The prevailing attitude is one of indifference and acquiescence. Yet still some scientists fight against the grim tide, with all the defiant ingenuity they can muster. Sonar devices that emit signals that can be heard by cetaceans, have been affixed to the hulls of certain fishing vessels. With such a preemptive warning, whales and dolphins can take avoidance manoeuvres. Whilst full of promise and good intention, we must collectively ask ourselves if this sufficiently aligns with our ethical values. Can we not empathize more with these majestic, intelligent animals, who now must eke out their existence in a constant state of evasive action? Is the best we can manage for nature a sharp honk of the horn as we speed past, racing toward oblivion?

Gripe

The car rattles down Fish Hatchery Road. I’m on my way to the central office of the Department of Motor Vehicles, the dreaded DMV. As a foreigner, I must renew my licence every time my visa expires. Clearly, when the clock strikes twelve, they want you deporting, not driving. Of course, the Departmetn of Motor Vehicles has a lilliputian parking lot, and I must circle for twenty minutes before a spot opens up. I enter the office, with its dozen booths staffed by half a dozen employees. The perspex screens that shield the workers from the public were a pandemic addition, but I assume they kept them to act as defensive barriers from the often irascible customers. I am instructed to take a ticket from the dispenser. The TV screen mounted high on the wall shows the tickets already being served and those that have yet to be called. But as the tickets include different letters and number combinations, it is impossible to determine the order fo their issuance. I wait for a few tickets to be announced to see if I can crack the sequence. No luck. I resign myself to a hard plastic chair, make a cursory final check of my documents to make sure I have everything, and settle down to think.

I look around me at all the other people in the waiting room. And, for reasons quite obscure even to me, I try to guess which of them fish. Recreational angling is big in this art of the country. Particularly at this time of year, late winter, when the lakes are completely frozen over, ice fishing consumes the populace. At the northern end of Fish Hatchery Road the shores of Lake Monona are just visible through the businesses and domiciles. The lake ice is littered with tents. Like a travelling circus, they spring up at the same time year without warning. Each morning, the sound of drills boring holes in the ice fills the arctic air. And then silence. An entire community sat for hours on upturned buckets and camping stools, patiently waiting for a bite. Each angler doggedly fixated on the twitches of their respective lines.

Although a wholesome activity, my mind cannot help lament the ersatz overtones of this winter scene. Cleverly concealed within many of the tents are space heaters and televisions. Get ups are stuffed with hand warmers and electric undergarments. The rugged facade is somewhat tarnished by the comforts offered by modern convenience. But by far the most important contributor to the artifice are the synthetic origins of the prize all participants seek. Not in decades have the fish in this lake been naturally produced. Due to declining water quality, habitat destruction caused by dredging, and chiefly the growing human population on its shore, left without intervention, the fish would have disappeared long ago. Indeed, in some sense, perhaps the realest sense, they did.

In many parts of the world, fish hatcheries have operated for centuries. Millions of fry are reared in captivity - in aquariums, cattle tanks, and kiddie pools - before being dumped into lakes and rivers to live out the rest of their fateful lives. This of course makes anglers very happy. During the expansion of the American West, European brook trout and Yellow Perch from the eastern part of the continent were routinely stocked in frontier states, much as the sparrows and starlings were introduced to Central Park in New York, to provide settlers with food, recreation, and reminders of home. As with the birds however, these species once established, rapidly outcompeted native fish fauna, driving extinctions and disrupting natural ecosystems. As cities sprang up in the new territories, and populations boomed however, the problem might have sorted itself out - the invasive trout and perch would be effectively controlled by increasing fishing pressure. But in history, irony abounds, and the piscine transplants had become such a staple feature of the western landscape, that the locals could not bear to see them go. To this day, non-native fish are routinely stocked in water bodies across western North America.

