HOW WE MAKE SENSE OF (WHAT WE CALL) NATURE - Making Sense of Nature - page 14

3.6

Norway
aquaculture

3.4

Global marine
fisheries

3.2

3.0

Global freshwater
fisheries

2.8

2.6

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

Figure 1.2 Mean trophic levels of global freshwater and marine fisheries over time: an
'aquapalypse'?
This diagram shows a continuous decline in the mean trophic level (MTL) of fish stocks worldwide
since 1970. Alone and with other researchers, the French-Swiss marine biologist Daniel Pauly has
persistently argued that an apparent increase in non-aquaculture fish harvests globally since the late
nineteenth century has come at the expense of MTLs. The latter are the ecological levels at which
harvested fish exist. Pauly and colleagues' claim is that the fishing industry has 'moved down the
food chain' because once higher species (like cod) are harvested to virtual extinction. Writing in
the current affairs magazine The new republic in 2009, Pauly talked dramatically of an 'aquacalypse'
and 'the end of fish' (Pauly, 2009). This is just the sort of discourse about natural resource over-use
that Western citizens are well familiar with. Other scientists have taken issue with Pauly's research.
Redrawn based on Pauly et al. , (2002).

advanced technologies we have at our disposal in more 'ecofriendly' ways
than heretofore. We can then recreate lost species using these technologies
and bring a dead past into a living present. We can tackle 'natural prob-
lems' within our own species, such as various genetic diseases. And we can
address 'wicked' environmental problems like climate change (e.g. through
geoengineering solar radiation fluxes). But critics argue that we'll only end
up creating unanticipated new and a larger problems with all our 'meddling'.
Indeed, when Nobel Prize winning scientist Paul Crutzen coined the term
'the Anthropocene' in 2000 he invited us to temporalise nature on a grand
scale. His neologism encourages us to regard the biophysical changes to the
Earth that have occurred during homo sapiens ' brief residence on the planet
as akin to those occurring during previous geological epochs. The same can
besaidofthedramaticnamechosenfortheBritish-basedChristianenvi-
ronmental charity Operation Noah, with its intimations of 'environmental
crisis'. The human influence, especially over the past 100 years, is thus