"We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunter. That is what civilization is all about — farming replacing hunting."

Jacques Cousteau

While the 20th century brought with it massive technological changes the way resources were harvested from the ocean were still fairly primitive. These methods were built around search and exploit. Fishing included the same search as thousands of years prior, but instead of relying on instinct and birds patterns now top modern radar technology were used to find prey. Coupled with much better fishing equipment, the amount of fish that were captured skyrocketed, but the act itself had the same organizational structure. Oil was the 20th centuries gold rush, but just like the original gold rush this has shown to be unsustainable. Also the resources that have been harvested have shown to be limited. Today we are overfishing our ocean, we have depleted two thirds of the oil in the North Sea and we are destroying our beaches to create our concrete buildings. 

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Cousteaus words have shown truth to them as we now have changed our perception of the ocean as a source of indefinite resources and rather as a source we have to work with in a balanced way. At the start of the 21st century knowledge has become more valuable than raw resources. This is reflected in how the modern ways of harvesting from the ocean are all about controlling the elements, instead of exploring and finding treasure. In 2016 aquaculture for the first time overtook traditional fishing in fish sold around the globe. Equinor, formerly Statoil, are in the process of changing their business from the depleted oil fields of the Norwegian sea to the ever windy wind farms in the North sea. 

Wind representing only one of the renewable energies that can be harvested in the north sea. By using it’s never ending forces such as wind, currents, tidal or salitinity energy the north sea might become a main solution for the surrounding countries to reach their goals for the paris agreements.

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