So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

[Michaelangelica]

This is a sad report.

Humans should thrive on fish.

It should be the food of preference.

A study has found that children under the age of six who regularly eat large, predatory fish, such as shark (which is sold as flake), catfish, snapper or barramundi often have mercury levels up to seven times the safe maximum, which can lead to aggressive and regressive behaviour.

For little ones, it's anything but brain food - National - smh.com.au

Don't ask about the PCB's, DDTs, CHs, OPs plastic, alphabet soup chemicals 'cause in Australia we can't test, or don't want to.

We do know that anything out of Sydney harbour is deadly because of the crap Dow (then Union Carbide ) left there while producing agricultural chemicals for the Vietnam war. We still need to wait 20 years to see how the Sydney Fishermen's kids, with massive doses of chemicals in their blood, turn out. Chemicals that can only be excreted in fat (mother's milk).

 

How can we do this to ourselves?

We came from the sea.

There is only one blue planet.

[nkt]

The problem with capitalism is that it ensures that everything dies, and everything gets fished to extinction.

 

Imagine cod gets up to £500 a kilo. Will it stop the fishermen? Not a chance! Because the higher price ensures that people will still fish it! As long as people are prepared to pay money for it, then it ensures the fish will be wiped out.

 

See Rare Tuna - Food & Dining (washingtonian.com) for an example of this - those Bluefin aren't going to last long. There is another one I read in New Scientist recently, where there is a fleet of boats that sail out *every day* to fish for a fish that is nearly extinct. Landing one of these fish earns the boat $600, and the fish will sell to a rich businessman in Japan, via various fences and ner'do-wells and, eventually, a sushi chef, for tens of thousands of dollars. $600 is more than the fisherman would earn in two years normally, working the land. Hence dozens sail every day, catching not even one fish a week between them!

 

Quotas make little difference to anyone, and, in fact, make things even worse. Imagine you are a modern fisherman, with your huge pot of crab, a table of iced cod and other fish, or whatever. You reel them in, and kick and squash the little buggers into the hold. If it isn't full enough to meet your quota, you carry on. Now, once you start getting near your quota, what do you do? You start only pulling out the more profitable species. So the smaller crabs, the eels, etc. get dumped, while the lobsters and bigger crabs get to take their place. But those smaller crabs and cheaper fish are half frozen, bashed and battered, and have a reduced chance of living any length of time.

 

And, if the boat simply meals (grinds them up) them before dumping, they can be to the pound accurate with the quota, even on the worst of trips! Yet when it's a good trip, they can replace them with higher value stock! With only a negative effect to the environment.

 

Size limits are also counter-productive. One big fish can produce a million or more roe, but they all get caught! The only selection pressure on a fish these days is to not be trapped by a huge net - get through the holes and live. Hence, fish are growing to size slower. This makes them more likely to be killed by a seal or whatever, as they are still subject to the normal selection pressures as well.

 

In fact, natural selection is still working too. The things that eat fish have a reduced food source, so they put more pressure on the few places that trawlers and net-draggers cannot go.

 

Eventually, every fish that wants to breed will end up on a Nemo style adventure to find another of his own species. And then that will be that.

 

Forget quotas. The *only* way to protect the Orange Rougher (or whatever) is to pass a world-wide law that limits the price of a fish to £5 (or whatever) because that destroys the incentive. You *have* to fish the common and easy to find species, or else you won't get enough fish to pay your wage bill.

 

The only other option would be to gene-splice some popular high-priced and rare fish (perhaps ones on the endangered list?) with something that causes temporary impotence, with repeated doses causing the "little soldier" to wither away. Then there would be no demand!

[Michaelangelica]

Fishermen and Fish Face Extinction in the Mediterranean

"When there's a fire in the woods ... everyone is upset and goes and stops it. In the sea, it's like there's been a fire forever, but no one does a thing," says Mr. Usai.

AlterNet: Water: Fishermen and Fish Face Extinction in the Mediterranean

[Jet2]

Don't worry. Nature will balance itself. So one day fishes will fight back. They will eat human in return and then we have to concern about our own population being threatened. Will you thank the Fish then Mike?

