ABSTRACT
Most works of fiction have at least one passage that can be identified as "the climax." This is the point to which the rising action is directed and from which the falling action recedes. Nonfiction may or may not have such a critical narrative peak, but this book does (at least in the author's perception). The present discussion of quantitative effects of coastal pollution on resource populations should be it! The text thus far has been concerned with the
We are as ready now as we ever will be in this document to confront the critical issue of numbers. It is not a topic that leads to crisp, satisfying conclusions, probably because it is so complex and our data sets are still so inadequate. To try to isolate and then to quantify specific pollutant effects on population abundance - as distinct from a maelstrom of other environmental influences on survival - is pushing the current state of the art in marine population dynamics too far. As will become obvious in the following pages, the approach that quantitative biologists usually resort to is to develop "simulation models", based on available data, to simulate and then predict potential effects of various levels of pollution (as additional causes of mortality) on the several life stages of fish and shellfish under varying conditions of exploitation by man.
