Fishing, Overs and Unders

In this debut podcast of Curiouser and Curiouser, host Jai Ranganathan interviews Duke University marine biologist Larry Crowder about how fishing, historically and currently, has changed the oceans.

How is fishing changing our oceans?

On the surface, the ocean can seem timeless and unchanging. But appearances can be deceiving because scientists have noticed massive drops in the number of fish in the ocean.

Larry Crowder, a professor of marine biology at Duke University, talks about the dramatic effect of overfishing. For example, archeological evidence shows that Native Americans a thousand years ago regularly caught cod that were more than 3 feet long. These days, commercial fishing boats are lucky to catch cod at all and the ones they do catch have shrunk to 7 inches or less. Crowder further discusses what can be done to save ocean ecosystems.

Music for Curiouser and Curiouser is provided by Jamie Miller and by David Matheson.

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