Even stocking native fish comes with misgivings. Hatcheries are older than the modern evolutionary synthesis, that scientific revolution of the first half of the 20th century that combined Darwinian natural selection with population genetics. Hatcheries therefore operated, understandably, from a position of ignorance. Neither when choosing individuals to collect for propagation nor when selecting sites for releases, were considerations ever made of adaptive capacity or genetic integrity. As such, huge mismatches between recipient and donor sites were unavoidable. Both inbreeding and outbreeding have plagued captive rearing programs since their conception. Moreso, releasing reared individuals into established natural populations, so called population augmentation, can lead to genetic swamping, whereby the signal of the original population is completely lost. If the captive individuals are distinct enough from their wild counterparts, the effect is largely indistinguishable from the introduction of an invasive species. Ultimately, the biological architecture that sustains a population collapses and the fish is no longer capable of perpetuating its own existence. Eventually, what was once a decision of whether to stock becomes a necessity, a need to stock. Within only a handful of human generations, fish hatcheries have become a crutch upon which all recreational fishing leans.

If we normalize nature as always getting the short end of the stick, forever marginalized, squeezed into an ever-decreasing corner of the planet, and unable to support itself without being propped up by our constant intervention, future generations may not be able to recognize quite how all-consuming humanity has become. The concept of shifting baselines had its origin in commercial marine fisheries. Commercial stocks of Atlantic species like cod and herring had been so depleted, and depleted so long ago, that the benchmark for a healthy population is no longer in the collective memory of those charged with managing the fishery. Without a suitable reference for what an un-fished ocean looks like, targets for recovery will invariably be ruefully pessimistic and become increasingly so with each passing generation. As witnesses of the past are lost to time, so our conception of prior conditions fades. Whilst young fisheries scientists celebrate a small bump in numbers from the previous assessment, the older members quietly weep at what has been irrevocably lost. The issue of shifting baselines pervades all areas of nature stewardship. Arguments rage amongst conservation practitioners, should we be trying to preserve what we have? Or should we be trying to restore things back to a better state than at present? Unhappily, even safeguarding the rags of what’s left of nature can often be too high of a bar.

There is something inherently virtuous about living within one’s means, but it doesn’t count if that state is achieved by simply printing more banknotes whilst continuing to engage in wanton excess. Our overexploitation of the planet is most assuredly a crippling vice; we are drunk on power, and we are haunted by the realization that hangs in the peripheries of the minds of all alcoholics that we must one day sober up and face reality. We find ourselves in an age of bizarre, albeit creative strategies to circumnavigate the real issues, to maintain our blissful, wilful ignorance. We spend our lives bending over backward in order to maintain the illusion that everything is fine. But the concern is that if we adopt these technologies, these band-aid solutions, if we continue not to concede any ground, we shirk responsibility from actually addressing the underlying problem. We are the problem. Our society’s addictive personality is the problem. Our limitless greed, our short-sightedness, our reticence, doom us to wallow in misery and regret. The long-term solutions to our addiction are not to be found using some clever trick that allows us to wantonly carry on, business as usual, without a care in the world. We must care. Now is not the time for calm. We must not carry on like this.

Three Sheets to the Wind

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
~ Charles Dickens

Groggy

We are in the heart of the Lake District. In the far north of England, a stone’s throw from the Scottish border, this national park lays legitimate claims to be the prettiest part of the country. We are taking the ferry from Keswick, the quaint gateway town, across to the western shore of Derwentwater. Along with thirty or so others crammed onto the boat, we are about to undertake the iconic ascent of the Cat Bells. Owing to its proximity to Keswick, and the favorable ratio between effort exerted and payoff from the views at the summit, it is one of the region’s most popular hikes. Youthful dogs can just about manage the climb; a golden retriever in the row behind us sticks its nose through the wooden slats of the bench; perched on the pew in front sits a springer spaniel that is clearly not having a good time ‘at sea’. Indeed, even on this calm day, passengers toward the bow are getting drenched. The lake surface is pancake flat, yet the lolling of the aging boat is throwing copious amounts of water up into the air. No warning was given of this potentiality when we boarded. Luck came to those such as myself that opted to sit nearer the stern. Further toward the bow, I can see water dripping from one man’s GORE-TEX hood as he shields his son from the brunt of the spray.

