Sam Farr: “We have also shown, though, that where we have degraded that habitat to such a point where all known life forms have…”

“We have also shown, though, that where we have degraded that habitat to such a point where all known life forms have failed in those systems, they have gotten so polluted, some of those streams, but with good management techniques we have brought those streams back and made them clean; and they now have vibrant fish life. The point is, we can turn this around. But when we are dealing with the entire ocean, we just cannot turn that around over time. If we have indeed taken all the large species, commercial species on the planet, it is going to take a long time of not fishing some of those species to allow them, the babies, to grow up to be big adults. Some of these fish live for over 100 years, so it is going to be, some places where we set up these marine reserves, we are going to have to put them off limits for fishing for a long time. On the other hand, when we do clean up areas and set these reserves, they allow this sort of abundance to return; fish do not know where those boundary lines are. They hang out outside the boundary lines. Then that becomes an opportunity for the commercial activity to be done.”