[HN Gopher] Alaska's Fisheries Are Collapsing
___________________________________________________________________
Alaska's Fisheries Are Collapsing
Author : mooreds
Score : 171 points
Date : 2023-03-06 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.com)
| justinator wrote:
| I walked into the local Asian grocery store, and saw that Alaskan
| King Crab was something like $80/lb, and then I realized I'll
| never eat Alaskan King Crab ever again.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Monterey's Cannery Row would like to have a word.
| nostromo wrote:
| The US should cap exports of wild fish. The US actually doesn't
| eat that much seafood, and most of the seafood captured along the
| Pacific is sent to China and other importers.
|
| We're destroying our local ecosystems for a quick buck, and a cap
| on exports would be the quickest fix. In the long term we should
| turn more to fish farms.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "and a cap on exports would be the quickest fix."
|
| One complexity with this plan is that the vast majority of the
| seafood processing occurs overseas. We export fish to China to
| be processed, then ship it back.
| nick123567 wrote:
| Sounds like a great way to onshore some industry for american
| labor market.
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Very similar to tree nut exports in California and the
| corresponding water crisis.
| nradov wrote:
| From the perspective of water use, the alfalfa that
| California exports to Saudi Arabia is even worse than tree
| nuts.
| kolanos wrote:
| Alfalfa is one of the most water efficient crops widely
| grown. Considerably more efficient than corn, rice, wheat,
| etc. And while California may export a lot of its alfalfa,
| it's the exception relative to the rest of the nation.
|
| > Based on USDA data for 2021, only 3.9% of all U.S. hay
| produced and 6.4% of all alfalfa hay entered the export
| market.
|
| [0]: https://www.hayandforage.com/article-3825-Year-end-
| hay-expor....
| nradov wrote:
| Efficient by what metric? Calories? Weight?
| Profitability?
|
| The problem is that due to the system of water rights and
| allocations, California is effectively subsidizing Saudi
| Arabia by selling water to local farmers at below market
| rates. Thus we have a water shortage which impacts
| everyone while benefiting only a tiny number of farmers.
|
| https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/contributors/vall
| ey-...
| beauzero wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2019/mar/25/california-w...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I worked summers in Homer, Alaska at the cannery (four decades
| ago, before it burned down).
|
| Herring season was interesting since all the herring roe went,
| apparently, to Japan. A Japanese inspector would arrive and
| test the herring that the cannery had stored in large brine
| vats, stacked around the facility. Only when he said it was
| "ripe" would we begin processing (separating) the roe from the
| herring.
|
| The non-egg part of the processing was, I was told, to become
| crab bait or cat food.
| dghughes wrote:
| Around these parts (Maritimes S.E. Canada) they call herring
| "herr rn" it helps if you don't open your mouth when you try
| to say it.
|
| They also have a giant vacuum cleaner type thing four stories
| tall as loud as two jet airplanes. People casually walk the
| small village as the "herr rn sucker" deafens everyone.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| Was this just harvesting roe and then turning the herring
| into bait/cat food? Or am I misunderstanding. Did the roe on
| kelp fishery even exist at that time?
|
| It seems very few of my friends kept fishing in Alaska as we
| got older. I suspect that is normal, but a few friends still
| go up to work summers. Sometimes I wish I had gone up to do
| it.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, that is true. The herring that was left after the roe
| was removed was not in great shape (having soaked in brine
| so long). Certainly edible by crabs though.
| metadat wrote:
| Are you saying sushi roe gets fermented (or cured) while
| still inside the fish carcass?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| For herring, yes. I can't speak to salmon roe.
| welder wrote:
| Salmon roe gets pulled out of the fish as soon as it's
| off the boat, soaked in brine for about 10 minutes, then
| packaged for shipping.
| yowzadave wrote:
| Haven't the Faroe Islands managed to develop a highly
| profitable and sustainable salmon aquaculture? Let's hope it's
| not too much to ask Alaskans to learn from what has been done
| successfully in other parts of the world.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Indeed, this is happening:
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/2280/the-global-fish-farming-...
|
| China's being smart about it too - they are farming fish which
| are ubiquitous and easy to farm (Carp and Tilapia):
|
| https://thechinaguys.com/aquaculture-in-china/
|
| China could do a much better job at regulating their fishing
| industry though...
|
| In the West we eat Tilapia, but we probably should learn to eat
| Carp. Unfortunately as a family of fish, it gets a bad rap for
| a few reasons (Americans don't like bones, Carp has a low-class
| association, Carp can be "muddy" if not raised and prepared
| right).
