Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

news.ubc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 394 posts

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#331

Post by mypalmike »

jliptzin wrote: post #186
hanniabu wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because we can no longer rely on our governments to act responsibly or arrive at a solution. We now have to rely on the world's billionaires and their generosity for help.

Then hold our governments responsible. I don’t know why anyone would expect a private citizen, regardless of whether or not he happens to have more than $1 billion, to help with environmental catastrophes. In fact I’d expect them to help the least out of anyone, since they have the resources to simply escape if they face danger or scarcity.

There's no realistic escaping planet Earth. Indeed this is a reason so many wealthy people become philanthropists. When someone truly has enough wealth to be free of any monetary anxiety, their concerns tend towards survival/preservation. Both of self and sometimes of humanity. It's ultinately self serving, in that they recognize that humanity's problems can negatively impact their own situations. Broad economic, societal, and environmental failures are probably the biggest risks to their powerful positions. And some do indeed look to ways to escape planet Earth.

I'm not saying that governments don't need to act, just pointing out that the motivations of the wealthy may not be what you expect.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#332

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

Stupulous wrote: post #200
duhuh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a resident of a first world country I stopped eating all seafood about 15 years ago. It seems unethical to support over-fishing if I have plenty of other good food to eat.

I've been wondering lately if cutting out a product is less ethical than buying the ethical version and supporting that market. Relatedly, people often don't eat meat because they oppose unethical treatment of animals. But I imagine farmers who treat animals well are disadvantaged by that strategy- people who care enough to buy their more expensive product opt out of the market entirely.

I really do think people want ethical food products, but with food in particular, it's really a lot to ask of individual consumers. There's a reason we have so many regulations around food quality - it just makes all our lives easier.

I've always thought less-than-ethical food products should be taxed more heavily, and the money should be used to subsidize the more ethical, healthier alternatives. Outright bans on certain product classes can be tremendously distortionary and have unintended side effects, but it's hard to imagine little pigouvian nudges being anything but beneficial to society.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#333

Post by hindsightbias »

fizzled wrote: post #275
hindsightbias wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment made me realize the original Portlandia episode with Colin the Chicken is a decade old already. Surprising to me that year-round veggies is so hard even with modern methods/greenhouses.

> Surprising to me that year-round veggies is so hard even with modern methods/greenhouses. You are correct: it is not so hard with modern methods, but none of the small communities I know of (15-50 people) have invested in a greenhouse of sufficient size. And even the local farms here don't have greenhouses, not that I am aware of. That seems odd to me, perhaps I am missing something because that seems unlikely now…

Having seen the transformation of Medford/Ashland to MJ and hemp greenhouses I'd think at least some people would be as fanatical about their vegetables/fruits.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#334

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

kinghtown wrote: post #85
istorical wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price for Soylent you quoted is for pre-prepared bottles. You can get the add-water-only version for much cheaper. In fact, you can get a day's worth of calories for about $10 even with better quality formulation competing products such as Huel 3.0 or Plenny Active. You literally scoop the powder into the provided bottle with the provided scoop they give you, fill it with water, shake it up for 30 seconds, and it…

$10 for a daily subscription to Ensure 2.0? You can eat eggs, slow cooker cuts of meat, seasonal fruit vegetables, rice, beans, flour, salt, yeast.. etc for $10 a day easy. As long as one is not too allergic to washing a few dishes, that is. Soylent is too expensive. It's a very attractive solution for me but the price point is higher than real food. Soylent needs to be like $1 a meal, with super duper high protein,…

Yeah, this. A couple years back I shifted my diet around to be more sustainable. I still eat meat, but stick to chicken and pork, and more occasionally rather than every meal. I use sous vide to batch cook and freeze stuff like chicken plus a curry base. Then per meal I can just thaw a portion and spend less than 10 minutes combining it with some fresh produce and final seasoning in a skillet. I costed out one of the thai curries I do this way out of curiosity the other day. Even using some more pricey seasonings like thai basil, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, and decent produce it still comes out below $2 per serving. Id say at this point I'm about 3/4ths of the way to the quality I get at local restaurants.

