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How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

e360.yale.edu

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Re: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

#121

Post by crucio »

noworriesnate wrote: post #82
rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we're not some magical creature free from biological needs. Am I? I became 100% vegetarian a year ago. No one around me was vegetarian. I saved money. I never ate so well and I'm in my best physical form ever. What is magical?

You need supplements to grow healthily as a vegetarian. For example, it's difficult to get Omega 3, 6 and 9 from plants. You need supplements for that. Also you've only been vegetarian a year. Being a vegetarian from birth to death without supplements would be much more difficult to do without major deficiencies. Also vegetarians today have the option of buying food from all over the world, but that wasn't the case f…

You are spreading misinformation.

Everyone needs Omega 3/6/9. You can get it from nuts and algae. IF you want to be inefficient and introduce a middleman, you can get it from fish.

B12 is needed by everyone. The meat you eat has it supplemented. Again, you can cut out the middleman and get it directly as a supplement rather than having a cow killed.

Re: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

#122

Post by yorwba »

evancox100 wrote: post #17

Anyone else catch this? First: “The Chinese government says its distant-water fishing fleet, or those vessels that travel far from China’s coast, numbers roughly 2,600, but other research, such as this study by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), puts this number closer to 17,000”. Several paragraphs later: “More recently, the Chinese government has stopped calling for an expansion of its distant-water fishing…

According to the 13th Five-Year Plan for the National Fishing Industry http://www.moa.gov.cn/nybgb/2017/derq/201712/t20171227_61312... China had 65398 sea-going fishing boats with a length of at least 12 meters in 2015 and planned to reduce that number to 57095 in 2020. The number of distant-water fishing vessels is given as 2512 in 2015, but I can't find anything to substantiate the claim that it's supposed to be limited to at most 3000 by 2021 (though I didn't read the whole plan, so maybe I missed it). EDIT: Turns out I should have looked at the five-year plan for distant-water fishing specifically, which does say that the number of vessels should be stabilized below 3000 by 2020 and also mentions that at the end of 2016, there were close to 2900 either already deployed or under construction http://www.moa.gov.cn/gk/ghjh_1/201712/t20171227_6128624.htm

Those 17000 vessels estimated by the ODI are likely not ships whose existence the Chinese government denies, but instead ships that are not classified as part of the distant-water fishing fleet even though they do venture far off the coast.

Re: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

#123

Post by surajama »

huffmsa wrote: post #48
geddy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need is to stop consuming animals and animal products, or we’ll keep having economy destroying pandemics. Not to mention the obvious problem that farming is horrendous for the animals. Animals aren’t some inanimate object.

And we're not some magical creature free from biological needs. Eating other animals is what got us here. Until we can print actual, chemically identical meat on a conveyor belt, our reliance on animals will continue.

400-500 million people in India are vegetarian [1]. Are these all magical creatures?

[1] http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/the-food-habits-of-a-na...

Re: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

#124

Post by knolax »

Disappointed in the article. When I saw the Yale domain I thought it would be a research paper or at least something written by an expert on the subject. It appears this is written by a journalist[0] and as typical of things written hy journalists, leaves out crucial details/sources which leaves you with more questions.

> the country’s commercial fishermen often serve as de-facto paramilitary personnel whose activities the Chinese government can frame as private actions.

???? The article doesn't go any further, but how would you use a bunch of unarmed fishing vessels crewed by "illiterates" (according to the article) for anything resembling a military purpose. Later on it mentions "crowding" but doesn't really go into detail about what that means.

Plus what is a "distant water fishing fleet"? The article gives numbers for overall number of fishing vessels and then "distant water fishing fleet", but only provides context for the later number by saying the US has only 300 such boats in its fleet. If a country with coasts on two oceans only has 300 of these, it has to be some really specific category of boat right? What makes this category important?

And of course there's the framing of the article, the fishing is done by private commercial fishers but apparently their entire country is to blame. I mean you can make some arguments about subsidies but then the article itself acknowledges that other countries also engage in similar level of subsidies.

