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I grew up in a small town in the PNW that has a yearly salmon festival, and it wasn't until a post from HN[1] that I learned/realized that the whole system of "
by evmar 6y ago
I grew up in a small town in the PNW that has a yearly salmon festival, and it wasn't until a post from HN[1] that I learned/realized that the whole system of "fish hatcheries" that my town celebrated is kind of a horrible bandaid over the ecological disaster we perpetrated.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21298472 , definitely worth a read if you care about salmon
- vba 6y agoLeavenworth? Also cool work history/projects from your website
- Herodotus38 6y agoI know Issaquah has 'Salmon Days'
- steve_adams_86 6y agoThere is a documentary about this as well (https://youtu.be/XdNJ0JAwT7I https://youtu.be/XdNJ0JAwT7I), which I thought was fascinating. I learned from this and one other (I’ve forgotten the name) that the salmon likely suffer far less from overfishing than most people believe. Perhaps what happened is the primary population pressures occurred until fishing pressure became noticeable. At that point people pointed their fingers to the most obvious cause of salmon deaths and missed the ones we’re only recently becoming more broadly aware of. Not to say fishing doesn’t make a difference. It’s just not the only problem. Fish farm research was suppressed by the Canadian government which showed that the farms were spreading vast amounts of disease very consistently, for example. One disease acted so quickly that the fish would die before they could spawn. Fortunately the research surfaced eventually and farms are largely being shut down, but these farms have been operating for decades. It’s a very complex and frightening problem. I’m glad we’re making progress in understanding it better.