[freeztar]

Don't worry. Nature will balance itself. So one day fishes will fight back. They will eat human in return and then we have to concern about our own population being threatened. Will you thank the Fish then Mike?

 

I doubt man-eating fish will arise to make the balance, but I do agree that nature will balance itself out. If things continue as normal, there will be so much mercury bioaccumulated in fish that they will become inedible, for example.

[Jet2]

You never know.

 

fangtooth - Google Image Search

 

Enjoy!

[freeztar]

You never know.

 

fangtooth - Google Image Search

 

Enjoy!

 

Well, unless you're doing DEEP sea diving, you're not likely to encounter one of those. :)

[Jet2]

When people get no fish to fish, they can't help but go deep...

[freeztar]

When people get no fish to fish, they can't help but go deep...

 

It would be much easier to farm raise fish than to try fishing at those depths, imho.

 

The pelagic fangtooths are among the deepest-living fish, found as far as 5,000 metres (16,400 feet) down. They are more commonly found between 200 - 2,000 metres (660 - 6,560 feet) however, and juveniles apparently stay within the upper reaches of this range.

Fangtooth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Michaelangelica]

Don't worry. Nature will balance itself. So one day fishes will fight back. They will eat human in return and then we have to concern about our own population being threatened. Will you thank the Fish then Mike?

You have been watching too may "Late Night Movies" like "Creatures from the Black Lagoon"

 

Fish can't fight back

Wild fish stocks will be depleted within the next 10-20 years unless sanctuaries are made everywhere.

[freeztar]

Here's some more disturbing news (we need a "happy news" section to offset all this gloom).

 

The Associated Press: Calif. Salmon Population Declines

Not long ago, salmon restoration efforts in the Sacramento watershed were being touted as a wildlife management success story. But recent years have seen populations dwindle in many Western rivers, and scientists are trying to understand why.

 

The council plans to meet in Sacramento in March to discuss possible restrictions, including a complete closure of the salmon season that begins in May. Final decisions will be made in April.

 

Duncan MacLean, a Half Moon Bay fisherman who is on a team that advises the fishery council, said he's bracing for hard times.

 

"It's probably going to be worse than anything we've experienced before," said MacLean, 58, who relies on salmon fishing for as much as 70 percent of his income. "It's going to put a lot of us out or business."

If the salmon disappear from the west, that will be a VERY bad sign!

[Jet2]

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

 

May be not only the fish.

 

Humans screwing up more than half of World's ocean...

Wild Blue Yonder Not So Wild | Wired Science from Wired.com

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

The Great lLakes must be an environmental disaster area?

 

The Oil Drum | The Round-Up: May 8th 2007

I live on Lake Erie (not on on the lake but within walking distance of) and it is definitly a mess....fish with wierd nasty growths etc. I wouldn't eat anything that came out of it...but people do...the game commission posts a list in the fishing liscence manual every year with recomended maximums for consumption of lake fish....aparently eating too many will result in health problems down the line due to all that good stuff they've been puttin in the lake, it's tributaries, the three lakes above (Superior, Huron, and Michigan), and their tributaries.

[Michaelangelica]

May be not only the fish.

 

Humans screwing up more than half of World's ocean...

Wild Blue Yonder Not So Wild | Wired Science from Wired.com

just four percent of Earth's oceans are still pristine; coral reefs, seagrass beds, rocky reefs and continental shelves have been particularly hard hit, while soft-bottom shallows and the deep ocean have fared best.

Very depressing article/picture from you and DFINITLYDISTRUBD

 

I think the seas are stuffed.

[Michaelangelica]

Ocean advocates hopeful of WTO cut in fishing support

Fri Feb 15, 2008 8:15am EST

By Missy Ryan

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Supporters of action to protect the world's fragile fish stocks are hoping that a recent proposal to drastically limit fishing subsidies will prevail in global trade talks.

 

"We are in such dire conditions," said Courtney Sakai, campaign director for Oceana, an environmental group that vocally opposed subsidies for boat-building, fuel and other activities they say have pushed fisheries close to exhaustion.

 

Critics of those subsidies, which total about $20 billion a year globally, hope that a long-awaited agreement in the World Trade Organization's Doha round will force countries like Japan to scale back payments.

Ocean advocates hopeful of WTO cut in fishing support | Environment | Reuters

Reuters

 

Ocean trawling impacts can be seen from space

SeaWeb

February 16, 2008

Bottom trawling, an industrial fishing method that drags large, heavy nets across the seafloor stirs up huge, billowing plumes of sediment on shallow seafloors that can be seen from space.

Untrawled and trawled seafloor, deep Oculina Reefs, Florida. Photos: R.Grant Gilmore, Dynamac Corperation, Lance Horn, UNC Wilmington

As a result of scientific studies showing that bottom trawling kills vast numbers of corals, sponges, fishes and other animals, bottom trawling has been banned in a growing number of places in recent years. Now satellite images show that spreading clouds of mud remain suspended in the sea long after the trawler has passed.

Ocean trawling impacts can be seen from space

 

 

“The root cause of this crisis is a failure of both perspective and governance,” concludes the seminal Pew Oceans Commission’s 2003 report to the nation.

“We have failed to conceive of the oceans as our largest public domain, to be managed holistically for the greater public good in perpetuity.”

Instead, we have roiled the waters, compromising the equilibrium that allowed our species to flourish in the first place, and providing ourselves with a host of challenges that will test our clever brains and our opposable thumbs as never before.

Afloat on arks of dry land, we sail toward a stormy future.

julia.whitty - Julia Whitty The Fate of the Ocean

[Michaelangelica]

World Fisheries Face Collapse Within Decades - UN

Mail this story to a friend | Printer friendly version

 

MONACO: February 25, 2008

 

 

MONACO - A deadly combination of climate change, over-fishing and pollution could cause the collapse of commercial fish stocks worldwide within decades, said Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Programme.

 

. . .

 

Some 2.6 billion people worldwide depend on fish for protein, said a UNEP report "In Dead Water" published on Friday.

 

Climate change has compounded previous problems such as over-fishing, as rising temperatures kill coral reefs, threaten tuna spawning grounds, and shift ocean currents and with them the plankton and small fish which underpin ocean food chains.

Planet Ark : World Fisheries Face Collapse Within Decades - UN

 

Garrett extends blue fin tuna licences

 

Posted Fri Feb 22, 2008 6:46pm AEDT

Updated Fri Feb 22, 2008 7:04pm AEDT

 

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett has approved a two-year extension to southern blue fin tuna licences.

 

Fishing of southern blue fin tuna has been controlled by a conservation committee since stocks became severely depleted in the 1980s.

 

Australia has a yearly quota of 5,265 tonnes, which is mostly caught by licensed fishing operations off Port Lincoln in South Australia.

Garrett extends blue fin tuna licences - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

[Ahmabeliever]

Before I talk about farming fish. I want ocean fishing severely curtailed, but the reality is, it wont be. Maybe increasing mercury is the only way to stop man from fishing, and even then, non predatory species will have less mercury and continue to be culled, thereby starving out predators...

 

The future of humans eating fish is not over as enclosed farming can continue on land. The practise of Aquaculture is fraught with it's own problems however, the two main concerns being pollution and nutrition.

 

So long as people kill ocean fish to feed farmed fish it's unsustainable. Especially with the oceans supply rapidly diminishing.

 

Fish nutrition from vegetable proteins, and specific insect rearing techniques, and smaller fast growing fish species as food sources, etc. This is where research $$ could be poured.

 

When we can sustainably feed farmed fish, the pollution is easy to take care of, and profitable.

 

With Aquaponics.

 

Freshwater you grow veggies with the waste which keeps your fish healthy in recirculated water.

 

Saltwater you grow seaweeds and filter feeding shellfish.

 

Freshwater aquaponics could take a small fortune to set up. Or you could dig a big hole in the ground, line it, stock it, and use the water on crops. The complexity is up to the individual.

 

Many land based farmers are getting diminishing returns for staple crops, a 'green' farmed fish would fetch good market prices. Farmed fish are frowned upon, and they should be :doh: But Aquaponic farmed fish, well, once we can feed em sustainably, that's a clean sustainable fish supply which could ease pressure on the oceans (though it wont as going out and catching fish is always easier than waiting for them to grow unless there's none to catch).

 

Much of it hinges on govt policy, unfortunately.