As the "Baby Boom" generation matured, they brought another factor to bear on the environment: a deep and abiding concern for the environment, which unfortunately, tended to be colored more by romance concepts of wildlife and wild places and less by experiential and traditional knowledge gained from generations of living with nature's resources. Perhaps that characteristic was shaped in response to the global bloodshed that came from World War II and subsequent lesser but equally horrific social turmoil over the ensuing years. Whatever its origin, the ethos of the Baby Boom generation tended toward pacific ideologies that swung 180 degrees from the mortality of war towards a rather extreme version of an ages old belief, namely that the lives of "all God's creatures" are sacred. 

This credo is not new. It's been the core of most hunting and fishing cultures for thousands of years. But, these urban born and bred youngsters found their lives, for the most part, sheltered from the realities of life and of death. Their food was prepared, packaged, and fixed for them without the fuss and muss of having to stalk, catch, kill, clean, or cook it. Recently one of Washington D.C.'s two daily newspapers ran an article where a school teacher was lamenting the fact that many of the children she taught did not know the basics of table manners. They did not know how to use a knife or fork because they have been raised on McDonalds's hamburgers and Domino's pizza. So without that sense of balance in their perceptions of reality, today's generations - parents and children alike - from so-called highly developed nations have a very unnatural or non-nature understanding of life. They've taken the concept of reverence for life to the extreme particularly when applied to the environment and all things wild. 

Whales were now sacred. Sharks were sacred. Wolves were sacred. Nothing was to be killed…for any reason. Cultures that depend upon the sea for their food are considered archaic, barbaric, and cruel. These attitudes are reflected in contemporary literature, classroom rhetoric, and in the quasi-nature shows on cable television where sharks no longer attack humans, they merely mistake them for food and other predators are just big roly poly cuddly animals. The urban myths that animals don't kill members of their own species or kill for the sake of killing are echoed everywhere. Seals don't eat cod. Wolves don't eat moose. Tiger sharks don't eat sea turtles. Unfortunately for the cod, moose and sea turtles no one told that to the seals, sharks or wolves.

Just as on land when predator numbers grow greater than the predator prey equilibrium formula and prey species begin to disappear, so too in the oceans, when equilibrium is lost whether by too many whales or sea lions and seals or sharks the entire ocean eco-system suffers. Ironically, it is the spirit of "saving" a single specie that threatens the survival of many other species.

Other factors come into play also. Weather, water temperature, ruptures of the earth's crust beneath sea level leaking lava or gases, all these things affect marine species.

Now I do not want to be quoted out of context for bringing such factors up. I am not saying they mitigate human pressure on the marine environment. I am merely stating that they are factors that must be acknowledged and studied if realistic solutions to the problems of commercial fisheries and marine species are to be found.