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Stopping some fishing would increase overall catches
- maneesh 6y agoCrazy how we all use common resources without regard for the system as a whole. Some might even call it a tragedy.
- fireismyflag 6y agoI understood that reference
- guerrilla 6y agoHave you seen Elinor Ostrom's work[1]? She gives the conditions under which commons resource sharing works. Globalized fishing doesn't meet them. I believe she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prizein economics too. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom
- jbay808 6y agoWhat would her recommendation be?
- guerrilla 6y agoI can't say with confidence but I suspect using government to artificially create the conditions.
- simonh 6y agoIt turns it into a self regulated market. For example one of the principles is that the self regulation of the participants must be recognised as autonomous by higher authorities. The basic principle is that it makes the long term health and viability of the resource in the interests of those exploiting it, by putting the ability to effectively manage the resource long term in their hands.
- petre 6y agoInstitutional agreements. Like the UN and the WHO but for fishing. That'd probably work when there's no more fish in the sea.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoBetter link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#Design_principles_for_Common_Pool_Resource_(CPR)_institution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#Design_principle...
- BurningFrog 6y agoTextbook "tragedy of the commons". I understand Iceland and New Zealand has systems with property rights for fishing grounds, which has solved these problems.
- boxed 6y agoPlus Iceland just declared control over huge swaths of the ocean and we are all immensely better off because of this unilateral action.
- gnat 6y agoProperty rights did not solve overfishing problems in NZ. We have had crashing fish stocks, and new problems like exploited foreign workers.
- stuzenz 6y agoNew Zealand has fisheries management with a lot of quota provided to Maori Iwi (tribes) who in turn might sell the quota or run a fishing business outright or in partnership. Additionally Maori have customary fishing rights for funerals and other customary events. I am not quite sure what you mean by property rights and what it means in reference to other places. On a side note, New Zealand just changed a number of significant fishing rules for commercial and recreational fisherman. The new restrictions on types of fishing that are allowed are to help protect both the Hectors dolphin (est. 10,000 left) and the Maui dolphin (est. 50 left. It is good to see these unilateral efforts are possible in NZ due to their being no competing interests who have legal entitlement to the same waters. Annecdotally, It is still relatively easy to go to the beach in NZ and catch a few fish of 2 - 6kg in size. https://www.mpi.govt.nz/protection-and-response/sustainable-fisheries/managing-our-impact-on-marine-life/protecting-hectors-and-maui-dolphins/ https://www.mpi.govt.nz/protection-and-response/sustainable-...
- tuatoru 6y ago> I am not quite sure what you mean by property rights The "property" is the quota, the proportion of the total allowed catch of a species. As you say quotas can be bought and sold, so they are ordinary property. (The total catch is set annually, sometimes even based on the recommendations of fisheries experts.)
- whimsicalism 6y agoCan't read the full article, but the analogies to the Laffer curve seem obvious. Seems like it is a much more real consideration for fishing than taxation.
- XorNot 6y agoI mean it's real for taxation too, it's just nobody wants to ever accept they might be on the side of the Laffer curve that implies taxes should go up.
- whimsicalism 6y agoSorry, I meant the idea that we're on the right side is more real for fishing than taxation.
- pitaj 6y agoEverybody disagrees about which side they're on. It's incredibly difficult to know, because there's no way to run experiments.
- fastball 6y agoSufficiently sophisticated modeling could do the trick.
- jfk13 6y agoNo matter how sophisticated the modelling, how would you know whether it's accurate? A model can be highly sophisticated, yet quite wrong.
- whimsicalism 6y agoIs your position just skepticism of models generally?
- undersuit 6y ago
- ordinaryradical 6y agoThe Chinese have flotillas of hundreds of illegal fishing boats that travel across the globe to devastate local fish populations. They recently illegally entered the area surrounding the Galapagos to terrible effect.[1] So as sensible as this concept is, it needs enforcement, and at this point I’m not sure what, shy of direct violence, will get this to stop. [1] https://phys.org/news/2020-10-crisis-galapagos-chinese-fishing-fleets.html https://phys.org/news/2020-10-crisis-galapagos-chinese-fishi...
- hashtagmarkup 6y agoIndirect violence might work... like, if we could genetically engineer a highly infectious virus that mutates RNA and destroys lung tissue, then deploy it somewhere in china? That would probably work. What are the odds a Chinese fishmonger would ever come in contact with an American?
