Introducing the Hive Mind

It’s hard to eat fish these days without wondering where it came from, and whether it will be around in twenty years.

As report after report warns of oceanic collapse, the mafia is stocking up on soon-to-be-extinct bluefin tuna; salmon fishermen and farmers fight over water on North America’s west coast; giant jellyfish dominate the Sea of Japan; and fish previously considered trash are standard restaurant fare, with everything more tasty having been consumed.

Oceans, once thought endless in their bounty, are on the edge of becoming a vast extinction site — the first, perhaps, in what many scientists consider to be the Sixth Great Extinction, the latest in a series of catastrophes that have periodically wiped out most of Earth’s life.

Unlike an asteroid collision or volcanic explosion, however, the causes of this extinction are not natural. It’s all too human. It’s our own pollution and overfishing that are emptying the seas. But we have the chance to reverse it — and we’d better. Touchy-feely environmental sentiments aside, oceans are a primary source of protein for more than one billion people, and provide livelihoods for millions. And jellyfish just aren’t that tasty, no matter how you cook them.

So for our first topic, Hive Mind is going to be talking about the economics of extinction in fish. After all, there’s no way to save them without understanding the dynamics — both ecological and human — of the forces shaping their lives and our relationship to them. We’re a group of five journalists (see “about” for information”) that will focus our collective efforts on a single thread every month, with each of us getting one day of the week to post.

Think of our blog as akin to a newspaper section with DVD options: Posts can be stories or features; they can also be interview transcripts, authorial observations, pieces of reportage, non-print media, or the old-fashioned opinion and commentary for which blogs are known. All the while, we’ll bounce off each other’s ideas as we follow our own muses.

After a month of swarming around a theme, we’ll have expanded our collective consciousness — and hopefully yours, too.

Image: Brian Smith/Flickr