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My single biggest takeaway from watching it was that there is no "sustainable industrial fishing" despite every political advocacy group stating that as a bulle

by s_dev 5y ago

My single biggest takeaway from watching it was that there is no "sustainable industrial fishing" despite every political advocacy group stating that as a bullet point "eat sustainable fish" to helping biodiversity and fish stocks. Basically unless the a dude has a fishing rod and is catching his own dinner it's unsustainable. Those boys over at impossbile burger better be whipping up some fish substitutes because I think the future of the fishing industry will look like what the British fishing industry is going through with Brexit right now -- a sudden collapse.

wongarsu 5y ago
Fish raised in a fish farm is reasonably sustainable, especially those raised in lakes.
- GordonS 5y ago
  It's not so simple - farmed fish produce a lot of waste in a very small area, which pollutes the water. There are also serious welfare issues with fish farming - for example, horrible mechanical and chemical treatments of salmon to remove lice, high use of antibiotics, terrible life expectancy of feeder-fish (which are introduced to eat lice off of salmon), poor environmental conditions for the fish (largely because so many fish are packed into such a small area), high rates of disease (again largely because of high stocking density).
  - GordonS 5y ago
    I don't want to be all doom and gloom, and should add that some of these problems are potentially solvable, even if the solutions themselves have trade-offs. For example, aquaculture can be moved offshore to large farm, mobile farm vessels, so the pollution is spread about instead of being concentrated at a small section of coastline. These vessels are new though, and an accident or freak weather even could result in millions of farmed fish being released to the wild - farmed fish are not the same, genetically, as wild fish, so the effects on wild stocks from that many escapes could be significant. Another new solution is closed-containment aquaculture, where the fish are placed inside a sealed sphere in the ocean. This approach allows all waste to be collected at the bottom of the vessel, and then turned into fertiliser. There are welfare concerns around increased stocking densities, and shutting hundreds of thousands of fish off from the outside world. Another solution that is (inexplicably, IMO) seeing huge investment are land-based, RAS (Recirculating aquaculture system) farms. These too can collect all fish waste, and it's touted as a way to prevent disease. There are concerns here too though - using arable land for fish farming doesn't seem like a very good idea, RAS farmers use horribly high stocking densities (they must, to be profitable), and there have been several incidents where disease has been inadvertently introduced from the outside (in such close quarters, the effects are of course disastrous). OK, so that still all sounds pretty gloomy - realistically the only way for things to get much better is through regulation. But better welfare increases farming costs, and like anything, there is always going to be a race to the bottom (e.g. if Norway increases costs too much for farmers, more move to Chile etc).
    - jules-jules 5y ago
      Yeah, or you know you could also not eat fish in the first place.
- shoo 5y ago
  There's the question of what inputs are used to provide the feed to grow the fish. E.g. for salmon > On a dry-dry basis, 2–4 kg of wild-caught fish are needed to produce 1 kg of salmon. The ratio may be reduced if non-fish sources are added. Wild salmon require about 10 kg of forage fish to produce 1 kg of salmon, as part of the normal trophic level energy transfer. The difference between the two numbers is related to farmed salmon feed containing other ingredients beyond fish meal and because farmed fish do not expend energy hunting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture_of_salmonids https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture_of_salmonids
- smackay 5y ago
  Unfortunately humans like to eat predatory fish - salmon, tuna, etc. So although farming would be a way forward most farming needs large-scale industrial fishing to support it. The pet food industry also has the same problem. Moving farming to vegetarian species like tilapia would solve this but it's going to take a monumental effort to change the attitudes of generations.
  - galangalalgol 5y ago
    Does that imply that some tilapia is raised sustainably? I can live with tilapia. I'd like herring or sardines better, are they low enough in the food chain to harvest sustainably? I can't handle vegan though, I'll switch to cannibalism before trying that again.
    - steve_adams_86 5y ago
      Tilapia farms are mostly disgusting, unfortunately. Hopefully it can be done cleaner. If you look into it, they are often cesspools of feed sediment, waste, and antibiotics. The runoff is terrible for surrounding life. The incredibly heavy use of antibiotics is seriously problematic. I know the united states and Australia have some cleaner operations, but they’re much lower density and nowhere near as profitable. I’m personally fine with that, but I don’t think most people are. Hence the constant races to the bottom
- s_dev 5y ago
  >Fish raised in a fish farm is reasonably sustainable It's not though -- thats the myth to be debunked. Also the parasites were disgusting -- farmed fish are slowly being eaten alive -- for every four salmon produced only 1 makes to the chopping board for human consumption. The others succumb to the parasites and are simply discarded creating their own pollution problems. I didn't know this before the documentary. He covers advanced countries like Norway and Japan as well. So this isn't like some developing country who can't even get onboard with human rights or international law.
- jules-jules 5y ago
  As others have said, this is simply wrong. Shocking footage, be warned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWaYYbIpnmU&t=104s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWaYYbIpnmU&t=104s
semi-extrinsic 5y ago
I'm not sure what you mean with "there is no sustainable industrial fishing"? If you look at e.g. Norway, fishing has been industrialized literally since the Byzantine empire was around. While there was indeed a crisis with overfishing in the post-war period, today it is a well-regulated and sustainable industry with quotas set on the basis of scientific measurements of the population sizes of different species. So it seems to be unambiguously possible?

by s_dev 5y ago

wongarsu 5y ago

Fish raised in a fish farm is reasonably sustainable, especially those raised in lakes.