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Seeing fish farms in China next to factories, trash heaps,
| and rail lines, maybe would inspire more confidence if the
| fish were less robust than tilapia and carp that can survive
| in almost anything
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Lobsters were once a low class food. I wonder what it takes
| to change the perception.
| akiselev wrote:
| Lobster was considered a low class food because it goes bad
| extremely fast once dead, i.e. within 24 hours even if
| properly refrigerated, and so it'd only be fed to people
| like prisoners who had no other choice.
|
| The popularity of lobster went up first when canning
| technology allowed boats to cook and package them up
| immediately after they were caught but they were still a
| cheap source of protein. It didn't become the delicacy it
| is today until after the great depression when the
| economics allowed fishermen to specialize in lobster
| fishing and keep them alive until they reached the
| customer.
|
| That set of circumstances is difficult to repeat for other
| species
| steveylang wrote:
| You give it a fancy name and marketing makeover, that's
| what happened to the Patagonian toothfish...sorry, I meant
| Chilean sea bass.
| wincy wrote:
| I don't know but after going on vacation and eating some
| fresh lobster I think lobster is gross by itself. A nice
| Lobster Bisque prepared correctly is delicious but
| otherwise it's just a giant muddy tasting sea bug. I'd
| prefer a Dungeness Crab over lobster any day.
| jhickok wrote:
| We grew up eating carp out of the Mississippi river.
| Certainly not great, but easy enough to put in a smoker. In
| fact, it's a relatively common dish in certain communities
| along the river, and you can find smoked carp in gas stations
| and grocery stores in the region.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Which region? I live a few hours from the Mississippi, but
| up north in northern IL, and it runs for quite a ways
| further north than even me.
|
| I will have to pick up some smoked carp if I make it to
| said area. I've never seen it for sale. The only time I've
| seen Carp for sale period is in Asian supermarkets.
| jhickok wrote:
| I am not super familiar with anything south of Dubuque,
| but Highway 35 between Prairie du Chien and ending with
| Lacrosse Wi is full of a number of small river towns that
| sell it (or at least did when I was growing up there). De
| Soto and Genoa are the two that had a lot of river
| catfish and carp, both smoked and sitting in grocer's
| fridge units.
| jhickok wrote:
| Here is a picture I found from a grocer in Prairie Du
| Chien:
|
| https://dynamic-media-
| cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/11/f...
|
| Here is an article I found about it:
|
| https://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/cast-iron-chef/ritters-
| fis...
| [deleted]
| thatcat wrote:
| Carp are bottom feeders that accumulate toxins in polluted
| waters.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Sure. That's why they farm raise them in Asia. European
| carp, anyways.
|
| Asian species are a different story - some of them are
| filter feeders. Some other European species don't have
| bottom feeding mouth parts as well (Crucian, Prussian).
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| So are catfish and there's a healthy market for them.
| nradov wrote:
| Most catfish are farm raised in reasonably clean water.
| juujian wrote:
| This is not the solution it seems. Too often, aquaculture
| uses wild-caught fish as feed. Great way to reduce waste, not
| a great way to protect the marine environment. At the moment,
| there is not a lot fish on the market that you can eat with a
| clean conscience.
|
| Edit: I was thinking saltwater fish, freshwater fish is a
| different story.
| RajT88 wrote:
| That's certainly true of Salmon, but not for Tilapia and
| Carp. Carp and Tilapia mostly feed on plant matter and
| insects - and so that's what the feed pellets are made of.
| juujian wrote:
| Good to know, appreciate it!
| quest88 wrote:
| Capping may be good, but what will people do for their
| livelihood that depend on this?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Without meaning to judge, the US as a whole seems happy to
| overexploit itself at the expense of its citizens.
|
| Fisheries would be one example, agriculture which a sibling
| comment mentioned, another. But it's also pollution, labour
| laws, access to housing.
|
| It's tricky because the US is literally the most powerful
| economy ever, so it must be doing something right, equally it
| seems other countries care more about their citizens. Not China
| or North Korea ofc but Europe or Canada etc.
| halfdan wrote:
| I obviously have nothing to back this up with, but my
| instinct is that it's the over exploitation that makes it
| such a powerful economy. But just like Saudi Arabia's oil it
| will eventually stop being a sustainable source for the
| economy. Alaskan fisheries collapsing, rivers that support
| water hungry crops in the desert running dry might be first
| indicators of many that things are collapsing.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Huh, its almost like infinite growth is impossible in our
| context of the natural world.
|
| Who would have thought spreadsheets and magic market
| numbers had little material connection to the resources
| extracted to extrapolate those numbers.
| kiba wrote:
| Eh, only within the current context of society and
| technology.
|
| For example, most of the energy from the sun that hit our
| planet are just basically wasted. Meanwhile, the sun
| uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the
| planet.
|
| The reason why fisheries are collapsing is because we
| don't spend much making our environment more habitable
| and pollute or use up what's already there.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Huh, its almost like infinite growth is impossible in
| our context of the natural world.
|
| > Eh, only within the current context of society and
| technology.
|
| > For example, most of the energy from the sun that hit
| our planet are just basically wasted. Meanwhile, the sun
| uselessly radiate away energy that's not even hitting the
| planet.
|
| You can't magick away the problem with sci-fi fantasies.
| Those technologies don't actually exist and (with a
| fairly high probability) may never exist.
|
| And in any case, a bigger finite does not an infinite
| make.