- PicassoCTs 6y agoActual violence is not a solution. What is need is anti-fishing equipment mines, that destroy nets brought into a protected area. A solar powered drone-sub with a "gnaw"-wire-saw near the towing cables should do. Fishing is a dying "industry" as is old school electricity- every time fishing goes into decline, fish-farms grow. Interesting Trivia by the way: Fish farming is one of the cheapest ways to generate protein besides insects. Fish living in a weightless environ and requiring very little body heat, help to that.
- botwriter 6y agoGhost nets are some of the most ecologically destructive things on the planet. creating more of them isn't a smart move.
- PicassoCTs 6y agoSo the drone rolls them into a ball and carries them to the surface?
- scythe 6y agoFishing is not amenable to enclosure. Unfortunately that's how our society has managed resources in the field for the last 500 years. Worse, the ocean laughs at Westphalian borderisms. It's not only our economic traditions: our political institutions are not up to the task. Stalinism relies on borders too. We have some arrogance about our recent social achievements, as a species. In a few centuries we went from clashing empires to a semblance of cooperative and democratic internationalism with a general if superficial repudiation of racism and imperialism. Some people, both pro- and anti-capitalist, have suggested that we are within sight of a long-term equilibrium of social development. It's humbling in these circumstances to remember that we still don't even really know what to do about... fish.
- boxed 6y agoExcept all that is bull. Look at Iceland and the Cod Wars. Massive areas of the ocean can be pulled into the direct control of nations and it would have an enormous impact on the oceans.
- MaxBarraclough 6y agoHere's the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars
- paulmd 6y agoThe Chinese straight-up don't care about legal claims (see: the galapagos islands fishing incidents), unless you are willing to use force and sink offending vessels they don't really care what you think or say about it.
- boxed 6y agoYou don't need to sink the ships. Just make it economically i feasible or too risky. Again: look at the Cod Wars.
- scythe 6y ago>Look at Iceland and the Cod Wars NATO is indeed quite powerful. Unfortunately the strategic balance of power in the Atlantic cannot be held hostage by most nations trying to protect their fishing rights!
- carapace 6y agoClassic tragedy of the commons. > The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action. The concept originated in an essay written in 1833 by the British economist William Forster Lloyd, who used a hypothetical example of the effects of unregulated grazing on common land (also known as a "common") in Great Britain and Ireland. The concept became widely known as the "tragedy of the commons" over a century later after an article written by Garrett Hardin in 1968. In a modern economic context, "commons" is taken to mean any shared and unregulated resource such as the atmosphere, oceans, rivers, ocean fish stocks, or even an office refrigerator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons To me the wild thing is the first sentence: >IN 2018, THE most recent year for which relevant data are available, people consumed more fish than they did either pork or beef or poultry. The lede isn't buried, it's right there, but it goes unremarked. We already converted land mammals to human food: > Earth's LAND MAMMALS By Weight > A graph in which one square equals 1,000,000 tons. Dark grey squares represent humans, light gray represent our pets and livestock, and green squares represent wild animals. The squares are arranged in a roughly round shape, with clusters for each type of animal. Animals represented: Humans, cattle, pigs, goats (39 squares), sheep, horses (29 squares), elephants (1 square). There are other small, unlabeled clusters also. It is clear that humans and our pets & livestock outweigh wild animals by at least a factor of 10. https://xkcd.com/1338/ https://xkcd.com/1338/ If we're pulling out more fish from the sea than all those pigs, cows, chickens, ducks, etc., that's gonna leave a mark, eh?
- dmurray 6y ago> If we're pulling out more fish from the sea than all those pigs, cows, chickens, ducks, etc., that's gonna leave a mark, eh? The sea is big, though. 3x as large as the land, and it's mostly teeming with life. It gets just as much solar energy per square km as the land, so it can support a roughly similarly dense ecosystem. The problem is more about what type of fish we like to eat than the sheer volume: if we were willing to make do with krill and plankton we could sustainably consume many times our current intake, but not so when we want cod and tuna.
- Proven 6y agoIsn't that common sense? Why do we need The Economist to tell us that? If seas were privatized (or leased) there would be no more fishing than necessary.
- acd 6y agoWe need to implement Pigovian taxes that is related to the number of fish. Ie taking up fish is not free it’s related to the amount of fish in the ocean. If the fish is endangered the price of fishing increases exponentially for that species. Pigovian tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
- mhb 6y agoThe implementing is where the problem lies.
- rriepe 6y agoAfter much hand-wringing by bureaucrats, it would end up as a tax on fishing poles.
