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So if the population collapses, the fishermen will go out of business until the population recovers? Or is it not as simple as that?
by travisoneill1 6y ago
So if the population collapses, the fishermen will go out of business until the population recovers? Or is it not as simple as that?
- hammock 6y agoJust like restaurants and bars and their workers during the pandemic
- cloudwalking 6y agoWhen the population collapses, the species will go extinct.
- eloff 6y agoDepends. Both outcomes are possible.
- tartuffe78 6y agoI mean the population would presumably dip low enough to where fishing becomes too difficult to be profitable before total extinction.
- dragontamer 6y agoI'm sure hunters of the Passenger pigeon thought the same too. Many fish and bird species have shear reprodutive ability as their only defense. In the case of Passenger Pigeons, they had very little defenses against predators, but migrated in huge flocks of hundreds of thousands at a time. No predator could really harm the flock as a whole. Well, until Humans became too good at hunting anyway. (Also, USA used to be covered in forests. But we cut those trees down to make room for our cities) As described in 1813 (From Wikipedia): > The air was literally filled with (passenger) Pigeons; the light of noon-day was obscured as by an eclipse; the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow, and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose.
- jeffbee 6y agoI recently read this book which suggests that the abundance of passenger pigeons in America was itself a result of human interference with the ecosystem. The general point of the book is that current people have no idea what a natural landscape looked like, and the places we think of as natural or pristine were themselves already severely degraded by prehistoric people. https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Once_and_Future_World.html?id=DzYoDYRqjGUC&source=kp_book_description https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Once_and_Future_Wor...
- dragontamer 6y agoWell, I never liked naturalism as an argument anyway. But with that being said: I like Talapia. I like Salmon. I like various fish. They're all quite tasty, and I'd like to keep eating them throughout my life (and possibly let my children have a chance at it too). For people who liked one food: the passenger pigeon, that opportunity is now gone, because the species has gone entirely extinct. And overhunting of that species is cited as a potential cause for extinction. --------- It has nothing to do with naturalism or the state of things. Just from a purely selfish point of view: if you like a certain food source, you have to take care of it, lest it goes extinct and disappears forever.
- grugagag 6y agoEven worse, another unpredictable aspect can occur within the whole ecosystem, either another dependent species dies as well or something goes out of whack. It's sad to see so many species disappear in such a short timespan.
- ashtonkem 6y agoUsually commercial exploitation becomes unviable before actual extinction occurs, although some species have been hunted to death for sport. You’d typically see this being a bigger problem for highly valued species like tuna where consumers are willing to pay premium prices for the remaining creatures, rather than more commodity species. The bigger risk extinction wise isn’t that we’ll fish a species to death, it’s that we’ll leave it in such a rough state that any number of random events might finish the species off.
- sandworm101 6y agoAfter a true collapse, the local stocks may never recover. The removal of one species may impact the ecosystem so strongly that that species is not able to return. Or the lack of numbers may make breeding so difficult/slow that it could take decades/centuries to return to a "normal".
- Wohlf 6y agoI'm sure there's also food chain considerations with massive knock on effects for the entire ecosystem.
- rolobio 6y agoLets hope its as simple as that. If they go out of business, then I would think the fish would recover. Maybe the next business will want to be more sustainable? I'm reminded of the jellyfish problem in Japan. Because of over-fishing, the jellyfish polyps aren't being eaten as they used to. So, enormous jellyfish swarms are being caught by these fisherman instead. I had to laugh at the frustration on their faces, cursing all of these jellyfish that they were catching. It was a problem of their own creation! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HP0_7_RRwg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HP0_7_RRwg
- ipnon 6y agoThe population 82% of species are "below levels that can produce maximum sustainable yields, due to being caught at rates exceeding what can be regrown." Fishermen are already losing money, and the worst going out of business, because the size of the total catch available to all fishermen is already smaller than in the past.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y agoA good overview of over-fishing and why it's urgent to halt it: https://vimeo.com/43888692 https://vimeo.com/43888692
- yboris 6y agoA stellar video! Thank you for the share.
- jeffbee 6y agoOr the ecosystem arrives at a different, stable operating point.
- kjs3 6y agoWhich may be very much less desirable from an ecological or economic point of view.
- kjs3 6y agoNot as simple, no. 1) There are consequences (economic and social) beyond what goes on our plate to "fishermen will go out of business". In many places, especially in underdeveloped areas, fishing is subsistence and the consequences of fisherman having to find alternative livelihoods can be problematic.[1] But even in the developed world, overfishing can have serious economic impact.[2] 2) There is no automatic guarantee that fish populations will recover, or recover quickly enough. While complete extinction is rare[3], some species have come close (several species of whales and sharks, for example) and can take decades to recover. In addition, destructive fishing techniques like bottom trawling can destroy the environment needed for a recovery. There is also some evidence (not, as I understand, conclusive) that in the absence of native fish, especially if their population is depressed for a long time, could allow less desirable species to displace them.[4] [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319680762_When_Overfishing_Leads_To_Terrorism_The_Case_of_Somalia https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319680762_When_Over... [2] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2011/07/25/sunken-millions-the-hidden-cost-of-overfishing-to-commercial-fishermen https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-shee... [3] https://www.pnas.org/content/114/31/E6274 https://www.pnas.org/content/114/31/E6274 [4] https://www.sciencebuzz.com/jellyfish-apocalypse-problems-causes-and-opportunities/ https://www.sciencebuzz.com/jellyfish-apocalypse-problems-ca...
- tastyfreeze 6y agoIt is as simple as that. But, populations are very slow to recover. This is only one example and is a bit of a special case. https://www.newsdeeply.com/oceans/articles/2017/10/13/boom-and-busted-lessons-from-alaskas-mysterious-herring-collapse https://www.newsdeeply.com/oceans/articles/2017/10/13/boom-a... Fishery collapse has happened in other areas as well. Here is an example that didn't follow a disaster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north... In all the cases I have looked at recovery is decades long.
- WrongThinkerNo5 6y agoIt is not at all that simple. Unfortunately we are "harvesting" the "food supply" way beyond the capacity for it to actually regenerate. For various reasons, several different groups tell us that there are "sustainable" levels of "harvesting" the "food supply", but reality is that the actual sustainable and regenerative capacity of the ecosystems is far lower than what people are willing to accept. Accepting actual sustainable/regenerative levels would inevitably change things for those groups, whether it is making less profits and putting people like fisherman out of business, or that the totally out of control African and Asian populations need to be dramatically reduced or massively have their consumption repressed and immigration from low to high consumption regions reduced. Either way, people will not like it on both sides, which is why it is ultimately not solvable. If we wanted to really solve this issue, which most people, not just here, don't really want to; we would set definitive measures like allocating to every society an equal, fixed amount of consumption (e.g., x tons of fish, grain, etc.) regardless of population size, so that the incentives would prioritized sustainable human populations too; at the very least for the out of control African and Asian continents. I would say that regardless of "color" or culture of people; even if every human looked exactly the same … it's simply not sustainable that the Asian and African populations are net increasing by at least 2 people (if one believes the questionable numbers) every single second of every single day. Meaning that by the time you have read this, there will be roughly 120 net more Asians and Africans than when you started reading this. That's simply not sustainable when they all require feeding and are increasingly demanding more and more "diverse" foods. Personally, I actually have a theory that some of this whole "pandemic" response is part of a response to that reality, the ruling class using the opportunity to at least hit the pause button to assess where to go with this, because no matter what, the path we were heading down fast was simply not sustainable.