I had to start over because
My first attempt got corrupted and now i'm in a neutral biome with a magma vent and a veeeeeerrrrrrrryyy sssslllloooowwwllly growing population. The fort got off to a bad start though, because the native fire imps (of which i had no experience whatsoever in) killed 6 of my 7 starting dwarfs, fortunately it was the miner that survived and my food and booze stockpile was already safely tucked away. The fire imps then proceeded to repeatedly set fire to the plains over the course of the year as my single Dwarf struggled to survive by herself (it was so funny seeing her tantrum and then frantically run around with no one and nothing to take out her frustrations on). Then when the first batch of migrants arrived i recruited four of them and stationed them around the vent just waiting for the little devils to pop their heads out. I've labeled this military action the "great imp genocide" and 2 of my dwarfs died during it, one by a stray fireball and the other by wrestling one of the little bastards into the vent (where he won, then died, and is still burning if the 'U' menu can be trusted), the remaining two killed the last of the imps. i dubbed them both 'imp-slayer' for their efforts. the unfortunate occurrance of a bad mood has killed one of the imp-slayers unfortunately. the other is living comfortably as a legendary engraver, who makes many engravings of his fallen, still burning comrade.
then a simultaneous mishap with my booze production and desalination plant almost killed all my dwarves of thirst.
Also, oddly enough, i've been sieged and had a Titan attack but haven't had a single ambush yet. Titan got taken out by a single stonefall trap.
anyway,i have about 15 full-time masons (although i predict, once my population gets higher, i'll have 40-50 masons working on it full-time) working on paving the ocean, not with stone, but with blocks. that sort of action might seem to only deliberate slow myself down, but it's slowly gaining momentum as the masons gain attribute levels, they work faster and faster. i've already dumped over 2000 blocks into the project, although it's still in its infancy and i predict that somewhere around 60,000-90,000 blocks will be necessary to fully pave the ocean.
and my name's not Bob.