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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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike the US+the West, China will never be able to be world police.

Why not?

Because the West in general is ideologically cohesive and generally follows a country which, alone, is a sole superpower.

China is never going to be able to outproduce the ~billion people in the west economically, and will never be able to have an overwhelming military edge over NATO sufficient to set up and for at least a decade enforce its own version of the liberal international order. The US was able to do so because, once the USSR fell, it was able to do things like invade Iraq and Afghanistan and play a hand in destroying Syria and Libya. Unless China gets such overwhelming advantage militarily, it's not going to be able to overpower NATO outside of Asia, and as a result won't be able to dictate an international order.

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

#272

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.

I wonder what it is that drives the human desire for meat. Meat substitutes seem to be trying to solve the environmental issues by taking advantage of that inbuilt natural desire, albeit imperfectly. I have to wonder if thay is an easier strategy than trying to change people's habits on a mass scale.

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

#273
post #226
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to prevent economic losses and massive unemployment So sad to see how easily long term catastrophic damage is justified by short term gains.

If the world doesn't get over fossil fuel addiction and allowing oil companies to push us to near extinction for their profits, really soon, the worse is yet to come.

Talk to a European about that evil addiction to fossil fuel this winter.

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

#274
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the world doesn't get over fossil fuel addiction and allowing oil companies to push us to near extinction for their profits, really soon, the worse is yet to come.

As much as I would like to end such an addiction, there aren't even viable replacements for every ICE yet. What do we do about aircraft, freight trucks, and sea vessels?

Not just that, practically every petrochemical (plastic, fertilizer, synthetic rubber, etc) is derived from oil and/or natural gas. We need more fossil fuels to make the green tech in the first place (in the form of mines, powering factories, and producing petrochemicals). To convert the entire globe, we actually need to be producing a lot more than we currently are!

Sure a day may come when there's enough solar/wind/nuclear to restrict oil/natural gas to petrochemical production, but until that day green tech, like all others, follows the price of oil. You want to cut oil production now? Say good-bye to the green transition.

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

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I would like to end such an addiction, there aren't even viable replacements for every ICE yet. What do we do about aircraft, freight trucks, and sea vessels?

Stop using them so much?

Yeah, how about we shut down large swaths of national economies. That's produced nothing but positive effects for all involved over the last couple of years.

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

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in the Alaska fishery and am typing this while sat in one of the largest fish processing facilities in the western hemisphere. I have the spare time because, well, there's no crabs coming in and everything else is mostly out of season. About half of the boats on Discovery belong to the company I work for, the largest in the US. So I'll take the opportunity to share some on-the-ground observations. Overfishing:…

Any chance that trawling caused significant decline due to habitat damage, regardless of actual by catch tonnage?

I suppose it would stand to reason. The talk I've heard has been about the disparity of (nearly) banning crab-harvesting but barely restricting crab-wasting.

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

#278
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…

I work in the Alaska fishery and am typing this while sat in one of the largest fish processing facilities in the western hemisphere. I have the spare time because, well, there's no crabs coming in and everything else is mostly out of season. About half of the boats on Discovery belong to the company I work for, the largest in the US. So I'll take the opportunity to share some on-the-ground observations. Overfishing:…

Mick, thanks for taking the time to share your observations and expertise about this industry.

Just want to say that my point about sharing the Canadian cod industry collapse was to illustrate the long-term effects - it still hasn't recovered 30 years later. And maybe that dovetails with what you're saying about indie crabbers being driven out, although from what I understand of the Canadian situation there is basically no industry now, indie or otherwise.

Curious: What is your line of work in Alaska?

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they’re cannabalistic Seems like a place where GMO organisms might make sense. You just have to knock out this behavior somehow.

would it be simpler just to de-claw the crabs so that they are unable to poke / snip at each other?

Claws have some of the best meat, if anything you want larger claws

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

#280

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.

Yes, but this is most likely not cause by over-fishing.

Snow crab fishing is relatively strictly regulated since a long time, and while there are always many ways this might be side stepped the amount of missing crabs is way to high in a too short amount of time to just because of over fishing AFIK.

More likely it is a combination of multiple factors putting strain on the population leading to a collapse event. One main driver for many of this factors is probably climate change.

Something similar happened not to far away of where I lived (on a much smaller scale). Tones of fish died. There where many factors which where not grate and in the end too many algae where blamed as main source, but if you look into it it's basically: Low water levels due to multiple years of extremely dry and hot summers strain the ecosystem in various ways and make a explosion algae much more likely. Still that wouldn't have been enough to kill all the fish but throw in the fertilizer from nearby fields even further amplifying the problems and a small contamination with chemicals (which by itself wouldn't have cause it either) and most of the fish died. Or to say it differently with climate change putting strain of water ecosystems we might need much stricter limits about what human causes we allow to put strain on them.

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