After reading the introduction to The Ocean Reader by Eric Paul Roorada, one thing that stood out to me is how the author reminds us that humans are constantly exploiting the Ocean (with a capital O) and hurting its ecosystems, and wants us to become more environmentally aware of the Ocean due to its limited resources.

Roorada writes, “[T]he multifaceted Ocean … is an enormous and very complicated system. Humans interact with that system in many ways. They relentlessly hunt sea creatures, taking 90 million tons of fish from it annually.” (3)

This description of humans “relentlessly” hunting sea creatures shows how we take these gifts of Nature for granted. The Ocean is enormous, but it is not infinite. Like land, it is home to many resources that can only be found underwater. However, there is only so much that we can gather from the Ocean before it eventually runs out of said resources and we have to compete for it.

The author also sheds light on overfishing, giving us a statistic of humans “taking 90 million tons of fish from it annually.” Overfishing leads to a depletion in fish stock, which endangers marine ecosystems and harms human livelihoods. Because of this, it is important for us to consider what resources we really want and how much we really need, taking in mind how efficient we need to be with the resources we have. Limited resources cannot fulfill our unlimited wants.