- kls 6y agoThe sad part is that is most likely how it would go down, in Florida we see the continual regulations on the recreational fisherman, why commercial allotments do not suffer an equal measure in reduction of catch allowance for that particular species. This is slowly starting to change as recreational sports fishing organizations have become more powerful in their lobbying efforts to share the burden across both commercial and recreational, but it is still fairly uneven handed with recreational bearing the brunt of restrictions, closures and taxation.
- bobthepanda 6y agoYeah, good luck getting governments to agree on consistent levels of taxation on something, when it's also some nations' primary protein source.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoThe problem isn't so much coming up with a specific mechanism to limit fishing. Such a tax would work, as would outright quotas backed by criminal law. It's to agree and to implement any common strategy in a classic Prisoner's Dilemma, where it's beneficial for every single participant to break any agreement. Another difficulty is that the partners that would agree (governments) are not themselves fishing. Even with the best intentions, not all of them have the means to sufficiently police every operator of a fishing vessel. The silver lining is that it's an "iterative Prisoner's Dilemma". The "prisoner"'s decision isn't isolated from everything, because others will respond in the next round. The issue can also be combined with others, tying, for example, trade agreements to sufficient cooperation (c.f. Brexit). But the sheer number of participants alone makes it a slow slog. Just look at the problems OPEC has, even though that group is a lot smaller and the activity in question is far easier to control.
- based2 6y agohttps://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/strategic-plan-2016-2020-dg-mare_march2016_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/files/strategic-plan-20... We are in the same boat.
- robocat 6y ago64% of the world’s ocean is commons. The other 36% is Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ). However interestingly, the US has not actually ratified the convention that recognises EEZ’s (along with a few other countries like Iran and Turkmenistan). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_United_Nations_Convention_on_the_Law_of_the_Sea#United_States_position https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_United_...
- Timpy 6y agoThis seems like the same problem with traffic. If fewer people drove we'd have better throughput in our roadways, when the roadways get more efficient more people want to drive, and we have clogged roadways again.
- cies 6y ago> Stopping some fishing would increase overall catches Stop fishing altogether and increase --otherwise dying-- marine life. Having particular ecosystems in the ocean is not something we can afford to miss. And the current state of over-fishing is the main reason several of them are almost out of existence.
- andai 6y agoSerious question, is the marine ecosystem more important than the one on land? Or are they at the same level?
- animal_spirits 6y agoThey are equally important in broad terms, but the ecosystems under the sea are less noticed than the ones one land and less relevant in the minds of the majority.
- nix23 6y ago>marine ecosystem more important than the one on land Yes it is, it's the biggest oxygen producer, but every ecosystem is important even that in our guts. https://eos.org/research-spotlights/worlds-biggest-oxygen-producers-living-in-swirling-ocean-waters https://eos.org/research-spotlights/worlds-biggest-oxygen-pr...
- jacknews 6y agoExactly, we should farm fish (indoors, on land, to avoid pollution). Wild populations should be left alone entirely.
- Danieru 6y agoSadly farm fishing as it stands now relies on the bulk catch of wild fishing. Farm fishing is a machine to turn unsalable tralled fish into commercially desirable delicious fish. Fish farming cannot yet exist without wild trawling.
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- blobbers 6y agoThis is not surprising. This is basic game theory - Nash Equilibrium. The reason there are so many people trying is because it's about how the pie is divided, not how large the pie is.
- pvaldes 6y agoYup, this is typical marine biologists job. Mostly ignored by strategical and geopolitical reasons, but this what they do.
- nmridul 6y agoState of Kerala in India imposes ban on trawling (a method of fishing) during onset of monsoon. It's an ongoing practice for last couple of decades https://scroll.in/article/932402/net-profit-or-loss-keralas-trawling-ban-during-the-monsoon-has-become-a-bone-of-contention https://scroll.in/article/932402/net-profit-or-loss-keralas-...
- nstj 6y agoPaywall - is there a rule for no paywalled articles on HN?
- hombre_fatal 6y agoNo, presumably most people here realize they want to read more than what ad-farms can push out. You should learn how to bypass paywalls so that you aren't stuck in that boat. It's a necessary skill for the modern world alongside using bittorrent and youtube-dl.
- hoveringhen 6y agoFor anyone even mildly interested in crime, exploitation, vigilantes and other human stories across the oceans, check out The Outlaw Ocean by NYT journalist Ian Urbina. Brilliant work. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43345615-the-outlaw-ocean https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43345615-the-outlaw-ocea...
