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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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tw current threats to the foodweb in the ocean are microplastics and wastewater release from Fukushima nuclear reactor area.

Do you have any idea of the quantity of radionuclides released from Fukushima and their half lives? Just a couple of kilometres off the coast of Japan their activity is well below (multiple orders of magnitude) the natural background level. The sea is naturally full of radioactive potassium and uranium, amongst a lot of others.

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

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bec…

I think if Chinese people were to throw off their slave shackles and liberalize, then Chinese hegemony would be permissible/possible. I don't see any reason that's not possible, Taiwan is exactly an example of an ethnically Chinese society doing just that.

America was ceding power to China through making it's supply chain vulnerable. If it were not for Xi's disastrous reign, that likely would have continued. America was losing, China snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Another fallacy is that there is a strategy to out-compete via producing more. Russian and Chinese strategy is to corrupt and destroy institutions such that the west produces less and becomes another low trust society. Given recent political happenings, I would say this is an effective strategy that is showing both success and results.

It's not hard to imagine an America where every single American is paying rent to a Chinese landlord. That is winning a war without firing a single gun.

Military might is only one form of power. Economic and social power are not null.

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

#333
post #89
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many fish were much larger in the not so distant past. Marlin in Caribbean used to be huge compared to todays catch. Pictures from the 1950's and earlier, you see some just massive Marlin. They're big today but nothing like how they used to be. But we have a whole lot more people on the Earth today.

> "We are eating bait and moving on to jellyfish and plankton", [University of British Columbia fisheries scientist] Pauly said. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/30/local/la-me-ocean30j... ( https://web.archive.org/web/20161010003945/http://articles.l... ), p3

Thank you for sharing those, esp. the one about Lyngbya majuscula blooms.

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

#334

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?

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…

This is actually why I'm buying an ICE truck rather than an EV. We need fossil fuels for so much, including fertilizer. It feels irresponsible to buy an electric.

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

#335
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"...encouraged by various means ; fines, jail, etc, to obey that collective decision" Encouraged my ass. I would call it what it is - threat of violence by governments.

Sure, in response to equally violent acts by fishing boats.

People's actions do not need to be violent in order for the governments to respond with violence. Disobedience is enough. You know it very well. This is just how it works.

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have large cognitive dissonance to "we shouldn't be the world police" and "globalism is bad." At face value I agree, but... If you believe in the rule of law and human rights, then globalism seems like a natural consequence, as does policing the world. What would happen if you let China have global hegemony and they become the over-fishing police? What type of enforcement do you think they might have (or non enforc…

Unfortunately, as someone who the intelligence agency in my land said, ultimate power brings ultimate corruption. If there is no #2 then no one can police #1

Yes, sadly this is more true than ever. America is all about due process and socialism for the rich and powerful, and plea bargains and rugged capitalism for the poor and unfortunate.

We have no right to preach rule of law (which more than anything means consequences for billionaires and politicians), when we don't practice it at home.

I suppose the best the argument can get is that many governments would be much worse police at least for the time being.

I think Europe does have the capacity (but maybe not the will) to check America's power.

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

#337

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:…

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 basica…

You also have to take into account the sexual maturity and number of offspring of the species.

Cod reach sexual maturity from 2-7 years, crab in 1 year. But Atlantic cod apparently lay 200k-2m eggs, alaskan crab between 50k-500k. Though I can't quite see if the cod number is lifetime or annual.

I seem to recall a huge drop in the Salmon population on the Fraser river back in the early 2000s. Seems the numbers continue to bounce around. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/fraser-socke...

Doesn't mean we don't need to know why. It's good that the crab season is cancelled, but I really feel for the crab fishermen. After the last few years, and with inflation, to lose a whole season must be devistating.

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

#338
post #130

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.

Veganism is the (only logical) future.

Truth.

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

#339
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Impossible/beyond apparently have similar CO2 footprints as turkey. On the other hand, we're in the middle of a turkey shortage due to bird flu.

Source please.

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

#340
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:…

When I was in Norway about ten years ago, I heard a story about Kamchatka crabs, introduced by Soviet scientists to Murmansk and then, due to absence of natural predators started migration first around North Cape and then south towards the Gulfstream. Norway captain of our yacht said, that in warmer waters crabs are more active, so they became an ecological danger of sorts. So I thought that with sea warming we should see a rise, not a drop of crab population, aren't we?
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