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Why? That just means we would be fucking up the land more. No joke, if we don't eat fish we are eating something that requires land to grow, and agrarian land u

• PretzelPirate 5y ago
  We already grow enough plant matter on land to feed to entire world population, we just feed most of it to animals instead. If we stop fishing, we don’t need to use more land to grow more food, we just need to shift consumption towards plants and away from inefficient options like cows.
  • pvaldes 5y ago
    > If we stop fishing, we don’t need to use more land to grow more food > we just need to shift consumption towards plants Both terms are contradictory. Why are we still discussing basic reality facts? Plants need land to grow. Lots of it.
    • ada1981 5y ago
      As has been pointed out, the majority of land is used to grow plants to feed animals - also not needed for consumption. Not sure re discussing basic facts, but happy to help you get a handle on reality.
  • kuhewa 5y ago
    In some idealized world where everyone acts collectively toward the goal of minimising animal production, sure, but that's not actually how it works. If the supply of fish is constrained, demand for terrestrial animal protein and related land use increases. For arguments sake though, let's grant that all terrestrial food production becomes plant based: adding some well managed fishing would then reduce the land footprint required to produce the calories we need. Some of the ecosystems that have been razed into biodiversity deserts to produce crops won't be needed for agriculture, and can return to wilderness.
• ada1981 5y ago
  Humans don’t really need to consume any animals and we have ample plants. Whether or not we act rationally is a different question. Humans tend to prefer their addictions vs. adopt species saving behaviors.
  • kuhewa 5y ago
    We don't need to do a lot of things. Sustainable management of all sources of food is going to save species, taking 71% of the surface of the earth entirely off the table of potential solutions is not optimal for most reasonable metrics of what we should do.
    • ada1981 5y ago
      We have nothing close to sustainable management. I have no fantasies humans will get their shit together either. It’s filled with people who’d rather put words in italics rather than actually make significant lifestyle changes.
      • kuhewa 5y ago
        > We have nothing close to sustainable management That is incorrect.
        • ada1981 5y ago
          I think you must just be trolling at this point. Our oceans have lost 50% of life in the last 40 years; 1/3 of marine mammals and sharks and others are at risk of extinction and close to 90% of the ocean has been damaged by humans. I’ll say it again, we have nothing close to sustainable management.
          • kuhewa 5y ago
            Not trolling, and nothing personal but I pointed out an inaccuracy in a vapid and snarky comment with the level of detail it deserved. The fallacy in your understanding of fisheries management, as you describe it, is that fisheries are not managed as a single global stock. Your argument is the equivalent of saying "all worldwide governments are terrible because some totaltarian despots exist". There certainly are some historical failures and cautionary tales in fisheries management. But partially in response to those missteps, like the collapse of Atlantic cod fisheries in 1992, the implementation of science-based fisheries management have greatly improved. This isn't just an exercise in hypotheticals, where intensive management is applied, previously overfished stocks rebuild, or stocks are at target levels that can support sustained harvesting (https://www.pnas.org/content/117/4/2218 https://www.pnas.org/content/117/4/2218). Fisheries management works where applied, and there are absolutely examples of sustainably managed fisheries today - take skipjack tuna a cosmopolitan species that is not at risk of overexploitation. They can be harvested on a commercial scale with pole and line gear, one at a time with very low rates of bycatch. This isn't some fringe case either, skipjack make up the majority of global tuna harvest.
• pvaldes 5y ago
  Correct answer. Most of the fertile soils are under concrete now.