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The authors seem to want to redefine "sustainable" to match their moral values and policy preferences. They should get their own word — this only muddies the di

The authors seem to want to redefine "sustainable" to match their moral values and policy preferences. They should get their own word — this only muddies the discussion. "Sustainable fishing" means just that the populations do not decline. "Zero tolerance for marine mammal bycatch" has nothing to do with this. Taken literally, it's also a completely unattainable goal, which makes me doubt the authors' intentions. What's next? No mammal killing in agriculture? Good luck. Even biological agriculture farms have snake shelters to keep the vermin numbers in check.

rtx 6y ago
All of these will happen one day. Author will be on the right side of history.
- Verdex 6y ago
  > Author will be on the right side of history. Nope. The author wants to pay top dollar to eat fish and chips while people with less means go hungry. The author wants somebody to feel bad enough about the whales so that they will figure out how to actually save the whales. The author doesn't want to actually figure out how to save the whales themselves. The author may appear to be on the right side of history. And maybe that's all that matters. What people mis-believe about you after you're dead. On HN I don't want to hear about how the whales are having a hard time. I already know about that. I watched Voyage Home. I know about how all the whales had a great time when we temporarily shut down shipping after 9/11 and they didn't have to deal with all the noise pollution. I know about the 52-hertz whale. And I know about the 3 billion people who need fish to not stave. On HN I want to hear about how they're going to save the whales and also prevent mass starvation. The "Right Side of History" doesn't mean the "Good Side of History". Maybe the save the whale people figure out how to convince the rest of us to let the people who need to eat fish to live just starve. Everyone will agree the author was on the right side, but I would rather be said to have been on the wrong side of history in that scenario.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    And I know about the 3 billion people who need fish to not stave. Is that really true? I find it hard to believe.
    - Verdex 6y ago
      Top of the google search. https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sustainable-seafood#:~:text=As%20the%20largest%20traded%20food,a%20primary%20source%20of%20protein https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sustainable-seafood.... From a website that's trying to support sustainable fishing practices. (I actually thought the number was 2 billion until I looked it up before making my previous post. It shouldn't be too surprising considering how much of the world's population lives on the coast AND fish basically take care of themselves, so it's an easy to way get your food.)
      - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
        That doesn't say anything about starving, just that those people use fish as their primary source of protein. Presumably they could get that protein from poultry or even beans and pulses.
        Verdex 6y ago
        I don't know dude. "You can't fish anymore." "Then what are we going to eat?" "Well, I presume that instead of going fishing once a day you can start a farm. Watch over and feed some chickens. Whatever." And, like I said in my other post. If you can find a way to actually save the whales and let everyone still eat, then I'll be right there with you. But right now this looks like rich people who have time to go whale watching wanting the poor people who barely have time to get enough food to eat to stop eating so that they can still go whale watching. Give me some actual numbers that show that people who rely on fish can actually farm to make up the difference and I'll be convinced. But right now I'm on the side of caution that says "let's not do something that might starve some percentage of 3 billion people" and the article is saying "eh, 3 billion people can probably find something else to eat".
tyingq 6y ago
The paper linked in the article suggests that most of the problem is gill nets, and that acoustic pingers on the gill nets reduce marine mammals being caught by 90%. So, as you say, their current goal seems unattainable. But there's an obvious attainable goal. Seems focusing on that first should be the priority.
- mc32 6y ago
  I agree with parent though. It’s a noble goal, but you have to name it something else. Otherwise it’s moving goal posts. Call it reduced by catch fishing or something catchier, but don’t mix two goals by coöpting a term that already has established meaning.
mrpopo 6y ago
> No mammal killing in agriculture? Good luck. Even biological agriculture farms have snake shelters to keep the vermin numbers in check. Just like the other comment explained, while accidental marine mammal bycatch will always happen, it's possible to reduce it drastically, at a reasonable cost. Similarly, while our agriculture cannot be completely separated from the animal world, there are low-hanging fruits. We can collectively decide that we shouldn't eat meat from animals raised in horrid conditions, and accept the condition that we can't reasonably do that without cutting a bit of the average 100kg of meat a year. A zero-carbon lifestyle is completely unattainable for the simple reason that we breathe out CO2. Zero deforestation is crazy because people rely on wood for heating in winter. Overfocusing on the ambitions of the end goal is missing the point.
- crispyporkbites 6y ago
  Zero carbon or negative carbon is definitely attainable. You can put more carbon back into the ground than you burn / breathe to get below zero.
  - ThomPete 6y ago
    not if you want to live a modern life with all the benefits that comes from that.
    - Schiendelman 6y ago
      This comment isn’t adding to the conversation.
      - ThomPete 6y ago
        I am sorry you feel like that. Personally I would always want to factor in some sort of ROI for the conversation to have any meaningful context. There are many ways we can "fix" things but the cost of the fix should always be measured against what it is fixing.
smackay 6y ago
Look at what the hookpod people have achieved, https://www.hookpod.com/ https://www.hookpod.com/ It seems an utterly impractical problem but they have a solution that works, apparently really well. With a will, some incentives and some clever thinking it seems that similar solutions could be found for mammals. In some ways it's an easier problem as cetaceans are generally known not to be dumb. Seals I'm not so sure of ;)
Verdex 6y ago
