[HN Gopher] Atlantic Dawn: The Ship from Hell
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Atlantic Dawn: The Ship from Hell
Author : mosiuerbarso
Score : 171 points
Date : 2021-04-09 10:12 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (britishseafishing.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (britishseafishing.co.uk)
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Unless the penalities are prohibitively expensive, proportional
| to the capacity (the more fish the ship can catch, the higher the
| penalty) and extreme (confiscation and destruction in case of N
| no. of repeat offences), unscrupulous operators will continue to
| use such ships.
| Guthur wrote:
| And there is the problem you immediately point to this
| individual McHugh and others like him, and I'm not defending
| him, but the problem is that the corruption went right the
| whole way to the top of "democratic" system of Ireland. It was
| politically untenable for the Irish government to admit this
| vessel was breaking the rules and they should/did know it would
| but tried their damnedest to make it work, for whatever popular
| brownie points they'd get for it.
| djohnston wrote:
| I watched Serpico last night and it really captures this
| phenomenon perfectly, albeit in the context of the NYPD.
| bombcar wrote:
| Declare it piracy and sink-on-sight.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Perhaps confiscation of the cargo and immediate sale at well
| below market rate?
|
| That would tank the market and hurt all fishermen. Thus all
| fishermen would have a vested interest in policing themselves.
| mcguire wrote:
| That has the same tone as executing the family members of
| convicted killers.
|
| A better solution is to confiscate the ship and sell it to
| the breakers.
| cptskippy wrote:
| There's no self policing in that situation, just a greater
| emphasis on not getting caught.
|
| By selling the cargo below market rate, everyone has a
| stake. They'll either collude on large scale or turn on
| each other in acts of self preservation.
| McDyver wrote:
| Sea Shepherd puts it well:
|
| How to save the ocean:
|
| 1) Don't eat marine animals
|
| 2) Be a voice for marine animals
|
| 3) Repeat steps 1 and 2
| avereveard wrote:
| 2) happily do
|
| 1) eh. I would pretty much prefer a system where externalities
| are embedded in taxes and levies to the point the consumption
| becomes sustainable
| bayindirh wrote:
| We shall do photosynthesis then.
|
| 1. We harm marine ecosystem, we shan't eat marine animals.
|
| 2. Land animals are too cute, also we eat a lot of them, and we
| shan't.
|
| 3. Forest has a communication net, so plants also have some
| kind of intelligence, eating them is cruel.
|
| I understand that excessive of everything is damaging the
| environment, and we do a lot of damage to our planet, but this
| is not the way to solve the problems.
|
| We shall become sustainable, not prohibitive.
|
| BTW, if I could do photosynthesis without damaging anything,
| I'd happily do it.
| jquery wrote:
| So what action are you suggesting?
| bayindirh wrote:
| Actually nothing too fancy. I don't believe in synthetic
| foods not because they're not natural, but because I think
| human body is at least one order of magnitude more
| complicated than we know, and we don't know the
| peculiarities of dietary needs.
|
| There are some big problems in food supply chain as I see
| it. Oversupply and too much waste. Moreover, I believe this
| waste is fueling the oversupply trend.
|
| It's not possible to reduce waste to exactly zero, but
| throwing away food just because it's not eaten today (by
| restaurants, hotels and similar establishments) is creating
| a big waste, which can be used in a much better way. It's
| also same for baked goods (remember reading a homeless
| guy's story which volunteered at Starbucks and got free
| food from the "will be trashed today" pile). Even if we
| able to feed some people with this so-called waste, that'd
| be something.
|
| For the oversupply part, it's much more easier said than
| done, because human and corporation greed comes into play.
| Free market economy is generally the survival of the
| fiercest, so who can sell more thrives. So to sell more,
| you need to catch more. To limit this damage, quotes are
| put in place, but they're not enforced strictly by anyone
| AFAICS.
|
| In short, there shall be a system which strictly applies
| quotas & really punishes the damaging parties, a good
| scientific commission which decides on quotas with
| worldwide collaboration and future planning, and an
| unanimous consensus on climate change and sustainable
| fishing & farming.
|
| However, while this is a good plan on paper, human is in it
| and, this makes it a very hard idea to implement, because
| politics, country economics, personal and corporate
| interests and everything in between will come into play.
|
| So, these things called _growth_ and _hard capitalism_ is
| damaging our planet. Mobil knew global warming since 80s
| and they just hid it. It 's the same thing. Greed. Just
| under different names.
| ksherlock wrote:
| hipster ensure soylent of course.
| underseacables wrote:
| With a little research it seems that these type of factory
| vessels are becoming the norm especially in Asia. However I'm not
| seeing much you can do about them. It seems like this is similar
| to many problems on the high seas: it depends on who's flag fly
| under. That's why most vessels fly under the flags of very tiny
| and obscure nations.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| This is simply terrible.
