[HN Gopher] Fishing for oil and meat drives extinction of deepwa...
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Fishing for oil and meat drives extinction of deepwater sharks and
rays
Author : etiam
Score : 213 points
Date : 2024-03-08 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| causal wrote:
| Was shocked to read that shark livers are used for biodiesel.
| Feels like 18th century whaling for lamp-oil.
|
| Here's a Forbes article that seems almost enthusiastic about this
| as a "green" energy source:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissacristinamarquez/2020/03/...
| rocketbop wrote:
| > For those sharks who have perished due to becoming bycatch,
| this allows a unique opportunity to have their livers provide
| valuable products like biodiesel, squalene, and omega-3
| polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) -including eicosapentaenoic
| acid (EPA; also icosapentaenoic acid) and docosahexaenoic acid
| (DHA). Afterall, the major constituents of WSLO are
| triglycerides (TG), diacylglycerol ethers (DAGE), and squalene.
|
| What a strange article.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "perished due to becoming bycatch"
|
| So sorry we accidently killed you. In order to give your life
| some meaning, we've come up with "unique opportunity to have
| their livers provide valuable products"
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| That's all we can ask for in many careers
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| I doubt I will ever provide as much value as a shark
| liver's worth of biodiesel.
| cgannett wrote:
| Your employer frantically googling how much biodiesel can
| be produced from a human liver
| throwway120385 wrote:
| In modern capitalism your life only has meaning if you
| produce products.
| randomsolutions wrote:
| To who? As opposed to?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This seems overly cynical.
|
| If sharks are purposefully being killed like this then
| thats one thing. But that's not being alleged.
|
| If sharks are accidentally killed then it's good that
| they're making use of them to some extent. Hopefully they
| can make even more use of them.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| They could reduce the amount of bycatch, like they have
| with dolphins. They won't if there is economic incentive
| not to.
| refactor_master wrote:
| But dolphins and giraffes are cute. Sharks and cattle
| aren't.
| jprd wrote:
| Legions of toddlers demand you review the body of work
| from Pinkfong, and then reconsider your inclusion of
| sharks as "not cute".
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| They are being killed through the use of specific fishing
| techniques. Anyone using those techniques KNOWS that this
| is going to happen.
|
| Adding a financial incentive to continue harmful
| practices is NOT a good thing.
| causal wrote:
| You're essentially saying that accidental shark death is
| bad, so we should make it on purpose.
|
| We should be punishing bycatch, not incentivizing it.
| oregano wrote:
| This idea really disgusts me. If an animal is
| "accidentally" killed then the first action should be to
| punish the people who did this and then take steps to
| ensure it does not happen again. Just allowing capitalism
| to continue to wreak havoc on our planet is so obviously
| not moral thing to do.
| jknoepfler wrote:
| I'm not sure it's possible to be "too cynical" in the
| commercial fishing space. If there is even the remotest
| financial incentive to do something, we should expect
| people to maximize profits and do it. The concept of
| "intent" doesn't really need to enter the discussion, I
| don't think.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| > the authors stress that is should remain a "waste" product
| and not create a market for increased shark fishing
| causal wrote:
| "Damn this supply chain opened up and we need more sharks
| but the authors stressed that we shouldn't increase catch
| so I guess we won't"
| jeremyjh wrote:
| But gosh darn it we accidentally caught a lot more and
| yes, this is my new boat.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| "Oops, look at this shark that I totally didn't mean to
| catch. Ohh well, now that it's dead, I can maybe use the
| bycatch for shark fin soup."