| kiba wrote:
| We already have the technology. Just not the economy to
| take advantage of it. Solar panels, satellites and
| factories are nothing new to us.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > We already have the technology. Just not the economy to
| take advantage of it. Solar panels, satellites and
| factories are nothing new to us.
|
| We don't have the technology to pave the planet in solar
| panels, because we don't have the technology to make it
| cost effective. Also the solution to the "problem" of
| "most of the energy from the sun that hit our planet are
| just basically wasted" is to _literally_ destroy the
| environment in an industrialization project.
|
| Solving the "problem" of "...the sun uselessly radiate
| away energy that's not even hitting the planet," is also
| limited by that cost effectiveness problem AND the
| problem of we don't have the technology to do anything
| with energy collected by satellites, especially ones
| half-way around the solar system. Then there's the issue
| of putting up a few trillion solar power satellites
| _still_ would allow the sun to "uselessly radiate away
| energy that's not even hitting the planet."
| myshpa wrote:
| > We don't have the technology to pave the planet in
| solar panels,
|
| We'd need only 254x254 km of solar panels for the whole
| world.
|
| https://www.dlr.de/tt/Portaldata/41/Resources/dokumente/i
| nst... - page 25
| gretch wrote:
| Well yeah, obviously _infinite_ growth is not possible
| given the laws of physics.
|
| But the whole premise of technology is that you can break
| the zero-sum and reach arbitrarily high levels.
|
| For example Deuterium-tritium fusion runs on hydrogen
| that's pretty common to find. Yes, if we learn to exploit
| it, we will one day run out, but by then we'll have new
| sources of fuel. Similarly solar energy is just 'free'
| energy that rains down on our planet.
|
| We could use that energy to farm fish or cultivate
| natural populations. We don't do that which is bad, but
| it's not some impossibility.
| secstate wrote:
| While you're not technically wrong, the idea of net-zero
| sources of energy does not address what happens when you
| start concentrating "free energy" in new places. Fish
| farms are ecologically monstrosities in most places they
| exist. Electricity is only one input, fresh water is
| another, and we haven't figured out where to get that
| much fresh water for free yet.
|
| In many ways these arguments of "there's free energy from
| hydrogen fusion" feels similar to arguments about solving
| invasive species with another species because we haven't
| figured out that the new species will be invasive yet.
| And in a similar fashion, the local ecology may
| eventually re-balance (indeed, likely will) but what time
| scale are we looking at? Humans need human time scales.
| greedo wrote:
| Almost all our agriculture AND aquaculture are ecological
| monstrosities because we don't make the producers pay for
| externalities.
| frozenport wrote:
| The value of some large tech companies is orders of
| magnitude above the entire Alaska fishery.
|
| The US's wealth is in it's people not it's fisheries.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Aye, about 2.5% of it's people
| Jensson wrote:
| I think they meant the political climate in USA where
| corporate profits is the top of every political agenda,
| that helps all companies and not just Alaskan fisheries.
| If the government listened more to workers then USA
| probably wouldn't be as dominant as it is.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I don't think so necessarily, the US is still a huge,
| solid market market. If anything, I think it could be
| even richer and more powerful if more its populace were
| lifted from poverty.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| On the other hand, the servers at restaurants in SF make
| more than most software engineers in Western Europe now.
| So probably good to focus a little more on economic
| growth.
| advantager wrote:
| And minerals and petroluem
| hyperbovine wrote:
| > the US as a whole seems happy to overexploit itself at the
| expense of its citizens.
|
| At the expense of *most* of its citizens. I know people who
| make a shocking amount of money fishing in Alaska every
| summer. The problem with the US is that it always prioritizes
| a few of its citizens getting rich, to the diffuse and often
| intangible detriment of the rest of us.
| notch898a wrote:
| I worked in Alaska (fishing trawler). Most the people there
| are not making a "shocking" amount of money. It's basically
| minimum wage plus overtime (granted a shit ton of it) for
| people working in processing or the lowest positions
| onboard the vessel.
|
| A good representation of the people I found were Native
| Alaskans, immigrants, or felons who were attracted to the
| job because it was one of the damn few available to them.
| It was brutal work to eke out a basic existence.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I feel like I've been conned by Mike Rowe - I was under
| the impression that it was brutal work that at least paid
| pretty well. On the boats at least.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-64-mike-rowes-
| koc...
| [deleted]
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| In the Netherlands the fishing industry has basically
| evaporated to less than 1% of GDP. But the loss of jobs
| has been amply compensated in other sectors.
| notch898a wrote:
| Our labor market is probably robust enough for the time
| being that the felons and immigrants will find other
| work.
|
| Not sure about the natives. Their way of life was wrecked
| by western influence and fishing even on a modern vessel
| is about the closest thing they have to continuing their
| way of life while making some income near their home. I
| have no idea what they would shift to if they moved.
|
| In any case USA's highly regulated Bering Sea fishing
| industry is shared with Russia. Even if we
| eliminated/downsized our fishing it'd have to be done in
| concert with Russia to get the desired outcome, otherwise
| we'd just be handing the lions share of our catch to
| Russian fisherman.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| fishermen constantly accuses everyone and anything
| "stealing my fish" ?.. it is a ridiculous spectacle that
| repeats regularly, even as catches go from a boat load to
| a cargo container ship full. That means other companies,
| other animals, other countries .. always "them" ?
