I'm surprised there wasn't more discussion of environmental and industrial change. Some of the examples are closer to pure fantasy, but I suspect there were lar

I'm surprised there wasn't more discussion of environmental and industrial change. Some of the examples are closer to pure fantasy, but I suspect there were larger, and more larger, specimens of animals in the sea, 150 years ago than today. Probably greater diversity as well. I know this is true in the areas I'm familiar with, that imagining wild areas 200 years ago is somewhat difficult because there's so many things you wouldn't even imagine because your frame of reference is distorted. Trees were much much larger and more abundant, and there were a lot more, and much larger fish and molluscs, than is the case today. It seems that squid and oarfish might provide similar examples. I also wonder about the role humans played in that people were probably smaller on average, in smaller boats etc. The same squid is going to be more of a threat if everyone is smaller, on what today would be considered a smaller boat, and those are the limits of the human world.