Saltier than thou

“The oceans have long been, and will long be, subjected to ruthless exploitation and even, in places, to ruin. It is not really the sea which is in recession, though, but wildness itself. Wildness is everywhere but it can no longer be seen; and its apparent vanishing is a direct consequence of the new conservationism. ‘The Wild’ is nowadays a concept ringing with the overtones of patronage, of collections by schoolchildren on its behalf. The present generation is as much contaminated by its own reverential and placatory attitude as the older was by domination. There is something ignoble about it, compounded as it is of urban sentimentalism, virtuous concern and sheer panic at having irrevocably fouled the nest while so comfortably lining it…Virtue and the wild share no common universe.”—Seven-Tenths: The Sea and its Thresholds.