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Well, I didn't claim that, and in any case, what you're
| saying reinforces my point. All that money _is_ accruing
| to a small number of people, because of our government 's
| love of privatizing shared natural resources.
| notch898a wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the ocean has the opposite problem of
| privatization. In fact it's the prototypical example of
| tragedy of the _commons_.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _so it must be doing something right_
|
| Consider the fact that when the US was colonized, the native
| population was small and had a significant technological
| disadvantages - also true to some extent for central/South
| America. That gave the colonists a whole continent for
| virtually free, whereas in their territories of origin they
| would have had to compete with large incumbent populations
| that had similar technology, from weapons to the
| administrative organs of states.
|
| If youg et a huge resource boost you will surely find ways to
| profit, just as if you received a billion $ to play with. But
| getting thins for free - especially land - also means you can
| afford to care less about externalities, because you don't
| have as many neighbors or you are not jammed as closely
| together. And so it's easy and natural for people in that
| situation to prioritize resource extraction and profit
| maximization. California's gold rush is a relatively recent
| example of the same phenomenon.
|
| My pet theory is that when you do this on a continental
| scale, you end up with a culture that defaults to thinking of
| economic inputs as infinite, and even if they're not, to
| maximizing output for as long as possible and then moving on.
| It's slash-and-burn agriculture's mentality (with a side dose
| of captive labor) but on an industrial-technological scale.
|
| Fast-forward to the present, and there's an awareness that
| the civilizational free lunch is over, resources and livable
| territory are finite, and pollution has a nasty habit of
| ending up somewhere, but where it's still profitable to do
| business with the attitude described above. A lot of the
| bitterness in contemporary politics is due to the economic
| calculus being increasingly obvious thanks to widespread
| availability of scientific data and network infrastructure.
|
| Incumbents and wannabes whose economic interests/preferences
| tend toward extraction of resources or rents _cannot_
| publicly admit the validity of data about the downsides of
| their economic activity, because then they would also have to
| admit that they simply don 't care and prefer making money in
| the short term to any sort of sustainability in the long
| term. Though numerous, they are too few in number to sustain
| such a position in face of broad opposition, so they maintain
| a set of policy arguments (and a polity) based around
| different but more emollient axioms. The more questionable or
| untenable those axioms, the more fervently they must be
| upheld, to maintain the support of their polity.
|
| In the US, the hardline extraction position has a significant
| overlap with Chrisitan Nationalism, a belief strongly held by
| ~10% of the population and accepted/supported by another
| ~20%. The CN position, when you get down to it, is that
| mankind was meant to exert total dominion over the Earth by
| divine fiat, and that in the not-too distant future the
| divine power will return and re-establish itself on earth
| following a period of apocalyptic upheaval.
| babypuncher wrote:
| We prioritize economic growth over the wellbeing of our
| citizens. The prevailing thought for decades was that more
| growth = more prosperity for everyone, but that facade has
| slowly melted away over the past ~40 years as more and more
| of that prosperity is funneled down to a small ultra-wealthy
| subset of the population.
| Retric wrote:
| The US being one of the largest countries/empires to ever
| exist doesn't have much competition to be the largest
| economy.
|
| Per capita we're still doing ok but far from #1.
| Armisael16 wrote:
| The US is top 10 in PPP gdp per capita, and almost all of
| the states that are higher up are either tiny oil and gas
| states (eg Qatar, Brunei, Kuwait) or small states that
| focus on financial services for much larger areas
| (Luxembourg and Ireland for the EU, Singapore for the
| indopacific).
|
| Seriously, the highest population in any state with a
| higher GDP per capita than the US is the UAE.
|
| #1? Maybe not, but it's certainly pretty close in any
| useful discussion.
| shuckles wrote:
| Do you know if the petro state per capita figures include
| the migrant/indentured workers employed there?
| Armisael16 wrote:
| Per capita figures do include full-time residents, even
| migrant workers. They do not capture international
| commuters (most relevant for Luxembourg, which gets
| something like half its workforce from neighbors).
| Retric wrote:
| The US economy is more focused on finance and fossil fuel
| extraction than Ireland, which easily beats the US in
| terms of PPP per capita.
|
| Remove oil and financial services from all coin and the
| list does look different, but the US's position is still
| far from #1. Also, PPP comparisons between countries are
| rather suspect as costs for housing, food, etc vary
| widely across the US. There's plenty of ways to run these
| numbers but the results are surprisingly arbitrary.
| AwaAwa wrote:
| If you actually looked at actions, you would see that Canada
| exploits its people vastly more than they exploit any of the
| resources that exist here. Very cursory example is the price
| of gas, for a country with the 3rd highest reserves in the
| world, and the addition of a carbon tax, while inflation is
| at record highs, when the Canadian footprint is negligible in
| comparison to the amount of trees here working as a carbon
| sink.