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| So it's more a greenwashing initiative causes the problem...
|
| Similar vibe as replacing leather with microplastics or meat
| that can exist anywhere with deforesting the amazon for meat
| alternatives ingredients.
| digging wrote:
| > meat that can exist anywhere with deforesting the amazon
| for meat alternatives ingredients.
|
| Is this the case? A major problem with beef is that so much
| of it comes from the cleared Amazon. Also, meat intrinsically
| takes more space than vegetables because we still have to
| clear land to grow feed for the meat, so a 1:1 replacement of
| Amazonian beef with soy and chickpeas or whatever would be a
| massive increase in yield.
| causal wrote:
| Yeah magnitude matters. Clearing rainforest is generally
| bad but if meat requires 5x the land of plants then we
| shouldn't make false equivalencies.
| samatman wrote:
| If one discovers that a brand of tshirt is being
| manufactured using slave labor, a reasonable response is to
| buy another brand of tshirt. Clearly more is needed to
| solve the problem, but the slave labor doesn't "rub off" on
| the other tshirt, it's obviously silly to say "don't wear
| tshirts, some of them are made by slaves".
|
| It's no different with beef. Most beef in the USA comes
| from the USA, and you might raise various objections about
| the treatment of cattle, pollution from runoff, and so on,
| but it isn't contributing to rainforest deforestation, so
| that isn't a good reason to not eat it.
| wyre wrote:
| Crops grown for animal feed is still a major cause of
| deforestation and USA beef can still be culpable for
| contributing. Realistically, I think most US cattle is
| fed from domestic feed, but I know Brazil exports a lot
| of animal feed to Asia and Europe.
|
| To expand on your metaphor, not only are the t-shirts
| made with slave labor, but the cotton grown is harvested
| and milled by slave labor and without supply chain
| transparency it's impossible to know if the new brand is
| also using the slave-labor cotton.
| graemep wrote:
| On the other hand most beef I eat in the UK is grass fed
| which is a whole lot better and does not consume much
| imported feed.
| wyre wrote:
| I'll agree, but it's important to remember and consider
| grass-fed cattle cannot scale to any level resembling
| societies current beef consumption.
| graemep wrote:
| AFAIK most beef in the UK is grass fed, not 100% so, but
| close.
| samatman wrote:
| > _Realistically, I think most US cattle is fed from
| domestic feed_
|
| I believe you could make this "all" without loss of
| accuracy, at least to three significant figures. Might
| have to relax "domestic" to cover Canada and Mexico,
| neither of which is deforesting to produce fodder.
|
| The US is a major exporter of the crops fed to cattle,
| and livestock in general. The lack of supply chain
| transparency your counter-analogy relies on is nowhere in
| evidence in US agriculture.
| digging wrote:
| > it isn't contributing to rainforest deforestation, so
| that isn't a good reason to not eat it.
|
| Yes it is, only indirectly, as it's driving climate
| change. It's also destroying local ecosystems which you
| might have an interest in? Beef is just insanely
| inefficient as a food source. It's like finding out all
| t-shirts are manufactured using a process that throws
| 10lbs of manufactured cloth into a landfill for every
| shirt made.
| graemep wrote:
| The same is true for a lot of meat alternatives/fake meats
| which use many times the inputs of producing soy of
| chickpeas.
|
| Not all beef is equal. Almost all the beef I eat is from
| the UK, and most of it grass fed.
| digging wrote:
| > Not all beef is equal. Almost all the beef I eat is
| from the UK, and most of it grass fed.
|
| I mean, all beef is equal in the sense that it's not an
| efficient use of resources, including space, to feed
| cattle vs growing crops that feed humans. That's
| basically true no matter where the land is.
|
| Anyway, if we _are_ talking about the Amazon, there is
| absolutely no conversation to be had that doesn 't center
| on beef. Talking about Amazon deforestation specifically
| being driven by anything other than cattle ranching is so
| wrong it's evil, and plenty of UK beef also comes from
| the Amazon.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| Cattle can feed on land that is not suitable for growing
| crops
| graemep wrote:
| really?
|
| all the supermarkets i go to sell mostly British beef,
| and the butcher sells mostly local beef. most of of the
| rest is Irish.
