[HN Gopher] Lobster and snow crab fisheries search for alternati...
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       Lobster and snow crab fisheries search for alternative baits
        
       Author : Petiver
       Score  : 18 points
       Date   : 2022-12-05 16:25 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (hakaimagazine.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (hakaimagazine.com)
        
       | blakesterz wrote:
       | Interesting, according to this In Canada's Atlantic provinces,
       | fisheries for lobster and snow crab are booming; in 2022, lobster
       | prices reached record highs, and fisheries managers increased the
       | quota for snow crab in some places by 32 percent.
       | 
       | But a couple months ago there was this:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207372
       | 
       | Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an
       | estimated 1B crabs.
       | 
       | Quite a big difference between the 2 oceans for crabs.
        
       | AlbertCory wrote:
       | > "Using two pounds of bait to catch one pound of lobster just
       | didn't make any sense."
       | 
       | Apparently it made sense to the lobster fishermen. If the price
       | of bait went up enough, then it wouldn't anymore. Or if using
       | mackerel and herring as bait became illegal, it definitely
       | wouldn't make sense.
        
         | bell-cot wrote:
         | In terms of sustainably feeding ~8 billion people in a finite
         | world - "spending" 2 pounds of seafood (bait), plus all the
         | overhead of fishermen / boats / fuel / etc., to get 1 pound of
         | seafood (lobster) - that is far, _far_ beyond mere batsh*t
         | crazy.
        
           | sannee wrote:
           | On the other hand, humanity is spending several pounds of
           | food per day on a generic programmer and all they have to
           | show for it is some numbers shuffling around inside of a
           | computer.
           | 
           | Turning less tasty food into tastier food at a 2:1 ratio
           | honestly does not seem all that terrible in the big picture.
        
           | AlbertCory wrote:
           | Apparently you don't have Skin In The Game, and the lobster
           | fishermen do.
        
             | bell-cot wrote:
             | Does "living on the Earth, with no good alternative to
             | that" count as Skin In The Game?
        
               | AlbertCory wrote:
               | Actually, no, unless you think that everyone's business
               | is your business.
        
         | bragr wrote:
         | In some sense, this is no different than that a huge portion of
         | agriculture goes to feed farm animals. It does not make sense
         | from a purely economic nutrition delivery perspective but since
         | people have a preference for meat, especially lobster, people
         | are willing to bear the cost.
        
           | blfr wrote:
           | Eating meat and other products from higher up the food chain
           | makes perfect nutritional sense. Much more than optimizing
           | for calories per buck which leads to a diet full of HFCS
           | horrors.
        
           | AlbertCory wrote:
           | The "purely economic" perspective is why it _does_ make sense
           | to them.
           | 
           | Raise the prices of the baitfish, or outlaw using them. Do
           | you have another method?
        
             | bragr wrote:
             | I think realistically we're not going to make any real
             | progress either way until there's a big cultural shift away
             | from regular meat eating.
        
               | AlbertCory wrote:
               | I don't think that's required. Look, they have quotas on
               | cod fishing, and AFAICT those are effective. Whale
               | hunting is _mostly_ outlawed.
        
         | TheDong wrote:
         | Externalities are the thing that get you, and I think are what
         | the article is obliquely getting at with that phrasing (and the
         | "amid concern about the state of fish stocks" later).
         | 
         | Each poacher who kills an african elephant for the ivory is
         | paid handsomely, and individually it perhaps makes sense to
         | them, but it's illegal because the externality is that the
         | african elephant would go extinct if we treated this purely as
         | a market where "if someone will pay for ivory, that justifies
         | it".
         | 
         | The health of the planet is usually not able to be factored
         | into market economics.
         | 
         | Laws intervene, but ideally we would recognize the
         | externalities and adjust our behavior _before_ laws come into
         | play. We shouldn't have to wait on the law to limit carbon
         | emissions to recognize that destroying the planet, even if it
         | gives us more dollars in our lifetime, is a move that does not
         | make sense for humanity as a whole.
         | 
         | I think the framing of the article is that this inefficient use
         | of resources makes less sense from an externalities
         | perspective, and you're saying that it makes perfect sense from
         | an economic perspective.
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-06 23:01 UTC)