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Get real. When you were 4 years old, you understood it better. It goes like this: You dump the inkwell (toxic discharge from industry and sewage systems) into the goldfish bowl (ocean) and the fish all turn belly up and the bowl is without fish. The moneyed polluting industries, of course, would rather not get caught, so there are other (poorer) fall guys (the fishing industry, for example) to take the heat for dumping the ink into the goldfish bowl. While the rich guys pay for studies (grants) of specific attractive topics to support their point of view, the ocean is still dying.

Pennie Mumm
Newport, Ore.

I wonder about the boxed section “Sea-Friendly Eating” within your article. I don’t trust that list of fish that are environmentally good and bad for people to eat. For instance, the indictable offense of farmed salmon is that they will genetically degrade the species through escapes. But if all right-thinking fish eaters would eat only wild salmon, those fish would be terrifically overfished. So, the argument is strong that eating farmed salmon is better and wild Alaskan salmon should be saved for the occasional treat.

Linda G. Johnson
Longmont, Colo.