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Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

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Re: Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

#111

Post by ungreased0675 »

reticulates wrote: post #96
ungreased0675 wrote: post #77

It’s hard to believe this is real. Destroying a vibrant ecosystem for a one-time catch is so selfish and shortsighted it’s amazing to me that anyone would seriously consider doing it.

The degree to which this lacks empathy for the struggle to survive that people have the world over is harder to believe. Sincerely, though, all fishing is pretty terrible, we (the rich west) have been overfishing and pillaging the oceans for decades. Even now in peak concern for the environment, we really don’t care nearly enough. If you personally want to avoid contributing to ravaging of the planet, switch to a low…

Not to do poverty Olympics, but I once was poor, living on an island, and reliant on fish for a lot of meals. Don’t assume I can’t empathize.

Why so quick to make excuses for selfish and mind-bendingly stupid people? Why are you assigning guilt on the “rich west” for a local practice that is for local consumption? Not every indigenous practice is good. Some are the reason those communities can’t escape poverty. It’s not colonialism or oppression, their problem is stupidity.

Re: Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

#114

Post by Someone »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #77

It’s hard to believe this is real. Destroying a vibrant ecosystem for a one-time catch is so selfish and shortsighted it’s amazing to me that anyone would seriously consider doing it.

> Destroying a vibrant ecosystem for a one-time catch is so selfish and shortsighted it’s amazing to me that anyone would seriously consider doing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing#Examples_and_evide... has several examples of prior ‘art’, and I don’t think that list is complete. Herring almost became extinct in the Atlantic in the 1970s, for example.

And that’s only fishing. Other examples include the passenger pigeon, the American bison, and the dodo.

Re: Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

#115

Post by [deleted] »

lenerdenator wrote: post #110
shevy-java wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the world has moved on to the metric system. Even NASA did. UK should not hold us back with their shenanigans.

The UK is arguably worse than the US in this regard. The US has mainly stayed with a system that sticks to one measurement across use cases. If I burn fuel at a rate of x miles per y gallons, I purchase it at the pump in gallons . If Tommy Atkins burns fuel at a rate of x miles per y gallon, he purchases it at the pump in liters; there's an extra step for conversion.

[deleted]

Re: Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

#116

Post by pishpash »

WarmWash wrote: post #107
kridsdale1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People will do literally anything if they are hungry enough.

It's more like "People will do anything for money"

Money is a claim on valuable things, so people will do anything to get more of valuable things. Some may say that's just an abstracted form of biological hunger.

Re: Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

#117

Post by tomasphan »

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #112

We need to stop our obsession with exploiting animals. It’s leading us to do insane things damaging our own health and the environment, nevermind how much suffering it’s causing the actual sentient beings we’re using.

This is not an obsession with hurting animals. It’s survival and earning a living for these Indonesian fishermen.

To incentivize them to stop you have to give them better options. In this case, teach a man to not fish with explosives and you’ll feed him for the rest of his life.

Re: Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

#118

Post by BoxOfRain »

shevy-java wrote: post #95
BoxOfRain wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a uniquely American thing to be fair, in the UK it's not unusual to discuss area in terms of football pitches or for very large areas, Wales.

The rest of the world has moved on to the metric system. Even NASA did. UK should not hold us back with their shenanigans.

To be fair, who actually has a mental model of what 20,779 square kilometres or 8,023 square miles (the area of Wales expressed as a number) actually looks like? Doesn't matter if you're using imperial or metric, it's not very intuitive beyond the human scale.

If you're trying to communicate 'this much rainforest disappeared' or 'look how large this landmass-sized Antarctic iceberg is' to a wide audience a well-known area is a reasonable way to do it. In Britain basically everyone knows roughly what the size of Wales is relative to the other countries of the UK, even if they don't know its exact size.

Re: Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

#119

Post by [deleted] »

wraptile wrote: post #51

I'm a scuba diver here in Thailand and you can still see blast fishing damage from decades ago that never fully recovered. It's truly as terrible as the article makes it out to be. What is interesting is that both Indonesia and Thailand have strong and similar anti blast fishing laws since early 00s that charge 5+ years of prison time. However, Thailand has been much more successful with taming blast fishing which is…

[deleted]

Re: Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia's coral reefs

#120

Post by koliber »

Bomb fishing is bad. I am surprised that only 3 football field equivalent areas are destroyed per year in a country as vast as Indonesia.

I hate the idea but this article makes me optimistic that other proactive measures that are not mentioned might be restoring a lot more than this.

Read critically.

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