7 ms·

You know that’s not going to happen, so I’m curious what your comment was intended to elicit. Follow-up questions like mine?

bigDinosaur 5y ago
Is there a reason it could not happen, or do you just think it won't? I wouldn't be so sure in say, ~100 years, that we'll be doing much significant ocean fishing.
- teakettle42 5y ago
  I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it wouldn’t. Why would everyone voluntarily stop eating seafood?
  - Nursie 5y ago
    They won't, but perhaps they should, because we are decimating sea life and destroying undersea ecosystems. You're right though, people won't. People won't even stop hunting and eating known-endangered animals.
    - kuhewa 5y ago
      We are destroying ecosystems on land as well. Everything is connected and there is no free lunch — the answer isn't to completely stop doing one or the other only to greatly increase impacts on the other parts of the biosphere, it is to produce food with sustainable, science based management, which is absolutely possible in the ocean.
      - Nursie 5y ago
        But that might not include anything recognisable as "fishing" or harvesting wild populations. As was said to you eleswhere - much of the world does have a choice of where to get their calories. Taking from the sea until it has nothing left to give is a profit-driven exercise in the main, not one of caloric necessity.
        kuhewa 5y ago
        > But that might not include anything recognisable as "fishing" or harvesting wild populations That's just not true. About half of scientifically assessed fish stocks at or above target levels, thus sustainably harvested, or they are successfully rebuilding from previous overexploitation i.e. fisheries management is working. One can easily consume seafood without engaging in "Taking from the sea until it has nothing left to give". Doing so reduces the land footprint of your diet, and for some seafood like whitefish, small pelagics or cultured bivalves, you will probably decrease your carbon footprint, even relative to a vegan diet.
  - bigDinosaur 5y ago
    Why would everyone voluntarily stop hunting? People don't go out and run ocean trawlers every day for their meals, they buy it at the supermarket, and for most the source is irrelevant.
    - labster 5y ago
      Trawling to trolling is only a Levenshtein distance of two.
      - bigDinosaur 5y ago
        Not sure what your point is. Are you saying I'm trolling because I'm saying that consumers will mostly be fine with farmed (and possibly 'lab grown') alternatives in the future? The sources used for our food have changed dramatically over time, no reason for that to not happen again.
        kuhewa 5y ago
        But there are highly abundant stocks of wild fish that can be harvested sustainably en masse, like pollock, it's really hard for scalefish aquaculture to entirely outcompete the simplicity of that — allowing nature to feed your fish and control all the necessary variables. I don't think we'll see capture fisheries totally disappear.
      - jacobolus 5y ago
        Trolling is a fishing term. The sense of 'internet troll' is based on a fishing metaphor. Trawling and trolling are slightly different fishing techniques. Both are ways to catch fish from a moving boat, but trawling involves dragging a net, while trolling means trailing a baited line.
        bigDinosaur 5y ago
        Huh, the more one learns.
    - dustymcp 5y ago
- imnotlost 5y ago
  More than half of seafood is now produced from farmed fish so my guess is that it is possible. The fish farming industry has a wide range of serious problems but maybe it could save ocean wildlife? https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-aquaculture https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-aquaculture
  - pvaldes 5y ago
    They are comparing apples with oranges in that chart. Cultured algae, molluscs, crustaceans, echinoderms, and cultured fish versus... wild fish. So they are removing wild molluscs, crustaceans, echinoderms and wild algae from one side of the equation in an article that focus in the message that that part has decreased. Lying with statistics. If we compare wild fish against farmed fish only, the result would be really different. And there is pirate fishing also. Some companies under-report a percentage of their captures routinely, to hide that they fish more than are allowed to. Not so easy to do in sea farms when you can't produce more than the space assigned to you.
    - kuhewa 5y ago
      I'm pretty sure the wild capture fisheries data includes shellfish etc. FAOs numbers for total fisheries production matches aquaculture + capture fisheries that says 'wild fish'. Often fish is used in a very loose sense in fisheries.
- aaron695 5y ago
ada1981 5y ago
In the same way we humans will likely never stop raping children or keeping slaves, sure. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop. What a lovely family we have.

