Five Easy Pieces features five contributions, originally published in Nature and Science, demonstrating the massive impacts of modern industrial fisheries on marine ecosystems. Initially published over an eight-year period, from 1995 to 2003, these articles illustrate a transition in scientific thought--from the initially-contested realization that the crisis of fisheries and their underlying ocean ecosystems was, in fact, global to its broad acceptance...

"In a Perfect Ocean is the first in a series of assessments of the world's marine ecosystems. In this first comprehensive, empirical portrait of the North Atlantic, the authors use traditional catch data and cutting-edge scientific techniques to provide an indisputable picture of an ocean whose food webs have been dramatically altered. They then explain how the North Atlantic arrived at this state, and how we can return it to health."--Jacket.