Mark Kurlansky Quotes

Our oceans have been the victims of a giant Ponzi scheme, waged with Bernie Madoff-like callousness by the world's fisheries.

Sustainable fishing is a fraud. It's a marketing term that really means 'business as usual.'

Commercial fishermen are the greediest, stupidest people on earth.

I don't eat fish because there is no such thing as sustainable fishing in the world right now.

Believe me, I did not come to London to cook farmed fish. All my fish are wild.

I'm not against extracting a modest amount of wildlife out of the ocean for human consumption, but I am really concerned about the large-scale industrial fishing that engages in destructive practices like trawling and longlining.

There is an urgent need for regeneration of fisheries and fostering a sustainable fisheries programme. What I mean is, designing new fishing vessels and nets so that they do not disrupt the fish lifecycle by catching young ones and also do not destroy sea grass beds, which serve as habitats for dugongs.

Until fishing is properly regulated and contained, we should withdraw our consent. Save your plastic bags by all means, but if you really want to make a difference, stop eating fish.

Sharks are being driven to extinction because people want to eat their fins and their flesh.

The fact that we're catching more fish per person than we've ever done before doesn't mean that there are not particular places where we've managed fisheries badly.

Eating a tuna roll at a sushi restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning a manatee.

I would just like my children to be able to eat fish when they grow up. Now, I don't think there's anything controversial about that.

Sharks are in real trouble, and they need all the help they can get.

The Ocean Health Index is like the thermometer of the ocean. It will allow us to take the temperature to know what is going on at the global level, trying to integrate different impacts, including overfishing, invasive species, coastal development, and climate change.

There are so many issues in our oceans - like the near extinction of blue fin tuna - that should be taken more seriously worldwide.

80 percent of our global fish stocks are fully exploited, overly exploited or have collapsed. Two billion people rely on the oceans for their primary source of protein.

Seventy percent of the fish we eat is black market, fished in violation of international laws. Our ignorance makes us unwilling partners in crime. Rogue economics is turning the global market into our worst nightmare.

The end of commercial fishing is predicted long before the middle of the 21st century.

If we don't preserve the oceans from nitrate runoff and plastic and chemicals, and if we don't preserve it from acidification, and if we don't preserve it from grotesque overfishing - too much money chasing too few fish - we're going to have the most massive ecosystem on the planet in peril.

The idea of the industrial fishing affects everyone. Those factory ships play this game of hit and run with the international fishing limits, and somebody said it's like hunting squirrels with a bulldozer. They pull everything in and they are only looking for certain types of fish and everything else dies and they just throw it back. It's like chumming.

Fish are a renewable resource, and one of the problems we've had is people feel obliged to catch the limit, then throw 'em in the garbage can.

Ten percent of the big fish still remain. There are still some blue whales. There are still some krill in Antarctica. There are a few oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Half the coral reefs are still in pretty good shape, a jeweled belt around the middle of the planet. There's still time, but not a lot, to turn things around.

The real threat to whales is whaling, which has endangered many whale species.

There is no need for an end to fish, or to fishing for that matter. But there is an urgent need for governments to free themselves from the fishing-industrial complex and its Ponzi scheme, to stop subsidizing the fishing-industrial complex and awarding it fishing rights, when it should in fact pay for the privilege to fish.

I have heard endlessly that fish are so resilient that there is no way that you could exterminate a species. We are learning otherwise.