151–160 of 202 posts
How did we get to loonie tunes levels of absurdity? I understand dragnet fishing is destructive, but who first decided that dynamite was a good fishing method?
It is easy thus people will do it. Convenience is the single most potent drug we have ever invented. Man kind - If we can, we will.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I enjoy when HN engages in overt racism like this — eg, denying peer agency and morality to SE Asians, due to the posters feeling above those “lessers”. Paternalistic racism might as well be a central tenet of certain political movements — whose entire ideology is that certain humans are not fully equal as thinking moral agents in the world. The new “scientific racism”.
I think you read a lot into my comment that’s not there. I replied to someone who wrote “ Desperation is no excuse.” Developed countries are rich after centuries of extracting natural resources, to the point that Europe is nearly deforested, American rivers in the rust belt used to catch on fire from chemical pollution, and we destroyed a pacific atoll with over 20 nuclear bombs. A little rich for us to suddenly care…
I am calling out exactly that sentiment, because it removes the intelligence, agency, and morality from the people you’re discussing by reducing them to animals. You call them lessers and stop holding them to the same standard — and that so many did so here, despite poverty being unrelated, is precisely the evidence their motivation for doing so was racial stereotypes and not facts.
You see the same with, eg, excusing gangland violence as “poverty”, despite areas with much higher poverty (including foreign nations) not experiencing the same anti-social behavior.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is easy thus people will do it. Convenience is the single most potent drug we have ever invented. Man kind - If we can, we will.
Or avoiding starving.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for sharing your first-hand account of diving in Thailand. I think they should aggressively pursue coral planting. They are several projects in Indonesia that have demonstrated excellent results. I volunteered for a day doing coral planting in Bali, Indonesia. As part of the dive, they take you to different parts of the coral reef as it recovers, showing you how it changes year after year. You can see the chan…
Mossy earth has been doing a (i think quite successful) restoration of an coral area damaged by bomb fishing in indonesia. Here is a 2 year recap of the program and the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0bkMhhMHOw
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Livingseas+Coral+Restorati...
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…
Thanks for sharing your first-hand account of diving in Thailand. I think they should aggressively pursue coral planting. They are several projects in Indonesia that have demonstrated excellent results. I volunteered for a day doing coral planting in Bali, Indonesia. As part of the dive, they take you to different parts of the coral reef as it recovers, showing you how it changes year after year. You can see the chan…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> It’s survival and earning a living for these Indonesian fishermen. Why make excuses for greedy jackasses? Their ancestors didn't invent this 5,000 years ago and it's the "oNlY wAy they can survive." They fished without bombs once. Some guy realized this depraved method works, so now lazy people choose to do it so they can get money faster than the people fishing legitimately can. That's why it's illegal.
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Care to explain for those of us unaware?
The island of New Guinea is one of the most biodiverse places on earth. It hosts roughly 7% of all global species, with 60% of them being endemic. Peopled by Melanesians, it's one of the most linguistically diverse places on earth, with over 1000 languages. The east of the island became independent (from Australia) in 1975 and is now Papua New Guinea. Meanwhile, the western half was handed over to Indonesian control…