| verisimi wrote:
| I know... But when you think about it, it is renewable! I mean,
| even fossil fuels are renewable eventually....
| hedgehog wrote:
| Whaling continued until much more recently. I knew a guy in the
| early 2000s that made his money in the whale oil business and
| he was around 70 at the time.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| There are other threats to the deep ocean other than fishing -
| From what I understand, whale falls are a big driver of
| biodiversity in the deep ocean, so while it wouldn't appear
| intuitive that reducing the number of whales in our oceans would
| have that kind of effect, ecosystems are closely intertwined and
| one change can have far reaching effects.
| hvs wrote:
| This is the first I've ever heard that term but it instantly
| makes a lot sense. Found my wiki rabbit hole for today.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I first heard about it on this site - it's
| very interesting.
| rcpt wrote:
| Planet Earth has an episode on it. Some of the greatest TV
| ever
| xnx wrote:
| Sharks Feasting On A Whale Carcass:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7t1WguYJyE
| pvaldes wrote:
| check also: marine snow
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Would that the doom of X/Twitter would do the same for
| startups (although I suppose that graphic was in the opposite
| direction)
| srameshc wrote:
| Maybe we need to have a list of the companies who are in this
| chain for profit.
| xnx wrote:
| What's happening to the oceans is truly awful: overfishing,
| bycatch, bottom trawling (like strip mining or clear-cutting of
| the ocean floor), ocean acidification, ocean warming,
| agricultural runoff leading to algal blooms, noise pollution, and
| plastic pollution. It would never be tolerated if it was more
| visible.
| TOGoS wrote:
| > It would never be tolerated if it was more visible.
|
| Idk man, we put up with a lot of horrible stuff up here, too.
| Not so much because we like it but because nobody who isn't a
| billionaire (or perhaps heads a powerful but privately owned
| company) has much say in any of it. Heck, even my city council
| does whatever the heck the businesses want, no matter how big a
| crowd shows up at their meetings and says "please no."
|
| (We don't have any ocean, here, but we do have lakes that have
| been getting more and more polluted for decades because nobody
| has the backbone to tell folks upstream to keep their
| fertilizer out of the water, or whatever.)
| rcpt wrote:
| > even my city council does whatever the heck the businesses
| want
|
| So there's lots of new housing being built by big developers?
| hackerlight wrote:
| Tragedy of the commons + diffuse interests vs concentrated
| interests.
| boringg wrote:
| Its the wild west out there - definitely needs help. Its the
| ultimate tragedy of the commons problem with global
| implications.
| causal wrote:
| It's so big, even 100 years ago it probably seemed impossible
| for human activity to affect it. But human activity scales
| while ocean size remains constant.
|
| Better maritime regulation is a must.
| juujian wrote:
| Such is the (dumb pun incoming) power of exponentials and
| exponential growth.
| xnx wrote:
| True. Though it is worth noting some small success stories
| like the decline of whaling:
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/whale-catch
| taway_6PplYu5 wrote:
| except we are harvesting all the krill, not leaving a lot
| for the whales.
|
| and a lot of the krill goes to dog food.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I get where you're going, but I think you need to go back
| more like 200 years at least. 100 years ago our impact on
| whales at least was very clearly evident to anyone remotely
| paying attention.
| causal wrote:
| Shout out to the folks at Global Fishing Watch doing amazing work
| tracking unregulated fishing activity. Just need policy to catch
| up with reality now.
|
| https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/index
| marricks wrote:
| I feel like if global actually policy helped we wouldn't be in
| this "never ending increase in CO2 emission" hellscape we live
| in now.
|
| Like, not to knock on someone else's work, but I bet if we had
| globally enforced regulation while we may get nice bylines of
| "the blue fin tuna has made a rebound" the global fish
| populations would continue to plummet and the oceans acidify
| even further.
| causal wrote:
| Well we haven't ever had global policy enforcing CO2
| reduction so I don't think we can conclude it doesn't work.