We nevertheless survive the voyage and disembark at the Hawes End jetty. The boat drops you off at the base of the mountain, such that the steep climb is loaded in the first mile of the loop trail. Within half an hour, I had decided that this hike did not deserve the ‘moderate’ difficulty rating or ‘family friendly’ descriptor it had been billed with. It was vertical. I reach the top with burning thighs and heavy breath. Noticeably, no one else at the summit seems to be as exhausted as I am. Ten years of office work has taken an embarrassing toll on my fitness. But the strain is worth it - the views are stunning. It is clear enough to see the peaks of Walla Crag, High Tove, Maiden Moor, Causey Pike, and Bleaberry Fell. The rugged rock faces contrast marvellously with the placid pastoral landscape in the valleys; long defunct dry stone walls litter the slopes; everywhere sheep. And every feature of the scene is gorgeously illuminated by the sun’s rays as they bounce and scatter off the lake surface. It is an unseasonably warm and pleasant day for this part of the world. My uncle has spent the best part of three decades trying to find sunshine in the Lake District, at any time of year, and has not managed it yet.

Wilderness does not exist in England. Beauty, certainly. But every inch of the British Isles show the mark of humanity. The Lake District’s general impression is one of barren remoteness, for example, but even this is largely manufactured. Centuries of overgrazing has stripped away the vegetation and continues to inhibit trees from establishing. The lack of a root system has led to widespread erosion, exposing the bedrock that has begun to itself be whittled by the wind and rain. The dramatic relief of the landscape is due to an excess of people, not their absence. The ecosystem here has long since passed a tipping point. The natural forests would not come back if you tried. Through our innocuous actions we can raze entire forests, upturn ecosystems, reorganize biological communities by driving extinctions and introducing non-native species. This is the lasting legacy of humanity. These thoughts haunt me as I rest atop the mountain. I wonder whether it matters that nature is no longer natural. Untouched environments are fallacious anyway, a mirage born from historical romanticism.

Even in the open ocean, the high seas, hundreds of miles from any national border, humanity’s touch is felt. There is no forest to destroy, no soil to denude; instead, the predominant architecture of marine ecosystems is biological; structure in the vast blue void emerges from the development of complex food webs, producers and consumers, predators and prey, interlocked in an eternal dance, somehow both unchanging and ever changing. Global fishing is the biggest disrupter to marine food webs, and its impacts, besides removing a large portion of the system’s biomass, are to impose unnaturally strong selective pressures on targeted species. Much like agriculture that selectively breeds individuals to propagate certain characteristics to future generations, and in a short amount of time can produce dairy cows that produce milk year round or corn ears an order of magnitude larger than wild maize, we have inadvertently imposed the same process on fish. But because the selection was unintended, simply an artifact of trawling and harvesting a subset of the population that share certain features, the results are not always to our benefit.

Evolution by way of natural selection is a thoughtless, inevitable process. Some individuals die, and some live. Only those that live sire offspring, and in this way, the gene pool automatically changes from generation to generation, becoming increasingly stacked with genes from individuals capable or fortunate enough to survive and reproduce. Natural selection is at its strongest when most individuals die. In such situations, the gene pool changes dramatically over successive generations, and any trait that spares an individual from death rapidly becomes widespread in the population. Commercial fishing creates such a scenario. Huge swathes of populations are dredged up from the depths and killed. Only a small fraction are left to seed the next generation. And what traits do these lucky few possess? To put it another way, what characteristics improve your chances of avoiding the minefield of hooks, traps, and nets?

