6 ms·
Loose lips save sunken ships
- rob74 3y agoTL/DR: loose lips haven't currently saved any sunken ships. The remote hope is that, if they disclose the locations of shipwrecks, fishermen might choose to avoid them. They haven't even considered turning their "National Marine Sanctuary" into an actual fishing prohibition area, because of the "anti-regulatory zeitgeist", so the policy is strictly voluntary, and no one is really abiding by it, but for some reason they remain optimistic. So this is the "deep state" that Republicans want to dismantle? After reading this article, I'm inclined to say they might as well do it, but not because of how dangerous it is - because of how ineffective it is!
- spdif899 3y agoIt's quite telling how much the article makes it clear that these fishing practices are absolutely devastating the marine habitats that their perpetrators profit from, but oh no nobody wants to do anything about that because that would be hard. Instead let's try to preserve some "culture" for some reason (but not actually try because that would also be hard).
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- aziaziazi 3y ago> Most captains would obviously want to avoid such a costly and dangerous situation, but the sheer number of nets draped on Stellwagen wrecks indicates that some are willing to risk it. Nets are a great source of Microplastics in the ocean, whether lost during fishing or flying away of landfills [0]. New kind of ropes degrades slowly but that’s just a “timer on the bomb”. What can we do ? At a society level legislation does not work off the coast: near impossible to find consensus on international zones laws and even more complicated to enforce them. At a personal level you can stop eating fishes. You won’t change the world alone but still have a small but real impact, about the same as when you go to the polls. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X21011498 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X2...
- mikewarot 3y ago>Nets are a great source of Microplastics It seems to me the solution is to require (and subsidize) the use of cotton (or other natural fiber) based netting, which is biodegradable.
- bobthepanda 3y agoCotton in particular is a bad crop choice because it uses a lot of water. Cotton cultivation is a contributing factor to the shrinking of the Aral Sea.
- laci37 3y agoIs cotton cultivation that bad in areas that were not artificially made suitable for the crop by the Soviet Union?
- aziaziazi 3y ago> artificially made suitable Don’t know what you mean by that but the Soviet having made worse does not mean other countries approach is water-friendly. See https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/files/6843583/water_footprint_of_cotton_consumption.pdf https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/files/6843583/water_footprint_of_c...
- bobthepanda 3y agoTo produce a kilo of cotton (roughly equivalent to a t-shirt and a pair of jeans) takes 20,000L of water. It’s just fundamentally an extremely thirsty crop. Not to mention that cotton is notorious for depleting soil nutrients, so it is often grown with very large amounts of fertilizer, which also polluted waterways and their outlets into the oceans.
- dappermanneke 3y agoif only there was actually any good evidence of microplastic impact on health instead of a moral panic. microplastics will sink to the bottom of the sea and get buried under dirt on land, becoming part of the geology anyhow. for something with no clear evidence of harm, is it really worth replacing it with materials that require multipliers more fossil fuels to produce, increase carbon emissions, which are very much proven to cause harm to both human health and ecosystems?
- thaumasiotes 3y agoWhat is supposed to be being "saved" here? If a fisherman unknowingly destroys an object that nobody else ever knew was there, what's the loss?
- aziaziazi 3y agoThe article explains that those wrecks are oases of marine life. Those living forms can’t defend their real estate to the court because they can’t speak and because fishermen are lobbying against restriction (of that real estate enforcement). Ben Haskell try to preserve those marine sanctuaries by asking politely to stop, hoping fishermen love to marine life may restrain them for destroy it.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoWe have huge industries devoted entirely to finding and killing that life. Why would we worry about whether, when we do that, it's living in a shipwreck we gave it or a reef that grew over time?
- aziaziazi 3y agoMany reefs are also fishing protected areas for the same reason, why this one should be treated differently?
- thaumasiotes 3y agoWhat's the goal? Is the idea to stop fishermen from hurting themselves? Is it that removing a sunken ship would interfere with the natural processes that put the ship there? Reefs can't be fishing-protected areas because of the presence of fish. The presence of fish is how we pick fishing-intensive areas.
- pvaldes 3y ago> Reefs can't be fishing-protected areas because of the presence of fish. The presence of fish is how we pick fishing-intensive areas. Not. Complex problems don't have simple answers. We don't define fisheries by the presence of fish. We define fisheries by the presence of fish that --can be-- fished. This means normally age, not number. And age can't be measured easily in many species so we use size instead. Distance to the coast, population status and life cycle are also hugely influential.
- creshal 3y agoKeeping coordinates hidden to protect wrecks from looters is not an unreasonable policy to set, they'll do even more damage to the marine environment to harvest copper, bronze, low-background steels and memorabilia.
- fatfingerd 3y agoIs new mining of similar materials environmentally friendly?
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- buildsjets 3y agoWe no longer have the ability to manufacture new low-background steel on this planet due to environmental contamination.
- sl-1 3y agoI think we do have the capability if wanted, it just does not make economical sense. Basically we'd need to filter the gases injected to the process to guard against contaminants, which would cost a lot. So it's just cheaper to recycle old steel.
- rnk 3y agoWhat is low-background steel?
- natpalmer1776 3y agoLow-background steel, also known as pre-war steel, is any steel produced prior to the detonation of the first nuclear bombs in the 1940s and 1950s. Typically sourced from ships (either as part of regular scrapping or shipwrecks) and other steel artifacts of this era, it is often used for modern particle detectors because more modern steel is contaminated with traces of nuclear fallout. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
- squokko 3y agoNot sure that an old shipwreck rusting away is an important treasure that needs to be preserved. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, fishing will damage it. OK, whatever.
- pvaldes 3y agoIf protected from fishing, sunken ships will create an ecotone that will fill all the nearby areas with fishes and shellfishes. Fisheries are money. Do we want money?. Then we need to fight against pirate fishing. Is very simple.
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- Tao3300 3y agoAlternative headline: Haskell Preserving Legacy Sea
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