[HN Gopher] An undersea art gallery that ensnares illegal trawlers
___________________________________________________________________
An undersea art gallery that ensnares illegal trawlers
Author : unripe_syntax
Score : 179 points
Date : 2022-11-16 08:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.co.uk)
| dementis wrote:
| This reminded me of a burial trend I heard about in Florida to
| help build artificial reefs. Burial at sea is legal in the
| US(with restrictions) but the Mediterranean has a ton of
| ecological restrictions and a quick google search doesn't reveal
| if burial at sea is legal within those protected waters.
|
| https://www.cremation.com/cremation-memorialization/eternal-...
| troymc wrote:
| Here's the website of _La Casa dei Pesci_ :
| https://www.casadeipesci.it/
| elnatro wrote:
| The fish house in English.
| ambicapter wrote:
| This seems like a genius idea that I want to get involved in. Are
| there any projects like this in the northeastern US?
| shagie wrote:
| I am not aware of any... though I _do_ know that some of the
| largest marble quarries in the world are in New England.
|
| http://www.vermontquarries.com/danby-quarry
|
| And then there's also large granite quarries... like the Rock
| of Ages.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/rock-of-ages-granite-qua...
| olivermarks wrote:
| It's a cute arty way to draw attention to a huge problem, but lax
| legislation and penalties are the real culprit here. Net
| inspection and huge fines would make industrial scale strip mine
| fishing economically very risky. Again, the issue is that no one
| can police the offshore globalists who hide behind a veneer of
| philanthropy, woke virtue signaling and greenwashing.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Why are you blaming globalism for this? I'd argue that a lack
| of globalism is at fault here. Fishing in international waters
| is a problem that can only be solved by the global community.
| The problem here is that corporations and monetary interests
| act globally and always will while governments aren't.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| No, this is incorrect. They already do regulate it. It is
| already illegal. The problem is the regulations and penalties
| are pretty hard to enforce when any ship in the world can go
| anywhere else. Italy can pass all the regulations it likes, and
| a Chinese ship full of somewhat desperate people can illegally
| fish there anyway with whatever equipment they brought with
| them, until the ship gets individually caught. And please note:
| Italy's coastline is ... Big. Really big.
| tmnvix wrote:
| For anyone interested in seeing a short documentary about this,
| DW covered it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-SPiCVTKiY
| wffurr wrote:
| What's the impact on climate change of just enforcing the laws
| already on the books against bottom trawling and such?
| jstanley wrote:
| Are you suggesting that instead of coming up with ways to catch
| criminals, we should just catch criminals?
| a_shovel wrote:
| If the goal was solely to ensnare trawler nets, then it could
| probably be done a lot more efficiently by just sinking some
| concrete blocks. But by putting _sculptures_ down there instead,
| it gets media attention and public interest as well, which leads
| to funding to continue the project.
| kawsper wrote:
| That's what Greenpeace is doing in the UK:
| https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/live-greenpeace-boulders-...
| overlordalex wrote:
| Huh, seemed pretty effective at first glance. It also lead me
| down a wiki rabbit hole from the dogger bank to similar
| nearby features, which came full circle with the Cleaver Bank
| where Greenpeace also sunk some boulders. Except apparently
| they were removed by the fishers... The
| Cleaver bank is in 2015 considered for protection as a Marine
| protected area. The Greenpeace organisation considered the
| actions of the Dutch government in this direction too slow
| and sunk some large boulders on the seabed in May 2015 to
| increase the nature value.[7] Dutch fishers lifted the
| boulders on 16 June 2015, because they were afraid the
| boulders would damage their fishing gear.[8]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleaver_Bank
| theptip wrote:
| Maybe that's a benefit of something like artwork - removing
| it would presumably be a crime?
| a_shovel wrote:
| If not a crime, at least it would look way worse in the
| press than removing some featurless concrete blocks.
| arcticfox wrote:
| This seems like an asymmetric win for Greenpeace. It has to
| be like 10x easier to chuck boulders around than find and
| retrieve them.
| ambicapter wrote:
| > If the goal was solely to ensnare trawler nets
|
| It's not. The sculptures also serve as a base for the plant
| life.
| jrwoodruff wrote:
| And probably as an attraction for divers and others in the
| area.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| It started w concrete blocks -- but it proved too difficult to
| fund them in sufficient supply to be effective. Sculptures OTOH
| were a stroke of genius, flipping the script so they actually
| generate revenue and a virtuous cycle of attention and more
| installments.
| ISL wrote:
| Artists are also likely to be real interested in the
| opportunity to have free marble in large formats on which to
| work.
|
| Furthermore, if the sculpture works out well, you can get a
| bunch of press. If it doesn't, you get to sink it in the
| ocean forever.