- qchris 6y agoJust wanted to add that this is a superb and informative book, and was one of my favorite non-fiction reads in a long time.
- lordgrenville 6y agoI'm in the middle of it right now! In addition to some amazing first-person narrative about life at sea, it does answer a lot of the "why don't they just" questions in this thread. However he doesn't offer a solution to the fundamental tragedy of the commons problem. As with many other global problems, there seems no way to solve this without global government co-ordination, which seems pretty unlikely.
- hoveringhen 6y ago> In addition to some amazing first-person narrative about life at sea, it does answer a lot of the "why don't they just" questions in this thread. Yeah it puts into perspective how daunting the tasks of cleaning up the oceans (pollution, crime, illegal fishery, drilling, etc.) really are.
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/ANm2c https://archive.is/ANm2c
- porknubbins 6y agoIts an incredible statistic that fish is consumed more than cows, pigs, or beef. I don’t think I’ve been anywhere this is close to true. Where I am I think farmed salmon is at least 5x the price of chicken. Some countries must be hugely affecting the statistics. I wonder if there are poorer countries where people rarely eat meat but fish for subsistence?
- freddie_mercury 6y agoI live in Vietnam and I can believe it. Here's a map of the world showing where people eat fish. It is basically a list of places where Americans are unlikely to go. https://imgur.com/Snc2PvR https://imgur.com/Snc2PvR Asia accounts for 71% of world fish consumption. In places like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia fish makes up over 50% of all animal protein consumed. Unless you've travelled widely in Asia, especially outside of the rich up & coming cities with restaurants catering to foreign tourist palates and ate in local places, it would make sense that you haven't seen it.
- porknubbins 6y agoThats an interesting map, I did not realize that fish was such a big source of protein in those countries, although even at 10gr/day its not a huge component of the diet so overall animal protein must be low.
- ketzo 6y agoI was curious, so I looked it up -- it seems like fish is about 25% protein by volume at most, so that's ~40g or 1.4oz; definitely not a ton.
- namenotrequired 6y agoPigs (and farmed fish, and probably other species) are also fed fish on very large scale. I wonder if that's included in that statistic?
- forest_dweller 6y ago
- callamdelaney 6y agoAs with illegal french and Spanish ships in British waters I believe the best approach is to sink the illegal vessels if they do not cease activity and leave given fair warning.
- vaccinator 6y agoYou must be a democrat
- Reimersholme 6y agoWhen did defending property rights become a democrat thing to do?
- rv-de 6y agoThis is one of those examples where the cake is shrinking so everybody will get a smaller piece. Now if all participants would cooperate the cake could be made to grow. But this will afford people to not take as big of a piece as possible for a while. And because nobody trusts each other, every participant instead focuses instead on keeping the future pieces at least as large as they used to be which means taking relatively speaking an increasingly large chunk. And that's not sustainable so everything breaks down at some point and wars start over getting something from the cake. Same shit with carbon emissions, now fishing and soon water.
- blauditore 6y agoThis is called the tragedy of the commons.
- sharker8 6y agoEconomists have many choices when their models break: they can go poetic "tragedy of the commons", technical "externalities", John Nash "prisoner's dilemma", or even sort of nonsensical "internalizing externalities".
- pnutjam 6y agoSkience is like that, we should stick with science.
- pvaldes 6y agoNope. Tragedy of commons means that everybody share a legit right over resources but management fails. This is invasion, burn and plunder by a third part (one that does not necessarily has a legit right over the resource) while the commons are sleeping. Totally different situation.
- hansvm 6y agoI've never heard that definition of "tragedy of the commons." Rather, I've always seen it used to describe a situation where everyone would benefit if everyone took one action, but individually the incentive structure is to do the opposite -- effectively you're able to get the things you want for minimal personal cost and with large external costs. It very explicitly applies to shared resources like fisheries, and it crops up in much more mundane scenarios too. E.g., when water costs are split between multiple apartments you can pay peanuts for nearly unrestricted personal water use by offloading most of the costs to everyone else.
- hedora 6y agoI’ve stopped eating fish for this reason. (Well, cut it back by 90%.) That’s not enough, but if more people did it, it’d be a start.
- htnsao 6y agoAs David Attenborough stated in his most recent documentary, the solution for healthy oceans and enough fishing for all is to protect 1/3 of the ocean and coasts with marine reserves. This model has proven to work in many places, now it just needs to be implemented worldwide by unanimous consensus. And enforced by a properly funded Sea Shepherd armada perhaps.