> moral values and policy preferences I really like the idea that things could be better. If you tell me that you've got a way to fish and all the other animals that you like end up safe, then I like the idea that we could be using way. However, this article isn't a plan it's a wish list. It wants you to feel bad about whats happening to some animals. It doesn't really talk about how they're going to achieve this. If the how ends up starving millions or billions of people, then I'm really sorry but I'm not going to side with the whales as much as I would like them to be okay. The article sounds like it's coming from someone with other options when it comes to eating. If they don't have a plan, then they're just hoping someone else will do all the work for them. If they really cared about the whales then they would find a way to provide for the people who eat the fish that power the industry that is hurting the whales.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  > If the how ends up starving millions or billions of people, then I'm really sorry but I'm not going to side with the whales as much as I would like them to be okay. If the world has too many people, and we're fishing beyond replenishment rate, those people are going to starve to death anyway. It's just a matter of when. Who should be sorry if there's evidence the world is beyond it's carrying capacity? > If they really cared about the whales then they would find a way to provide for the people who eat the fish that power the industry that is hurting the whales. It's not the job of non profits to figure out how to feed endless amounts of humans. This is no different than environmental constraints that force population declines in all other species. You can't continue to expand the human species unbounded and foist the problem on someone else when physical systems are pushed beyond their limits.
  - alehul 6y ago
    > It's not the job of non profits to figure out how to feed endless amounts of humans It's the job of governments to not create regulations that starve them.
    - toomuchtodo 6y ago
boomboomsubban 6y ago
>"Sustainable fishing" means just that the populations do not decline. "Zero tolerance for marine mammal bycatch" has nothing to do with this. Why should only the targeted fish population levels be considered when determining if it is sustainable? Wouldn't that encourage bycatching, as the elimination of a predator would allow you to catch more fish? >Taken literally, it's also a completely unattainable goal, which makes me doubt the authors' intentions. Taken literally, it means every marine mammal bycatch faces punishment, a completely obtainable goal.
snarf21 6y ago
The more these discussions progress, the more I wonder if there is really only one solution. We need less people. Trying to convince 8 billion people to do something like never eat meat or fish seems like an impossible goal. We need to raise the standard of living in countries that reproduction rates > 2. We could also remove tax breaks for kids after the second in developed countries to mitigate the incentives for extra children. Maybe if we only had 4 billion people, we might be able to have everything be sustainable. Such a hard problem to solve.
- mrpopo 6y ago
  > We need less people. Trying to convince 8 billion people to do something like never eat meat or fish seems like an impossible goal. Again this is the problem I'm mentioning. You're picking an impossibly high goal and concluding that there is no solution. Let's try to consume 2 or 3 times less meat/fish, it's gonna be much easier and faster than the problems associated with extreme population reduction (radical population aging, no career opportunities for young people, overloaded medical staff, etc). For the average American, eating 3 times less meat still means you can get 3 steaks a week. It's not completely crazy.
  - wmeredith 6y ago
    I seriously doubt the "average American" is eating 9 steaks a week. Where are you getting that information?
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      Most sources agree that the average American eats 250ish pounds of meat a year, which adds up to about 5 pounds per week or 9ish 8 ounce steaks. (I do agree that the average American isn't eating that in the form of steaks - there's a lot of bacon, burgers, and chicken mixed in.) (example: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/visualizing-a-nation-of-meat-eaters https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/vi...)
  - snarf21 6y ago
netcan 6y ago
> "Sustainable fishing" means just that the populations do not decline. "Zero tolerance for marine mammal bycatch" has nothing to do with this." Environmental sustainability doesn't "scope creep" for the same reason as other morality terms (eg justice). It scope creeps because of the nature of environmental sustainability. Affecting non-target species (bycatch etc.) tends to have unpredictable effects on target species... and longer time horizons yield more complexity. That's what ecosystems are, interdependent sets of population dynamics. Anyway, at this point, "sustainability" means environmental decency in the general sense. Like the term "literally," it has evolved with usage. If a beef farm is poisoning a nearby lake and all its neighbors' farms, but could theoretically continue doing so without a decline in beef production... we wouldn't describe this as sustainable. There's also a practical sense to it. Commercial fishing (and aquaculture) gets away with a lot of environmental harm, for relatively little economic size. This isn't oil & gas. In some places, even recreational fishing is a bigger industry. This is not sustainable politically. Eventually, people will just want to ban it... like most commercial hunting was banned, inland fisheries retired, etc. That's unsustainable in the literal sense. It will lead to the end of commercial fishing.
- wnissen 6y ago
  Yep. The kelp forests in California have been devastated in the last few years, due to "sea star wasting disease". The sea-star population crashes, sea stars are a no longer a major predator of purple sea urchins, sea urchins like to eat the "holdfast" where the kelp attaches to the seafloor, and boom, no more kelp forests. The resulting denuded landscape (seascape?) is known as an "urchin barren". Instead of a lush underwater forest teeming with crabs, snails, and fish, you have mostly bare rocks and urchins. The ocean truly is a system.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  > Anyway, at this point, "sustainability" means environmental decency in the general sense. Like the term "literally," it has evolved with usage. The problem with this is, that now there is no way to talk about the original meaning of "sustainable". Since that is an important concept, much is lost when it can no longer be talked about.
pvaldes 6y ago
Well, Sustainable means sustainable, but not for humans, for the ecosystem. Ecosystem must remain (relatively) stable. To keep its stability the ecosystem must be allowed to grow diverse and awfully complex. That the fish populations do not decline is not enough. All economically valuable species of fishes populations are depleted. In all parts of the planet. They must increase ASAP. And there must be something left for the fish predators and other parts of the ecosystem. If not, there is a serious risk of collapse of the entire house by a waterfall of collateral damages. If you remove predators, there will be consequences in prey populations, that range from displacement of key species to extinction of the preys. Marine Mammal's bycatch is a waste and not a desired outcome in fisheries management, but moral reasons are the wrong reasons here. They should not be wasted because we want and need fishes in the sea. We don't want oceans filled with unedible jellyfishes.
musicale 6y ago
> "Sustainable fishing" means just that the populations do not decline. A very low bar considering many of those populations have already declined greatly since the 1970s.

