Going Vegan, Ep.10: Fish

I gave up fish just in time.

I was reading a book called “The World is Blue.”  This remarkable account details in stark and horrifying glory the devastation that humans have inflicted upon our watery environment over the last hundred years.  It’s brutal.

Groupers and bluefin tuna are nearly gone, dredging for shrimp wrecks havoc on delicate ecosystems, and there is a mile-long pile of garbage that simply floats in the duldrums of the Pacific Ocean.

We, as humans, have been behaving badly.

The problem seems to be that we are removed from the actual devastation.  No one really shows us the pictures or tells us about it.  We try to do the right thing.  If we saw something wrong in front of us, most of us would try to do the right thing.  But all of this destruction is far away and out of site.  We attempt to eat well, feed our children healthfully, until one day someone comes out with a report that says that the thing we were eating to keep ourselves healthy actually may have the power to destroy us.  Witness the rise of heavy metals in fish.

Did you know that algae produce most of our oxygen?  I didn’t know that.  I would’ve guessed trees.   So now instead of worrying about rainforests, we need to worry about the ocean.  Because if that system goes down, we’re all proverbially screwed.

So.

I gave up fish just in time.