Over-fishing

Further investigations that clarify the variation over fish species, regional provenance and breeding (e.g. marine versus aquaculture) will be necessary to clarify the extent of variation in exposure. 

Later the fantastic is joined by the macabre. Oscar s parents observe eels being caught in the sea. A dead horse s head yields the fresh eels that will be dinner. The wife is revolted, and yet later she kills herself by overeating fish. Even later, the father is killed by choking on his Nazi Party pin—he had tried to hide it from a Russian by swallowing it. All these events are symbols of the relationship of life to death in the period of the Third Reich. In the end, all the death symbols—the swastika, the bodies of men and animals—prove to be toxic. They kill all of Oscar s parents. 

In order to provide a fair basis for examining human impacts, future environmental states in the absence of action must be estimated. The populations of a species of animal or fish may already be declining (which can be schematically represented in Fig. 1), due to over-grazing or over-fishing, even before a smelter is built. This part of the analysis is largely a scientific problem, requiring skills drawn from many disciplines. The prediction will often be uncertain, but the degree of uncertainty should be indicated in qualitative terms at least. 

An exciting development in protein production in which chemical engineers have played a key role is protein production by fermentation. This production route will become increasingly important because of population growth, and a desire not to over-fish the sea and over-farm the land. In this relatively new route, micro-organisms are fed on simple and relatively inexpensive substances like hydrocarbons, methanol and carbohydrates. Once they have multiplied many-... 

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