|
| If you were to look at the details, I do not doubt that it
| would be the same in Europe. Please don't think that any of
| the 'developed' countries are holier-than-US.
| scottiebarnes wrote:
| Carbon and environmental externalities get displaced along
| with the manufacturing/industrial base.
|
| If you buy "stuff", you participate in the exploitation of
| nature.
| gruez wrote:
| >Very cursory example is the price of gas, for a country
| with the 3rd highest reserves in the world, and the
| addition of a carbon tax, while inflation is at record
| highs, when the Canadian footprint is negligible in
| comparison to the amount of trees here working as a carbon
| sink.
|
| 1. "Addition of a carbon" tax is highly misleading because
| it was enacted almost half a decade ago, and while there
| was an increase in carbon taxes during an inflationary
| period, that was scheduled years before.[1]
|
| 2. Dropping carbon (or similar) taxes to fight inflation is
| terrible policy. It's untargeted, benefits rich people more
| (the more gas you use the more you benefit), and encourages
| more consumption by lowering prices. If you want to provide
| relief, targeted subsidies work far better.
|
| 3. Carbon in the atmosphere is fungible so whether there
| are trees or not in your country is irrelevant. If your
| country is pumping 20 tons (or whatever) of carbon into the
| air, that's still 20 tons of carbon that's heating the
| atmosphere, or 20 tons that a developing country can no
| longer emit.
|
| 4. Forests are "carbon sinks" in the sense that if you keep
| them around you'll keep a lot of co2 from entering the
| atmosphere, but mature forests don't suck much carbon out
| of the atmosphere (on net).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Canada#
| 2020:...
| awhitby wrote:
| It's more complicated than that, because there is a substantial
| trade in fish export to China, where processing happens,
| followed by re-export back to the US.
|
| 2019 figures:
|
| * U.S. commercial fishermen landed 9.3 billion pounds of
| seafood * Americans consumed 6.3 billion pounds of seafood
|
| Given imports are more processed than exports, a part of that
| difference is presumably waste & less desirable byproducts. So
| it seems fair to conclude that the US eats pretty close to the
| amount of seafood that it produces.
|
| In $ terms (because of the value add of processing), US seafood
| imports are roughly 4x exports.
|
| Source: https://media.fisheries.noaa.gov/2021-05/fus-2019-fact-
| sheet...
| Depurator wrote:
| As a consumer you should ask if the fish has been bottom trawled,
| just a MSC label is not enough.
|
| Please eat fish that is pelagic such as herring and sardines.
| Otherwise long-line fished cod and salmon are fine as well as
| farmed fish.
| wappieslurkz wrote:
| Or... stop being that kind of consumer. It has never been
| easier to go plant based.
| jcadam wrote:
| [flagged]
| Choco31415 wrote:
| It was an enjoyable read for me. I got to learn about the
| fishing industry and it seemed well written.
| earlyam wrote:
| I was listening to a piece on the local news radio about fish
| hatcheries in the PNW and the numbers are shocking with the fish
| that make it back to spawn; Chinook salmon sound like they're
| barely holding on with all our best efforts.
|
| I have a lot of pessimism about our ocean health, we really need
| to do anything we can to support fish populations -- if those
| collapse it's just a matter of time before the rest of the
| ecosystem follows.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Take a look at Patagonia's Artifishal film[0]. The best thing
| to support anadromous fisheries might be just leaving them
| alone - in the rivers, and in the ocean.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.patagonia.com/stories/artifishal/video-79192.htm...
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| If fishing was done on land and not miles off sea and underwater
| where the public can't see what's going on - I'm sure there would
| be much more care about how we fished and it wouldn't take a
| massive collapse in fish populations before something was done
| about it.
|
| It seems no matter where in the world the same thing is happening
| in different ways and there seems to be a common response: it's
| not us - its foreign fisherman, big fishing companies, climate
| change, different types of fisherman, marine use etc.
| paulcole wrote:
| The public only cares about what is affecting them today and is
| right in front of their face. And often even then they don't
| care that much about those things.
|
| Generally speaking, people as individuals are simply not
| willing to change and will always point to someone else as
| being the problem.
|
| The only thing that has a chance at "solving" climate change
| and environmental collapse is individual action and individual
| change.
| randomname93857 wrote:
| Industries produce goods that are _intentionally_ made NOT to
| last, but are made to go garbage and pollute our environment.
| Even if we as consumers will put that into recycle or re-use
| it in some other way, still vast majority of that goes into
| waste. It is not done to make it cheap and affordable, it is
| produced that way to maximize profits of manufacturers by
| allowing frequent sales repetitive sales. Companies that used
| to produce reliable stuff don't do that no more. Not in their
| offer list. How do I fix this individually?
| Loquebantur wrote:
| You are directly contradicting yourself in the last sentence?
|
| This nonsense-belief of "individual change" as a necessary
| precursor to societal adaptation of necessary policies is an
| absurdity most likely cooked up by industry spin-doctors.
|
| Of course, it is exactly the other way around. Abstract
| insight into a problem and its solution needs to be
| implemented into policy by the government. That is it's
| primary function.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I don't eat seafood. Seems like a choice people could make
| (in fairness it is not an ideological decision for me I
| just can't stand the stuff).