rtx 6y ago

All of these will happen one day. Author will be on the right side of history.

Verdex 6y ago
> Author will be on the right side of history. Nope. The author wants to pay top dollar to eat fish and chips while people with less means go hungry. The author wants somebody to feel bad enough about the whales so that they will figure out how to actually save the whales. The author doesn't want to actually figure out how to save the whales themselves. The author may appear to be on the right side of history. And maybe that's all that matters. What people mis-believe about you after you're dead. On HN I don't want to hear about how the whales are having a hard time. I already know about that. I watched Voyage Home. I know about how all the whales had a great time when we temporarily shut down shipping after 9/11 and they didn't have to deal with all the noise pollution. I know about the 52-hertz whale. And I know about the 3 billion people who need fish to not stave. On HN I want to hear about how they're going to save the whales and also prevent mass starvation. The "Right Side of History" doesn't mean the "Good Side of History". Maybe the save the whale people figure out how to convince the rest of us to let the people who need to eat fish to live just starve. Everyone will agree the author was on the right side, but I would rather be said to have been on the wrong side of history in that scenario.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  And I know about the 3 billion people who need fish to not stave. Is that really true? I find it hard to believe.
  - Verdex 6y ago
    Top of the google search. https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sustainable-seafood#:~:text=As%20the%20largest%20traded%20food,a%20primary%20source%20of%20protein https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sustainable-seafood.... From a website that's trying to support sustainable fishing practices. (I actually thought the number was 2 billion until I looked it up before making my previous post. It shouldn't be too surprising considering how much of the world's population lives on the coast AND fish basically take care of themselves, so it's an easy to way get your food.)
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      That doesn't say anything about starving, just that those people use fish as their primary source of protein. Presumably they could get that protein from poultry or even beans and pulses.
      - Verdex 6y ago
        I don't know dude. "You can't fish anymore." "Then what are we going to eat?" "Well, I presume that instead of going fishing once a day you can start a farm. Watch over and feed some chickens. Whatever." And, like I said in my other post. If you can find a way to actually save the whales and let everyone still eat, then I'll be right there with you. But right now this looks like rich people who have time to go whale watching wanting the poor people who barely have time to get enough food to eat to stop eating so that they can still go whale watching. Give me some actual numbers that show that people who rely on fish can actually farm to make up the difference and I'll be convinced. But right now I'm on the side of caution that says "let's not do something that might starve some percentage of 3 billion people" and the article is saying "eh, 3 billion people can probably find something else to eat".

tyingq 6y ago

The paper linked in the article suggests that most of the problem is gill nets, and that acoustic pingers on the gill nets reduce marine mammals being caught by 90%. So, as you say, their current goal seems unattainable. But there's an obvious attainable goal. Seems focusing on that first should be the priority.

mc32 6y ago
I agree with parent though. It’s a noble goal, but you have to name it something else. Otherwise it’s moving goal posts. Call it reduced by catch fishing or something catchier, but don’t mix two goals by coöpting a term that already has established meaning.

mrpopo 6y ago

> No mammal killing in agriculture? Good luck. Even biological agriculture farms have snake shelters to keep the vermin numbers in check. Just like the other comment explained, while accidental marine mammal bycatch will always happen, it's possible to reduce it drastically, at a reasonable cost. Similarly, while our agriculture cannot be completely separated from the animal world, there are low-hanging fruits. We can collectively decide that we shouldn't eat meat from animals raised in horrid conditions, and accept the condition that we can't reasonably do that without cutting a bit of the average 100kg of meat a year. A zero-carbon lifestyle is completely unattainable for the simple reason that we breathe out CO2. Zero deforestation is crazy because people rely on wood for heating in winter. Overfocusing on the ambitions of the end goal is missing the point.

crispyporkbites 6y ago
Zero carbon or negative carbon is definitely attainable. You can put more carbon back into the ground than you burn / breathe to get below zero.
- ThomPete 6y ago
  not if you want to live a modern life with all the benefits that comes from that.
  - Schiendelman 6y ago
    This comment isn’t adding to the conversation.
    - ThomPete 6y ago
      I am sorry you feel like that. Personally I would always want to factor in some sort of ROI for the conversation to have any meaningful context. There are many ways we can "fix" things but the cost of the fix should always be measured against what it is fixing.

smackay 6y ago

Look at what the hookpod people have achieved, https://www.hookpod.com/ https://www.hookpod.com/ It seems an utterly impractical problem but they have a solution that works, apparently really well. With a will, some incentives and some clever thinking it seems that similar solutions could be found for mammals. In some ways it's an easier problem as cetaceans are generally known not to be dumb. Seals I'm not so sure of ;)

Verdex 6y ago

> moral values and policy preferences I really like the idea that things could be better. If you tell me that you've got a way to fish and all the other animals that you like end up safe, then I like the idea that we could be using way. However, this article isn't a plan it's a wish list. It wants you to feel bad about whats happening to some animals. It doesn't really talk about how they're going to achieve this. If the how ends up starving millions or billions of people, then I'm really sorry but I'm not going to side with the whales as much as I would like them to be okay. The article sounds like it's coming from someone with other options when it comes to eating. If they don't have a plan, then they're just hoping someone else will do all the work for them. If they really cared about the whales then they would find a way to provide for the people who eat the fish that power the industry that is hurting the whales.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
> If the how ends up starving millions or billions of people, then I'm really sorry but I'm not going to side with the whales as much as I would like them to be okay. If the world has too many people, and we're fishing beyond replenishment rate, those people are going to starve to death anyway. It's just a matter of when. Who should be sorry if there's evidence the world is beyond it's carrying capacity? > If they really cared about the whales then they would find a way to provide for the people who eat the fish that power the industry that is hurting the whales. It's not the job of non profits to figure out how to feed endless amounts of humans. This is no different than environmental constraints that force population declines in all other species. You can't continue to expand the human species unbounded and foist the problem on someone else when physical systems are pushed beyond their limits.
- alehul 6y ago
  > It's not the job of non profits to figure out how to feed endless amounts of humans It's the job of governments to not create regulations that starve them.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago

boomboomsubban 6y ago

>"Sustainable fishing" means just that the populations do not decline. "Zero tolerance for marine mammal bycatch" has nothing to do with this. Why should only the targeted fish population levels be considered when determining if it is sustainable? Wouldn't that encourage bycatching, as the elimination of a predator would allow you to catch more fish? >Taken literally, it's also a completely unattainable goal, which makes me doubt the authors' intentions. Taken literally, it means every marine mammal bycatch faces punishment, a completely obtainable goal.

snarf21 6y ago

The more these discussions progress, the more I wonder if there is really only one solution. We need less people. Trying to convince 8 billion people to do something like never eat meat or fish seems like an impossible goal. We need to raise the standard of living in countries that reproduction rates > 2. We could also remove tax breaks for kids after the second in developed countries to mitigate the incentives for extra children. Maybe if we only had 4 billion people, we might be able to have everything be sustainable. Such a hard problem to solve.

mrpopo 6y ago
> We need less people. Trying to convince 8 billion people to do something like never eat meat or fish seems like an impossible goal. Again this is the problem I'm mentioning. You're picking an impossibly high goal and concluding that there is no solution. Let's try to consume 2 or 3 times less meat/fish, it's gonna be much easier and faster than the problems associated with extreme population reduction (radical population aging, no career opportunities for young people, overloaded medical staff, etc). For the average American, eating 3 times less meat still means you can get 3 steaks a week. It's not completely crazy.
- wmeredith 6y ago
  I seriously doubt the "average American" is eating 9 steaks a week. Where are you getting that information?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Most sources agree that the average American eats 250ish pounds of meat a year, which adds up to about 5 pounds per week or 9ish 8 ounce steaks. (I do agree that the average American isn't eating that in the form of steaks - there's a lot of bacon, burgers, and chicken mixed in.) (example: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/visualizing-a-nation-of-meat-eaters https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/06/27/155527365/vi...)
- snarf21 6y ago

netcan 6y ago

> "Sustainable fishing" means just that the populations do not decline. "Zero tolerance for marine mammal bycatch" has nothing to do with this." Environmental sustainability doesn't "scope creep" for the same reason as other morality terms (eg justice). It scope creeps because of the nature of environmental sustainability. Affecting non-target species (bycatch etc.) tends to have unpredictable effects on target species... and longer time horizons yield more complexity. That's what ecosystems are, interdependent sets of population dynamics. Anyway, at this point, "sustainability" means environmental decency in the general sense. Like the term "literally," it has evolved with usage. If a beef farm is poisoning a nearby lake and all its neighbors' farms, but could theoretically continue doing so without a decline in beef production... we wouldn't describe this as sustainable. There's also a practical sense to it. Commercial fishing (and aquaculture) gets away with a lot of environmental harm, for relatively little economic size. This isn't oil & gas. In some places, even recreational fishing is a bigger industry. This is not sustainable politically. Eventually, people will just want to ban it... like most commercial hunting was banned, inland fisheries retired, etc. That's unsustainable in the literal sense. It will lead to the end of commercial fishing.

wnissen 6y ago
Yep. The kelp forests in California have been devastated in the last few years, due to "sea star wasting disease". The sea-star population crashes, sea stars are a no longer a major predator of purple sea urchins, sea urchins like to eat the "holdfast" where the kelp attaches to the seafloor, and boom, no more kelp forests. The resulting denuded landscape (seascape?) is known as an "urchin barren". Instead of a lush underwater forest teeming with crabs, snails, and fish, you have mostly bare rocks and urchins. The ocean truly is a system.
BurningFrog 6y ago
> Anyway, at this point, "sustainability" means environmental decency in the general sense. Like the term "literally," it has evolved with usage. The problem with this is, that now there is no way to talk about the original meaning of "sustainable". Since that is an important concept, much is lost when it can no longer be talked about.

pvaldes 6y ago

Well, Sustainable means sustainable, but not for humans, for the ecosystem. Ecosystem must remain (relatively) stable. To keep its stability the ecosystem must be allowed to grow diverse and awfully complex. That the fish populations do not decline is not enough. All economically valuable species of fishes populations are depleted. In all parts of the planet. They must increase ASAP. And there must be something left for the fish predators and other parts of the ecosystem. If not, there is a serious risk of collapse of the entire house by a waterfall of collateral damages. If you remove predators, there will be consequences in prey populations, that range from displacement of key species to extinction of the preys. Marine Mammal's bycatch is a waste and not a desired outcome in fisheries management, but moral reasons are the wrong reasons here. They should not be wasted because we want and need fishes in the sea. We don't want oceans filled with unedible jellyfishes.

musicale 6y ago

> "Sustainable fishing" means just that the populations do not decline. A very low bar considering many of those populations have already declined greatly since the 1970s.