Most fishing gear is size-selective. This is largely by design. Bigger fish yield more meat and thus greater profits. But smaller fish will not contribute any more to future gene pools than big fish if their presence in trawler nets is only delayed, after they have grown to a catchable size. For small fish to survive, they must stay small. The evolutionary pattern that is most typically observed therefore, is earlier maturation. When maturity is reached, growth significantly slows down so that energy can be allocated toward producing eggs. A fish that matures early, never reaches the size of a comparatively late bloomer. Maturing early also has the added benefit of shortening the generation time. Speeding up the life cycle can offset heavy casualties - if your expected lifespan is curtailed to only three years, say, it is imperative you start making babies as soon as possible, by two years at the latest. In these ways, evolution has molded fish to their new, more hostile, environment. But there is only so much natural selection can do, only so fast species can evolve.

When environments change beyond that which natural selection can effectively buffer, ecosystems cross a tipping point. In our own lifetimes we have been witness to several of these crossed thresholds, where biological communities have undergone dramatic transformations and reorganizations. The Gulf of Maine is known the world over for having the best lobsters in existence. This however is a relatively recent state of affairs, only coming to be after the coastal sea was pushed beyond its limits. Prior to this century, the largest fishery in Maine, by far, was for Atlantic cod. Fully grown cod are voracious predators of shellfish, keeping lobster numbers in the frigid northeastern waters low. When the cod stocks were decimated by fishing fleets, the lobsters suddenly found themselves free of their primary predator. The main force controlling their numbers disappeared overnight, and the lobster population exploded. Despite the fact that the cod fishery has been closed for decades, they never recovered. The ecosystem has been forced into a new stable state, and in that state, cod do not feature. Irreversible regime shifts such as this have occurred, and continue to occur, around the world; in the ocean as a result of overfishing, in lakes as a result of agricultural runoff, and in ancient woodlands as a result of deforestation. Most of these new regimes represent a significant downgrade, at least from a human perspective - even lobster was initially seen as gross, food only fit for prisoners, before Mainers realized the cod were not returning and a PR campaign was swiftly set in motion to put some journalistic spin on the new glut of writhing aquatic invertebrates - but we are still only good at lamenting these changes as opposed to actively preventing them.

Trying Different Tacks

After several splutters, the engine revs into life. At this time in the tail end of winter, the ice covering the lake is over two feet thick. But this has not deterred the local angling population; the lake’s surface is peppered with plate-sized holes. All season long, hopeful fishermen have drilled through the frozen shield, dropped a line, and waited. For someone unfamiliar with such activities, even venturing this far out from shore is somewhat unnerving. Despite multiple reassurances from my companions that the ice in its present condition could support a pickup truck, there remain visions of stepping on the wrong spot, cracks emanating from the offending foot, and suddenly disappearing without a trace into the frigid waters below. Ice fishing is not for the faint of heart.

I am in Wisconsin’s northwoods, in Vilas County. The upper midwest is the Lake District of the contiguous United States. Spider Lake, on which I am currently standing, is only one of tens of thousands of lakes in the region. Here, glaciers from the last ice age scoured the earth’s surface as they retreated and left the land pock-marked for hundreds of square miles. In the summer, waves of vacationers travel up from the big cities further south; sleepy towns burst into life; the lakeshore cabins fill and motorboats congest every waterbody big enough to hold them. In the winter, the rental properties lay empty, and the whole upper portion of the state takes on an eerie silence, heightened by the muffling effect of the season’s lingering snowpack.

I have only been in Wisconsin for three months, and so I have yet to bulk out my collection of winter clothes. As such, my first sojourn onto the ice, as part of a work retreat, was made with only a standard pair of hiking boots on my feet. For the most part they did the job, but ice fishing is an exercise in patience. After several hours on the ice, the snow that clung to the leather and laces had started to melt and seep into my socks. With temperatures fixed at -15C for the entire day, my feet were burning. Hailing from warmer climes, frostbite is not something that I have ever had to seriously consider. Was I at risk? Who knows. It was bloody painful though.