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Abstract insight into a problem and its solution needs
| to be implemented into policy by the government._
|
| That's all well and good if you live in a dictatorship, but
| those of us under democracy are lead by the same
| individuals that who won't act. Only once they have decided
| to act and feel the need to clean up the outliers who
| continue to go against the grain will they use their
| governmental powers.
| steveylang wrote:
| Complacency and greed can just as easily exist in a
| dictator as it does collectively in a democracy. That
| being said, I think there are particular factors in the
| United States that favor corporations and their profits
| over the general good of the country.
| Loquebantur wrote:
| Environmental degradation is a socialization of
| (opportunity) costs. Unaccountability for those is a
| systemic failure that needs to be adressed as such.
|
| This has nothing to do with democracy per se. The
| constituency in the US isn't directly involved with
| legislature. They vote for "representatives" who
| _supposedly_ defend their interests in a role of
| mediation.
|
| In reality, long-term interests of the public are of
| little import. Public perception is easily swayed, what
| counts more than votes is, who has money and knows how to
| use it.
|
| Those responsible steal themselves out of accountability.
| politician wrote:
| Look no further than plastic recycling for the impact that
| individuals can have on improving the environment. Which is
| to say, none. For all of the pro-recycling propaganda, 95% of
| it ends up in landfill.
| myshpa wrote:
| Pro-recycling propaganda started within packaging industry.
|
| Pro-animals and vegan movements have different roots. Dairy
| & meat industry is trying its best to discourage individual
| actions ... their concern with plant based alternatives and
| naming of stuff is a clear indicator. Even terms like
| almond milk (1000 years old term) is somehow a problem.
|
| Plastics are very visible within our environment, that was
| the reason behind population accepting recycling.
|
| Animals do not have the voice and the horrors of their
| lives are generally hidden from the consumers. If most of
| the population remains ignorant incl. politicians, we
| cannot expect that anything will change.
| sksndoffnd wrote:
| This is nonsense pushed by industrial lobbyists.
|
| The driving factors of climate change: * industrial * end of
| list
|
| Individuals changing their behavior will not do a single
| thing to solve, reduce, or delay the climate crisis. It's a
| feel-good thing for individuals to do, yes, but it doesn't
| help in the slightest.
| paulcole wrote:
| It's almost like industries are run by people who make
| decisions. Those people need to change their behavior as
| well.
| erellsworth wrote:
| I'm not so sure about that. The horrors of factory farming
| happen on land and while a lot of people criticize it, nothing
| much has been done about it since the 30s.
| Animatronio wrote:
| Something has been done about it, just not what one would
| hope.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ag-gag
| erellsworth wrote:
| Yeah, that tracks. ALEC is behind a lot of reprehensible
| legislation.
| randomdata wrote:
| Factory farming mostly takes place inside barns so, for all
| practical purposes, it is not really any more visible than
| fishing.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation_(2003_film)
| metalliqaz wrote:
| After watching that, may I suggest Parallax[1].
|
| [1]https://youtu.be/42XcN52xEfU
| notch898a wrote:
| I worked on an Alaskan fishing vessel. They had a live aboard
| agent of the state making sure everything we did was kosher. I
| don't think the Russians in the Bering Sea had such restraints.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the right response here is to prioritize the fish populations
| with the best available tech; a challenge common to all
| civilized people
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| don't forget fishermen blaming seals! lol
| giantg2 wrote:
| "If fishing was done on land and not miles off sea and
| underwater where the public can't see what's going on - I'm
| sure there would be much more care about how we fished and it
| wouldn't take a massive collapse in fish populations before
| something was done about it."
|
| I think that's a but wishful. Just look at stuff like CAFOs.
| The majority of consumers don't give a damn as long as the
| price in the store is cheap enough. They're not thinking of
| where the stuff they're buying came from.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| There's a correlated issue here-- housing (and other goods)
| have gotten so expensive with respect to real wages that most
| consumers don't really have much of a choice.
|
| Wealth inequality is a huge part of the reason consumers
| won't opt for the more eco-friendly or ethical options on the
| market.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > If fishing was done on land I'm sure there would be much
| more care about how we fished
|
| viva Las Vegas
| ccooffee wrote:
| I hadn't heard the term CAFO before. Here's a fact sheet from
| the Sierra Club about these "Concentrated Animal Feeding
| Operations": https://www.sierraclub.org/michigan/why-are-
| cafos-bad
|
| I've done a lot of highway driving around the US and CAFOs
| are probably the worst part of it. They are depressing to
| look at, and you can often smell them miles before you see
| them. Central California, all of Nebraska, and Northern
| Indiana are three places that stand out in my mind for having
| outrageous "density" of abhorrent-smelling places.