|
| Nations can't properly coordinate these things. We're going to
| deplete our oceans, and affect climate in unforeseen ways.
|
| I wish there was something we could do.
| neartheplain wrote:
| >Nations can't properly coordinate these things.
|
| Sure they can, at least in theory and sometimes in practice.
| The article describes several countries' navies intercepting
| the Atlantic Dawn, arresting members of her crew, and
| convicting them of crimes. The UN Convention on the Law of the
| Sea (UNCLOS) defines who can fish where. Many countries
| vigorously enforce this treaty.
|
| Unfortunately, the ability to regulate overfishing does not
| imply a willingness to do so, and signatory status to UNCLOS
| does not imply a willingness to abide by its rules. For
| instance, the country with world's largest navy is currently
| using its sea power to fish in other countries' waters, in
| stark violation of the UNCLOS and good environmental sense:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56474847
|
| >Two years ago, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte defended
| his non-confrontational approach to the maritime dispute with a
| quip about Chinese President Xi Jinping.
|
| >"When Xi says 'I will fish' who can prevent him?" he said,
| quoted by the Associated Press. "If I send my marines to drive
| away the Chinese fishermen, I guarantee you not one of them
| will come home alive."
|
| If China, the US, and the EU all agreed to enforce UNCLOS and
| help smaller countries regulate overfishing, they could do it.
| The technical capabilities exist. The legal frameworks are
| already in place. It's a matter of political will.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That appears to be a territory claim dispute, not fishing.
|
| > The Philippines says the fishing boats do not appear to be
| fishing and are crewed by China's maritime militia.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| > the country with world's largest navy
|
| Not particularly relevant, but this is only true by the
| metric "number of boats". If you weigh by boat size other
| countries are much larger.
| [deleted]
| choeger wrote:
| There is a simple way to fix this.
|
| 1. Introduce tight quotas and enforce them strictly. 2. Only
| allow imports from nations that follow the same, or a stricter,
| protocol. 2.a Alternatively, enforce an import quota or prevent
| imports completely. 3. Measure the effect and adapt quotas if
| necessary.
|
| Now I am not a marine biologist, but I presume that the areas
| where quotas are enforced are of utmost importance in that
| matter. So the difficult part is to get many nations on board
| and define meaningful areas of the high seas that are then
| protected.
| bserge wrote:
| Isn't that already the case? Fish prices are kinda high, too.
| I personally don't like fish, it's a bit surprising that
| over-fishing is still a huge problem around Europe.
| wolfpack_mick wrote:
| I'd say the system for coordination is pretty good in Europe.
|
| There is a specialist EU agency for fisheries inspection (The
| EFCA located in Vigo, Spain) A lot is being done there to
| ensure the rules are abided. Placing inspectors on board,
| tracking the behaviour of the boats, and so on. But of course
| the budgets of this agency are nowhere near that of the agency
| for medicine or chemistry, and cheating is easy when you're
| alone at sea (using hidden compartiments for example).
|
| The European Commission has a Directorate-General for
| fisheries, which does research on how much fish there is, and
| negotiates treaties on fisheries quotas with other nations. I
| believe they have great intentions, but not every one cares
| about sustainability, and if money talks countries like China
| can outbid the EU.
|
| Source: My dad was known as the Eliot Ness of fisheries.
| lucidguppy wrote:
| Stop eating fish... its filled with toxins anyway.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Wow.
|
| I'm prepared for seeing, in my lifetime, the day when bananas are
| gone: no more, done, only a memory. I'm prepared for seeing bees
| gone: no more, done, honey doesn't exist now.
|
| It had not occurred to me that I might live to see a day when
| FISH were not a thing.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| If the bees went it would be a lot more serious than no more
| honey. It would cause the total collapse of a significant chunk
| of the ecosystem.
| bserge wrote:
| Well, it's the only species that is mostly hunted (as opposed
| to farmed), so it shouldn't be that surprising.
|
| What's that about honey? I can send you pure, natural, seasonal
| (tastes different depending on month/flowers) honey anytime.
| We've got more than we can sell every year. ~5-10 Euro/L.
|
| Expanding on that, it's really strange how expensive and poor
| tasting honey is in western Europe. The normal cheap stuff
| (still expensive imo) is the usual mix of everything, just
| tastes sweet/bland, none of the spring/summer/autumn tastes
| that I'm used to.
|
| It's not like it goes bad (it does saccharize after a while
| though), there's an oversupply in eastern Europe, how come no
| one is importing it en masse? Strange, to say the least.
| Perhaps there's a good business opportunity there.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/884kq4/your-fancy-honey-
| migh...