Discomfort aside, I came to realize that fishing was incredibly easy. We drilled a few holes, deployed some tip-ups - spring-loaded devices attached to a hook and line that sit perched atop the hole and raise a flag into the air anytime the line is pulled - and waited. Our team of six set around fifteen tip-ups between us. Within minutes, flags were shooting up around us in all directions. It was hard to keep up with them. Racing over to each signalled hole in turn and hauling up the catch. Yellow Perch, Northern Pike, Largemouth Bass, all falling victim. In each case, hunger, brought on by the lean winter months, was their downfall.

In the modern era, fishing is not fair. Armed with power tools, sonar trackers, and trawler nets, the term ‘sporting chance’ doesn’t come into it. Even the rank amateur, as I unashamedly profess to be, can reel in fish after fish without breaking a sweat. Indeed, fishing has become so easy, fishing techniques have become so effective, that we must enact self-imposed rules to prevent the capture of every single fish. We now put limits on when people are allowed to fish, the size of fish that they are allowed to harvest, the sex, the mesh widths of certain nets, all acting as a handicap to the fish to even the playing field. Yet even this sometimes is not enough and the history of fishing is one of increasingly stringent regulations.

The Maine lobster fishery is one of the most tightly controlled fisheries in the world. They have learnt their hard lesson from the collapse of the cod stock, and thus proceed with utmost caution. Only a handful of licenses for trapping lobsters are issued each year. Most of the boats currently in operation are grandfathered in from previous generations of trustworthy stewards; outsiders are routinely shunned. Of the select few allowed to partake, they are restricted to five traps in operation at any one time. Only lobsters between three and five inches can be harvested. To protect the family lineages, egg-bearing females are completely off limits, regardless of their size. License holders are also legally required to file a notch in the tail of any egg-bearing female they catch, as a way to identify her breeding status, and ensure she remains immune from harvest even after she has deposited her eggs. These are the restrictions we must place on ourselves. This is how dominant of a species we have become.

Figureheads

Finishing the descent of Cat Bells, we stop at an ice cream van parked in a lay-by - the snaking line of walkers emanating from the perspex slide window belie the genius of the location - before returning to the jetty. As the seller carefully constructs my double scoop of raspberry pavlova, he asks if I know how this place got its name. I assumed it was to do with the bell-like shape of the peaks, but he gleefully corrects me, as I’m sure he has thousands of sweaty tourists, that Bells is a corruption of the Old English word ‘bields’, meaning refuge, because a large population of wild cats used to call the peaks home. With the destruction and persecution wrought by humans, all that is left of this wilderness is a cryptic moniker.

My time in the Lake District has come to an end, I must now head south along the A65 to the historic town of Skipton for a family wedding. The road skirts the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, glacial valleys that bisect the upland range known as the backbone of England, the Pennines. Although scenic, as the miles accumulate, the drive becomes monotonous. Farm fields are omnipresent. There are even more sheep in Yorkshire than the agriculturally-dominated landscape I have just departed. Quiet feelings of meandering through a tranquil rural idyll turn to frantic panic of running on an inescapable treadmill, where each pastoral scene is indistinguishable from the last. Like Alice, I sprint as fast as I can for as long as I can and find myself in the same place.

The overarching impact of humanity is one of homogenization. As we clear forests for farmland, as we move species wholesale from country to country, from continent to continent, as we erode the planet’s biodiversity, everything starts to look the same. The combination of destruction and mixing causes the vibrant rainbow of life to blend into a uniform dull brown. More than half of all plants and animals in Florida are not from Florida. With the introduction of cats and rats to oceanic islands, the unique fauna of each is rapidly eaten to extinction. The native birds of New Zealand have almost all been wiped out. The same is true for Hawaii, for Mauritius, for Guam. Even large continents are not immune to the erosion of distinctness; the endemic mammalian diversity of Australia has been supplanted by rabbits, sheep, and feral cats. In time, the prescience in the naming of New South Wales will come to bear; places will cease to be distinguishable, no matter the distance between them.

