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Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

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Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#191

Post by barkingcat »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #79
insane_dreamer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> considered to be sustainably harvested (by NOAA, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, others) maybe they considered incorrectly, based on historical data that doesn't reflect recent conditions also possibly that regulations are being flaunted by bad actors it could seem improbable that either of those would lead to a sudden catastrophic decline, but many systems do experience a point where what had been a linear decline sudd…

In previous collapses such organizations sounded the alarm well before. Something else is happening.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2021/10/09/alaska-snow-crab-...

The alarm has been sounding for at least a season, maybe even more.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#192

Post by hedora »

jjk166 wrote: post #114
checker wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating zones is one thing, enforcement is another. Hopefully technology can help solve this because I honestly don't see any other way - the oceans are too vast.

Enforcement is a solved problem - ships can be tracked by various means, ports where catches can be offloaded can be audited, crews can be arrested and ships impounded when in port. No one is going to overfish if they can't economically get their catch to market and get paid for their troubles. The issue is getting everyone to enforce the policies consistently - the leaders of different jurisdictions may not see eye…

Enforcement is far from a solved problem. For one thing, many fishing boats are still using slave labor.

I agree the technology exists, but there's no way the governments in those areas are going to enforce any sort of laws that hurt short term profits.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#193

Post by llbeansandrice »

dfc wrote: post #155
ilamont wrote: post #4

Something similar happened to the cod fishing industry in Newfoundland and other parts of eastern Canada 30 years ago. The reason: overfishing, due in large part to technological advances. Here's what happened: Canada and NAFO continued to overestimate the abundance of cod in the Atlantic Ocean and therefore continued to set dangerously high [Total Allowable Catches]. This was in large part due to the widespread prac…

How is a 90% decrease in two years similar to a 93% decrease over 30 years?

Top 2 comments are like "oh yeah this is over fishing" when the only thing in common with cod are that they're in the ocean.

Either folks aren't RTFA or are being willfully ignorant. Over fishing to the tune 1bn crabs when juvenile populations from 2018 and 2019 looked great? No way.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#194

Post by starik36 »

gcanyon wrote: post #84
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia says its not expected to recover to sustainable levels until 2030. Mind that they take 2-8 years to reach sexual maturity and were reduced to 1% of original population level, so a span of decades to recover is pretty sadly expected.

Yep, came here to comment that same bit. So I'll contribute the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...

That is one grim Wikipedia article.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#195

Post by jeffbee »

andrew_ wrote: post #125
jeffbee wrote: post #7

Quoted post unavailable.

As a fisherman who practices sustainable fishing and abides by the regulations in place, and has witnessed the rebound of several species I target, I call bullshit.

If the regulations lead to a complete disappearance of the fishery then they are definitionally unsustainable.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#196

Post by hayst4ck »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #157
Spivak wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that people en masse don’t actually care all that much about the cruelty of killing animals so long as it’s not reasonably torturous. The future, however dystopian you may see it, is sustainably growing the animals we want to eat for slaughter.

The concept of "reasonably torturous" is pretty wild.

Quite literally wild. There is nothing quite like watching David Attenborough walking us through the absolute ruthlessness of the animal kingdom in his plummy staccato voicing. There is no doubt that had cows evolved differently they would be as torturous to their prey as any other animal.

I think we can definitely do better, but I think it's equally clear that mother nature is not very opinionated on the topic.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#198

Post by llbeansandrice »

cmsj wrote: post #186
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, raising animals in captivity is much much more difficult than I imagined. IIRC - Guns, Germs, and Steel had a pretty good point that we didn't so much domesticate animals and plants as there were plants and animals that were pre-disposed to domestication.

Yeah for sure. Lion could well be 10x more delicious than beef for all I know, but I'm quite certain we couldn't farm millions of lions.

Meat from carnivores tends to not be very good/tasty for a variety of reasons. iirc most of it is mainly due to the fact that other carnivores process meat similarly to how humans do so it's not as nutritious/tasty. Also many carnivores tend to also kind of be scavengers whose meat is generally quite quite bad.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#199

Post by wonderwonder »

a billion seems like such a huge number when you consider its referring to giant crabs. Had no idea there were that many; but never really thought about it. Seems insane for there to be that many let alone for that many to be missing.

Re: Alaska snow crab season canceled after disappearance of an estimated 1B crabs

#200

Post by ijidak »

WalterBright wrote: post #127

Overfishing is a classic problem of "Tragedy of the Commons". The oceans are the commons. For example, nobody is predicting a catastrophic decline in the population of pigs, chickens, and cattle. Fish farming is the future.

> Overfishing is a classic problem of "Tragedy of the Commons". The oceans are the commons.

> For example, nobody is predicting a catastrophic decline in the population of pigs, chickens, and cattle.

That's a great point.

So true...

It's hard to get people to care enough to do anything about it until enough people are affected.

Which is no fun for the sea life and poorer humans waiting for things to get bad enough that sufficient action is taken.

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