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Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

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Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#41

Post by gumby »

One of the non-obvious factors of the economics of farming (fishing a specific region included): since most of the inputs are the same (weather, and with the emergence of commodity crops over the last century, seed too), if you have a good year, so do your peers, which drives down the value of the crop; when the year is bad (driving up the value) your yield has likely sunk.

This is the justification of ag cooperatives (like the recently invalidated California Raisin Advisory board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Raisin_Advisory_Boa...) which are/were granted monopoly control over marketing and enforcement of production controls.

These boards have been really useful (in some fisheries like Ayre Peninsula / South Australia, and according to this article perhaps in Maine) and really terrible (e.g. Wisconsin milk boards).

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#42

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

zwieback wrote: post #4

Is the herring they use as bait the same fish I buy in cans or jars in the supermarket? I'd rather eat that than lobster most days.

Yes, as bait fish they're quite easy to catch. Drop a line with a few shiny gold hooks and you'll likely pull it back up with a herring on each hook. For some reason they really like shiny objects.

Only problem is they only taste good smoked, and when I had easy access to fishing for herring, I didn't have a smoker :-(

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#43

Post by EvanAnderson »

lukethomas wrote: post #33
celias wrote: post #29

I remember reading about how abundant lobsters were on a historical plaque in Cape Breton. From travel Canada - "There was a time when these crustaceans were so plentiful and underappreciated that only the poorest children took lobster sandwiches in their lunches while the rich kids ate bologna." http://www.torontosun.com/2016/07/27/learning-about-lobster-...

Folklore told here in Maine said that lobsters were so abundant they would walk up on the beaches. It was considered to be "trash" food and they fed it to prisoners. http://www.history.com/news/a-taste-of-lobster-history

Others who are into lobster folklore I suspect will enjoy listening to episode 33 of "The Memory Palace" podcast: http://thememorypalace.us/2010/08/episode-33-lost-lobsters/

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#44

Post by Spooky23 »

jaredhansen wrote: post #22
scrollbar wrote: post #3

I'm in the middle of reading Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution by Marjorie Kelly, which talks extensively about Maine lobster fishery rights. Along the sensitive areas of the coast, only owner-operated boats are allowed to fish, and these people must all have certified lobster fishing licenses. Their licensure also gives them voting rights around regulations for lobstering- in a sense, they own the…

>That the right to make a living comes before the right to make a killing. That fairness for the many is more important than maximizing for the few. OK, but that's not really a full accounting of the tradeoff being made. Preventing "outside" or "non-local" fishing does have the advantage of privileging local stakeholders over remote capitalists - but it also privileges local stakeholders over remote _customers_. If e…

Local vs. Remote matters because the remote guys give zero fucks about the state of the fishery, or any other resource.

For example, as a consumer, we in aggregate give zero shits about the oppressed seamstress in Bangladesh who is essentially a slave making our t-shirts for pennies. But if somebody kicks a dog, it will generate a massive outcry. We relate to the dog, who could be our own dog, but don't relate to the seamstress.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#45

Post by Spooky23 »

tyingq wrote: post #17
shostack wrote: post #2

I for one will do my part to help pick up the slack in demand. While the wholesale price has fluctuated, has there been much change in retail/restaurant lobster prices? I certainly don't see restaurants near me lowering the price of a lobster roll. If anything, looks like Old Port Lobster Shack in Redwood City increased theirs judging by what Google shows in their menu listing for a "Maine Lobster Roll" ($18.75) vs.…

Some of the New England area McDonalds sell Lobster rolls: https://newengland.com/today/travel/new-england/places-to-ea... No idea if they are any good, but they are $8.

Usually fast food lobster is warm water langistino.

I tried the McLobster a few years ago, it was pretty mediocre.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#46

Post by orik »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40
orik wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A perspective from the north pacific on fisheries, counsels, voting rights, etc - The whole thing is a many sided tug of war. Ultimatly Fisheries are very complicated. Green Peace & Environmentalists would like us to reduce our use of capture fisheries or abandon the practice altogether. (Even though capture fisheries produce protein without damaging biodiversity, unlike farms. also less greenhouse impact.) Financial…

> Green Peace & Environmentalists would like us to reduce our use of capture fisheries or abandon the practice altogether Bans seem to work better for charismatic animals. We spend about $10,000 per year per tiger on conservation efforts [1]. Meanwhile, marine protected areas [2], of which some are no-fish no-catch, are notoriously under-enforced [3]. Which kind of makes sense given nobody is directly incentivized to…

like I was saying, many people would like us to abandon this large source of protein even though sustainable fisheries are possible.