In an attempt to safeguard nature, and save ourselves from this prosaic future, the most common approach has been to designate areas as no-human zones. National parks, wildlife refuges, marine protected areas, all established in an attempt to keep the grubby fingers of humanity from venturing into every corner of the globe. The prominent biologist EO Wilson has decreed that half of the entire planet should be ring-fenced in this way if we are to provide the rest of life with enough space to breathe. The major challenge facing this initiative however, is its own history. Conservation science as a field is embarrassingly wrapped up with colonialist expansion and imperial ambitions. Almost unfailingly, the creation of a national park was preceded by the forced eviction of indigenous peoples. Displacing minorities in order that white people have ample green space in which to camp and go birdwatching is perhaps not the resounding win for humanity’s ethical consciousness that it has been promoted as. There has been a regime shift, and in the new stable state, people are everywhere; in this regime, it is not possible to protect large stretches of uninhabited land without coming up against thorny issues of human rights. If not enough of the natural world can be effectively shielded from people to change the course of biodiversity collapse, then the change must come from within. Human behavior is incredibly labile, this flexibility is one of the keys to our species’ success, and we have developed enough of an understanding of nature to shape our behaviors in a way that reduces our impact on it. The question is whether we value nature enough to make those sacrifices.

Turning a Blind Eye

He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Shore Leave

INT. SHEFFIELD HOUSE (DINING ROOM) - MORNING
PETER and DANNY sat round a dining room table. To their left is a grubby window, through which is visible a black wheelie-bin in an alley, and a row of terraced houses stretching down a steep hill. The room is sparsely decorated with second-hand furniture. As the two characters talk, the steam from freshly made cups of tea rises up between them.

Peter: Tell me Danny, why do you not eat fish? We live on an island, surrounded by a bountiful ocean, the fruits of which are some of the most delectable of this earth.
Danny: My primary issue is one of sustainability. Yes, there are fish now, but we have become so adept at catching fish, soon there will be none left. We will have tapped the oceans dry.
Peter: True. But you are in the minority are you not?
Danny: Sadly, yes.
Peter: Then how much change will your abstinence invoke?
Danny: This is needless pessimism. Individual actions, collectively, can move mountains. Social norms, as you well know, are plastic, and society’s environmental consciousness is on the ascendency.
Peter: I couldn’t agree more, however I worry you misunderstood the nature of my question. Even if the legion of conscientious people were an order of magnitude larger than its present number, I would still ask the same. How much change, and of what kind, will abstinence invoke?
Danny: I do not understand.
Peter: My skepticism stems from economic principles: supply and demand. If those concerned with the practices of the seafood industry simply boycott the seafood industry, the only demand left are those inflicted with apathy.
Danny: I see.
Peter: If the majority of consumers do not care where their food comes from, producers will simply opt for the supply chain with the biggest profit margin, i.e., the cheapest option. In the case of fishing, the cheapest option is that of ocean trawlers, that effortlessly scoop up all and sundry. These trawls are the most ecologically destructive are they not?
Danny: They are.
Peter: Without incentives, fisheries as an industry will, I fear, become less sustainable through your proposed actions.
Danny: Then what do you propose? Resign ourselves to indignation?
Peter: Ha! Not quite. We must guide the ship rather than abandon it. This is the way to induce meaningful change. If the demand for sustainably sourced food matches that obtained through unsustainable means, the fishers will modify their practices accordingly. Businesses that ignore the demands of the customer base are sure to fail and be replaced.
Danny: Is this what you do?
Peter: No. Although I am convinced by my own arguments, I still abstain from eating seafood much like you.
Danny: Ha! But you are a man of logic! Why do you disregard your own reasoning?
Peter: For this conversation neglects an issue of paramount importance. I am a medical doctor, and what convinces me to eat less fish, is not the issue of sustainability, but all the nasty chemicals in them.