|
| But it's also not a fair comparison, reducing shark bycatch
| and reducing human CO2 output are completely different
| problems with different scale.
|
| I don't think giving up is acceptable either.
| marricks wrote:
| > I don't think giving up is acceptable either.
|
| 100% agree here.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Just need to start sinking ships, sadly.
|
| The rate of enforcement is far too slow, and you have far too
| many nations as bad actors, there will never be effective
| enforcement.
| WillAdams wrote:
| There was an XKCD on this:
|
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/33/
|
| My grandfather lived in a time when commercial hunting ceased to
| be viable and was outlawed --- I worry my children will live in a
| world where fishing goes the same way, which given the percentage
| of the world's population which depends on seafood is
| existential.
| ezxs wrote:
| Are we going to keep avoiding the fact that the population growth
| can not be the goal any more? In fact it's better for this planet
| if the number of people actually decreased? BTW no on is
| advocating doing it forcefully, but just through distributing
| contraception and educating women, that seems keep the population
| stable.
| betaby wrote:
| It a very unpopular idea in this forum and in general in the
| western world which is basically 'growth by all possible
| means'. More consumers - better.
| bitwize wrote:
| Then we need to shut down the "Western world". A blanket ban
| on excess overbreeding and polluting technology. Maybe the
| NWO should consider using their stockpiles of sterilization
| drugs bound for the water supplies...
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| The "exponential growth forever" microsecond of human history
| will be looked on as a fever dream in the future, and
| hopefully the masses who support that ideology will be
| remembered with the same contempt as slavers.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Degrowth as a concept is about economic growth. Not only is
| it popular with the far-left/environmentalist intersection,
| they don't seem to want to consider population at all. Part
| of this is because it feels incongruent with their stance on
| immigration, even though they aren't the same things.
|
| Even those enthusiastic about economic growth are at least
| more likely to be honest with themselves that scaling up is
| creating pressure on the environment, despite the
| improvements in innovation. This is because of soaring global
| demand (particularly from the East). There are, of course,
| techno-optimists who want to believe that a sustainable
| future is a foregone conclusion. Even if we think we'll get
| there eventually, the damage in the meantime can be
| considerable.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| we can support a larger population, but we can't support a
| larger population at the current meat consumption levels
|
| I guess we'll find out if we're willing to eat less meat, or if
| we'd rather a certain % of the global population to starve...
| so far it's looking like the latter
| slothtrop wrote:
| > we can support a larger population, but we can't support a
| larger population at the current meat consumption levels
|
| All environmental encroachment and emissions scale with
| demand. It's reductionist to only talk about meat; it's not
| the only reason people want to migrate to the West.
| Notwithstanding, demands for alternatives have shot up in
| Western countries and land-use for cattle has not actually
| increased in the US. As countries in developing world lift
| themselves out of poverty, they consume more meat (and fuel,
| gadgets, etc).
|
| Even if you hypothetically cut down meat consumption in the
| West, emissions would still rise to levels that would
| exacerbate climate change. It's not enough. And "degrowth" is
| such an injust hardship to demand of developing countries
| that it's amazing people consider it an actual possibility.
| Some combination of tough policy measures (in the short-run)
| and innovation is what we can expect, probably after things
| get worse.
|
| Ultimately global population growth is going to stall, in
| less than 100 years. by then whether people eat meat will be
| a moot point. Demand won't grow, and renewables will have
| taken over the market.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| degrowth should happen in the west
| drewm1980 wrote:
| I've got 99 reasons to be vegan, but shark extinction... is yet
| another one.
| z_open wrote:
| People are still really viscerally against veganism. Really this
| isn't even close to the main issues with the animal husbandry
| industry, including famine in developing countries
|
| https://planetforward.org/story/the-dirt-on-beef-global-hung...
