Most people know Ted
Danson as the loveable Sam Malone from Cheers, but what isn’t as public is his
support for environmental conservancy, specifically the sea. This is hands down
one of the best environmental books of the last few years…not only is it
aesthetically beautiful, what’s written inside is both awesome and thoroughly
frightening. It was a shock to learn that probably because of their vast size,
oceans don’t have the same protections that other bodies of water do. Many
think that the oceans are the environmental equivalent of “too big to fail”,
when reality shows they are just as vulnerable as everything else. I’ll let the
quotes speak for themselves:
p. 69 “The current rate
of destruction and death among the world’s coral reefs due to a multitude of
threats including trawling and bleaching is—there’s no better word for
it—horrifying. Close to 30% of the world’s tropical reefs have vanished since
1980, including half of the reefs in the Caribbean.”
p. 89 “Experts say we’re
within a century—possibly even less—of inhabiting a world where the only viable
seafood left in the oceans will be jellyfish.”
p. 130 “Calculations
show that the total area of seabed trawled by the worlds fishing fleet each
year is 150 times the area of the forests cut.”
p. 182 “You show me a
polluter, and I’ll show you a subsidy.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
p. 186 “Factor in the
destruction caused by that deep-sea fishing and you’ve got a triple whammy: The
public is paying to help catch those fish, we’re paying to eat them, and we’re
paying to help destroy our oceans in the process. I don’t think many of us
would support fishing subsidies if we were fully aware of these facts.
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