Index 
To: editorial@discovermagazine.com From: Scott Sinnock ssinnock@netzero.com, 9:56 PM, Feb. 20, 2013 Subject: Mail Section: Letter for Consideration Re: "Don't Throw Back Those Baby Fish", page 20, March 2013. The article ends with a moral proscription; namely, "We should" ...... "find more uses for anchovy-sized fish in our diets and in animal feed". The basis of "need" that supports the morality implied by the word "should" seems to be "rebuilding the world's fisheries", stated in the previous sentence. The article goes to lengths to show that fishermen's "keeper sizes" lead to inefficiencies by "depleting", and "harming" the fisheries and by creating "unnatural, bottom-heavy ecosystems". That may be, the author makes a good argument, but I am not sure what the problem is, really. I assume it has to do with sustaining some level of biomass "harvest" and the related efficiency of transferring solar energy from the sun to human thought and other energy uses. Such efficiency, however, may indeed profit from a "bottom heavy, unnatural ecosystem" like our corn and wheat fields. I suggest a more efficient use of the ocean, rather than just eating smaller fish as suggested in the article, would be to go a step fa rther and eat the algae and plankton; just like we do on land with our monoculture fields. That would be even "better" than "little fish", if efficiency of "use" of the ocean for food is an objective. Ditto for hamburgers. But I suggest an even different goal: leave the fish alone. Adjust OUR numbers rather than theirs. I suggest further that this would better achieve the objective of "rebuilding the fisheries", except they would no longer be fisheries for us, just for other fishes. Scott Sinnock 205 West Todd Avenue, Apt 201 Woodstock, IL 60098 815-206-0634 ssinnock@netzero.com |