10 ms·
Crab crisis in Bering Sea a sign of ‘borealization’
- baerrie 4y agoIf the crabs are hurting you know shit is bad
- hedgehog 4y agoFarther down the coast ocean acidification is also affecting the Dungeness crab: https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2581/Dungeness-crab-showing-impact-of-coastal-acidification https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2581/... Not great.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- baerrie 4y agoMan, so sad. There is no sympathy for the invertebrates or other canary-in-a-coal-mine species from the average consumer but they are extremely loud alarms sounding all around us.
- lambdasquirrel 4y agoThere’s little love for Douglas Firs further down the coast as they burn and die off in Oregon and Northern California, and I wonder what’s going to happen by 2080 or so, as the climate transitions to Mediterranean. Half the places that used to be productive forest turn into not-so-productive oak chaparral, and productive farmland turns into not-so-productive ranch land. The existing ranch land is already becoming desert.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThe productive farmland of today are tomorrow’s arid solar farms unfortunately.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ChatGTP 4y agoSo I read yesterday the Biden administration has signed a lease to open up more of Alaska for oil drilling and exploration. It’s hard to believe.
- standardUser 4y agoAnd his opposition party would do that, plus vastly expand offshore drilling, plus scrap every cent of federal spending intended to reduce carbon emissions. The political situation in the US is not and has never been compatible with combating climate change.
- lostlogin 4y agoA two party system has got to hurt when you don’t like either choice.
- hn_version_0023 4y agoYou're constantly choosing between the lesser of two evils. Which means you're always choosing evil. It's less than ideal.
- lostlogin 4y agoBut even that’s broken, as it may be true of one issue, but most people care about more than one thing and the US system doesn’t really allow for that. It’s a pretty crude democracy by current standards.
- consumer451 4y ago> You're constantly choosing between the lesser of two evils. I am not trying to excuse bad behavior, but there are never perfect options. Choosing between the lesser of two or more evils appears to be the adult human condition. This is important to accept because otherwise people just avoid voting.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- PradeetPatel 4y agoIs there anything we can do as consumers to promote ethical fishing practices? For example, there are certifications and accreditations fisheries can obtain to prove that eco-friendly methods are used.
- jnmandal 4y agoTo be honest, this has very little to do with fishing practices. It's more about the temperature of the ocean. There are some folks who think by catch (a very destructive externality from ocean floor trawling) has an impact on this fishery but unfortunately that's more of a guess. The science certainly shows that the temperature anomaly literally preempts reproduction. So heat waves eviscerated an entire generation, perhaps multiple generations. So can you affect the temperature of the ocean? Not anymore than you can stop global warming. Even if you did everything to become carbon negative, it's gonna be getting warmer before it gets back to normal temperatures. But stopping eating seafood would be a good start. Lowering demand for them means that they have a chance of surviving through to a time when climate change could be reigned in, maybe in several decades.
- standardUser 4y agoOr eat more farmed seafood, or seafood that we have high confidence can be safely harvested, per the link I posted above.
- jnmandal 4y agoIt's good to see efforts at adaptation. This is an important aspect of dealing with climate change. There's simply no preventative measures that can be implemented at this point. So if we can get Alaskans and the fishing industry in general to adapt to the new realities and transition them to industries more productive to conservation and carbon drawdown that will be a huge win.
- ornornor 4y agoMeanwhile, ConocoPhillips just got permission to drill out an estimated 600 million barrels over the next 30 years in Alaska. It’s very hard to not feel hopeless and pessimistic about the future.
- ChatGTP 4y agoMade the same comment earlier, copped the down vote but I agree, I absolutely cannot believe it. I also read they will need to artificially freeze the sea bed to make it possible, which will require a huge amount of energy and therefor emissions. Really wild.
