But science was generally slow to latch on. His was the age of the first hatcheries which were established to study and allow fish spawn in artificial environments. One of its pioneers, known in France as le père de la pisciculture, Victor Coste (1807-1873) was originally professor of embryology, and was instrumental in spreading interest in the methods of artificial collection of wild spat from oysters. Right from the beginning, science has endeavoured to involve itself in aquaculture. Aquaculture was seen as a way to buy good publicity and acquire a brand as a caring company. However, not all aquaculture is sustainable, and in a recent book by Colin Nash, The History of Aquaculture (2011), a pile of evidence is amassed of the unsavoury involvement of the nuclear power industry and multinational chemical conglomerates like Union Carbide, Dow Chemical and Sun Oil in aquaculture during the 1960/70’s which had devastating consequences for the marine environment. Aquaculture is seen as an economic and environmental necessity to safeguard the finite resources of the seas. Stocks have fallen dramatically and fishing has now become far more regulated. Nowadays, the tragedy of all this naivety, on the one hand and greed, on the other, is only too apparent. Apart from France, most countries failed to introduce any viable system of regulation until it was too late.
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To be fair to Huxley, towards the end of his life, his tone changed, as he became more convinced that management of oyster beds needed to be introduced and recognised the dangers inherent in certain practices.
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In his opinion, the bounties of the oceans were considered inexhaustible and nature left to its own devices, in the true spirit of free trade and liberalism, was almost infinitely resilient and could adapt to any pressure imposed by man so that the idea of any threat of overfishing was totally rejected. Long ago were the halcyon days of seas, brimming with all kinds of fish and molluscs, and laissez-faire politics that shunned any form of regulation on fishing, best exemplified by the opinions of one of the intellectual giants of the 19 th century, Thomas Huxley, an autodidactic natural scientist, who dubbed himself “Darwin’s bulldog” because of his staunch defence of the latter’s controversial ideas, and who fathered a long line of Huxley geniuses.