|
| > Grab any random bottle of honey from your kitchen, coffee
| shop, or restaurant: According to a number of honey experts
| who spoke with VICE, the odds are high that your honey isn't
| what it claims to be. Honey imported from overseas is often
| adulterated--either by having sugars added to it or by being
| cleaned, heated, or filtered--and then is blended with small
| amounts of true honey until the sticky substance is uniform.
|
| > In a small experiment of my own, I bought honey from
| different stores to test them at two different honey labs. In
| half of the samples I sent to a lab in Germany, and more than
| half of those I sent to a lab in Missouri, the results
| indicated adulteration may have taken place.
| msrenee wrote:
| The honey in the grocery store has nothing on real honey
| either. It just tastes like corn syrup to me. There's a
| store here that sells honey from local bee keepers and it
| blew my mind the first time I had it after using Sue Bee
| all my life. Now a friend of mine has a hive. Her first
| harvest this spring is the best honey I've ever tasted.
| Here's hoping next year's is just as good.
|
| She ended up getting a number of small jars of exotic honey
| from some famous name in the bee world. There was honey
| from bees that gathered from peppercorn flowers, mustard
| flowers, those wild African hives that you have to gather
| from inside trees, honey from the side of a cliff. Just
| crazy things like that. We had a little tasting party, it
| was a blast. But her honey was better than any of those.
| And she left me some bits of honeycomb in there because I
| like to chew on it. I'm so spoiled for honey.
|
| Grocery store honey is like drinking bud lite when you want
| a nice wheat beer.
| bserge wrote:
| Oh wow, what the hell. It's not enough to just blend all
| the honey into one, they add sweeteners and filler? Must be
| really profitable, I guess.
|
| Heating, I can understand, it's a way to re-liquify
| crystallized honey. It's done at a low temperature over
| some time, so the taste remains mostly the same. Fresh
| honey straight out of the hive is the best, though.
|
| Now I wonder if people would even buy real, untouched
| honey. It's less viscous than the usual stuff in stores,
| and it crystallizes/hardens after a while, so it may
| actually seem fake, but that's natural honey.
| msrenee wrote:
| Grocery store honey crystallizes too. What I've found is
| that people who grew up on cheap honey just don't know
| what they're missing. Once they try the good stuff,
| they're ruined for the national brands.
| afandian wrote:
| Fish have been in trouble for a long time. Eg collapse of cod
| 30 years ago.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_nor...
| [deleted]
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| European trawlers have been fishing in African waters for decades
| after depleting the North Sea. You can buy fishing rights in
| Mauritania and its perfectly legal.
| marsven_422 wrote:
| Thanks to the EU for setting that up
| xwdv wrote:
| Between overfishing and climate change I say we have about 20
| years or so before oceans are fully depleted of life. Children
| may someday ask what was a fish.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Or we switch to aquaculture for seafood. It's really weird how
| we stopped depending on hunting and gathering for food
| thousands of years ago except with respect to seafood. It's
| time to complete the agricultural revolution that started
| 10,000 years ago and switch to farmed fish.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Aquaculture can be done well, but it is often done as densely
| packed as possible, and as with chickens and pigs that drives
| them to use then mitigate disease with medication. The notion
| was that the ocean was large enough relative to our
| population that we could use natural animal density to feed
| ourselves. If natural animal density can't feed us, then we
| need unnatural animal density...
| jpswade wrote:
| This can't really happen otherwise there will be no children to
| ask the question.
| [deleted]
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| Countries like the UK should designate large sections of their
| sea territory as marine conservation areas - where trawling is
| completely and permanently banned - this would be far more
| effective than quotas in enabling fish stocks to recover.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| It's so tragic it's almost comical. The whole fishing industry
| is about PS700 million industry and yet somehow is a huge dog
| whistle in politics.
|
| Compare to the night time entertainment industry which is a
| PS66 billion industry. When it was effectively shut down
| indefinitely by covid-19 the governments response was to tell
| them to go retrain as cyber experts.
| cseleborg wrote:
| As I understand it, fishing is a very important part of the
| UK & IE identity. I guess similarly to firearms in the US or
| labor protection in France (I'm French). It doesn't matter
| how small a part of the economy it represents, it's still a
| highly emotional topic. This explains why politicians go to
| great lengths to protect the fishing industry there.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| This is what confuses me: before the brexit campaign, I
| don't think anyone here (brit checking in) cared about
| fishing. Naval battles maybe, but not fishermen. It was
| never a part of national identity for me at least...
| DanBC wrote:
| There was that whole COD WAR thing which was pretty
| intense at the time, and fishing quotas have been a thing
| in The Sun for a while, but I agree it doesn't feel like
| a huge part of the general identity.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I feel like people trying to build a national identity
| around hating Europe are really keen on fishing. Though
| only as far as it's useful for that end, no one actually
| cares about fishermen etc. That's what's so confusing to
| me about all this (brexit etc): it's all a very thin
| "papering over the cracks". As soon as someone has to
| make a hard choice, they renege. How anyone still
| supports it baffles me.
|
| /Rant
| willyt wrote:
| Pelagic fishing in Britain literally only employs about
| 10,000 people. Prawns, crabs, lobsters and fish farming
| employ more but they have all been thrown under the bus by
| the brexit deal that the halfwits in charge have
| negotiated. The industry is just waking up to the fact it
| has been conned.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| What's "night time entertainment "?
