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Sentences
While immersed in other projects and adventures, I kept bumping into stories of overfishing, overhunting, and other depredations that ocean life has been subjected to.
As I read the voluminous literature and listened to the cries of despair, I realized I had found the subject for my next book, one that seemed as necessary as a fire alarm in a burning building.
Through carelessness, greed, or just plain stupidity, we have squandered our precious marine heritage - in some cases beyond salvation.
I have written about all sorts of things that live in the sea, from sperm whales to great white sharks, from giant squid to deep sea viperfish, but never before have I felt such a pressing need to get the information out.
Some of the situations are already hopeless: millions of dolphins, whales, seals, sea lions, and sea otters have been killed in the name of fashion or commerce.
We will never again see a living great auk or Steller's sea cow; the barn door skate is history.
But this is only the beginning of the end, as it were.
Poisoning, overfishing, and extinctions are on the increase around the world.
If we are not to repeat the history we did not understand, perhaps this warning will alert the fire department, and maybe - just maybe - we will be able to avoid greater calamities in the future.