A basic rice, beans, and green veg meal comes out to less than $0.50, and that's including some pork sausage to flavor the beans. I do gumbo occasionally and it's at about the same price.

If you have the time/space/ability to cook, you can eat quite well shockingly cheap, even in places with relatively high cost of living.

For me the key was to just ban myself from takeout, period, for about a year. It worked. My cooking is good enough now I prefer it to takeout, whereas when I was in my 20s I was a pretty typical tech bro that ate out every single meal.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#335

Post by InitialLastName »

madaxe_again wrote: post #282
pengaru wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All due to runaway global warming acidifying the ocean with CO2 Err, what? My understanding is ocean acidification is a contributing factor, but that the primary cause of coral bleaching is the warming directly, not acidification [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coral_Bleaching.jpg

Warming is the primary cause of coral die offs right now, but acidification will hit a tipping point pretty soon where it becomes nigh on impossible to get calcium ions out of solution. Pretty much anything that lives in the ocean and has a skeleton is in for a rough time - as well as everything that depends on them.

I'm not necessarily skeptical of the overall trend, but I'd be very interested in a citation on this.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#336

Post by Stupulous »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #332
Stupulous wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering lately if cutting out a product is less ethical than buying the ethical version and supporting that market. Relatedly, people often don't eat meat because they oppose unethical treatment of animals. But I imagine farmers who treat animals well are disadvantaged by that strategy- people who care enough to buy their more expensive product opt out of the market entirely.

I really do think people want ethical food products, but with food in particular, it's really a lot to ask of individual consumers. There's a reason we have so many regulations around food quality - it just makes all our lives easier. I've always thought less-than-ethical food products should be taxed more heavily, and the money should be used to subsidize the more ethical, healthier alternatives. Outright bans on ce…

I would be very much in support of a regulation that requires every single product to display the carbon footprint required to produce it and, where applicable, the carbon footprint of using the thing per year.

Doesn't necessarily solve our problem here, but it might help the larger situation and with potentially bipartisan support (economic right positions rely on the consumer being able to make educated choices).

I absolutely agree with a carbon tax and a land tax to push the prices in the right direction. From what I recall, American meat is subsidized by the government, making it cheaper than anywhere else. I expect removing those subsidies would also have the support of anyone not bribed by the meat industry.

All too often, controversial opinions dominate the conversation because they get people talking. I think there's a lot we can do to improve things by working together across political lines.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#337

Post by [deleted] »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #307
mythrwy wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but the mass die-offs we're seeing are because the world's coral reefs will be dead by 2050" I've argued this point before here but I don't believe that will happen by 2050 at all. For several reasons, not the least of which is there are fossilized reefs from epochs with much much higher C02 levels (and temperatures) then we will see any time in the near future. I was in Mexico last year. On the reefs. Diving. They…

I mean, the internet is here if you'd like to learn the actual science. This is a topic we understand and have ample empirical evidence on. I'd start by considering that most species were also quite different during the high CO2 era. And while I'm glad you had fun in Mexico and what you saw there looked healthy, that doesn't somehow erase the bleaching we see on reefs globally. That the coral is dying, rapidly, is no…

[deleted]

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#338

Post by mythrwy »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #307
mythrwy wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"but the mass die-offs we're seeing are because the world's coral reefs will be dead by 2050" I've argued this point before here but I don't believe that will happen by 2050 at all. For several reasons, not the least of which is there are fossilized reefs from epochs with much much higher C02 levels (and temperatures) then we will see any time in the near future. I was in Mexico last year. On the reefs. Diving. They…

I mean, the internet is here if you'd like to learn the actual science. This is a topic we understand and have ample empirical evidence on. I'd start by considering that most species were also quite different during the high CO2 era. And while I'm glad you had fun in Mexico and what you saw there looked healthy, that doesn't somehow erase the bleaching we see on reefs globally. That the coral is dying, rapidly, is no…

The species may have been different but they were constructed with the same calcium skeletons that are claimed to be much under threat from acid producing C02. Yet they thrived and left fossil remains in environments that were much much much more C02 rich and warmer.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#339

Post by InitialLastName »

mypalmike wrote: post #331
jliptzin wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then hold our governments responsible. I don’t know why anyone would expect a private citizen, regardless of whether or not he happens to have more than $1 billion, to help with environmental catastrophes. In fact I’d expect them to help the least out of anyone, since they have the resources to simply escape if they face danger or scarcity.

