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California cancels salmon fishing season

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Re: California cancels salmon fishing season

#211

Post by dredmorbius »

swatcoder wrote: post #154
dcchambers wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2.7 trillion fish are caught every year, or up to 5 million caught every minute. Bycatch aside, this number absolutely floors me. There is no way this number can sound remotely sustainable to anyone, right? I love seafood, but I know the issues with overfishing so I don't eat it often and when I do, I do my best to only eat sustainably caught or farmed fish...but I feel absolutely hopeless seeing numbers like this.

Overfishing is an issue for sure, but the number just speaks to home unfathomably huge the oceans are. Poke around and look up how big wild schools of anchovy can be, or how many krill it takes to feed a whale. And each of those numbers you find are just teensy little blips. The ocean is really big and its teeming with life.

The ocean is really big and its teeming with life.

As earlier responses have noted, this is an exceedingly common misperception. It further fails to acknowledge harms done.

Estimates are that upwards of 90% of all marine animal life has been destroyed largely by human activity.

Vast fisheries have utterly collapsed, notably Grand Banks cod off Newfoundland, sardines off California, orange roughy, and more. Surviving fisheries are hugely impacted, often with both far fewer and far smaller individuals than in historical records.

Records and understand themselves are exceptionally limited, as major scientific study of the oceans dates only to the mid-20th century, after which much of the harm had already been done.

A fascinating trivium is that there is more oil floating in tankers over the oceans than there are fish swimming in it.

And, as myshpa noted, the deep oceans tend not to have much biological activity. Fish (and plankton) aggregate near continental boundaries where upwelling provides essential nutrients. Sunshine and water alone are vastly insufficient.

Map of global fisheries / fish stocks: https://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/earth/fisheries-an...>

State of fisheries: https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-2/fisheries/state-of-fis...>

Notably this map showing sustainable- / over-exploitation status: https://worldoceanreview.com/en/files/2013/04/wor2_c3a_s52_3...>

Re: California cancels salmon fishing season

#212

Post by CalRobert »

uoaei wrote: post #210
CalRobert wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of them don't seem to realize dairy and veal go hand in hand. Or some are vegetarian for other reasons (health, ecological, religous, etc)

The thought-terminating cliche raises its head again. There is nothing "ecologically" sound about keeping cows alive and burping on the cheapest feed available. This is not a criticism of your response, just pointing out that these kinds of cliches become culturally embedded after a certain amount of time, even if they do not reflect the reality.

I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just saying that people have lots of different reasons for choosing to be vegetarian, and animal welfare isn't always their concern. I certainly recognize dairy has a large ecological impact (I live in Ireland after all; we're choking on dairy) but someone who eats dairy and beef probably has a greater impact than someone who eats dairy and plant-based foods.

Re: California cancels salmon fishing season

#213

Post by rcpt »

8note wrote: post #137
14 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see all commercial fishing banned as well for something like 10 years. Unfortunately there are other countries that would not respect the ban and even if not countries, individuals would ignore it as it would create a black market. I still think the idea should be discussed and maybe g20 nations come up with some agreements. Hopefully things like lab grown fish improve and maybe we can move people awa…

I'm unclear why you'd stop at commercial fishing . Just ban all fishing and all fish consumption. The premise that your children could one day eat fish is the problem

Is recreational fishing that big of an impact?

Re: California cancels salmon fishing season

#214

Post by belorn »

myshpa wrote: post #205
belorn wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people it will feel like the best way to only have some amount of blood on their hand will be a vegan diet. Obviously not all vegan diets are the same, and foods like avocado which is popular in vegan diets are quiet bad and should be avoided. Basically anything which on the purchased packet says imported from an country that has rain forests should be avoided if one want to avoid having the blood of animals…

> Basically anything which on the purchased packet says imported from an country that has rain forests should be avoided Animal farming in EU is reliant on Brazilian soy from Amazon. Nowhere on the packet you'll read this. But sure, blame avocado toasts, and ignore the fact that avocados grow on trees and as such are (may be) very sustainable. Just don't do the same stupid stuff as californians do with their almond m…

Cherry picking data and sources don't really convince anyone. What objective data can say is the averages from large industries. Those are useful, but also limited to those contexts.

I think you also missed that I earlier said that small scale farming and hobbyists are not scalable. There is just not enough land to feed everyone using those farming techniques. A person raising a few chickens do not need to also have a corn farm to feed them. They can just let the chicken eat grass on the yard. Large scale factory farms however do not have enough yards outside the house to feed millions of chicken, so they need to use large scale farming of animal feed. Those two farming techniques are distinctly different.

Re: California cancels salmon fishing season

#215

Post by peanuty1 »

yesenadam wrote: post #30
mikeg8 wrote: post #11

Great news. I live in the area this story was filmed in and have been to that pro shop. I really hope they can weather a lost season and feel bad for the tough times ahead. But I’m happy and proud that our state is willing to take drastic measures to protect the resource. I hope that as we focus on balance and stewardship, populations of salmon, and abalone, to continue to rebound so that the fisheries are healthy an…

And maybe the life in the ocean is more than just a "resource" for humans to exploit, like so much coal or gas.

This is exactly how I was feeling reading this thread. We are only concerned about the salmon to preserve the industry and not the salmon themselves or the ecosystem.

Sometimes I hear Millennials and Gen-Z say they don't want to have kids because the world sucks and think they're doomers but they have a point.

