By ANDREW C. REVKIN
NYT - Published: October 24, 2006
MONTAUK, N.Y. — For Carl Safina — a biologist, conservationist and prize-winning author — passions and intellectual pursuits are deeply entwined.
The best place to observe this fusion is aboard his 24-foot powerboat First Light at the time of day for which it is named, when Dr. Safina is scanning flocks of terns hovering over the tide-roiled waters between Montauk, the tip of Long Island, and the slate-dark hump of Block Island to the east.
Dr. Safina’s doctoral thesis was on the interrelated behaviors and annual rhythms of the common tern and bluefish, which feast on the same bay anchovies and other small prey.
On many days, though, he is carefully tracking the birds not in pursuit of new knowledge, but in hope they will point him to dinner.
On a recent three-hour fishing trip, in snippets of windblown conversation while steering his boat, jigging or casting, then fighting, landing and cleaning fish, Dr. Safina reflected on two decades of work revealing the enormous disruption of ocean ecosystems by industrial-scale fishing and other human activities.
Now 51, he has written three books on the rising human impact on seas once presumed boundless. The first was on fishing, the next on the travels and travails of albatrosses. His latest, “Voyage of the Turtle: In Pursuit of the Earth’s Last Dinosaur” (Henry Holt, 2006), follows the struggles of the ocean’s ancient leatherbacks and other sea turtles.
His prime goal, he has said, is to develop a “sea ethic” similar to the land ethic of Aldo Leopold, and a scattering of success stories has convinced him that a balance is still possible between exploitation and conservation of marine resources...."
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