There's no realistic escaping planet Earth. Indeed this is a reason so many wealthy people become philanthropists. When someone truly has enough wealth to be free of any monetary anxiety, their concerns tend towards survival/preservation. Both of self and sometimes of humanity. It's ultinately self serving, in that they recognize that humanity's problems can negatively impact their own situations. Broad economic, soc…

I have a theory that the highest priority most people with wealth (very reasonably) have is "never be financially insecure again" (propagated to their descendants), and that the more wealth somebody has beyond "sustain a comfortable lifestyle indefinitely off of dividends", the more of their money and mindspace they invest into protecting themselves against the long tail of circumstances that could affect that. Applied on a broad scale, with different value systems and mindsets, this explains both preppers ("Society might collapse, so I should do everything I can to ensure that my needs are met in that circumstance" with a little bit of "here's hoping it happens so I have an excuse to shoot someone" mixed in) and philanthropists ("Society might collapse, or even just fall apart to an extent that degrades my control over the means of production, so I should do as much as possible to keep that from happening").

At the extreme of wealth, an appropriately diversified portfolio takes both options into account. If you have $1 Billion and think there's a .1% chance that society will collapse soon and make your money worthless, you're perfectly justified in spending up to $1million to protect against that contingency.

Re: Popular seafood species in sharp decline around the world

#340

Post by Depurator »

GordonS wrote: post #316
Depurator wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doing a Ph.D. in salmon farming, it's an exciting field for sure. Just to address some common misconceptions: * The feed used for norwegian salmon is about 70-80% plant based, so the fish is a net producer of marine protein. The majority is soy, and the industry is trying to transition to sustainable feed ingredients such as insects (see Protix) and micro algae for EPA/DHA (See veramaris) * The farmed salmon does…

I've done a lot of reading on salmon farming over the past 6 months, as the tech consultantancy I work for has been investigating approaches within the industry, primarily in Norway. I look forward to reading your thesis :) The feed conversion rates that Norway is achieving are, frankly, incredible . But the thing that troubles me the most is welfare. Sea lice remain a huge problem, and the mechanical and chemical tr…

Thank you for your thoughful and interesting reply!

First off, you are absolutely correct in fish welfare being a huge issue. I am in no way condoning the current practices that lead to an average of 20% mortalities in the sea phase in norway, and around 5-10% in regions such as tasmania not affected by sea lice.

Cleaner fish is also a worrying issue with very questionable fish health pactices. Fortunately there are stronger regulations being implemented, that will help remedy some of these issues. One trivial example is that farmers are now required to feed the cleaner fish, whereas they were not before.

I agree that you can absolutely see some horribel looking cages and fish with health issues. The industry explanation is that the percentage that is sick will most likely swim toward the surface and thus give the wrong impression. I say, increase the omega 3 from 1% to 3% and imrpove the quality of the smolt we will surely see benefits.

both offshore and land-based have their issues. net-pen is incredibly efficient and beautiful in its simplicity when it works and the locality is optimal. Salmon will be reared at maximum 25kg/m3, but on land they wanna do 50kg+/m3 to be profitable. They wont do more than 100, as you will see decreasing fish health. For comparison tilapia is known to be farmed at 600kg/m3 in some regions.

Land-based farming will be interesting for sure, and a compeltely new set of issues regarding pathogens and Co2, H2S, NH4 problems. I'm sure they will figure it out. Atlantic Sapphire sure has a lot riding on figuring fish health on land out. Not very promising with the big emergency slaughter the other week.

let me know if you wanna have a chat at some point, always intersting to look at the industry with different eyes.

Post reply on HN