This week’s lecture from Professor Loren McClenachan was very interesting to hear about and once again displays the never-ending relevance that history has in our modern world. The lecture began with some serious discussion of the changes occurring to ecosystems and specifically coral reefs. This was followed by lighthearted pictures of people in short shorts catching big fish like sharks and groupers. Using four different time periods of these pictures, she was able to discover that the fish were decreasing in size over time. This is truly remarkable to see that you can determine this from these images considering that people were taking just to display their large trophy fish. Between the 1950s and the 2000s we have reduced the biomass of these large trophy fishes by 90%. The statistics were alarming to see and I honestly had no idea that the trophy fish in our waters had gone down in size so much or that it had been anywhere near that drastic and it is incredible that this could all be determined from these old photographs of people enjoying their leisure time. Luckily the population of these Goliath groupers has been on the rise since these fish were put on the “Species of Concern” list by the government. I think this is really interesting to consider in our modern world because so many species have already been destroyed or wiped out because of us and yet we continue to make so many harmful decisions towards our environment.
It was also very interesting to hear that people from the fisheries are saying there are so many now that they are becoming a nuisance and that they have never seen this many of these groupers in their lives. This is very surprising to hear and must be a large issue to deal with when trying to maintain the longevity of this species. Especially considering how long data on this topic and other marine life forms have been readily available it becomes clear how important these voices from fishermen could be when they have been fishing for long durations. This is really interesting to consider in relation to our talk last week and how communism was able to span such a large region and be so influential with a massive network of spies and correspondents. It really emphasizes the importance of historical records and how the records can get blurred or limited based on our data collected or based on who is given what information or piecing seemingly unrelated things together.
In this lecture we also discussed coral loss over 240 years and established it was around 52% over this time period. However, there was a very large spatial balance to the loss and some specific places had up to 92% loss such as Florida Bay. Professor Loren McClenachan also mentioned how sponges were taken from reefs and used for a multitude of things throughout our human history. Sponges were associated with wealth for a long period of time and she even showed us a song singing about sponge money. This high market value really quickly drove declines and by 1870 the shallow water sponges were “fished out.” It is incredible to see so clearly how big of an impact we can have on an ecosystem and environment if we are unregulated. I think this talk relates beautifully to all of the other talks we have had throughout this semester and clearly exemplifies how relevant the past is in our modern day as these issues still exist and many harmful actions we all commit regularly are unregulated and are permanently impacting the world around us. She mentioned at the end of this lecture how understanding how the world around us has changed will help us in preventing further damage to ecosystems and I think that is truly the main theme of this course: understanding the past to help create a better present day.