Protecting Earth’s Oceans

By Liza Gross

When New England fishers complained of working harder and harder to catch fewer and fewer fish, Spencer Baird assembled a scientific team to investigate. Though a fishery failure would once have seemed inconceivable, Baird wrote in his report, “an alarming decrease of the shore-fisheries has been thoroughly established by my own investigations, as well as by evidence of those whose testimony was taken.”The report was Baird’s first as head of the U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries. The year was 1872.Baird recognized the ocean’s limits. A decade later, however, his British counterpart, Thomas Huxley, took a decidedly different view. Calling the sea fisheries “inexhaustible,” Huxley deemed regulations useless, since “nothing we do seriously affects the number of fish.”

Source: The number one thing we can do to protect Earth’s oceans | Ensia