Is there any hope for our overfished oceans? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is there any hope for our overfished oceans?

#11

Post by cninja » Mon, Jul 26, 2010, 1:25 PM UTC

smiler wrote: post #6

tomjen3 wrote: post #3

Sure, at some point it will become cheaper to grow the fish in fish farms, at which point we aren't going to be fishing in the oceans anymore.

Except what do fish eat? Other fish / sea life - so then we basically need to breed an ocean full of sea life in a farm in order to eat the fish - yes it can be managed better, but not sure that will mean it becomes cheaper. I don't think it's that simple

Fish feed is harder to produce than cow feed, but it is not an insurmountable obstacle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_farming#Intensive_aquacult...

Re: Is there any hope for our overfished oceans?

#12

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 26, 2010, 2:24 PM UTC

electromagnetic wrote: post #9

A good first step would be to completely abolish fishing subsidies. Fish is priced abnormally low in stores because a portion of our income taxes go to pay for the fish a second time over. Similar happens with Corn, however corn is a multi-functional food product. Humans eat it as corn, as bread, as oil, as sugars; then humans can also eat the cows, chickens, pigs and lambs that can also be corn fed, but we can also…

[deleted]

Re: Is there any hope for our overfished oceans?

#13

Post by jacksoncarter » Mon, Jul 26, 2010, 2:28 PM UTC

froggy wrote: post #10

tomjen3 wrote: post #3

Sure, at some point it will become cheaper to grow the fish in fish farms, at which point we aren't going to be fishing in the oceans anymore.

Fish farms create high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus which gets into the oceans and spawns toxic algal blooms. Algal blooms kill marine life, notably the coral reefs that so many fish depend on for shelter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algal_bloom

They're also havens for disease like fish lice, viruses, and bacteria that infect themselves and the surrounding communities of fish.

Re: Is there any hope for our overfished oceans?

#14

Post by pinko » Mon, Jul 26, 2010, 2:40 PM UTC

electromagnetic wrote: post #9

A good first step would be to completely abolish fishing subsidies. Fish is priced abnormally low in stores because a portion of our income taxes go to pay for the fish a second time over. Similar happens with Corn, however corn is a multi-functional food product. Humans eat it as corn, as bread, as oil, as sugars; then humans can also eat the cows, chickens, pigs and lambs that can also be corn fed, but we can also…

> A good first step would be to completely abolish fishing subsidies.

Especially if you couple it with some form of jobs or welfare for fishermen, so as to decouple the political issues from the goal at hand (saving our fisheries).

But if you refuse to do that, you willingly bolt the battle to save our fisheries with other political issues that can and should be debated independently.

Re: Is there any hope for our overfished oceans?

#15

Post by hga » Mon, Jul 26, 2010, 2:50 PM UTC

I think you need to be careful distinguishing the issue of overfishing apex predators like the Atlantic bluefin tuna and the Newfoundland Cod, where we suspect they can go effectively (or at least commercially) extinct because other species go to the apex and keep their numbers down, from the implication this might decrease the total animal biomass of an area.

Re: Is there any hope for our overfished oceans?

#16

Post by sliverstorm » Mon, Jul 26, 2010, 6:14 PM UTC

gojomo wrote: post #5

sliverstorm wrote: post #2

tl;dr - No.

That's an inaccurately bleak summary. While the author is discouraged about the fate of the bluefin tuna, and her final note is one of worry, her last three paragraphs are mostly about things that could work: And yet this is never where the new fish stories, or stories about the fish stories, wind up. Just when things seem bleakest, hope—dolphinlike—swims into the picture. David Helvarg concludes his memoir-cum-ecolo…

> “We can restore the life and habits of the sea because it is in everyone’s interest that we do so.”

If that's the best reason he's got, the ocean is doomed. It's in everyone's best long term interests to do so, but quite a lot of countries are convinced it's in their best short-term interest to overfish, and they will not think about the long term.

There are two reasons for that; profit and preventing starvation. There are areas of the world that would not have enough food to survive if they stopped fishing the way they do. The only solutions would be to send them food, or implement population control.