Almost a quarter century ago, Daniel Pauly, one of the most important scientists of the Anthropocene, introduced “shifting baselines syndrome” to explain our generational blindness to environmental destruction. It has since become one of the key terms framing climate change and other forms of planetary degradation.

In his upcoming book Vanishing Fish, Shifting Baselines and the future of global fisheries, Daniel Pauly offers a devastating look at the state of today’s global fisheries—and a radical way to turn it around. He chronicles not only the arc of the fishing industry’s demise, offering insights into how and why it has failed, but draws on decades of research to provide an up-todate assessment of ocean health and an analysis of the issues that have contributed to the current crisis, including globalization, massive underreporting of catch, and the phenomenon of “shifting baselines,” in which, over time, important knowledge is lost about the state of the entire natural world.