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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

#201
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.

I mean... compared to other animals, of which some don't even kill you, before they start eating you... we're still better than a lot of "nature".

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How are you able to implicate the regulations here directly? The fishery collapsed 90% in 2 years, something else is at play.

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

#203
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.

Which will likely involve not raising animals for slaughter at all, but rather things like Impossible/Beyond meats.

I don't think those will really ever make a noticeable dent in the market. Most people don't want plant based burgers, especially with the negative reputation of soy and masculinity. I think lab grown meat will be the future. If you are able to present it in packages that look exactly like the cuts that one can currently buy in the store I see no reason they wont catch on.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which will likely involve not raising animals for slaughter at all, but rather things like Impossible/Beyond meats.

These have flopped. Most people who like meat want real meat. Most people who don't like meat don't want fake meat. The remainder is the market for fake meats, and it has proven small.

they flopped because they're expensive. I've tried both. They're both more or less edible. But impossible burgers are more money than just buying beef, and not as good. Why is this pea protein more money than beef?

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of "reasonably torturous" is pretty wild.

Agreed, if you have to include the word torture in the descriptor of food production than there’s already an ethical problem to solve.

What is the ethical problem? What kind of solution would there be?

How would that philosophical thinking apply to other apex predators, such as spiders who poison and wrap their prey while they hopeless wriggle to death for minutes or snakes who suffocate their prey to death sometimes breaking major bones, or a cat killing a rodent for fun? Do we have a responsibility to intervene against other torturous predators, why or why not?

I am curious about your philosophical reasoning on the topic, I am not asking rhetorically.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways to solve the specific problem of overfishing, mostly to set aside zones where fishing is not allowed so the population can recover. This is at the level of government and states, having little to do with anything within my power.

Changing the industry overnight isn't in any one person's power any more than electing the next president, but the sum of our collective votes does decide the victor. Large scale boycotts of the industry will drop demand, and so production, and finally the impact on the fisheries. You can already see this at work with the decline of the milk industry in the US as consumers have lowered their consumption by about 49%…

That's talking about people drinking milk or milk with cereal. Overall dairy consumption has increased ~20% over the same time period, mostly due to cheese and yogurt[0].

Changing the industry is not in one person's power, but it is a small number of people (owners of the several large producers and the regulatory guys) who do change it; this (overnight) cancelling of the season is a counterexample to your point.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/dairy-data/

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

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concept of "reasonably torturous" is pretty wild.

I mean... compared to other animals, of which some don't even kill you, before they start eating you... we're still better than a lot of "nature".

The thing is, there are a lot of horrible ways that people die. Cancer, alzheimer's, violence, crippling injuries, chronic pain and depression leading to suicide, war, etc. etc.

Does this justify us enslaving people and torturing them (debatedly) less in a factory farm and slaughtering them at a young age?

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By contrast cod that folks keep referencing collapsed 90% over _30 years_. An issue with a single season does not suggest that the regulations weren't strict enough. They now do need to become more strict as a reaction to the population but fishing is not the only pressure on a population and I find it difficult to believe that snow crab would be fished basically to extinction in < 700 days

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

#209
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already full of plastic and mercury, so still might not be a great idea

> It's already full of plastic So are you, and everybody else that has synthetic textiles in their house.

What's one more drop of poison, right?

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

#210

How feasible is it to grow crabs in captivity? We need to start farming food, no way natural ecosystems can support themselves _and_ humans at current levels.

I did a decent amount of research into this a while back. They (blue crabs) can be grown in captivity, but they’re cannabalistic, so they have to be kept apart from each other. This makes it pretty inefficient and high overhead. The crab farming operations I’ve seen literally have each crab in its own little compartment - this is too labor intensive to be feasible outside of places with very low wages like the Philippines and Indonesia.

If someone can figure out how to keep crabs in large pens without them eating each other, they will make a lot of money. I’m not sure if that’s possible with selective breeding. Maybe we need to wait until crab legs can be “printed” or grown in a lab

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