At the turn of the century French community geographers defined the concept of 'the ecomene' as the socioeconomic focus of local natural resource utilisation. An ecomene is a unique combination of people, topography, ideas, skills and capital for the sustained exploitation of local biological resources. An example of an ecomene is a maritime community bonded to its environment through the fish stocks it is able to bring within reach of its families. They achieved this by developing appropriate boatbuilding crafts and harvesting strategies. An essential feature of the ecomene as originally defined was its geographical isolation and its stability. These are two fundamental aspects of the annual harvest expected from an ecosystem that sustains itself in a dynamic balance based on cycles and fluctuations in natural populations. Ecomenes use natural resources based on an ecological intuition of non linear biological processes, aptly expressed by Ned Mullender as 'judgement of water'. Stability of the ecosystem and the ecomene is undermined by linear enterprises associated with indefinite economic and technological growth. Such enterprises may be described as anti-ecological. It is the clear message of environmentalists that anti-ecological thinking has modified our environment to such an extent that we have lost touch with our biological and ecological heritage more than any other culture and any other civilisation in the past. The fate of European marine fisheries are all case histories of what happens when nature becomes viewed as a mechanical extension of industrialism, and, when, repeatedly, ecological lessons are not being learned. 'Following Fish' is a national project to stimulate ecological awareness in maritime ecomenes which were once sustained by the belief that fish would always be there for the catching. Modern information technology provides the network for collecting and organising information about the heritage of fishing communities, but also provides powerful tools for predicting the outcome of interactions between cyclic and linear dynamic behaviour. Finally, computers offer an unparalleled means of communicating the results of their local deliberations to others throughout the world.