Nature remains focused on survival.

Nature may have even less patience than politicians.

Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

When the Basque whalers applied to cod the salting techniques they were using on whale, they discovered a particularly good marriage because the cod is virtually without fat, and so if salted and dried well, would rarely spoil. It would outlast whale, which is red meat, and it would outlast herring, a fatty fish that became a popular salted item of the northern countries in the Middle Ages.

By the time the war ended, Iceland was a changed country. Not least among the changes, in 1944 it had negotiated full independence from Denmark. Now it was free to negotiate its own relations with the rest of the world. Because of cod, it had moved in one generation from a fifteenth-century colonial society to a modern postwar nation.

Newfoundlanders debated over when "the cod was coming back". Few dared ask if. Or what happens to the ocean if they don't come back?

gastronomically, a wild salmon and a farmed salmon have as much in common as a side of wild boar has with pork chops.

How much above zero still produces zero is not known.

Marine ecology is complex and tightly interwoven.