[...]... Australia 50,000 years ago, and the elephant-like mastodons and the sloth of North America about 13,000 years ago The story was similar for large island birds such as the moas of New Zealand, exterminated within a few generations of the arrival of the Polynesians later known as Maoris In the North Atlantic, deliberate hunting of whales—as opposed to the occasional consumption of stranded individuals—was... probably initiated in Scandinavia a thousand years ago, and then further developed by the Basques, who could practice on the whale populations in the Bay of Biscay, now devoid of large cetaceans Whaling grew to engulf the entire North Atlantic, and the Atlantic gray whales, probably similar in habits to their cousins along the coast of the northeastern Pacific, went extinct in the process, while the. .. to North Atlantic fisheries Decline and fall of a marine empire 35 The charts, each representing one fish population, portray the near universal decline, in the last decades, of the abundance of commercial fishes in the North Atlantic, and the increase of the fishing mortality to which they are subjected Summary view of the decline in populations of large predatory fishes in the North Atlantic since... became Europe and Africa, creating the Atlantic Ocean between the two landmasses (Figure 1) Along with a slow but continuing expansion, there are environmental processes operating in the North Atlantic Ocean at different 1 N006_Pauly_Ch_1 2 10/22/02 2:18 PM Page 2 In a Perfect Ocean FIGURE 1 THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN BASIN Bathymetric map of the North Atlantic as defined in this book This shows shallow... increasing by a few centimeters each year.2 The Ocean developed from the splitting up of Pangaea, the only land mass, or continent, in pre-Jurassic times At that time a single giant ocean, Panthalassa, surrounded the land Pangaea began to break into northern and southern segments about 200 million years ago, and a fissure that is now the mid -ocean ridge began to divide the American continent from what... of the North Atlantic Ocean This book offers a comprehensive assessment of fishery impact in the North Atlantic Ocean and recommendations for mitigating that impact It serves as a model of tested methodologies for analyzing and assessing the condition of other seas and ecosystems as well The project was called The Sea Around Us, a name drawn from the outstanding book of this title by Rachel Carson.1... off Labrador at the same latitude is frozen for half the year.5 The world’s oceans are divided into 4 biomes: the Polar biome, containing polar and subpolar oceans, which make up only about 6% of the total; the Westerlies biome, containing the temperate and subtropical areas of the oceans, about 54%; the Tradewinds biome, corresponding roughly to tropical sea areas, 33%; and the Coastal Boundary biome,... history of the ecosystems and the consequence of present trends and alternative management measures This also enabled us to prepare a “report card” that grades the various aspects of the North Atlantic investigated in our study compared to the relative abundance 50 and 100 years ago The question we aim to answer, for the North Atlantic and subsequently the rest of the world’s oceans, is: How close can we... regarded as firmly “dead and buried,” where the terrestrial landscape is everywhere being cut-up and paved over as a consequence of human population pressure and increasing demand from each of us, we have the opportunity to reverse the clearly declining nature of the planet’s oceanic ecosystems The mapping approach that forms the basis of much of this book enabled us to learn a great deal about the history... thank University of British Columbia President, Dr Martha Piper, for reminding us of that work, and thus inspiring the name of our project We hope that through this book, readers will realize the importance of maintaining and safeguarding marine ecosystems, which are in many ways as indispensable to our well-being as the terrestrial ecosystems that we inhabit Daniel Pauly, Vancouver Jay Maclean, Manila . Series N006_Pauly_FM 10/22/02 2:11 PM Page iv IN A PERFECT OCEAN THE STATE OF FISHERIES AND ECOSYSTEMS IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN DANIEL PAULY AND JAY MACLEAN Washington. Cataloging -in- Publication Data. Pauly, D. (Daniel) In a perfect ocean : the state of fisheries and ecosystems in the North Atlantic Ocean / Daniel Pauly and Jay Maclean.