71–80 of 118 posts
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Mass-murdering sharks for cosmetics is unethical and evil. They feel the pain just like we do.
On pure utilitarian grounds, sharks are all carnivores who kill thousands of other animals over their life in horrific, painful ways. That doesn’t mean that there’s not environmental reasons to justify shark conservation. But from the standpoint of animal suffering killing apex predators is almost certainly a net good.
Look at the situation in the Scottish highlands. The entire landscape has changed beyond all recognition because of the loss of apex predators (wolves, bears). The deer population is massive, and it prevents forest growth and regeneration, and results in a landscape devoid of its natural biodiversity. This isn't just bad for the environment, we also suffer from related problems such as the spread of ticks spreading Lyme disease.
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> Stinks of agenda. Everyone has an agenda. I don't see an agenda of conservation of our ecology as one we need to resist. Especially when their conclusion at the end is not just "Save the Sharks", but a hope that we will research other possible ingredients instead of just running with the first working prototype.
Many agendas masquerade as "conservation of our ecology" when they are none of the sort and produce no results or even the opposite of what they claim. The fact that you like it is no reason to not look at what's behind it.
Climate change deniers, for example, say the agenda “the redistribution of wealth“
Now we can have a discussion.
It’s more upsetting to know that over 2.7 million are killed for cosmetics. Humans truly know how to dispense misery on mass scale.
But we only hear about it when less than 1/5 of that amount _might_ be sacrificed for human health. Stinks of agenda. Also, without context, is 500,000 a lot of sharks? How many exist in the wild? How many are needed to have a stable population? If we don't cull millions of sharks annually, what effect would that have? And what is "shark" in this context, anyway? There are dozens of fish species, at differing levels…
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Could you elaborate? In what way? How would you proceed?
Well, my understanding is that the virus jumped from some species, which was sold under absolutely miserable conditions in a wet market in Wuhan, to humans. I find it almost comical that someone would be completely fine with more animal exploitation given that this was the reason humans were infected in the first place.
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Mass-murdering sharks for cosmetics is unethical and evil. They feel the pain just like we do.
On pure utilitarian grounds, sharks are all carnivores who kill thousands of other animals over their life in horrific, painful ways. That doesn’t mean that there’s not environmental reasons to justify shark conservation. But from the standpoint of animal suffering killing apex predators is almost certainly a net good.
“Bonnetheads also ingest large amounts of seagrass, which has been found to make up around 62.1% of gut content mass. The species appear to be omnivorous, the only known case of plant feeding in sharks. The shark may perform this activity to protect its stomach against the spiny carapaces of the blue crab which it feeds on. A 2018 study with a carbon isotope-labelled seagrass diet found that they could digest seagrass with at least moderate efficiency, with 50±2% digestibility of seagrass organic matter, and had cellulose-component-degrading enzyme activity in their hindgut”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mass-murdering sharks for cosmetics is unethical and evil. They feel the pain just like we do.
On pure utilitarian grounds, sharks are all carnivores who kill thousands of other animals over their life in horrific, painful ways. That doesn’t mean that there’s not environmental reasons to justify shark conservation. But from the standpoint of animal suffering killing apex predators is almost certainly a net good.
seriously though, ecosystems are interdependent and predators have their place. I remember watching a documentary about white wolves on a remote isolated island keeping the local population of yaks and rabbits from eating the island clean. They are absolutely vital for that particular ecology. Similarly it is not our place to rank animals by importance, since we are as a species quite obviously imbeciles.
"They keep our fish stock healthy, they keep the food chain intact, they keep diseases out of other animal populations," she said. "Good luck trying to replace that when we lose them." Isn't human predation (fishing) a suitable alternative to shark predation for this purpose? I guess they eat a more wide diet of fish types.
My father in law is a fisherman, of various shellfish. Puts a premium on being sustainable and a lot of his business is farm raised shellfish.
Rays eat the shellfish. They can decimate beds of shellfish.
Sharks eat the rays.
I've joked with him about raising sharks as a farm raised fish. He laughs but gets kinda terrified of the idea because he actually thinks it through a bit half seriously and is nervous about sharks.
I'm surprised there isn't aquaculture programs for sharks though if there's such a demand. Lots of sharks are small.
My impression based on reading a bunch of links is that a bit of genetic engineering and bigger demand would improve yields and efficiency of plant and microbial squalene. It seems like in this type of situation the differential is usually due to historical convenience.
Biomedical research is full of examples of this sort of thing. It's not exactly a beacon historically for animal welfare. Horseshoe crabs are a similar example that come to mind as a para llel.
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A scarier thought is that it has been hard to convince people to wear masks to save themselves, so what hope do we have of getting them to save the planet or even just some species that share it with us? (read a tweet to this effect, but didn't keep a ref)
Please, please consider your privilege first, before beying condescending about the world population. Helping the Earth is very, very high on Maslow's pyramid, just appreciate that you are that high on it and think how to bring more people at thay level. Plagues and wars cannot help the environment, but the bettering of the condition of man kind can, and is the only way forward. In order to help the Earth, we first h…