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Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

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Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#171
post #40

We should be fixing farmed fish. When was the last time people ate wild cow. It's not sustainable for a population to be exploiting wild fish, farm properly and learn to do it quickly. As long as we eat meat, we have to do it in the least intrusive way.

Can you cite a single type of fish that is currently farmed properly (i.e. sustainably)?

US/Canada Farmed Steelhead Trout, Rainbow Trout: http://seafood.edf.org/trout

Arctic Char: http://seafood.edf.org/arctic-char

US Farmed Tilapia: http://seafood.edf.org/tilapia

US Farmed Catfish: http://seafood.edf.org/catfish

Basically, avoid any fish farmed in Asia, as there are no environmental regulations on those.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#172
post #117
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a point here, yup. Some vegetables are luxury food, and less efficient than cattle. Replacing nature with monocultures is a problem. If we stop eating cattle for that, there is not moral room to keep eating chocolate, for example. Or coffee

If I eat seafood I rob from ocean species, illegal labor, the hungry poor, and the future. Sometimes, farmland represents the same problem, sometimes not. Seafood is an unsolved problem globally. It has no form of ethical consumption.

Most seafood is produced and sold by the hungry poor. You're not doing them any favors by boycotting their goods.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#173

I'm shocked that the article didn't mention this, but the mass die-offs we're seeing are because the world's coral reefs will be dead by 2050: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/environment-90-per... https://www.businessinsider.com/great-barrier-reef-could-dis... https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2020/02/24/70-90-per... The effect of this is that 500 million pacific islanders will be forced to flee to So…

Your logic is faulty.

> "the mass die-offs we're seeing are because the world's coral reefs will be dead by 2050"

This does not make sense.

Let's break it down:

This is what you're saying:

"The [current thing happening] is due to [the occurrence of a future thing]."

Clearly, something in the present is not due a dependency on an event which has not happened yet.

What you should perhaps say is something more like:

"The [current thing happening] is due to [the same causality] as what will cause/is causing [the future occurrence]."

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#174
post #111
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a point here, yup. Some vegetables are luxury food, and less efficient than cattle. Replacing nature with monocultures is a problem. If we stop eating cattle for that, there is not moral room to keep eating chocolate, for example. Or coffee

Based on some rough napkin calculations, the caloric efficiency by land of broccoli is about the same as industrial meat. Optimizing diet for land efficiency probably does not produce healthy diets. You can find strong evidence for this trade-off in the changes of average human health at the advent of agriculture.

Much lower water usage and impact on the land used though, even if it's bad soil and you have to use a ton of fertilizer.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#175
post #81

It's not that hard to be vegetarian or at least cut back a lot on meat folks.

Society will never overcome this tragedy of the commons. Only a few will make personal sacrifice for the common good. Only a market-driven solution will be viable. We need to find sustainable alternatives that are better than the foods they replace. Just like we need electric cars that are better than internal combustion engines.

>Only a few will make personal sacrifice for the common good.

Are you vegetarian? I chose to, only because I want mankind to live on this planet for a long time. That's not a sacrifice, that's a basic choice. I'm not sacrificing stuff when I chose to behave responsibly (e.g driving safely, not stealing my neighbors, paying taxes, etc). Do you think people only pay taxes because they fear the police? Or they don't kill each others only to avoid going to jail? Of course they are abuses on our systems (like any social situation), but if you think most people behave responsibly only to avoid a kind of punishment, then you have a very dark idea of society or you hang out with bad people (that can change).

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#176
post #29

With the way the human population is expanding and the rising income of 3rd world nations we are really going to look at a major increase in both genetically engineering food stock to be larger and more nutritious as well as ramping up lab grown meat. Conservation is clearly not going to work as so many nations ignore it anyway and quite often regulations lack teeth due to the fear of killing an industry. Its difficu…

Yup. We're already pretty much at capacity in terms of using arable farming land[1]. We need more efficient farming, which means GMOs and advanced farming methods; we don't need less efficient farming like organic and anti-GMO. [1] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/how-much-arabl...

Global warming will free up an enormous amount of arable land (most land is in the northern hemisphere anyway)

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#177
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sure wish a tech billionaire would do something about this. I've noticed in tech that a common hope that people in tech hold is that "the billionaires", in their infinite wisdom and generosity, will pull magical solutions out of their hats and save us all. Like you mention later, yeah, right. > one of the thousand reasons I got out of tech Not an option I've considered much, but it's almost tempting.

It's because we can no longer rely on our governments to act responsibly or arrive at a solution. We now have to rely on the world's billionaires and their generosity for help.

We no longer rely on our governments not because governments are inherently distrustful but due to a toxic hyper-libertarian philosophy that's been systematically trying to disable our governments and moving power toward the billionaires. The solution isn't to pray "Save us of wise and powerful billionaires" - the solution is to fix the governments.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have little hope that we will reduce emissions in time or in sufficient quantity to save the coral reefs. My remaining hope is that projects like Project Vesta will help reverse ocean acidification https://projectvesta.org/

Would a hot war in East Asia be enough for the same effect? Hypothetically of course

Well a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan would cool the Earth temporarily, but it wouldn't help long term: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191002144251.h...

I would expect ocean acidification would actually get worse, since the effects would mimic the 'Year without a Summer' so people would be releasing more carbon to heat their homes.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#179
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sure wish a tech billionaire would do something about this. I've noticed in tech that a common hope that people in tech hold is that "the billionaires", in their infinite wisdom and generosity, will pull magical solutions out of their hats and save us all. Like you mention later, yeah, right. > one of the thousand reasons I got out of tech Not an option I've considered much, but it's almost tempting.

>> that "the billionaires", in their infinite wisdom and generosity, will pull magical solutions out of their hats and save us all. Like you mention later, yeah, right. I think its more that they have the means. Cant get anything done on a large scale without lots of moolah

> Cant get anything done on a large scale without lots of moolah

You can, but it requires collective action. But in order to have collective action, you need to win the propaganda war. I'm not sure that lots of moolah at this point can win the propaganda war against climate denialism.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#180
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t speak for the parent of your post, so I don’t know if the numbers add up, but population of Indonesia alone is 270 million. And the country is spread out amongst many islands. That’s just one country of many.

Indonesia is South East Asia.

I think the more pertinent question is how much of Indonesia's diet depends on the reefs. It seems like the answer is "a lot", though it's hard to get a sense of it as a proportion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_cuisine#Fish

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