People do change - individuals, families, nations - and the pace of transformation need not be geological.

I don't believe there's anything cosmic or divine or morally superior about whales and dolphins or sharks or trees, but I do think that everything that lives is holy and somehow integrated; and on cloudy days I suspect that these extraordinary phenomena, and the hundreds of tiny, modest versions no one hears about, are an ocean, an earth, a Creator, something shaking us by the collar, demanding our attention, our fear, our vigilance, our respect, our help.

Hunting and gathering are in my blood. But I've lived long enough to witness a diminution in the seas, and to notice a fragility where once I saw - or assumed - an endless bounty.

I came home at dusk with my ears ringing from the quiet.

Overfishing is an obvious threat to our capacity to feed ourselves.

I grew up in a whaling town. We didn't stop whaling in Australia until 1978. And I've always lived in fishing communities. You could say I'm from the Redneck Wing of marine conservation. Everything I know about the sea I learnt at the end of a spear or a hook. Seems weird to admit it, but I hunted and killed my way to enlightenment. Eventually you see where you've been. All the traces you leave are gaps and absences. And it's a sick feeling, knowing you might bequeath a full dose of Nothing to those who come after you.

Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge.