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>THE world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 unless fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover, UN experts warned. An im
by RyanMcGreal 16y ago
>THE world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 unless fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover, UN experts warned.
An important lesson from the Canadian cod collapse is that when populations drop below a critical threshold, the stocks never recover.
- hga 16y agoThat may be due to the cod being an apex predator. I.e. has the total biomass of the region collapsed? However this is a classic Tragedy of the Commons example and the fact that Canada dithered long enough for it to reach what looks like a point of no return is sobering (I was living in the Boston area in the dozen years leading up to Canada's closing of fishery and remember reading articles about this). Some governments are simply not going to handle this well for the regions of the ocean they economically control, and plenty of the ocean (although I don't know how much of it is how productive) is beyond those areas. All that said, we're likely to see a continuation of farm raised fish replacing wild catched. Something akin to this happened thousands of years ago as we converted to agriculture.
- yesbabyyes 16y agoAre you suggesting that we converted to agriculture after killing almost all wild animals?
- scott_s 16y agoNo, he's suggesting that we switched from eating mostly hunted-meat to eating mostly domesticated meat.
- hga 16y agoMostly that, but as a member of a family that hunts growing up in an agricultural region (SW Missouri) I also know that the process of converting to agriculture radically changed the environment, especially the fauna. By and large a lot of wild flora continued to exist on unfarmed land, but that provided a lot less cover etc. for animal species who's various requirements got zapped. Nowadays hunters work with farmers to e.g. leave enough quail habitat at the edges of fields. Another thing that happened was that apex predators of domestic animals were suppressed and/or replaced by other predator domestic animals like the dog and cat. In general for lots of reasons the populations of humans grew substantially beyond what wild game could support. Although deer in the US are something of a special case. They're really thriving, we could harvest quite a few more (and in a number of places desperately need to), heck, they're the most deadly animal in the US (through car crashes). This of course wouldn't happen in countries where meat was at more of a premium and/or where the population density was a lot higher.
- DaniFong 16y agoFYI, we did kill a huge fraction of the world's megafauna before agriculture.
- ilovecomputers 16y agoIf we're gonna farm fish, we best do it right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EUAMe2ixCI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EUAMe2ixCI
- warfangle 16y agoCouldn't watch the talk at the moment (bookmarking for later), but additionally (saw this on HN a few months back): http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html
- hga 16y agoVery cool; I've mused about raising catfish in the basement before, but obviously you can go a lot further, more diversified and more full cycle. Thanks!
- poppysan 16y agoThanks for the link...So very inspiring.
- sliverstorm 16y ago> However this is a classic Tragedy of the Commons example Not on that, but ppossibly the most tragic example I've ever witnessed.