| alexpotato wrote:
| I was born with no sense of smell and have worked in tech
| relate fields for the past 15 years.
|
| I used to joke that senior tech role at Waste Management
| would be an efficient pairing but the CAFO angle was
| unknown to me before this.
|
| PS HN being HN, I realize that even if I can't smell, my
| clothes etc might acquire an odor from being in smelly
| places.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Funny, Ben Stein said there's plenty out there:
|
| https://www.intrafish.com/alaska-seafood-starring-in-new-tv-...
|
| https://imgur.com/a/0pi3eQy
|
| Unfortunately it looks like his 2006 ad's been pulled from all
| search results:
|
| https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-stein-commercial-stati...
|
| http://www.alaskaseafood.org/tv%5Fad/
|
| https://www.ispot.tv/topic/actor-actress/Ac/ben-stein
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ben+stein+fish+commercial&t=h_&iax...
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ben+stein+alaska+seafood&t=h_&iar=...
|
| It's remarkable how even today, some of the smartest people in
| the world are happy to sound like morons for the right price.
| legitster wrote:
| > Trawl industry representatives say that bycatch, which the
| industry is required by law to discard, is not the driving force
| behind recent crab, salmon, and halibut declines. They point to
| climate change and warming waters as well as natural population
| variability as the primary culprits.
|
| I don't think they are wrong here. I think blaming trawlers is
| looking for rounding errors. But there are still a litany of
| reasons to start sensibly restricting trawling.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Letting the industry set caps is insane.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| I feel like I've been reading this same article again and again
| my entire life, from the collapse of the cod fishery in '93 until
| now, we continue to learn nothing and make the same mistakes.
|
| Depressing.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Well there is a bias at play that we'll never hear about
| fisheries recovering. That's not going to make headline.
|
| I wonder if fisheries recover? For example what's the state of
| North Atlantic fisheries?
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| oh I don't know about that... coincidentally we got an
| article about a recovering fish stock very recently.
|
| https://hakaimagazine.com/features/in-cods-shadow-redfish-
| ri...
|
| While people are clearly happy about the return of this fish,
| seems clear there's a lot of uncertainty around what to do
| next and whether fishing for it is a good idea.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| From the wikipedia article, sounds like not great, although
| some signs it _could_ recover in the near future if left
| alone -- which we are unlikely to do, because every time it
| starts to look like it might recover, we just overfish it
| again.
|
| Wikipedia ends it's history with:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north.
| ..
|
| > In 2015, two reports on cod fishery recovery suggested
| stocks may have recovered somewhat.[56][2][57]
|
| > A Canadian scientist reported that, cod were increasing in
| numbers, health, normalizing in maturity and behavior, and
| offered a promising estimate of increased biomass in
| particular areas.[2]
|
| > A US report suggested that a failure to consider reduced
| resilience of cod populations due to increased mortality in
| warming surface water of the Gulf of Maine had led to
| overfishing despite regulation. Thus, overestimates of stock
| biomass due to generalization of local estimates and
| ignorance of environmental factors in the growth or recovery
| potential of a cod fishery would lead to mismanagement and
| further collapse of stocks, through further unsustainable
| quotas, as in the past.[58][59]
|
| > In June 2018, the federal government reduced the cod quota,
| finding that the cod stocks had fallen again after just two
| years of fair catches.
| nradov wrote:
| It's tough to talk about North Atlantic fisheries in
| aggregate. Some are reasonably healthy, others are still
| collapsed. Cod is just starting to rebound.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Apparently still not well. With similar themes
|
| > The trawlers also caught enormous amounts of non-commercial
| fish, which were economically unimportant but very important
| ecologically.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_nor.
| ..
| twblalock wrote:
| And yet the fishing industry didn't collapse!
|
| After 20+ years, you need to realize the doomsayers were wrong.
| iskander wrote:
| Fish biomass bottomed at the end of the 90s, which resulted
| in a bunch of changes in how large-scale fishing happens
| around the world:
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1909726116
|
| This mostly fixed the problem but demand keeps on increasing
| along with changes to water temperature, so local collapses
| in specific populations are becoming a big problem again.
| myshpa wrote:
| Species like thresher, bull and hammerhead sharks have lost
| up to 80-99% of their populations in the last two decades.
|
| Seabird populations have declined by 70% since the 1950's.
|
| Studies estimate that up to 40% of all marine life caught is
| thrown overboard as bycatch.
|
| Six out of seven species of sea turtles are either threatened
| or endangered due to fishing.
|
| Over 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises are killed as
| bycatch every year.
|
| 2.7 trillion fish are caught every year, or up to 5 million
| caught every minute.
|
| Fish populations are in decline to near extinction.
|
| https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts
| jmclnx wrote:
| They should ban these big trawlers.
|
| I read many years ago, the fishing fleet in the NE US was
| outdated, but Pres Carter provided subsidies in the 70s to
| modernize the fleet due to foreign competition.
|
| The result was the same as what the Article mention for Alaska.
