Yes, the oceans have always been a dumping place for contaminants, but the
scale of what we are doing in 2002 represents a TOTALLY different
situation from where Homo sapiens was for the previous 99% of its
evolution.

As John Gray wrote in his recent superb essay:

<The lush natural world in which humans evolved is being rapidly
transformed into a largely prosthetic environment>. (Full text at
http://www.evfit.com/population.htm).

Indeed, it appears that we have passed a number of key thresholds already
in terms of biodiversity destruction.  To take a local example that was in
the news today, here in Australia, fertilizer runoff from the cane fields
of Queensland is changing the chemisty and biomass content of the seawater
and destroying the Great Barrier Reef.

From a narrower Paleofood perspective, the artificial hormones fed to beef
cattle and the antibiotics they have to get into those cattle to protect
them from infection in the unnatural environment of the feedlot is a good
example of where, despite our position as <top predator>, our physiology
is quite unprepared for this sort of onslaught.  There are plenty more
examples, and that's why we are here as members of this list.

Keith