How do we know what once was, if we have all forgotten?

My grandfather pulled cod the size of toddlers from the water with fingers leathered by salt and grit.
Now, his grandson counts mackerel like pearls and calls it a good day.

What if the world is disappearing and we don’t even know it,
because we were born after the loss?

From A Fisherman

In the steady, gently humming harbours of Cornwall, I sit and talk with men my Grandad’s age. Men worn and weathered by many moons at sea. Salted skin, leather hands. Men whose eyes cradle the ocean like an old love. They speak not in metres or quotas but in memory. “Used to be, you’d pull your pots up and they’d be heaving,” one told me, hands sketching abundance in the air. “Now you’re lucky if you see a lobster a pot”.

Shifting Baseline Syndrome. Coined in 1995 by marine biologist Daniel Pauly, the term captures something quietly tragic: each generation accepts the ecological conditions of their youth as “normal.” Over time, this erodes our collective memory of what nature used to be. Oceans devoid of life become “average.” Forests thinned by logging seem “natural.” Coral reefs bleached bone-white are simply “how they are now.”

We forget, and in forgetting, we lose a world that once was. A world teeming with life.

The Ghosts of Abundance

In Cornwall, the sea has long shaped not just economies but identities. It’s written into the accent, the folklore, the prayer. But abundance is no longer a birth right.

1950s landing records from Newlyn show catches of over 10,000 tonnes of pilchard in a year.
By the 1990s, those numbers had plummeted below 500 tonnes.

Newquay harbour, circa 1906

The numbers tell a story, but it’s in the silences that the grief lives. In the gaps between one man’s memory and his grandson’s. In the empty pots and quiet docks.

This is the human face of environmental change—what academics are calling ecological grief. It’s not always a cry or a protest. Sometimes it’s a shrug. A slow, resigned turning away. Here, it is a lack of young entrants. Grandsons searching for alternative paths. Grandad’s selling their boats- but no one is looking to buy.

Cornwall isn’t the only place where the baselines have shifted.

In the tropical waters of the Caribbean and the Great Barrier Reef, children now learn to snorkel over husks of what once were kaleidoscopic cities of fishes and coral. It is quieter too – studies have shown there is an audible impact of degraded ecosystems. Will the songs of the reef ever return? Or will that be our new normal, too? Quiet, too quiet.

In the Philippines, fishermen recall a time when giant grouper—lapu-lapu—were common near shore. Now, they are stories more than sightings.

Why This Matters

Shifting baselines don’t just affect how we feel—they affect what we fight for.

If we think a degraded ecosystem is “normal,” we won’t push for its restoration. We set our policies, expectations, and futures on false floors. We risk managing collapse instead of recovering richness.

In my own research with Cornish fishermen, I’ve seen how this syndrome intersects with mental health, identity, and resilience. It’s not just about fish—it’s about meaning. When the sea gives less, and policy asks for more, the toll is heavy and invisible.

We must listen to those who remember more than we do. The living archives.

Memory as Resistance

To heal the sea, we must remember it.
To remember it, we must ask questions the data alone can’t answer.
What did your grandmother see in the rock pools?
What did your father catch off the pier?
What have we lost between tides and time?

We need scientific monitoring, yes. But we also need story. Oral histories. Intergenerational knowledge.

Reimagining the Future

Species can return. Habitats can heal. Baselines can shift again—upward—if we anchor them to memory and justice. What if we stopped asking only how much is left, and started asking how much was once here?

Further Reading & Sources:

• Pauly, D. (1995). Anecdotes and the shifting baseline syndrome of fisheries.
• Cornwall Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority Reports, 1950–2020
• PhD interviews conducted 2023–2025 (unpublished, forthcoming in dissertation)