Harmful if Swallowed

I write from one of only two US cities that lie on an isthmus - Madison, Wisconsin. The city was founded in 1836 and named after the fourth serving president, James Madison, who died that same year. The location for the new state capitol was still up for debate, when a wiley federal judge, attempting to profit from a hitherto worthless tract of swamp he had bought a year prior, bribed legislatures with robes made of buffalo hide. Warm clothes have considerable persuasive power in the frigid heart of the continent. The legislatures snatched the robes with frostbitten fingers, promptly and loudly decrying Madison as the perfect location for a state capital owing to its central location. And so it was that Wiconsin’s political and economic center was built on this narrow strip of land, sandwiched between two lakes. Modelled on Washington DC, the nation’s capital, it is an attractive city; piercing thoroughfares radiate from its center where sits the grand government building with its neoclassical dome that, by design, one catches constant glimpses of as they meander through the sprawling streets. At my age, the hustle and bustle of cities can sometimes overwhelm me, but in Madison it is easy to escape the urban clamour. You are never more than a stone’s throw from a shoreline, where the placid water and gentle breeze provides an instant restorative calm. I imagine the politicians in particular are immensely grateful for such proximate tranquility.

On the southern shore of Lake Mendota, the larger of the two lakes, sits the University of Wisconsin, to which I am presently employed. Indeed as a fisheries biologist, I have the enviable pleasure of having an office that overlooks the lake. The building in which I am housed has been here since the 1960s, and the department I am a member of has been studying Wisconsin’s water bodies since the 19th century. As a result, Madison proudly proclaims to be the birthplace of limnology in North America. Some also contend that Lake Mendota is the most studied lake in the world, but several European institutions may take issue with such a bold assertion. Nevertheless, this site has served as a frontier for research into algal blooms, food web dynamics, and climate change. My particular interests lie in the fish that call these lakes home, how they have adapted to survive in freezing water that are covered with ice for six months of the year, and how resilient they are to human pressures.

It is spring here, and one of my profound daily joys is to embark on a lunchtime stroll along the lakeshore path that adjoins my office. From my building, heading west, the path skirts the waters edge for several miles. This narrow tract of the university campus has been protected from development, and thus all along the path I am bordered by lapping waves on my right, and stands of mixed deciduous forest on my left. Maple, Hickory, Cottonwood, Cherry. And in the understory, a yearly ritual is still underway - wildflowers hurriedly blooming, desperately trying to attract pollinators and seed the next generation before they are once again shaded out by the canopy overhead. Great White Trilliums, Wild Columbines, Solomon’s Seal, Jack-in-the-pulpit, Bellwort, Yellow Lady’s Slipper, and Dutchman’s Breeches. All are vying for survival, all competing tooth and nail. The savagery of nature is exquisite beauty.

Turning to the lake side, the view is no less spectacular. Here, for me, the beauty lies in the mystery. Life in the lake abounds as much as it does in the woodland, but it is invisible, hidden from view. The ripples on the water’s surface and the sun’s refracted light obscure the scene below. It is tantalising. Mere feet from me swim Largemouth Bass, Northern Pike, Bluegills, and Sturgeon, exploring subaquatic forests of Coontail, Duckweed, and Wild Celery. But I can’t see any of it. I instead must rely on my imagination to explore that world and all the wonder it harbors. But my fantasies are marred. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. At intervals along the path, the Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources, a branch of the state government that regulates wildlife and recreation, has erected signs. Although the signs have colorful illustrations of some of the lake’s fish inhabitants, illustrations that may help with visualizing my flights of fancy, they nevertheless sour my mood. They are warning signs. Specifically they are signs to warn anglers not to eat what they catch.

Wisconsin is an agricultural state. One can drive across its relatively flat expanse for several hours without losing sight of corn stalks. While Madison’s central location provides advantages for effective governance, it provides a noticeable disadvantage when it comes to sanitation. Owing to their position, and the drainage patterns of the surrounding landscape, Madison acts as a clearing house for much of the region’s agricultural runoff. Herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer are carried by rain through the soil and into the groundwater. The groundwater flows down through the heart of the province and is decanted into the Madison chain of lakes, predominantly the first in the chain, Lake Mendota. Thus, perhaps not the most studied lake in the world, it could reign as the most polluted lake in the world. The cocktail of farmyard chemicals invariably finds its way into the fish. Hence the state department’s advisory - signage recommends limiting consumption to once per month, or if you are pregnant or prepubescent, the recommendation is to abstain altogether.

