Shifting Baselines

This project represents a fusion of scientists with filmmakers. There have been several dozen key participants from a wide range of organizations, but at the core, from the beginning, have been these five individuals. Each of them has their own personal experience with shifting baseline syndrome within their lifetime.

	° Dr. Randy Olson Prairie Starfish Productions and University of Southern California Filmmaker, former marine biologist Director of the Shifting Baselines Campaign "I enjoyed being a marine biologist so much in the 1980's that I began making silly short films about how to eat a "lobstah," the sex life of barnacles, and fish mating. I went to film school at U.S.C. to make more silly films. But then a sad thing happened. I began hearing from my old marine biology colleagues about the declining state of the oceans."
	° Dr. Jeremy Jackson Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Coral Reef Ecologist "Every ecosystem I studied is unrecognizably different from when I started. I have a son who is 30, and I used to take him snorkeling on the reefs in Jamaica to show him all the beautiful corals there. I have a daughter who is 17 -- I can't show her anything but heaps of seaweed."
	° Gale Anne Hurd Valhalla Motion Pictures Producer of Hollywood Movies ("Terminator," "Aliens," "The Abyss," "The Hulk") "After producing THE ABYSS, I became an avid scuba diver. I spent several years diving the initially pristine reefs of Micronesia, some of the most diverse marine ecosystems on the planet. With the promise of a fast profit, subsistence fishing in many areas has given way to more destructive practices, such as dynamiting reefs. The consequences? Destroyed reefs resulting in complete and sometimes permanent habitat loss. This is a serious problem throughout Micronesia, Indonesia and the Philippines. It's truly heartbreaking."
	° Dr. Paul Dayton Scripps Institution of Oceanography Kelp Forest Ecologist "I've studied the kelp beds around San Diego all my professional career. At first, the changes happened rather slowly as the big fish that escaped gill nets disappeared. I began to make dives and think to myself, "What's different here, this place seems less crowded." Then the invertebrates like abalone and scallops went. Then the live fishery took the smaller fish like sheephead, cabezon, and even moray eels and horn sharks. Now it's like a ghost town -- lots of structure, but nobody home."
	° Dr. Steven Miller University of North Carolina, Wilmington and Aquarius Undersea Habitat Coral Reef Ecologist "Caribbean coral reefs of the 1970s changed my life. But the reefs I first knew and loved are gone, casualties of disease, coral bleaching, and overfishing. The reefs I study now in Florida are only a shadow of their former glory. My tourist friends go snorkeling and marvel at the colors and structure, but little do they know they're looking at the ghost of a coral reef. While I can tell my friends about all that we have lost, I am saddened that my children can't have the same personal experience I had, just 25 years ago."
	° Jason Ensler Director of NBC movies, "Three's Company: Behind the Camera" and "Martha, Inc." I went to film school with Randy Olson and I like fish. I've eaten fish my whole life. Even when I was a child, I would forego ice cream to eat more fish. But I also like to look at them. Fish are pretty. One day, Randy and I were sitting in my living room and he told me we were running out of fish. I said, "Who?" He said, "We. Capital We." So, we came up with a plan to save the fish and the world that they live in. Because the world they live in, is the world We live in. And if we run out of fish, there won't be anything left to eat except jellyfish and ice cream.