[HN Gopher] California cancels salmon fishing season
___________________________________________________________________
California cancels salmon fishing season
Author : makerofspoons
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-03-13 20:57 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbsnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbsnews.com)
| mikeg8 wrote:
| Great news. I live in the area this story was filmed in and have
| been to that pro shop. I really hope they can weather a lost
| season and feel bad for the tough times ahead. But I'm happy and
| proud that our state is willing to take drastic measures to
| protect the resource. I hope that as we focus on balance and
| stewardship, populations of salmon, and abalone, to continue to
| rebound so that the fisheries are healthy and reopened, and we
| can all enjoy the bounty from this region's ocean.
| mulmen wrote:
| Well, we can't _all_ enjoy the resource. That's how we got into
| this mess.
| yesenadam wrote:
| And maybe the life in the ocean is more than just a "resource"
| for humans to exploit.
| dcwardell wrote:
| Reminds me of the Alaskan Snow Crab population collapse last
| year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207372
| kposehn wrote:
| I've been Salmon fishing in California since I can remember.
| There are few things I love more than being on the water going
| for Kings as the sun comes up.
|
| I'm really bummed we won't have a season, but having more fish in
| the future is worth the short term cost.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| It can't hurt, but I don't think something like this is really
| going to fix the problem. Dams, water levels abs temperatures,
| ocean trawling, acidification ... there's lots and lots of
| stress on salmon population aside from anglers.
| mikeg8 wrote:
| Fixing a multifaceted problem requires multifaceted
| solutions. It can definitely help.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| The publicity from the cancelation seems like a really
| valuable aspect too
| kposehn wrote:
| Absolutely. We definitely need to put a spotlight on this
| and other dwindling fish stocks. Even though there are
| other populations to draw from, once they're gone they
| are very, very hard to get back.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Car tire debris:
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/03/coho-
| sal...
| hadlock wrote:
| There was a bombshell report about an immediate moratorium on
| crab fishing in Alaska, that came out of nowhere, seemingly.
| About a month later there was a (very, very quiet) report
| justifying the moratorium. The short version is that
| effectively scientists had been asking for reduction in
| fishing in the area for decades and finally the remaining
| stock in the area was so low it was critically endangering
| the ecosystem there. So they finally put in a hard stop after
| years of kicking the can down the road.
|
| I suspect we'll see additional cessation of fishing in other
| areas as it further unravels that we've been chronically
| overfishing for decades.
|
| Britain after WW2 overharvested mackerel from their seas for
| so long that they had to put permanent fishing quotas and
| even today the mackerel have not fully recovered from
| overfishing over half a century ago. Anglers have an enormous
| impact on fish and wildlife stocks.
| qqtt wrote:
| See also cod fishing in Newfoundland:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_fishing_in_Newfoundland
|
| Cod stocks collapsed in the early 1990s, with a moratorium
| on fishing enacted in 1993. It took until 2011 for signs to
| show that the ecosystem was recovering.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| They did a moratorium on crab fishing by crab fishermen but
| allow trawling for groundfish that a) picks up crab as
| bycatch and b) destroys their spawning grounds.
|
| It's not a great example of an effective policy response.
| kposehn wrote:
| It won't fix it for sure, but it will help. Reducing the
| pressure on the population can go a long way to improving
| future prospects.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > For years, the salmon fishing industry has been locked in a
| political struggle in the legislature and the courts over how
| much water is being allocated to Central Valley farmers. An
| estimated 80 percent of the state's water goes to agriculture,
| leaving cities and fisheries to fight over what's left.
|
| This is the core issue. With droughts tending to increase rather
| than decrease, CA probably needs to reevaluate its commitment to
| supporting its (very large) agribusinesses.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| CA needs to rethink its water law. Parts of the agribusiness
| industry are at least providing decent bang for the gallon. But
| the fact that there are fields of low value alfalfa being
| watered tells you the incentives are all screwed up.
| Teever wrote:
| I've read online that a large portion of the water is used to
| grow alfalfa that is sold to Saudi Arabia as cattle feed.
|
| I'm not from the area so I don't know how the water system
| works but I was wondering if it was susceptible to domestic
| terrorism like what was happening to the power grid in an
| eastern state.