Clean Bill of Health

A famous right-wing conspiracy theorist was laughed at and derided for claiming the government was putting chemicals in the water that were turning all the frogs gay. Although the details are almost completely wrong and twisted, the outlandish proclamation was grounded in a real story. A broken clock, I guess. In the early 2000s, scientists discovered a causal link between commonly used pesticides and amphibian reproduction. Amphibians have porous skin, rendering them extremely susceptible to changes in water quality. The chemicals, upon entering the animals, interfered with certain hormones that control sexual development. No gay frogs, but lots of genital deformities, hermaphroditism, and sterility. This is definitely newsworthy. Far from being a government conspiracy however, this issue arose simply from an initial ignorance of what impact such chemicals would have when they inevitably escaped from the confines of farm fields and a subsequent lack of caring. And you should care. Follow up studies revealed similar effects of heavy pesticide exposure in humans. And this is just one of thousands of chemicals that are in circulation. For the vast majority we have not tested for potential side-effects. Yet, we continue to spray them on the food we eat and they continue to find their way into the water we drink. Modern agriculture is still too young for us to fully know how much damage we have wrought on ourselves.

Beyond farming waste, there is a cornucopia of harmful substances, generated from civilization’s indefatigable march and accompanying profligacy, that accumulate in our waters, and thence, our food. The curious element mercury exemplifies our folly. Its history is irony writ large - cinnabar, the ore that contains mercury, has been dug up and collected, from volcanoes no less, since the Stone Age. Once used in antiquity as medicine, before becoming the obsession of the alchemists, the symbol of transformation, we now know mercury to be highly toxic. Indeed, the toxicity of liquid silver began to be ascertained long before it was removed from balms and beauty products. Something as trifling as human health, it seems, cannot get in the way of capitalism’s inexorable rise. Importantly, once Mercury finds its way into living tissues, it can never come out. Thus even at low doses it presents a hazard, as chronic exposure leads to the build-up of higher and higher concentrations. Only eventually are the effects felt. In albatross, long lived seabirds, mercury has accumulated to such alarming levels in the adult population that the brain functions of many would-be parents are fried. In a neurological haze, they forget to tend to their eggs. The widespread use of birth control pills has resulted in sewage laden with estrogen. In the swamps of Florida, where the sewage is unceremoniously deposited, alligators are born without penises. Microplastics, linked to cancer and fertility issues, are turning up in everything. The list goes on. We are poisoning the earth.

What then can be done? Avoidance, thorough shrewd grocery shopping or reliance on bottled spring water, is no longer possible. The danger is omnipresent. It seeps into every fiber of our surroundings. No system of filtration has yet been conceived that could divorce us from contact with hazardous materials. It is regulation then, that represents our only hope. Policy changes that severely restrict chemical use, including the banning of certain substances altogether, should not be seen as extremism. Or if they are, a recognition that extreme actions are necessary in our current plight. Following such regulatory overhauls, the solution is simply time. After many years, many decades, the toxins of today will dilute and disperse. For the so-called ‘forever chemicals’, some of which take literal millenia to be broken down by natural processes, we will need the self-restraint and the patience of saints. Sadly, and perhaps explanatory of our reticence as yet, patience and discipline are virtues we lack in the modern era. Our die is cast. But we must exhibit fortitude if we are to learn to live without the benefits of antibiotics, fertilizer, and polyethylene, whilst still exposed to their lingering costs. We must suffer the consequences of our failed collective bets, and do everything in our power to not consign future generations to the same fate. We, after all, enact laws for our children.