Yet governments everywhere have so far failed to even recognize that there is a problem. Thailand, Ecuador and other countries in the developing world, for example, have placed such a high premium on economic development they cannot see beyond the horizon of next year's profit margin. They don't even try to manage the shrimp farms that are destroying their coastlines and could eventually render them useless to all economic activity. The United States and other developed nations aren't doing much better. Their heavily subsidized, overbuilt fleets are still scouring the oceans for fish that aren't there.
Habitat destruction is sometimes worse than in the developing world.
Marshlands, for example, nurture 98 percent of the fish species caught in the Gulf of Mexico. Other examples of dithering abound. The red snapper, a signature commercial product in the Gulf, hovers near collapse while fishing interests, scientists, managers and politicians stage a political brawl over how to manage it. National leaders typically ignore these problems until they become so overwhelming that only billions of dollars will fix them. The problems are also routinely used by politicians, fishers, and environmental groups as a pretext to attack government agencies and each other.