Let Them Eat Squid

Are you one of those types who can't get behind conservation unless there's some sort of personal kick-back or utilitarian rationale for your taking action or coughing-up financial support? Then a recent article in the journal Science is right up your alley.

The authors (Carlos M. Duarte, Nùria Marbá, and Marianne Holmer), looking back across approximately 9,000 years of human domestication of plants and animals, conclude that domestication has had higher success rates in the sea relative to those seen in the long history of land species' domestication. By 2000 years ago, an estimated 90% of the species presently cultivated on land had been domesticated. Since the industrial revolution, the increase in the numbers of domesticated land plant and animal species has been modest (~3%). In contrast, the domestication of aquatic--particularly marine--species has grown exponentially.

The authors offer three primary reasons for marine domestication success rates kicking land domestication's ass.

First, land domestication has drawn largely from mammals and birds, with few invertebrates (such as bees and snails) domesticated. In contrast, a diverse array of marine taxa--including mollusks, crustaceans, vertebrates, echinoderms, jellyfish, and worms--have been domesticated. Many more wild marine species are used as food [more than 3000 marine species compared to fewer than 200 land species], providing further scope for future domestication.

Second, the greater diversity of life forms in the ocean compared to those on land provides a broader range of opportunities for domestication. The limited success in domesticating land animal species has been attributed to the paucity of suitable species: Many land plants are poisonous or toxic to humans, and many land animal species have slow growth and long life cycles, specialized diets, or adverse behavioral traits.

Third, aided by the rapid spread of technical and scientific knowledge, domestication of aquatic species is developing globally, whereas land species were domesticated in just a few regions. A similar global effort to domesticate additional land animal species is precluded by the paucity of candidate species and the lack of market demand.

So why should you care? With the collapse of one commercial ocean fishery after the next, marine domestication such as aquaculture is bound to replace those failing commercial fisheries as animal husbandry replaced hunting on land. Unfortunately, I think the learning curve is going to be steep to convince the average American that seaweed, jellyfish, and worms makes a compelling protein alternative to tuna, mahi mahi, and orange roughy. But maybe if we can get the technology to catch-up, just imagine our great corn belt transformed into vast bumper crops of cephalopods.

Oh beautiful, for spacious skies,
For flashing, multi-colored waves of chromatophores!

Source: Science 20 April 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5823, pp. 382 - 383