Letters

摘要

sir - Your special report on the sea (January 3rd) outlined the escalating problems caused by overfishing. But simply improving the allocation of quotas, as you urge, amounts to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Marine protected-areas can't work if habitats have lost the capacity to provide fish with food and shelter. Long-term solutions lie in tackling global warming, rising sea levels, pollution and overharvesting; in the short term we can nurse back devastated ecosystems into economically productive habitats. In Indonesia, for instance, 95% of the coral reefs have ecologically collapsed.