Re: California cancels salmon fishing season

#216

Post by Firmwarrior »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #113
nerdponx wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is the irony of short-termist policy making. By blocking reforms in order to maintain some localized status quo, you are very often dooming the future of that localized status quo. Instead, you should be planning ahead to scale it down or transition out of it entirely, and attempting to help people make that transition smoothly over the course of a generation. Ultimately it's just another form of greed and s…

Yes, and never once did any of these owner-operator fisherpeople say: "Hey, we might be overfishing. Let's fish less." In my whole life, it is 100% opposition to any quotas. They are fishing themselves into poverty. It is bizarre. The future is aquaculture for 90+% of what we eat from the oceans/rivers/lakes.

Has anyone figured out how to make aquaculture sustainable? Last I checked it was so bad that it was actually worse than catching wild fish

Re: California cancels salmon fishing season

#217

Post by mrguyorama »

ipaddr wrote: post #78
mrguyorama wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my state, all the lobster fishing people have a "co op" to jointly decide how to manage the public resource of the fish in our waters so that they can come together and make the kind of conservation decisions together, and create some force to prevent anyone from defecting and catching everything in a down year. This gives them more stability year to year and a little bit of possible price fixing. Just don't call…

How do they stop rogue operators?

Since it's literally a good old boy network, probably with threats and violence or maybe they have legal backing? I don't know the legal details, I just know they set the rules and they voluntarily reduce fishing seasons to keep stock at healthy levels.

Re: California cancels salmon fishing season

#218

Post by mikeg8 »

nradov wrote: post #145
mikeg8 wrote: post #11

Great news. I live in the area this story was filmed in and have been to that pro shop. I really hope they can weather a lost season and feel bad for the tough times ahead. But I’m happy and proud that our state is willing to take drastic measures to protect the resource. I hope that as we focus on balance and stewardship, populations of salmon, and abalone, to continue to rebound so that the fisheries are healthy an…

It's unclear if abalone will ever rebound to the extent of allowing for much harvesting. There was a brief, unnatural boom in the abalone population due to humans almost wiping out their natural predator: sea otters. Now the sea otter population is recovering and they take many of the abalone. Withering syndrome also started impacting abalone populations around the same time as the sea otters. It's still a problem. h…

Hey, thanks for the great comment and info, it seems mostly accurate. I started diving for abs in 2007 until they closed the fishery, and continue to spearfish Sonoma/mendo coasts to this day. One of my best friend is an abalone scientist/researcher for CA fish and game and the UC Davis Bodega Bay marine lab, so I get some info directly from “boots on the ground” so to speak. I’d like to add/clarify for any other curious readers, as abalone are a huge interest of mine.

The otters are actually not a real problem for abalone. Yes, otters are a natural predator, but the current sea otter population is not recovering to levels that would seriously impact abalone recovery. To my knowledge, the Otter population is still plateaued at around 3-4k globally (used to be hundreds of thousands) In addition, many otters are found south of San Francisco, and while their range does historically include waters well north off GG bridge (where the red abalone are) it’s not a significant amount. I live within 10 miles of the Sonoma coast and frequently visit, I’ve seen maybe 5 otters in the past 10 years, even while kayaking/diving.

The biggest challenge for abalone right now is the lack of kelp beds (food) to recover a huge population die off in 2014/15 during a red tide event. The red tide devastated populations, literally thousands of shells washing ashore. In the wake of the die off, and unfortunately in conjunction with the timing of the sunflower star wasting disease killing off the urchins main predator, this left a huge vacancy for urchins to move in and create “urchin barrens” which are just rocks and ecosystems covered in urchins, nothing else. Urchins compete with abalone for food, and bull kelp for space to grow. So now the abalone, and their food source, don’t have the physical space to re-establish.

There was a sighting of the sunflower star in Sonoma this year so there are hopes that they will make a ferocious come back. In additions, the massive population boom of urchins has led to wasting and disease within that population, which is now slightly declining (good).

Abalone take 6-7 years to reach harvesting size and I think a few years before they can reproduce, so their recovery will always take a while. But it looks like we may have turned a slight corner this year.

Although you are totally right that they may never RE-open the fishery, I still hold hope they will someday as it’s an incredibly fun hobby and I love eating abalone. But at the end of the day, I just want to see healthy/balanced ecosystems. The waters used to be a lot more interesting when there was more abs, kelp, and other critters instead of the depressing urchin barrens of the last so many years. Thanks for reading.

Re: California cancels salmon fishing season

#219

Post by mwint »

drewm1980 wrote: post #181
donkeyd wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dutch experimented with pulse fishing [0]. This had some good benefits for the sea and didn't seem to negatively impact the fishing industry over here much. It was banned again by the EU, according to some due to lobbying on behalf of other countries that were afraid they'd have to start investing in it too. 0: https://www.wur.nl/en/dossiers/file/pulse-fishing.htm

Someone thought building a giant taser and electrocuting everything on the seabed was a good idea. https://www.pulsefishing.eu/what-is-pulse-fishing/techniques If it doesn't destroy the plants too, it probably ~is better for the ecosystem than what it's replacing, but if aliens come and start dragging electrocution nets over human cities to electrocute us all, we won't be able to say we didn't have it coming.

I’ll… I’ll take that risk.

Re: California cancels salmon fishing season

#220

Post by NoGravitas »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #216
throwaway2037 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and never once did any of these owner-operator fisherpeople say: "Hey, we might be overfishing. Let's fish less." In my whole life, it is 100% opposition to any quotas. They are fishing themselves into poverty. It is bizarre. The future is aquaculture for 90+% of what we eat from the oceans/rivers/lakes.

Has anyone figured out how to make aquaculture sustainable? Last I checked it was so bad that it was actually worse than catching wild fish

It depends on the species. "Sustainably farming carnivores" is not a thing that actually exists on land or sea, and a lot of people's favorite fish are carnivores. Herbivores like tilapia could often be raised on agricultural waste, but in practice are raised on corn and soy.
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