Peak Fish?

I once thought about producing a "coffee table book" that would showcase a collection of pictures of people that have been photographed right at the instant that somebody asked them what they felt about eating raw fish.

Ooooh! Ick! Yuck! NO! Take it back! Gross! I've seen all these reactions and more. ;-)

I don't think I could count all the different times that I have watched people scrunch up their face to that question.

Either you like sushi or you don't.

Have you ever been out to the sushi bar with some "landlubbers?" It is comical to watch them fumble with the chopsticks or give up and try to handle a handroll with the tips of their fingers, lest they stain them forever with stinky fish smell. Hilarious. They might try a nip off the corner of some maguro sushi, spit it out and then retreat to comfort by ordering some nice, well cooked, tempura chicken.

And, by the way, don't even try to discuss the conditions in meat processing plants with those same people who eat loads of cheeseburgers or chicken or whatever. They don't want to hear it and don't tolerate that flavor of criticism as well as they expect you to understand how extreme sushi really is to them.

Peak Oil is an extreme topic.

We humans we use our power of reflection to discern, to compare.

Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, Peak Gold, or my personal topic of close concern, Peak Caviar. Man, how I love that stuff! In Russia we call it "Ikra," and eat the fisheggs in "blini," little tasty pancakes, or snack on "zakuski" with caviar spread on crackers or deviled eggs.

Peak this or Peak that. They are all predictable lines of inquiry.

What about Peak Fish? Ever heard of that one? It's simple.

The world has passed the peak in the harvest of fish from the ocean. Even though fishing is a potentially sustainable system, apparently we have screwed it up and legitimate authorities have concluded that we are in a "race to the bottom" to rape the last schools of fish out of what was formerly conceptualized to be an unlimited source.

I'm a "waterman." I'm from the "Ocean Tribe."

People like me are surfers, sailors, divers, and fishermen, all at the same time.

And, I can tell you from personal experience that Peak Fish is real.

I have watched the world destroy the ocean. And, unfortunately, I have to take personal responsibility for my part in the destruction.  Pollution and overfishing has caused amazing impacts just in the short time I have been alive. Short geologically speaking that is.

You might find it not only interesting but probably disturbing to hear that the world's fishing peaked long ago, back in the 1980's, in some places it was the 1970's. Kinda reminds me of the Peak in US oil production that nobody paid attention to in 1971.

This is not good.

Peak Fish, as a concept, offers a spectrum of lessons, especially about politics and greed.

And, it seems only prudent to consider that Peak Oil is sailing along on the same course.

Lack of awareness, lack of what Mr. Gore calls "political will," lack of courage basically.

I can't tell you if the ocean is beyond repair. It certainly doesn't look good.

We have been playing around with a big toy we don't understand in the least. And we haven't taken very good care of our toy so far.

Discussing Peak Fish or Peak Uranium or Peak Platinum is all fine and dandy.

But I think it important not to dumb-down the discussion by making the other Peak concepts seem even nearly as important as Peak Oil.

Oil runs everything that matters. It's a fact.

We built up everything dependent on oil and so right now, Peak Oil is the "mother of all peaks."

The most important thing to understand is that if we are going to fix any of the other challenges, it is going to take energy to do it and the only "spooled-up" source of energy we have is from oil.