Guess we will all have to learn to like peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches.

That opening sentence analogy is nonsensical. Daniel Pauly should be flogged with a dead grouper.

I was trying to figure that out too. How does the ponzi scheme work exactly? I think somebody had his head buried in the financial times before writing this.

Ponzi schemes (which are often confused with pyramid schemes, similar but different) involve getting people to invest money promising high returns, paying those returns for a time by simply returning some of the money they gave you and from money from additional (newer) investors.  As in the case of Madoff you can carry on this way for a very long time (paying, or at least showing on paper, 20% returns for everybody and spending &/or absconding with the bulk of the principal) until the music stops (like the markets and economy tanks and everybody wants their money back. Madoff while in jail for the rest of his life has millions squirreled away around the world for his heirs to enjoy.

How that works as an analogy for pillaging the world’s oceans (other than being au current) not clear to me. The whole idea of analogies being to relate something to something else more readily understandable/familiar.