bigDinosaur 5y ago

Is there a reason it could not happen, or do you just think it won't? I wouldn't be so sure in say, ~100 years, that we'll be doing much significant ocean fishing.

teakettle42 5y ago
I didn’t say it couldn’t, I said it wouldn’t. Why would everyone voluntarily stop eating seafood?
- Nursie 5y ago
  They won't, but perhaps they should, because we are decimating sea life and destroying undersea ecosystems. You're right though, people won't. People won't even stop hunting and eating known-endangered animals.
  - kuhewa 5y ago
    We are destroying ecosystems on land as well. Everything is connected and there is no free lunch — the answer isn't to completely stop doing one or the other only to greatly increase impacts on the other parts of the biosphere, it is to produce food with sustainable, science based management, which is absolutely possible in the ocean.
    - Nursie 5y ago
      But that might not include anything recognisable as "fishing" or harvesting wild populations. As was said to you eleswhere - much of the world does have a choice of where to get their calories. Taking from the sea until it has nothing left to give is a profit-driven exercise in the main, not one of caloric necessity.
      - kuhewa 5y ago
        > But that might not include anything recognisable as "fishing" or harvesting wild populations That's just not true. About half of scientifically assessed fish stocks at or above target levels, thus sustainably harvested, or they are successfully rebuilding from previous overexploitation i.e. fisheries management is working. One can easily consume seafood without engaging in "Taking from the sea until it has nothing left to give". Doing so reduces the land footprint of your diet, and for some seafood like whitefish, small pelagics or cultured bivalves, you will probably decrease your carbon footprint, even relative to a vegan diet.
- bigDinosaur 5y ago
  Why would everyone voluntarily stop hunting? People don't go out and run ocean trawlers every day for their meals, they buy it at the supermarket, and for most the source is irrelevant.
  - labster 5y ago
    Trawling to trolling is only a Levenshtein distance of two.
    - bigDinosaur 5y ago
      Not sure what your point is. Are you saying I'm trolling because I'm saying that consumers will mostly be fine with farmed (and possibly 'lab grown') alternatives in the future? The sources used for our food have changed dramatically over time, no reason for that to not happen again.
      - kuhewa 5y ago
        But there are highly abundant stocks of wild fish that can be harvested sustainably en masse, like pollock, it's really hard for scalefish aquaculture to entirely outcompete the simplicity of that — allowing nature to feed your fish and control all the necessary variables. I don't think we'll see capture fisheries totally disappear.
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      Trolling is a fishing term. The sense of 'internet troll' is based on a fishing metaphor. Trawling and trolling are slightly different fishing techniques. Both are ways to catch fish from a moving boat, but trawling involves dragging a net, while trolling means trailing a baited line.
      - bigDinosaur 5y ago
        Huh, the more one learns.
  - dustymcp 5y ago
imnotlost 5y ago
More than half of seafood is now produced from farmed fish so my guess is that it is possible. The fish farming industry has a wide range of serious problems but maybe it could save ocean wildlife? https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-aquaculture https://ourworldindata.org/rise-of-aquaculture
- pvaldes 5y ago
  They are comparing apples with oranges in that chart. Cultured algae, molluscs, crustaceans, echinoderms, and cultured fish versus... wild fish. So they are removing wild molluscs, crustaceans, echinoderms and wild algae from one side of the equation in an article that focus in the message that that part has decreased. Lying with statistics. If we compare wild fish against farmed fish only, the result would be really different. And there is pirate fishing also. Some companies under-report a percentage of their captures routinely, to hide that they fish more than are allowed to. Not so easy to do in sea farms when you can't produce more than the space assigned to you.
  - kuhewa 5y ago
    I'm pretty sure the wild capture fisheries data includes shellfish etc. FAOs numbers for total fisheries production matches aquaculture + capture fisheries that says 'wild fish'. Often fish is used in a very loose sense in fisheries.
aaron695 5y ago

ada1981 5y ago

In the same way we humans will likely never stop raping children or keeping slaves, sure. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop. What a lovely family we have.