One of the most visible signs (visible to us landlubbers, anyway) of stresses in the ocean ecology is “fishing down the food chain” - the way that commercial fishing operations, having helped destroy stocks of desirable species like cod, take aim at species that they once ignored.

The Portland Press-Herald, which like a good newspaper in a port city writes a lot about the fishing industry, has a piece today on a perfect example: The hideous, bottom-dwelling and long-ignored monkfish, which is now a prized catch. The story notes that little is known about the monkfish, because there wasn’t funding to study it until recently, so it’s hard to know how to regulate the industry so that we don’t devastate yet another species - at least, not too quickly.

How long will this go on? When you hear that commercial fishing operations are concentrating on jellyfish, you know the oceans are dead.

(ADDENDUM: The Sunday Globe has an article about disputes between commercial and recreational fishermen caused by a decline in stripers.)