Mark Kurlansky Quotes

By 1760, the Nantucketers had virtually exterminated the local whale population.

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 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.

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

People still do not understand that a live fish is more valuable than a dead one, and that destructive fishing techniques are taking a wrecking ball to biodiversity.

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

Fish banks are areas we set aside without fishing, reserves where we allow marine life to come back.

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.

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.

One fifth of human kind depend on fish to live. Today now 70 percent of the fish stock are over-exploited. According to FAO if we don't change our system of fishing the main sea resources will be gone in 2050. We don't want to believe what we know.

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

Maritime nations still respond automatically to the shibboleth of the "freedom of the seas." Professing to believe in the "inexhaustible resources of the oceans," they bring species after species of fish and whales closer to extinction.

It’s all in there. We have harpooned every whale in the ocean.

I am delighted to see that the issue of coral reefs is receiving the attention it deserves.

If commercial fishing were excluded from large areas of the sea, the total catch would be likely, paradoxically, to rise, due to what biologists call the spillover effect.

'Cod' was a great story. It let me talk about the environment without putting people to sleep.

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.

If we keep on destroying fish, there won't be any left. If the oceans die, we all die. It's as simple as that.

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

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.

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

Without sound conservation and management measures, fisheries will quickly become depleted and a basic component of global food security will be lost.

Marine protected areas, and particularly no-take zones, are very effective in allowing regeneration of fish stocks.