Look at the fisheries in New Zealand or Alaska for examples of very well managed fisheries.

In many developing countries it's not a tragedy of the commons problem, it's a structure/stability problem. How can you ever have managed fisheries without political stability, or with stability but rampant corruption?

How can you have political stability without economic stability and food? It's a chicken and an egg problem.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#47

Post by erikpukinskis »

scrollbar wrote: post #3

I'm in the middle of reading Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution by Marjorie Kelly, which talks extensively about Maine lobster fishery rights. Along the sensitive areas of the coast, only owner-operated boats are allowed to fish, and these people must all have certified lobster fishing licenses. Their licensure also gives them voting rights around regulations for lobstering- in a sense, they own the…

I think it's interesting to think about the way such a system is a hybrid of different political systems.

At the fishery level it's not communistic... But it's also not capitalistic. The fishery isn't owned by a single profit driven entity, it's a democracy or a beurocrasy, or however they have it set up.

At the boat level it's a single profit driven entity, which is purely capitalistic

On the boat itself you have a monarchy: the captain is the king and you do what she says.

We spend too much time bickering over capitalism vs communism vs socialism vs anarchism, but to me the question is which structure for which resource. The political landscape never was monolithic and never will be.

Right now we are way over-using capitalism at the global level. But it doesn't need to go away. It just doesn't seem to work for watershed management, health care, etc.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#48

Post by drhodes »

sctb wrote: post #15
tyteen4a03 wrote: post #6

Copy the Danes: Mass-approve Chinese visitor visas, and lonsters will go extinct before you can say "Please take our lobsters"

Please don't post unsubstantive inflammatory comments on Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This isn't inflammatory. This was in the news recently, the Chinese folks THEMSELVES were commenting on how they would do a number on the invasive species, because they happened to have a taste for a particular oyster which the Dane's apparently do not.

> The most popular comment came from someone (a Chinese) suggesting oyster visas should be issued "with 10 years' unlimited round trips and one-month-long stay and I can eat up them all in five years" received over 10,000 likes.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2017-04/27/content_291141...

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#49

Post by zz01234 »

pash wrote: post #28
scrollbar wrote: post #3

I'm in the middle of reading Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution by Marjorie Kelly, which talks extensively about Maine lobster fishery rights. Along the sensitive areas of the coast, only owner-operated boats are allowed to fish, and these people must all have certified lobster fishing licenses. Their licensure also gives them voting rights around regulations for lobstering- in a sense, they own the…

> Kelly argues that this ownership of the lobstering commons, in a cooperative-like structure, leads to greater sustainability. >> Large corporate boats can operate only in designated areas. Instead of permitting limitless liberty to absentee owners for the seeking of wealth -- by hired hands indifferent to local custom -- Maine set spinning a new governing pattern…. That the right to make a living comes before the r…

> another way to prevent a tragedy of the commons is to get rid of the commons: grant exclusive use of the former commons to a single party, who then has an incentive for good stewardship.

There is a single party, and it is The State of Maine.

> And quite contrary to Kelly's characterization of it, Maine's solution to managing its lobster rights can be seen as an instance of favoring the few over the many

I fail to see your reasoning here. A single corporate entity would would prefer to employ the smallest number of people possible.

Re: Maine Is Drowning in Lobsters

#50

Post by blackguardx »

orik wrote: post #35
scrollbar wrote: post #3

I'm in the middle of reading Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution by Marjorie Kelly, which talks extensively about Maine lobster fishery rights. Along the sensitive areas of the coast, only owner-operated boats are allowed to fish, and these people must all have certified lobster fishing licenses. Their licensure also gives them voting rights around regulations for lobstering- in a sense, they own the…

A perspective from the north pacific on fisheries, counsels, voting rights, etc - The whole thing is a many sided tug of war. Ultimatly Fisheries are very complicated. Green Peace & Environmentalists would like us to reduce our use of capture fisheries or abandon the practice altogether. (Even though capture fisheries produce protein without damaging biodiversity, unlike farms. also less greenhouse impact.) Financial…

I'm not sure if you meant ocean farming or land farming, but most environmentalists oppose land fish farming because of the practices used to get fish meal are pretty destructive and impacts of concentrated penned animals (antibiotic use, waste, etc.) that affect all dense animal protein production.

http://www.farmedanddangerous.org/salmon-farming-problems/en...

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