| || The deep Bay of Saint-Brieuc, which has an area of 800 square kilometers (300 square miles), offers many kinds of fishing: gathering scallops, catching lobsters and spider crabs in pots, and trawling for ray, sole, and brill. But the ocean’s bounty is not unlimited, and during the 1960s biologists warned that the oceans were being overfished. Fish-farming offered an alternative to fishing; after oyster farming came mussel farming. Growing in clusters attached to 2-meter (6-foot) poles which are covered at high tide, or in deep water on long weighted lines, the mussels are left to grow for 15 to 24 months. Each can produce several million eggs per year and the species’ future seems secure, unlike that of many “wild” marine resources that are in decline. More than 8,000 years ago domestication led to the disappearance of wild horses and cattle. The same is now happening to marine species.
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