Ransom Myers overfishing crusader died

March 30, 2007
Ransom Myers, a former government scientist who sought to warn that overfishing would lead to collapse of Atlantic cod populations and later discovered that 90 percent of the world's bluefin tuna and other large predatory fish had disappeared, has died, he was 54.
He was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor in November and spent his final months in the hospital able to speak only a few words. He died Tuesday in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Myers was a gifted mathematician and biologist who shook up the insular world of fisheries science with blunt statements about how various species of sharks, turtles and fish were headed toward extinction if industrial fishing did not retreat from excessive hunting.
"Humans have always been very good at killing big animals," Myers said. "Ten thousand years ago, with just some pointed sticks, humans managed to wipe out the woolly mammoth, saber tooth tigers, mastodons and giant vampire bats. The same could happen in the oceans."
Such pronouncements didn't spring from pre-conceived ideology but rather from patterns he discerned from fishing records, scientific surveys and other data he collected.
Myers plain-spoken style got him into trouble in the 1990s, when he condemned the Canadian government's handling of Atlantic cod fishery even though he worked for Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans.