THE EMPTY OCEAN: PLUNDERING THE WORLD'S MARINE LIFE

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Notes

1 I am a lawyer who has fishermen, fishing associations, fishing research foundations, seafood buyers, and seafood processors as clients. I have commercially fished for cod in the North Atlantic off Iceland during the “cod wars” in the 1970's, and I was first mate on a pleasure/sportfishing boat off Montauk Point, Martha's Vineyard, Block Island, and Cape Cod in the 1960's.

2 As I reviewed the book, I was also reminded of something my eighth grade Literature teacher warned me, “Always read the Preface!” It was here that I discovered that Mr. Ellis, by his own admission, was “not a field researcher.” “I classify myself,' he writes, “as a library or Internet researcher—but I have been a student of marine life for four decades. …” Hopefully, Mr. Ellis will have many more decades to continue his study. I suppose the premonition should have been the “Advance Praise” (is that, I wonder, a review that appears before the book is written or published?) from Sylvia Earle, who said, according to the dust jacket, “Read this book and be inspired, informed, and entertained, but watch out. The latest, most powerful tribute to the sea by Richard Ellis could change forever the way you think about the ocean, about yourself, and about the future we share with the sea.”

3 Actually the best and most readable book on this subject is Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World (1997), a very widely read and best-selling book that most recently was available at the fish counter in Whole Foods Markets.

4 I have fished from both types of vessels. I have also heard stories about and fished with literally dozens of men who lost or maimed an arm or a leg by getting them caught between the side of the vessel and the trawl net on older “side winder” trawl vessels. The stern trawler design substantially reduces the contact between the fisherman and the trawl net before it is secured.

5 Even this seemingly benign statement curdles my blood, because as far as I recall, both under native American hunters, as well as European origin hunters, there was tremendous and shocking waste associated with buffalo hunting, whereas, with cod fishing almost every last atom of all the codfish caught was utilized.

6 The species is more accurately referred to as the “North Pacific fur seal.”

7 One of my first assignments when I joined the State Department's Legal Advisors Office was to assist in the renegotiation and extension of this Convention. My experience with Greenpeace USA and the politics of organized “conservation” groups such as I saw at work during this time, changed my formerly favorable view of “environmentalists,” forever.