I have about 15 villagers fishing constantly, but my food supply keeps dwindling. It was up to several thousand at one point, but this morning has dropped from about 3K to 500. I have the full nature faction and all of the full technologies. i am not playing with the time settings on my pc. Is this another _bug_?

What is your total population? 15 farmers would have trouble supporting a tribe that has reached maximum population.

Thanks for your quick response. Population is 61 and the food supply is now down to less than 400, even though there is a steady line of farmers fishing.

That does not seem normal. Would you mind quitting the game and leaving it off for an hour or two (without changing anything else), then launching it again and tell me how much food you have?

Okay. I just quit at 10:58 with 62 villagers and a food supply of 362. I'll check back in sometime between 1 and 1:30 today.

are you using the chief to create food?
do you have chief directing the fishing?

Yes, I have used the chief to create food, but he is busy directing the moving of the statue. I don't think he needs to direct the fishing, since the villagers are successfully catching fish and returning to the ocean for more. The issue is that even with this activity, the supply dwindles.
When I quit the game and came back to it, as Barbara requested, the food supply was about 5300, but of course, everyone had stopped working on the statue. The food supply is decreasing once again, even though they continue to fish.
I guess the strategy is to shut down the game in order to amass a substantial amount of food (although this means losing progress on the statue puzzle), then log on again and resume pushing the statue up the hill until food runs low again, quit for a while and start the statue work again.

One more question for you, since you have experienced the results that I expected in your test: Does your chief have a lot of skill in farming?

No, he was a scientist before he became chief, and is now a master, with some skill in parenting.

OK, then what you're seeing is probably just one of the many differences in how the game behaves when it's running vs. when it's off.