| Boom times for quite a while, then the crash which the NE is
| still working through.
|
| The obsolete fleet provided more employment and was not as
| efficient, providing for some recovery on the ocean.
| nradov wrote:
| What matters is the total amount of fish caught, along with
| bycatch and other damage from lost fishing great (ghost nets).
| The size of the vessels doing the catching is irrelevant.
| Fisheries should be managed based on quotas and allowed fishing
| techniques rather than boat size. Larger vessels also tend to
| be safer for the crews.
| floatrock wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...
|
| It was named Cape Cod for the plentiful fish back in the day.
| Choco31415 wrote:
| Did the NE manage to address the fleet efficiency problem?
| nvr219 wrote:
| I remember having to take a class about The Blockchain for
| professional development about ten years ago and they gave
| fisheries as an example industry where blockchain would help
| guarantee whatever fish was caught on whatever day and delivered
| to the store. What a joke.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's the bottom trawling that's the problem, that should be
| phased out.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| I'm sure the Chinese factory ships will not be in a hurry to
| oblige.
| [deleted]
| jabl wrote:
| Not sure that's the main culprit in this particular case, but
| yes, bottom trawling is incredibly destructive and should be
| banned.
| pvaldes wrote:
| That's unfair! Who could have predicted that trowing yummy
| radioactive water to the sea in Japan would have consequences in
| Alaska or Chile?.
|
| Why the immmune system of the fishes, and the sea birds, and the
| sea lions is failing so hard, instead creating a team of
| superherrings as planned?
|
| (And overfishing, and climate change, and pirate fishing, and
| ghost fishing...)
| ehvatum wrote:
| If this were true, there would be a marine zone of death near
| Fukushima that dissipates with distance. For the Bering Sea to
| be so impacted, the Pacific near Japan would be entirely devoid
| of life, and it isn't.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > the Pacific near Japan would be entirely devoid of life.
|
| I can't see why. Sealife does not work like that.
|
| Ecosystems "collapse" only to rebuild in a different
| direction. All those cods vanished are now lobsters. To
| remove all the life in the ocean we would need a really
| extreme event. Not even an atomic bomb could do it in Bikini
| Atoll
|
| And we need to stop lying to ourselves pretending that we
| have enough data about the Oceans. Some very serious troubles
| in the ecosystems can be spotted only by an expert, after a
| lot of hard work, and their effects will happen later and in
| a different continent.
|
| What I can see is a list, that is getting longer and longer
| each year, about massive die-offs in the Pacific. Sometimes
| is El Nino, other is "the bird flu" or the "yellow
| flubmarine". Who knows? The fact is that --nobody knows--
| exactly why this famished dolphins showing the ribs decided
| to strand here to die, and most of the corpses will be too
| decomposed after floating for three weeks before arriving to
| the coast.
| V__ wrote:
| Will the UN High Seas Treaty have any positive impact on this
| problem?
| jabl wrote:
| Too early to tell, but my cynical mind expects the 30%
| requirement will be fulfilled by choosing parcels of ocean
| smack in the middle of nowhere with the least economical and
| thus ecological value.
| euroderf wrote:
| It is illuminating to speak of _the rape of the oceans_.
|
| I do not use that verb lightly. I believe it is accurate and
| fair.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I feel pretty impotent and helpless clicking an upvote button as
| my contribution to these types of calamities that I, due to other
| priorities in my life, can otherwise do nothing about. I have
| almost zero faith in the government to remedy these issues when
| there is large corporate interest in the status quo.
| wappieslurkz wrote:
| Maybe you can't do much about this directly, but what about
| being part of the bigger solution by not consuming fish. I get
| my protein en omega 3 from plant based foods.
| wappieslurkz wrote:
| *en = and
| myshpa wrote:
| > can otherwise do nothing about
|
| You can. Your actions matter. Simply refuse to to participate
| in that. Even saving a small piece of nature has a meaning.
| Maybe not to you, but to what is saved it has.
|
| If there was no demand, it would not be happening.
|
| Your example can help others to see what's wrong with their way
| of living. If lot of people change, the laws shall be changed.
|
| > almost zero faith in the government ... when ..is large
| corporate interest
|
| All (western) governments are puppets of corporate interests.
| Just look behing most armed conflicts of the last century, and
| also how are goverments handling the climate crisis. We can
| expect no meaningful change from their actions.
|
| Demand for change must come from the people, and it must come
| from a significant part of the population (majority is not
| required, though), otherwise the status quo and business as
| usual will prevail.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Blow_Up_a_Pipeline
| notch898a wrote:
| The pipeline was successfully blown up. Now it gets carried
| by trains manned by overworked employees with constant
| derailments, or by gas guzzling tractor-trailers. Mission
| accomplished!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Sadly, the industry is already "blowing up their own
| pipeline" so to speak.
| myshpa wrote:
| We need omega3, not fish.
|
| We should acknowledge that it's our personal responsibility to
| lower demand, and protect (demand protection of) what remains.
|
| "Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I
| am wise, so I am changing myself." - Rumi
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