- wahern 4y agoThe drilling is on land. Artificial cooling of permafrost using thermosiphons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosiphon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosiphon) isn't new. For example, > 120,000 thermosyphons were built into the Trans-Alaska Pipeline’s supports in the 1970s. https://dakotafreepress.com/2021/07/11/permafrost-melting-could-break-trans-alaska-pipeline-thermosyphons-to-the-rescue/ https://dakotafreepress.com/2021/07/11/permafrost-melting-co... All of the concern about this project is fundamentally speculative. That doesn't mean the speculation is wrong, but little factoids like that about thermosiphons seem to be thrown into the mix to insinuate more substance and impending doom than can otherwise be fairly shown (at least shown in a popular news article). If coal is any indication, it's entirely possible that extraction at Willow would become unprofitable long before the lease expires.
- 4y ago
- stelliosk 4y agoDeadliest Catch returns in 2023 despite closing of fisheries: https://www.nationalfisherman.com/alaska/deadliest-catch-returns-in-2023-despite-closing-of-fisheries https://www.nationalfisherman.com/alaska/deadliest-catch-ret...
- steelbrain 4y agoI had to re-read several paragraphs to make sure my eyes weren't failing me. It seems either AI generated or needlessly extended, to the point where reading has become a chore. I gave up halfway through without understanding much of *how* they are able to return if the fisheries are still closed.
- zyl1n 4y agoFisheries are closed for certain types of crabs. They are switching to other types.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y agoNot mentioned, warming seas unleashing the methanhydrate at depth..
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- up2isomorphism 4y ago[flagged]
- pvaldes 4y agoYes and not. Again nobody is realizing the obvious problem here. Fishery collapsed in 2021! The year is not a minor detail! Can you see why?
- LegitShady 4y agowhy don't you just make an explicit point instead of having people guess?
- pvaldes 4y agoBecause a 200 million dollars industry vanishing overnight is an interesting question. The snow crab population collapsed between 2018 and 2021. We could start assuming that something triggered this collapse. Right? So we could wonder what event happened in 2019 to explain the collapse? Climate change? Predators? Fishermen going crazy? Wrong. The most probable answer is: "nothing happened"... and the second candidate to the pole position is "nobody happened".
- pvaldes 4y agoFisheries aren't the present, they show a snapshot of the past. Fishes need time to grow and cold water crustaceans in particular need a lot of time. Snow crabs mature slowly and can live until 20 years old. Females produce eggs in spring and, as in other crustaceans they have a pelagic cycle. After a while the larvae carried by currents settle in soft sediments and moult into tiny crabs. If they can pass those first years their survival rate boosts. The pelagic larvae known to be difficult to keep alive The snow crabs are 9 years old on average when fished. This means that the crabs that we are missing in 2020 and 2021 would had been born in (2020 - 9) = 2011!. 2011 and 2012. What happened in 2011 in the same area? A tsunami in March and a nuclear power plant accident releasing radioactive water to the sea for several months What we are seeing (In My Arrogant Opinion) is not climate change, or not only this; Is the effect of a mass die-off of >80% of the crab larvae in Alaska by Fukushima water, that happened nine years before but went unnoticed. The Japanese water traveled to Alaska probably just in time to meet the crab reproductive season and hit the eggs or the larvae in their zoea phase. Or maybe the scavenger crabs accumulated radioactive stuff after eating fishes and died later. Of course there was a tsunami also that could have killed some of the adult crabs but didn't happened in Alaska. And the lack of fishermen in the Covid years maybe add a "nobody came to feed the crabs with bycatch" effect. The populations will recover, as long as Japanese will stop trowing garbage to the sea in the crab reproductive season.
- mistrial9 4y agoquite a long and detailed FAQ here https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/alaska/bycatch/frequent-questions-snow-crab-and-salmon-declines-alaska https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/alaska/bycatch/frequent-quest...
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoMaybe metaverse is the answer to climate change? If managers could stand behind workers' backs in virtual 3D, peek over their shoulders and give valuable motivational feedback, maybe they would be more open to remote work, thus saving all that commute.
- mattpallissard 4y agoMeanwhile I'm just sitting here in rural AK. Once again watching the "experts" of HN speak with authority on topics they have no experience in.
- harambae 4y agoI do recall this sentiment on HN once before -- regarding whether Alaska should add a road for medical extraction or not. Seemingly strong divide between Alaskans and others. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31718125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31718125