GordonS 5y ago
It's not so simple - farmed fish produce a lot of waste in a very small area, which pollutes the water. There are also serious welfare issues with fish farming - for example, horrible mechanical and chemical treatments of salmon to remove lice, high use of antibiotics, terrible life expectancy of feeder-fish (which are introduced to eat lice off of salmon), poor environmental conditions for the fish (largely because so many fish are packed into such a small area), high rates of disease (again largely because of high stocking density).
- GordonS 5y ago
  I don't want to be all doom and gloom, and should add that some of these problems are potentially solvable, even if the solutions themselves have trade-offs. For example, aquaculture can be moved offshore to large farm, mobile farm vessels, so the pollution is spread about instead of being concentrated at a small section of coastline. These vessels are new though, and an accident or freak weather even could result in millions of farmed fish being released to the wild - farmed fish are not the same, genetically, as wild fish, so the effects on wild stocks from that many escapes could be significant. Another new solution is closed-containment aquaculture, where the fish are placed inside a sealed sphere in the ocean. This approach allows all waste to be collected at the bottom of the vessel, and then turned into fertiliser. There are welfare concerns around increased stocking densities, and shutting hundreds of thousands of fish off from the outside world. Another solution that is (inexplicably, IMO) seeing huge investment are land-based, RAS (Recirculating aquaculture system) farms. These too can collect all fish waste, and it's touted as a way to prevent disease. There are concerns here too though - using arable land for fish farming doesn't seem like a very good idea, RAS farmers use horribly high stocking densities (they must, to be profitable), and there have been several incidents where disease has been inadvertently introduced from the outside (in such close quarters, the effects are of course disastrous). OK, so that still all sounds pretty gloomy - realistically the only way for things to get much better is through regulation. But better welfare increases farming costs, and like anything, there is always going to be a race to the bottom (e.g. if Norway increases costs too much for farmers, more move to Chile etc).
  - jules-jules 5y ago
    Yeah, or you know you could also not eat fish in the first place.
shoo 5y ago
There's the question of what inputs are used to provide the feed to grow the fish. E.g. for salmon > On a dry-dry basis, 2–4 kg of wild-caught fish are needed to produce 1 kg of salmon. The ratio may be reduced if non-fish sources are added. Wild salmon require about 10 kg of forage fish to produce 1 kg of salmon, as part of the normal trophic level energy transfer. The difference between the two numbers is related to farmed salmon feed containing other ingredients beyond fish meal and because farmed fish do not expend energy hunting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture_of_salmonids https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture_of_salmonids
smackay 5y ago
Unfortunately humans like to eat predatory fish - salmon, tuna, etc. So although farming would be a way forward most farming needs large-scale industrial fishing to support it. The pet food industry also has the same problem. Moving farming to vegetarian species like tilapia would solve this but it's going to take a monumental effort to change the attitudes of generations.
- galangalalgol 5y ago
  Does that imply that some tilapia is raised sustainably? I can live with tilapia. I'd like herring or sardines better, are they low enough in the food chain to harvest sustainably? I can't handle vegan though, I'll switch to cannibalism before trying that again.
  - steve_adams_86 5y ago
    Tilapia farms are mostly disgusting, unfortunately. Hopefully it can be done cleaner. If you look into it, they are often cesspools of feed sediment, waste, and antibiotics. The runoff is terrible for surrounding life. The incredibly heavy use of antibiotics is seriously problematic. I know the united states and Australia have some cleaner operations, but they’re much lower density and nowhere near as profitable. I’m personally fine with that, but I don’t think most people are. Hence the constant races to the bottom
s_dev 5y ago
>Fish raised in a fish farm is reasonably sustainable It's not though -- thats the myth to be debunked. Also the parasites were disgusting -- farmed fish are slowly being eaten alive -- for every four salmon produced only 1 makes to the chopping board for human consumption. The others succumb to the parasites and are simply discarded creating their own pollution problems. I didn't know this before the documentary. He covers advanced countries like Norway and Japan as well. So this isn't like some developing country who can't even get onboard with human rights or international law.
jules-jules 5y ago
As others have said, this is simply wrong. Shocking footage, be warned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWaYYbIpnmU&t=104s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWaYYbIpnmU&t=104s

semi-extrinsic 5y ago

I'm not sure what you mean with "there is no sustainable industrial fishing"? If you look at e.g. Norway, fishing has been industrialized literally since the Byzantine empire was around. While there was indeed a crisis with overfishing in the post-war period, today it is a well-regulated and sustainable industry with quotas set on the basis of scientific measurements of the population sizes of different species. So it seems to be unambiguously possible?