Read the dialogue and discuss the problem of marine ecosystems

Mike: Thanks for joining us today Dr. Boris Worm. Can you give us a bit of a background of your work?

Dr. Worm: Sure, I'm a marine biologist. I studied Marine Biology and Biologic Oceanography back in Germany where I'm from originally, and about 10 years ago, I moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia where I still work today. I started being interested in ecology - so how the things in the ocean relate to the environment and to each other.

My work became focusing on the impacts we're having on ocean species and their supporting ecosystems, and that's mostly what I'm doing today.

Mike: It seems that the people who are engaged in fishing have always said, "Oh, don't worry; they're plenty of fish in the ocean." Right?

Dr. Worm: So I think there has always been a more optimistic and a more pessimistic view, and I think what we're trying to do today is try to find out where things really are. And I think there's a broad consensus now that fisheries worldwide are in trouble.

There are a lot of stresses on marine ecosystems, but there are also some success stories where people have managed to reduce our impact. I think it's important to see both sides of the coin. It's not all hopeless. The situation is dire, but also we have some ways of fixing it, which is important.

Mike: Isn't it your research, by the way, that has been widely quoted as predicting a collapse of fishing stocks in 50 years if we don't make these changes?

Dr. Worm: That's correct, in 2006 we looked at loss of species from ocean ecosystems. What we saw was that more and more of these fisheries were declining greatly in their catches – about 90% or more.

Mike: Isn't there pressure on the fishing industries then as the costal collapse; isn't there a tendency for them to just move farther offshore and explore more pristine ocean waters and start plundering those? Is that something that's real?

Dr. Worm: Yeah, well that's absolutely true. That's the historic trend and we have already expanded fishing operations all around the globe, and there's no ocean that has never been fished. And our human impact has really stretched to every little corner; even places in the Antarctica or very, very remote areas in the eastern Pacific have been fished and have been impacted a great deal.

Mike: Well I want to thank you for taking this time to join us.

Dr. Worm: Thanks and it was a pleasure to talk to you, good luck and all the best to you.

Unit 4

Protected Areas

“Big cities are chaotic.

And chaos for humans is the last step before conflict.

So, in the park, every kind of visual contradiction has been eliminated.”

~John Hench