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Keith Davis was protecting the oceans, then he disappeared

bbc.com

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Re: Keith Davis was protecting the oceans, then he disappeared

#21

Post by upwardbound »

upwardbound wrote: post #20

Here is some more detail about the ongoing human slavery that Keith spoke of and which phantomathkg linked to as well. https://www.ap.org/explore/seafood-from-slaves/fishing-slave... Fucking sad. I can't believe literal chattel slavery is this widespread. If you're considering becoming vegetarian or at least eating less meat and fish, maybe this is another reason to consider it. Either way, I hope we can find ways to…

> The men left their impoverished homes years ago full of hope and headed to neighboring Thailand, promising to send money back from good-paying jobs. Instead, they were tricked, sold or even kidnapped and put onto boats that became floating prisons. They then were trafficked thousands of miles away to the isolated Indonesian island village of Benjina, where the AP first found hundreds of captive fishermen, including some locked in a cage simply because they asked to go home. They were beaten and routinely forced to work up to 22 hours a day. The unluckiest ones ended up in the sea or buried in a company graveyard under fake names — their bodies will likely never be recovered.

> The AP story prompted the Indonesian government to initiate a rescue. It also traced fish tainted by forced labor back to the supply chains of many major U.S. companies and pet food brands, including Wal-Mart, Sysco, Kroger, Fancy Feast and Iams.

> Once, after coming ashore, Prasert asked his captain for more money. As punishment, he says he was tossed into a tiny, muggy cell with about 20 other men.

> Myint’s freshly shaved head reveals two large scars he received during his years in Indonesia. One is from a motorbike helmet, the other from an iron rod — both blows from angry fishing captains.

> The memories are still raw of Myint collapsing into his wailing mother’s arms on the same dusty road just feet away from where they sit now in southern Myanmar. That day was tinged with both joy and sorrow for all the time lost — ending 22 years of separation after Myint was taken to Indonesia and nearly beaten to death by a captain who refused to let him go home.

Re: Keith Davis was protecting the oceans, then he disappeared

#24

Post by jacknews »

ars wrote: post #15
jacknews wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think indoor/raceway farmed fish is the future, once we work out sustainable food sources, eg insects. I'm not sure how credible that is for marine species, but I'm sure it's possible for some, and we don't have to completely cut fish from our diets. In the meantime, I agree, we should be banning the sale/import of some species of fish.

Why insects? Tilapia eat plants, and other fish eat tilapia.

Then that should work too. I think current practice is often to feed larger carnivorous fish with smaller wild-caught fish, which doesn't really solve the problem.

Re: Keith Davis was protecting the oceans, then he disappeared

#25

Post by beachy »

p1necone wrote: post #10
User23 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning is just setting a quota of zero, which you've already agreed is effectively unenforceable. Obviously control has to be on the demand and not the supply side. Banning the sale of fish, or punitively taxing it, would be two options to make commercial fishing economically unattractive.

A full ban would be much much easier to enforce. You see a fishing boat? It gets a military escort out of your national waters. You see the same boat again? It gets blown up. Compare with having to board a random sample of boats (and there'd be a lot, because a lot of them would be legitimate), check documents, check catch totals etc.

Yes, because blowing up a boat crewed by poor third world sailors trying to make some money to feed their families back home is a truly proportionate response.

Re: Keith Davis was protecting the oceans, then he disappeared

#26

Post by dukeofdoom »

jacknews wrote: post #4

Commercial fishing at sea should be banned IMHO. It's unsustainable, and even if quotas could make it sustainable, they are all but unenforceable.

Oceans have been terribly overfished, but people need to eat. Many poorer countries rely on fishing to help then feed their populations. Banning commercial fishing would be like banning commercial chicken. A huge loss of a major cheap source of protein, and nothing to replace it with.

Re: Keith Davis was protecting the oceans, then he disappeared

#27

Post by jwilber »

Outlaw Ocean is an absolutely amazing book with chapters on different crazy occurrences in our legally-ambiguous oceans (slavery, mobile abortion ships, mercenaries, repo-men, activists , etc.)

Definitely worth a read if this interests you:

https://www.theoutlawocean.com/the-outlaw-ocean-by-ian-urbin...

Re: Keith Davis was protecting the oceans, then he disappeared

#28

Post by zozbot234 »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #26
jacknews wrote: post #4

Commercial fishing at sea should be banned IMHO. It's unsustainable, and even if quotas could make it sustainable, they are all but unenforceable.

Oceans have been terribly overfished, but people need to eat. Many poorer countries rely on fishing to help then feed their populations. Banning commercial fishing would be like banning commercial chicken. A huge loss of a major cheap source of protein, and nothing to replace it with.

Commercial chicken is not hunted in the wild, so I'm not sure how that comparison makes any sense. The oceans are already being depleted of fish in a highly unsustainable way so if you care about that protein source, shutting down large-scale fishing altogether is exactly what you should do.

Re: Keith Davis was protecting the oceans, then he disappeared

#29

Post by TaylorAlexander »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #26
jacknews wrote: post #4

Commercial fishing at sea should be banned IMHO. It's unsustainable, and even if quotas could make it sustainable, they are all but unenforceable.

Oceans have been terribly overfished, but people need to eat. Many poorer countries rely on fishing to help then feed their populations. Banning commercial fishing would be like banning commercial chicken. A huge loss of a major cheap source of protein, and nothing to replace it with.

I mean we could absolutely replace a lot of this with plant based sources. Why do you say there is nothing to replace it?

Re: Keith Davis was protecting the oceans, then he disappeared

#30

Post by m00x »

jacknews wrote: post #4

Commercial fishing at sea should be banned IMHO. It's unsustainable, and even if quotas could make it sustainable, they are all but unenforceable.

I used to live in a lobster/crab fishing town near the Atlantic.

Crab fishermen would meet First Nations people halfway to sell them the crabs that were over quota at a cheaper price since they don't have a quota, and they would sell it bootleg at the reserves.

We used to go down and buy 12 lobsters for $40 when I was a kid (20 years ago). It was the best deal ever.

When I left town, the fishermen started attacking First Nations boat because they realized they(FN) could just do it themselves and just cry colonizer oppression if they got caught. Crab supply got extremely scarce and the gov started cutting down licenses and lowering quotas. Many fishermen lost their 1-2M/y for 3 month of work businesses. There's still violence to this day, some FNs and some fishermen get killed every once in a while, and boats get burned.

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