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

e360.yale.edu

161–170 of 215 posts

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

#161
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agricultural subsidies that affect beef, either directly or indirectly, have been in place in the US for almost a century. So either your father is quite old, did not live in the US, or that meat was subsidized.

OK, but I'm asking for -how-, truly. My father is getting up there, but still raises cattle to this day. He buys them as calves, and sells them the next year. They mainly eat grass and hay, but admittedly there is -some- corn feed in the winter, which I understand as one source of subsidy, but I can't see it amounting to much in the grand scheme just based on the amount. When selling them, after accounting for initia…

Industrial Carrie farming has additional costs. Like wise they need to be transported, butchered, packaged, etc. This adds cost.... Your dad's break even is still losing money for anyone doing this as a business.

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

#162
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, meat SHOULD cost a fortune. The actual cost of meat is not what you pay for it, the only reason it’s even affordable is because the taxpayer shoulders the burden of the farm subsidies. Cut those out and a $5 Big Mac would cost almost $15. Add to that the environmental impact, insane water usage, and the fact that meat production will continue to destroy economies through pandemics, and it should cost 10-15x mo…

Most people in society like meat so it makes sense we subsidize it. This is progressive. Otherwise only the wealthy could eat meat. The wealthy actually pay more to eat meat as they pay the majority of the taxes that go into these subsidies so nearly everyone can afford meat in the market. Once again, this is progressive. Just like roads. Most people in society want to be able to freely travel where they want and whe…

> Most people in society like meat so it makes sense we subsidize it. This is progressive.

So, we should subsidize things that people like? Should we subsidize sugar?

Most Americans are eating far more meat than doctors recommend.

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

#163
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fish farming is a disease disaster that can harm wild populations. This gets discussed a lot in relation to Scottish Salmon, for example.

I'm thinking fish farming in urban centers, maybe tied to hyrdoponic greenhouses. I can picture more urban parks, with many fish ponds. The fish pond water used to grow labour intensive cash crops like raspberries (that are hard to pick).

Why on earth would you farm in an urban center with high ambient pollution levels and high land prices?

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

#164

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?

> bad news generator

Well someone has to choose what bad news to highlight and how biased to highlight said news. For example, per capita, Taiwan and S.Korea have larger DWF fleets, Taiwan significantly so. Factor in EEZ and you get a good idea of why.

China: 1400m ppl / 3000 dwf fleet / 900,000km2 eez (3.8m with disputes)

Taiwan: 24m / 414 / 90,000km2

Japan: 162m / 162 / 4,500,000km2

S.Korea: 52m / 198 / 300,00km2

Spain: 47m / 65 / 1,000,000km2

https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/files/file-attachments/St...

This EEZ map really explains a lot of tensions in these maritime disputes.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7292/10134658063_fca4fc3da2_o...

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

#165
post #124

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 activiti…

From the linked Ian Urbina Wikipedia page:

> As a journalist, his investigations typically focus on worker safety and the environment...

As you point out, Urbina has an undeniable preference for international law, regulation, and treaties pertaining to oceans and fisheries. These sentiments seem to align with the values promoted by the Yale School of the Environment [1]. The article links to an investigative report Urbina did for NBC [2] which describes the evidence.

[1] https://environment.yale.edu/

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/china-illegal-fishing-fleet...

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

#166

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…

Most likely they're interpreting vessels operating in disputed 9dash eez as DWF instead of domestic fleet. So they magically discovered 12,490 new ships not claimed by China, which would not consider them DWF vessels. See table on page 15 of report.

> 12,490 vessels without IMO or RFMO registrations but with active AIS signals outside Chinese waters at some point between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2018.

AND

>AIS signal outside Chinese EEZ in 2017 or 2018

CTRL+F entire report "South China Sea", 1 hit from references. The fact that this point doesn't get any elaboration makes this report suspect as hell. That leaves 4,476 vessels, 927 foreign flagged (20.7%) consistent with Chinese numbers. Under 4.3.1 (pg 21): "around 20% of the world’s fishing vessels are registered in states to which they have no other connection". In that same paragraph it tries to use 927/16,966 to show Chinese share of foreign vessels is relatively small at 5.5% when using 4,447 its right at the 20% mark.

Also shifty eyes at 2.2.1 that tries to do a nominal comparison to EU/US DWF fleets but conveniently leaves out the other countries with the largested DWF fleet size (Taiwan, SK, Japan, Spain) [1]. Taiwan adjusted per capita would have a DWF fleet the size of 24k ships. S.Korea is around 5K ships which is in line with China, per capita, but it seems like relative numbers lke per capita is frowned upon if it doesn't make China look bad relative to regional peers.

https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/resource-document...

[1] https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/files/file-attachments/St...

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

#167

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?

It's not like other countries do much better. China just makes the news a lot when it comes to the environment because there's a billion Chinese.

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

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Overpopulation is a racist myth. Developed countries use far more resources and waste significantly more food than developing nations and wealthy people have a larger footprint than their working class counterparts. https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/all_publications/living_... https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/chart-of-the-day-thes... https://theconversation.com/emissions-inequality-there-is-a-...

[deleted]

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

#169
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Salt water) fish farming is still hunting on an industrial scale because the farmed fish are mostly carnivorous and are fed with feed derived to a large part from hunted fish. It's mostly a tool to strip the oceans even harder (with fish farms converting undesirable catch into species people like to eat, everything becomes a target)

They should farm the prey too then? I still wonder where those mice that pet snakes eat come from. Never had a pet snake so I don't know much about them.

If you continue that line of thought long enough you end up declaring the entirety of the world's oceans one big fish farm and truly sustainable fishing that doesn't deplete populations your method of farming.

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

#170
post #22
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry that once that time arrives the government will force us to consume it by severely taxing actual meat.

Great, meat SHOULD cost a fortune. The actual cost of meat is not what you pay for it, the only reason it’s even affordable is because the taxpayer shoulders the burden of the farm subsidies. Cut those out and a $5 Big Mac would cost almost $15. Add to that the environmental impact, insane water usage, and the fact that meat production will continue to destroy economies through pandemics, and it should cost 10-15x mo…

People could afford to eat beef (albeit less of it) at 1800s levels of wealth per capita.

Currently high quality beef imitations like B-On are not quite cost competitive with real ground beef. Basically it's taken us an additional ~100yr of supply chain growth to get to a technological point where plant beef is priced like beef was 100yr ago.

I feel very comfortable saying that any change that hits the low level commodities that underpin these things, fuel, grain, etc. would just exacerbate that difference and set plant based "transition foods" back.

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