|
| It seems to me that a few well placed explosives could take out
| the water supply to these cash crops during a very hot period
| which would ruin the crop and free up the water to be used else
| where for the rest of the season.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Last year, 196,000 adult fish were expected to return to the
| Sacramento River to spawn but only 60,000 showed up.
|
| 70% decline
|
| If your business depends on this fishing season, what do you do?
| Go bartend?
| comonoid wrote:
| I saw a bartender fishing in 2020 when everything was closed.
| So, why not?
| swatcoder wrote:
| If I set up shop as a Blackberry developer and RIM goes out of
| business, I have a tough year as I regroup and figure out next
| steps for myself.
|
| Every business has dependencies outside of its control, and
| yeah, sometimes you may have to go bartend for a bit. It sucks,
| but business never comes with total guarantees. Planning for
| this stuff can help.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's in the best long term interest of the
| entire state if a few niche businesses based entirely around
| salmon fishing have a bad year. The calculus is those
| businesses will either struggle now or struggle forever when
| most of the fish are gone
| nradov wrote:
| Start a catfish farm.
|
| https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/reeling-in-the-doug...
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Catfish is not great.
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| It's hardly a substitute for salmon.
| nradov wrote:
| Some people prefer catfish over salmon. Tastes vary.
|
| Catfish is a pretty good substitute for salmon in terms
| of macronutrients. Salmon does have higher levels of
| omega-3 fatty acids. But catfish may be safer in terms of
| heavy metals and other toxins, depending on where the
| fish were raised.
| myshpa wrote:
| >> 196,000 adult fish were expected to return
|
| > If your business depends on this fishing season
|
| It seems that there's more people than fish. Draughts,
| overfishing, pollution ... not much perspective in that.
|
| If I may ... plant based has a future, fishing ... not so sure.
| Teever wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| In my state, all the lobster fishing people have a "co op" to
| jointly decide how to manage the public resource of the fish in
| our waters so that they can come together and make the kind of
| conservation decisions together, and create some force to
| prevent anyone from defecting and catching everything in a down
| year. This gives them more stability year to year and a little
| bit of possible price fixing.
|
| Just don't call it a union.
| mulmen wrote:
| Why is a private organization managing a public resource?
| Shouldn't a government agency do that?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > Just don't call it a union.
|
| Of course not. The more accurate word is "cartel" (note: I
| see management of a shared resource as a perfectly legitimate
| justification for cartel behavior).
| twblalock wrote:
| Catch different kinds of fish.
| myshpa wrote:
| It's not just the draughts.
|
| https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts
|
| "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.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| _Studies estimate that up to 40% of all marine life caught is
| thrown overboard as bycatch._
|
| This is a fairly important part. It's one thing to fish and
| eat. It's another thing to fish and destroy. Trawling is the
| strip mining of the sea.
| yesenadam wrote:
| It makes me ashamed to be human. Reading stuff like that, and
| thinking about what we do to cows, sheep, lambs, chickens, etc,
| it dawned on me a while ago that humans have no right to treat
| animals like they're just a bunch of cells to be treated
| however we want, like a serial killer treats their victims. But
| that animals are fellow beings, a lot like us in many ways. I
| didn't want pain, or someone to kill me, so I figured they
| didn't either.
|
| It was so easy to stop eating animal "products". The whole
| thing started to seem obscene, like a nightmare - ads on TV
| trying to tempt people to eat slaughtered baby sheep etc. I
| thought I'd miss the taste of meat but never have. (I feel so
| weird writing that sentence now.)
|
| I encourage everyone reading this not to be a part of the
| problem, to stop contributing to this desecration. If no-one
| ate meat, this genocide of sea life would just stop. For every
| person that stops, we get closer to that. I realize in some
| cultures, it's not so simple, but in many, it is.
| nimbius wrote:
| wild...as a hunter who has made the trek to California a few
| times for Javelina hog and black bear, i had no clue they even
| offered a permit for salmon at all...its just not something
| advertised much.
| wazoox wrote:
| And in EU, the French government just announced that it will
| "strongly oppose" forbidding deep ocean scrubbing nets in
| "protected areas" (which are therefore totally unprotected).
| They look like caricature villains from a comic book or
| something. Bonkers.
|
| For history, here's the criminal, senseless moron, shame on
| him, shame on them all:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtfGFt1c5H8
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-03-13 23:00 UTC)