| gumby wrote:
| Great project. But it makes me think that just dumping some tank
| traps down there (Three steel bars welded normal to each other)
| would work well to snag and tear nets and, if they don't
| encounter a net, support some sea life.
| ragingroosevelt wrote:
| Where's the news-worthy-ness in that, though? I get the sense
| that a large point of this isn't functional but rather to cause
| people to talk and think about it.
| gumby wrote:
| Oh, I think the art makes it a great project (I should have
| been less pithy and more fulsome in my praise in the first
| sentence) for the vert reason you give.
|
| I just meant it inspires me to think of a cheap and easy way
| to go "monkey wrench gang" in other places. In fact
| governments could even do this in places where they are
| trying to restore fisheries.
| christkv wrote:
| The illegal trawling on the African coast by Chinese trawlers are
| destroying the livelihood in many African countries. I wish the
| EU would work with those nations affected to intercept and arrest
| those boats.
| dementis wrote:
| This is from 2021 but it does show how heavily China has
| invested into Africa to support their Naval and Maritime
| shipping.
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9554253/How-China-b...
|
| There has been some speculation that China is effectively
| trying to take control over Africa and has been rather
| successful at doing so on some fronts.
|
| https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18417/china-taking-over-a...
| krisoft wrote:
| So Chinese ships are doing something at the coast of African
| countries and somehow you want the EU to do something about
| that?
|
| How does that compute?
| ornornor wrote:
| And that's why it's called tragedy of the commons.
| stuaxo wrote:
| An article on the original "tragedy of the commons"
|
| http://links.org.au/debunking-tragedy-commons
| ornornor wrote:
| This argues that the only alternative is privatization.
|
| I don't think that's true.
|
| The issue here is that land that no one has authority
| over means that there is also no enforcement and that
| it's a race to the bottom as to who will manage to
| exploit it to the point where it is destroyed and useless
| to anyone anymore. And why wouldn't you, morals aside?
| It's basically free resources for the exploiter with
| externalities shared by everyone. It doesn't mean the
| solution is private ownership. Look at national parks,
| they're publicly owned but they're not a no man's land so
| a government has authority to enforce conservation rules
| there and punish those who pollute/damage the park.
|
| That's what parent comment was perfectly illustrating:
| "not EU waters, not EU trawlers, why even lift a finger
| if Africa is too corrupt or financially unable to protect
| these ecosystems and the Chinese too cynical to refrain
| themselves?"
| foobarian wrote:
| The semantics of those words are not quite right. Yes a
| national park may sound like a "public" good. But it is
| privatized in the sense that there is an owner who looks
| after it. If international waters had an owner as
| diligent as the National Park Service things would be a
| lot different.
| pstuart wrote:
| Perhaps it's time for International Parks.
| brianmurphy wrote:
| The same question remains. Enforced by whom?
|
| It seems solvable with a consensus of the stakeholders.
| ornornor wrote:
| Well I reckon government (or a government-like entity)
| owned is as close as you'll get to have laws enforced
| while not being privately owned (as in by an individual
| or a corporation).
| dementis wrote:
| "Generally, a state's exclusive economic zone is an area
| beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea, extending
| seaward to a distance of no more than 200 nmi (370 km)
| out from its coastal baseline."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone
|
| "China has by far the largest distant water fleet in the
| world with at least 3,000 vessels, some of which have
| been spotted off the coasts of Africa and as far as
| Ecuador. This has raised concerns of overfishing at a
| time when global fish stocks are plummeting. "It's their
| strategy of establishing themselves as a big fishing
| power," said Matti Kohonen, executive director of the
| FTC. "Then they end up breaking a lot of fishing laws by
| doing that."
|
| https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2022/10/26/Chinese
| -fi...
|
| The issue with a lot of places globally that Chinese
| owned fishing fleets(of highly questionable legal status)
| go is that they will decimate the area like a plague of
| locus and then just like locus they will move on once
| there is no longer any viable marine wildlife to catch(or
| even kelp / sea grass to collect). And the local
| governments either don't have the resources required to
| patrol their coastal exclusive economic zone or they
| intentionally don't want to antagonize China by stopping
| their illegal fishing fleets either because of political
| corruption or due to other more serious reasons.
|
| Technically the International Criminal Police
| Organization (INTERPOL) can enforce Maritime law but I am
| not aware of them doing anything about illegal fishing
| fleets.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| To be fair the EU can barely prevent this shit in European
| waters.
| Nursie wrote:
| This sounds like a great project.
|
| It has been a consistent disappointment to me over the years that
| the EU failed to act to restrict these practices effectively.
| It's always the poor, poor fishermen who need their livelihoods
| protecting, never mind that their livelihoods are under threat
| from their own actions.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| I saw this on Patagonia's youtube channel... what a great idea.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-17 23:00 UTC)