History of marine animal populations: a global research program of the Census of marine life

This paper examines the relationship between history and science with regard to the marine environment. It argues that historians and scientists should collaborate to reconstruct past ecosystems. Such collaboration to shed some light on the reasons why the life in the oceans appears as it does today. With this objective in view, a global research program has been established. The History of marine animal populations (HMAP) addresses four basic questions. (1) How has the extent and diversity of these populations changed over the last 2000 years? (2) Which factors have influenced these change? (3) What has been the anthropogenic and biological significance of these changes? (4) What has been the interplay of changing marine ecosystems and human societies? The hypotheses of HMAP fall in three broad categories, dealing with questions of nature variability, such as historical population ecology, nature impact, such as climate forcing of distribution and abundance of fishes, and anthropogenic impact, such as questions of depletion and eutrophication. HMAP research teams are currently working in the Baltic, the White Sea, off southeast Australia and off the California coast.