economics

The financial collapse of the past few weeks offers striking parallels to the collapse of ocean wildlife. How is what’s happening on Wall Street and in financial capitals around the world like what’s happening in our seas?

Lehman Brothers and Canadian cod aren’t coming back.

The word “collapse” appears in nearly every thoughtful report on the financial crisis, and it’s also a common metaphor in the scientific reports on fishery depletion. It’s accurate in both cases because thelly notion that you can borrow more than you can afford, or spend more than you earn, inevitably produces a sudden and abrupt change when the money runs out.

In the fishery context, the notion that you can catch and kill very high levels of wild fish each year naturally leads to an empty ocean. For example, bluefin tuna fishing companies in the USA have not been able to catch their quota in the Atlantic. There just aren’t enough tuna to be found out there. By contrast, in personal financial terms, if you live off the interest and dividends on your investments, you can sustain that forever. But if you spend down your principal, you are on a path to going broke. The cod fishery off the eastern coast of Canada has never come back. Lehman Brothers isn’t coming back either.

The answer, according to our new report, is an overwhelming yes.

As you may have heard on NPR's Marketplace this morning, our report, Sea the Value: Quantifying the Value of Marine Life to Divers, asked scuba divers whether they would be willing to pay to help protect populations of ocean wildlife -- and a majority of divers surveyed said they would.