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Pubs, clubs, theatres etc.
| de_keyboard wrote:
| I think so too... but the political fallout from the job loses
| is too great. It reminds me of the oil industry in America.
| It's clearly harmful, it and clearly needs to be reduced going
| forward, but no one wants to be the one to do it, so the can
| just gets kicked further down the road.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I think so too... but the political fallout from the job
| loses is too great._
|
| Folks should look at Canada and cod collapse:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_nort
| h...
|
| At some point, you may not have a choice. Better to dial
| things down over years to prepare people.
| krisgee wrote:
| It should literally remind you of the east coast cod fishery
| in Canada which was once the most productive fishery in the
| world and is now basically nothing.
|
| It got wrecked by giant all in one factory trawlers out
| competing local boats, causing a feedback effect where to
| complete you needed trawlers as well helped along by a
| corrupt government that was willfully ignorant of the
| situation until (almost literally) one day there just weren't
| any fish left.
|
| That destroyed an entire region's economy (a region I happen
| to be from), and has led to generational depression,
| joblessness and frankly hopelessness.
| Retric wrote:
| That's not quite what happened, Canada banned foreign
| fishing well before the collapse. Unfortunately, they
| simply set the allowed catch vastly to large, ignoring
| internal recommendations to half it, and caused a near
| total collapse almost a decade later.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| No one wants to do it, because our entire society is
| dependent on oil industry. It's not about job losses: society
| at large won't care about job loss of some relatively small
| part of population. It hasn't cared for loss of coal miner
| jobs, and it won't care about oil either. What they do care
| about is their ability to get places, to heat their homes, to
| buy inexpensive food and consumer products etc. When they are
| able to do that in a way that doesn't depend on oil, they
| won't shed a single tear after the death of oil industry.
| However, as of now, killing oil industry would be exceedingly
| stupid, because the alternatives to it are not yet available
| to fully replace oil use cases. We are slowly getting there,
| though.
| de_keyboard wrote:
| I don't think we can eliminate fossil fuels usage entirely,
| but we can dramatically reduce our usage. Consider that the
| carbon output per person in the USA is roughly double that
| in Europe. Europeans live pretty comfortable lives imo. And
| besides, something has to give eventually. It is much
| better to manage the change than have it forced upon you.
| pharmakom wrote:
| One of my favourite parts of Blade Runner 2048 is where they show
| the insect farms.
|
| Could you imagine the total cost of replacing biological systems
| with man-made ones? We are playing with fire.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| We are on fire but won't put down the cigarette
| sedachv wrote:
| There is actually a very good reason why many people have
| already replaced fish consumption with algal farms:
| bioamplified and persistent environmental pollution,
| particularly mercury. The only unique nutritional value of fish
| is in long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, which the fish get from
| algae. This is commonly marketed as "Algae EPA DHA" at very
| large markups (I pay about $20 for two months' supply at my
| local rich people organic food store).
| Animats wrote:
| What's wrong with having a big, efficient fishing ship? Are all
| the little guys really needed any more? Maybe work this like oil
| leases - you bid on exclusive fishing rights to a square, and
| only some squares are fished each year. Big ships are easy to
| track. They have AIS, and can be seen from orbit if they're not
| sending.
| rdtwo wrote:
| I agree I'd prefer 1-10 big ships for the whole region and then
| just put all your inspectors on those boats with the ability to
| impose heavy fines. The problem isn't the ship is the tiny
| fines that are imposed for illegal activity
| detritus wrote:
| There's a link down the article to an even more gut-gnawingly
| huge fishing vessel, the Russian-flagged 'LaFayette'.
|
| It's longer and has only a slightly smaller displacement than the
| UK's new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers :\
|
| Article: https://britishseafishing.co.uk/the-lafayette-floating-
| fish-...
|
| Images:
| https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=lafayette+fish+factory&sou...
| bayindirh wrote:
| AFAIK it cannot catch fish, but only process and freeze it.
| That doesn't make it less grim though.
|
| BTW, it seems it's declared as an IUU (pirate) ship. Don't know
| whether it's still operating or is it possible to operate under
| these conditions.
| nradov wrote:
| That ship was renamed as _Vladivostok 2000_ and is currently
| moored in Russia.
|
| https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:34...
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