Also there's this weird fixation on North Korea, where it claims the Chinese fishing fleet is depleting North Korean waters, but doesn't really tell us about whether or not that's done with North Korea's permission. It mentions that it would be technically illegal for NK to sell fishing rights, but that doesn't really bear any significance.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Urbina

Re: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

#125

Post by metalliqaz »

bamboozled wrote: post #110

Is the world just going to have to let China own itself to learn the hard way? Like, it just seems like a bad news generator and we constantly need to dance around the CCP trying to guide them appropriately with sanctions, and threats and incentives. I understand depleting the oceans would be catastrophic, but how is this regime ever going to learn? Honest question?

This question has been answered many times in the past. Through most of human history, it would have involved killing 80% of their young men and taking the women as slaves. I don't know where it will lead in the age of nuclear weapons.

Re: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

#126

Post by oblio »

crucio wrote: post #116
momokoko wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global pandemics are not direct negative impacts? We have several documented(h1n1 etc) significant loss of life events due to animal agriculture. No more silent downvoting. People are dying and will continue to die as these continue to happen until grown adults get some self discipline and stop eating meat.

Typical response of HN to downvote comments like the parents, just because it's doesn't suit their own lifestyle.

I didn't downvote him but I think I know why he was downvoted. Denying human reality doesn't work. Remember the Prohibition?

Re: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

#127

Post by scythe »

oblio wrote: post #2

We badly need some sort of industrial fish farming at a large scale. Oceanic fishing at this point is basically like hunting gathering at an industrial scale: we just catch whatever we can and who cares if it grows back, not our problem, "nature" will take care of it. The same way we seed, till, etc., we should be doing the same thing with oceans and "hunting" aka fishing should only be allowed as a hobby. In a somew…

Aquaculture is huge in Asia. China produces 61% of all of the farmed fish in the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture#/media/File:Global...

What we need is to reduce the popularity of consuming "predator" fish species -- there is an abundant supply of forage fish, but these are often caught and fed to farmed fish! Sardines and herring aren't popular today, but they'd be a lot more appetizing and sustainable if we just froze them on the boat instead of grinding them into fishmeal to be fed to tilapia or salmon. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forage_fish

Re: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

#128

Post by wenc »

evancox100 wrote: post #17

Anyone else catch this? First: “The Chinese government says its distant-water fishing fleet, or those vessels that travel far from China’s coast, numbers roughly 2,600, but other research, such as this study by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), puts this number closer to 17,000”. Several paragraphs later: “More recently, the Chinese government has stopped calling for an expansion of its distant-water fishing…

I have no horse in this race, and may even be persuaded to agree with you, but as other commenters pointed out, the statements in themselves are not logically inconsistent.

The recent episode with the Apple story on HN reveals how easy it is for emotional pile-ons to happen on something that may or may not be factual. I think cooler heads need to be prevailed upon to speak up and add some balance to discussions.

Re: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

#129

Post by noworriesnate »

jnathsf wrote: post #88
noworriesnate wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need supplements to grow healthily as a vegetarian. For example, it's difficult to get Omega 3, 6 and 9 from plants. You need supplements for that. Also you've only been vegetarian a year. Being a vegetarian from birth to death without supplements would be much more difficult to do without major deficiencies. Also vegetarians today have the option of buying food from all over the world, but that wasn't the case f…

You only need to look at cultures like in India, Taiwan and elsewhere that have large vegetarian population to see that your statement doesn’t hold water.

It's possible to have a large population with deficiencies, which may be the case in India for example [1].

Another factor is, the number of insects that accidentally get into the food supply provide some protein. I remember reading about how a more primitive lifestyle leads to more insects being in the food supply, which provides some of the necessary protein for humans to thrive. But I can't find the link at the moment.

1: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/80-india...

Re: How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans

#130

Post by oblio »

snarf21 wrote: post #100
geddy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need is to stop consuming animals and animal products, or we’ll keep having economy destroying pandemics. Not to mention the obvious problem that farming is horrendous for the animals. Animals aren’t some inanimate object.

The more these discussions progress, the more I wonder if there is really only one solution. We need less people. Trying to convince 8 billion people to do something like never eat meat or fish seems like an impossible goal. We need to raise the standard of living in countries that reproduction rates > 2. We could also remove tax breaks for kids after the second in developed countries to mitigate the incentives for e…

The thing is, fertility rates are going down across the world.

What are you going to do with the current people? They will all want a decent quality of life. Will you sacrifice your life and quality of life to achieve this greater goal you mention? Or do you just want "others" to sacrifice themselves for it?

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