7 ms·
Enjoy your sushi while you can because at current fishing rates it will be gone in our lifetimes, fresh or frozen. http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/su
by cageface 9y ago
Enjoy your sushi while you can because at current fishing rates it will be gone in our lifetimes, fresh or frozen.
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/sushi-obsession-is-destroying-our-oceans/ http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/sushi-obsession-is...
- bdamm 9y agoSurely that only means the price will rise to become an exotic delicacy, rather than "gone"?
- njarboe 9y agoUnless there is some kind of global control on catching, for example, blue-fin tuna (which travels outside of nationally controlled waters), "gone" seems more likely. The feedback loop of, the rarer the fish - the higher the price, will push some species to extinction in the wild.
- irrational 9y agoI've never eaten sushi, so I'm not familiar with what fish are normally eaten, but can these fish be farm-raised?
- njarboe 9y agoFarm raising tuna is difficult. Not sure if it is done commercially yet and, even if successful, I would guess wild caught tuna will still be highly prized in Japan. It is really the Japanese market that is and will keep driving the high end of the fish market.
- djrogers 9y agoIt's a little more complicated than just 'farmed vs wild-caught', as a lot of tuna is wild-caught, then transferred to floating pens to fatten up for up to a year. Penned tuna are neither truly wild, nor considered farmed as there is no breeding stock.
- gtvwill 9y agoYes they can, they are farming a fish called Cobia in Queensland Australia that is a sashimi grade fish. The farming process is surprisingly good too, they worked with a local company and sorted out a crop based land grown food pellet for the fish to remove a large amount of reliance on pulling their food source from the ocean. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-01/cobia-to-kick-start-multi-million-dollar-aquaculture/7288980 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-01/cobia-to-kick-start-mu...
- e12e 9y agoSure. You'd have to be pretty lucky to find a wild salmon in a sushi place - and if you did it'd probably be twice the price. A somewhat recent development in packing fish is automated cutting and vacuum packing - alive to wrapped in less than 30 (or so) seconds. This is afaik also being done on factory ships, with fish like cod. Still rather new (a few years?) and expensive - but a great way to treat fish. Many of the advantages of flash freezing without the down sides.
- devmunchies 9y agoas long as it isn't subsidized like the livestock industry.
- always_good 9y agoThe problem is that then it becomes more lucrative to harvest. For example, the high price of tusk and horn isn't saving the elephants and rhinos.
- crispinb 9y agoPerhaps, but not necessarily. There are real concerns that with a combination of temperature rises, ocean acidification, and trophic cascades caused by overfishing, the oceans will entirely die in the medium term. They are certainly in the process of dying (like nearly all ecosystems under the assault of 'economic growth').
- bfrog 9y agoWe've eaten things to extinction before, so no, don't assume anything. https://www.britannica.com/list/6-animals-we-ate-into-extinction https://www.britannica.com/list/6-animals-we-ate-into-extinc...
- bdamm 9y agoThat's a remarkable list, thank you for sharing it.
- mveety 9y agoI'm still hesitant to agree that we caused the mammoth extinction. There just weren't enough people at the time to do it with the technology we had, especially in places that lack enough cliffs.
- xyzzyz 9y agoWe've had spears for quite a while now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAvEmzjL_lA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAvEmzjL_lA
- seiferteric 9y agoYour assuming population response is linear, it isn't. Passenger pigeon showed us that populations can collapse rapidly below certain thresholds.
- dflock 9y agoIncreasing the incentive to catch every last one, presumably?
- throwayit 9y agowhat about farmed fish though?
- philfrasty 9y agoI was under the impression that farm raised fish (compare to natural fish) has the same problems as farm/cage raised chicken/beef/etc...which is excessive use of antibiotics.
- eikenberry 9y agoBut that is a different problem with different, feasible solutions. Farm raised fish are our what we will be eating in the future.
- KitDuncan 9y agoPlant-based and lab-grown is what we'll be eating in the future. Farms (be it livestock or fish) are inefficient and cruel.
- ars 9y ago> compare to natural fish You mean compared to wild fish. Farm raised fish are still natural. But in any case, even if there was a lot of antibiotic usage, the point still stands: There will not be a shortage of fish.
- ars 9y agoThis ignores history. Every time some resource became scarce people figured out a way to get more, or find something else. Once prices go up, people will figure out how to farm tuna, and then they will no longer be scarce. A single tuna can lay 6 million eggs. You don't need that many to supply the entire worlds demand for it.
- Teever 9y agoEvery time, really? Like every single time? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon This kind of short-sighted hubris is why we are on the cusp of ecological collapse.
- lgas 9y agoPassenger pigeons weren't really a resource and wikipedia page says they were mostly driven to extinction by deforestation for land use and lumber and fuel... which are resources.
- aaronblohowiak 9y agoWeren't a resource? How so? Why were they hunted then?
- baddox 9y agoParent commenter should have said "every time something becomes scarce and highly-valued," although I'm sure there are exceptions to that as well.
- mulmen 9y agoYeah you're right, without market forces we never would have built those blue whale farms. /s
- ars 9y agoWhen blue whale blubber became scarce we .... switched to a new fuel. So that's actually confirmation of my point.
- merb 9y agoI'm european and I prefer salmon sushi and it probably won't go away anytime soon. salmon is easy to farm and produce in masses.
- amag 9y agoThe problem with farming salmon is that the food pellets salmons eat are made out of wild caught fish. Typically, for every kg of salmon you need 2kg of wild caught fish...so not really sustainable.
- semi-extrinsic 9y agoCurrent food-to-fish ratios are much closer to unity, usually 1.1 to 1.2. The nice thing about inefficiencies such as this one is that the cost is not externalized, thus companies have a large incentive towards reducing the problem.
- xjlin0 9y agowhat is that ratio of the wild caught salmon?
- hkmurakami 9y agoLiterally a rush to eat fresh water eel while supplies last as we speak. (That is stoked by even supermarkets in Japan... ~_~)