ABSTRACT
As I prepare to conclude this book, the Boyce, Lewis, and Worm (2010) Nature study documenting plummeting global phytoplankton levels has just been released. Losing 1% of global median levels of phytoplankton in the world’s oceans annually, and having lost 40% since 1950, the trajectory implies a catastrophic collapse of ocean ecosystems by mid-century, barely a blink in geological or ecological time. As the primary food source of marine eco-systems and one of the key carbon fi xers of the planet, these rapid declines auger catastrophic problems as well for the human communities that depend on them. As Howard (2007) demonstrates in the wake of the cod fi shery collapse in Newfoundland in the 1990s, the families and communities that depended on the fi shery dispersed within inter-regional diasporas soon afterwards.
