Let's face it our oceans are in trouble. We continue to pressure them with acidification, garbage disposal (or lack of it), plastics, over fishing, etc.
There is a respected report published in Science Magazine about 5 years ago about the importance of bio-diversity in the oceans. An international study that looked into how marine ecosystems handle stress concluded that the greater the species diversity the stronger a marine ecosystem is at handling stresses like over fishing. As far as I am aware it has been accepted for sometime that for land based ecosystems the greater the biological diversity the more stable they are. From what I have read this was the first study to find that ocean based ecosystems behave the same. What does that mean? It means that trying to manage fish stocks by protecting individual species is all wrong. We need to protect the entire ecosystem to protect individual species stocks. Loosing one species weakens the entire system and makes it more likely for other species to become extinct and so it goes round, and the cycle accelerates. The main push of the report is that it is not too late yet but we need to change the way we manage fish stock. We can still change the dramatic decline we see in global fish stocks, but we have to act now to stop the decline. And we have to do it in a much more holistic manner than just attempting to protect individual species.
That's not to say that sea food guides are a waste of time, but they are only one local aspect. A much needed one but just one. It also highlights the importance of maintaining diversity and not loosing our predatory fish to over fishing, how much the disappearance of a few species locally (hmmm let me think, nassau grouper, goliath grouper, & hawksbill turtle all spring to mind) will impact the local ecology as a whole - in other words the importance of guides like this.