| raptorraver wrote:
| It's not cow but how. Modern agriculture methods are very
| destructive for the environment. The biggest problem isn't even
| the greenhouse emissions but the way we are destroying the
| living topsoil by our methods and then trying to fix the
| problem with fossil fuel based systems - diesel based tilling
| and fertilisers. Veganism can't solve those problems either.
| Luckily there is a growing movement of regenerative agriculture
| which focuses on the soil health and maximing the carbon
| sequestering to the soil. It also makes much more sense from
| the financial point of view for the farmer.
|
| https://regenerationinternational.org/why-regenerative-agric...
| z_open wrote:
| Veganism doesn't solve every issue, but it makes them better
| almost immediately. For the problem you mention, we would
| need to farm substantially less with Veganism. Feed ratios
| for cows is around 7:1 when I checked last. So it absolutely
| is cow.
| raptorraver wrote:
| You're propably correct about the feed ratio but cows eat
| grasses and hay that aren't consumable by humans. In warm
| countries that's not a problem, people could grow there
| crops that humans can eat, but in big parts of world (like
| here in north where I live) grasses are best thing to grow.
| Also grasslands are best carbon sink we currently have
| (https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/climate/news/grasslands-
| mo...) and you can't have those without ruminants.
|
| Also it's good to remember how much food we waste each
| year. We could easily feed the world already now but it
| doesn't seem to be priority for the people in charge.
|
| That said I'm on a same side with vegans, I don't like the
| current way we produce food and I'd like to see a big
| systemic change there. But I think vegans don't take into
| account how complex problems we are dealing with - nature,
| agriculture's economics and eating habits and nutritional
| requirements of humans.
| robocat wrote:
| > grasses are best thing to grow
|
| The article talks about Grasslands.
|
| Farming cows on grass is something else (not grasslands)
| and fertisers are used and imported feed (or finishing
| feed in many countries). Without looking at the whole
| system you can't make any judgement.
|
| ~55% of New Zealand is being used for sheep and cattle.
|
| The environmental cost of that is unbelievable.
|
| Grass is _not_ good. PS: I 'm not a vegan.
| z_open wrote:
| Even in the US grassfed is less than 1%. It's just not
| sustainable.
| digging wrote:
| We can still farm ruminants on open grasslands where
| those are appropriate ecosystems, but that will mean
| cutting meat production by, I don't know, 99.99% or so.
| Which is fine, it's not healthy to eat a hamburger every
| day.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > The biggest problem isn't even the greenhouse emissions but
| the way we are destroying the living topsoil by our methods
| and then trying to fix the problem with fossil fuel based
| systems - diesel based tilling and fertilisers.
|
| You're talking about ammonia. This is currently irreplaceable
| in terms of scaling, certainly it would be impossible to feed
| 8 billion people without. Just look at how much more land-use
| "organic" plots require.
|
| There are innovations in the works to synthesize ammonia
| without fossil fuels, but I don't see a future without
| fertilizer.
| aktuel wrote:
| Humanity is eating its own limbs.
| vondur wrote:
| Yes, international waters are a kind of Wild West:
|
| https://insightcrime.org/investigations/argentina-plunder-da...
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| For people who care about the future of our biosphere, what would
| be the most logical next step?
|
| Reduce or stop eating factory farmed meat / industrial fishing
| products?
| digging wrote:
| That's a personal step which is good to take for credibility,
| but the only two effective things to do are:
|
| 1. Violence against corrupt capital-owners (I'm not
| _advocating_ this, for legal reasons, just saying it _could be_
| effective)
|
| 2. Organizing your fellow malcontents (that is: people who give
| a quarter of a fuck about human dignity), which is hard work
| but can really pay off systematically. Note though that you may
| still end up with some of the same legal risks as #1.
| jajko wrote:
| Yeah eco-terrorism will really persuade masses about your
| cause, what a non-smart advice to be polite. I don't claim I
| have a solution, but above is _not_ one
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