quote: Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades.
If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
....
"At this point 29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed -- that is, their catch has declined by 90 percent. It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating," Worm said. "If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime -- by 2048."
"It looks grim and the projection of the trend into the future looks even grimmer," he said. "But it's not too late to turn this around. It can be done, but it must be done soon. We need a shift from single species management to ecosystem management. It just requires a big chunk of political will to do it."
....
The National Fisheries Institute, a trade association for the seafood industry, does not share the researchers alarm.
"Fish stocks naturally fluctuate in population," the institute said in a statement. "By developing new technologies that capture target species more efficiently and result in less impact on other species or the environment, we are helping to ensure our industry does not adversely affect surrounding ecosystems or damage native species.
Seafood has become a growing part of Americans' diet in recent years. Consumption totaled 16.6 pounds per person in 2004, the most recent data available, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That compares with 15.2 pounds in 2000.
Whatever it takes to get us to realize the impact we have upon the world. Maybe the death of a billion people due to starvation, the collapse of a $200 billion industry, and the fact that you'll only be able to see fish in an aquarium instead of on your plate will get people to wake up to the reality of human impact on the planet Earth.
My friend Neal has been yelling at me for years whenever I eat sushi or salmon for just this reason. I've been trying to be more careful but it's hard to give up fish. *sigh* I guess I better try harder.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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No one needs to give up fish entirely. Americans, and really this one isn't just us, it's everyone, need to learn moderation.
Americans eat a pound more this year than we did in 2001 on average, of seafood. That's 300 million pounds. We all eat make two less trips to Red Lobster and that goes a long way towards easing the burden on the world's oceans.
But that's not enough. I've been reading stories for months now that the world's coral reefs will ALL be dead in the next two decades, from a combination of pollution and warm waters. That will have a catastrophic effect on the world's ecosystem.
Time for the world to step up and pay attention to science. It's all related, no one thing is going to fix the whole problem.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote: Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades.
This is one area where, quit frankly, small government conservatives are out of their mind. What I'm speaking of is the idea that if the government does nothing, business/private individuals will be able to solve this kind of problem by themselves without government regulation. What a joke.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Storm, do you have anything showing that "small government conservatives" don't acknowledge a place for government in commons problems such as this? I'm not sure your assumption that they don't is well-founded.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: I eat waaay more than the national average every year.
That is all.
It's okay, I don't eat any of it at all. You can have my 16.4 pounds (sorry, I do eat an order of coconut shrimp once or twice a year, so I need those .2 pounds).
Posts: 1368 | Registered: Sep 2002
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I think the pro-business side would say that when Salmon starts to cost $80 a plate, people will stop buying it, and it'll repopulate.
The problem with that being, salmon isn't like a DVD player, and supply and demand of animals doesn't work the same way.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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When it is worth eighty dollars a plate we will actively cultivate it. (or whatever the fish farm term is...)
Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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Unfortunately, it likely won't ever reach $80 a plate. When a particular variety of fish becomes in short supply, we switch to a substitute (and a tragedy of the commons typically occurs).
One big problem is that anyone can fish -- property rights are not well-defined for ocean fishing. We don't have such tragedies for most of our resources because individuals hold rights to parts of them, and allocate those parts more optimally, since they don't have the perverse incentive to overutilize that exists on a commons.
This leads to tragedy.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I love these "Whoops, we're raping the earth" stories which actually manage to trouble most people simply because they foretell consumer inconveniences.
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I don't know if cutting back on fish is such a great idea, actually. Presumably, you would substitute meat, and with the amount of fossil fuels the meat industry uses, ouch. If it's going to be any use, you'd have to eat rice and grain instead. I don't know if I'd care for that, honestly; I likeses my meatses, yes I does, precious.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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A primarily plant based diet with meat in moderation is healthier and better for the environment, both. Meat is awfully tasty, and I will never give it up entirely. Or seafood, for that matter. But I've been reducing my intake. Makes it harder to give blood, though, since I can't get in the habit of taking a vitamin every morning and my iron hovers around the acceptable line.
I've read a couple of different articles lately about fishing depleting the oceans, and they're really scary. We take until the population can't sustain itself, and then move on to another species. It can't go on forever.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Also, here's a page that lists the best and worst seafood choices, both for the environment and your health. One of the things that you wouldn't expect is that farm-raised Atlantic salmon is on the worst list for both. The way they raise it is damaging to natural stocks and polluting the ocean, and the fish are contaminated with PCBs, dioxins and pesticides. Wild Atlantic salmon is endangered, and illegal to sell in the US. But there are several varieties of Pacific/Alaskan salmon and artic char that are both safe and environmentally friendly. Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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The meat industry also uses a lot of fresh water (for washing and watering, presumably) which is a problem if you're in a drought region. Sydney has a major water crisis at the moment because the only thing our politicians seem to be able to agree on is; yes, we're running out of water and yes, we need to help the farmers. Great, so what happens when the dam is empty?
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I love these "Whoops, we're raping the earth" stories which actually manage to trouble most people simply because they foretell consumer inconveniences.
That, and starvation and the collapse of major coastal economies. Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by ElJay: A primarily plant based diet with meat in moderation is healthier and better for the environment, both.
Unless you need to consume high amounts of protein. Meat/dairy is a much, much easier way to try to get all the protein I need than...I don't know, trying to find high protein soy something.
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The New York Times had a good opinion piece on this in yesterday's paper.
Too bad you have to register with them to see it and I can't link to it from this forum. And I'd quote it for you, but, you know, copyright violations and all.
But take my word on it, it made a lot of sense.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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The Australian drought -- as well as lesser droughts in the US, Argentina, and the Ukraine -- has reduced the world wheat reserve down to 53days as of October. With no relief in sight. Even when such relief finally arrives, all GlobalWarming simulations forecast that drought will become the climatic norm for those regions affected.
Also EU overfishing off the African coast has been has been directly correlated with the increasing use of bush meat, leading to extreme depletion of African wildlife.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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This is aweosme! I can try to convicne my parents to stop serving me fish! <--- Hates fish because fish are out to get me, whenever I eat fish I choke on bones.
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I don't like seafood much, with the exception of some fried snapper or something. But because of overfishing I just quit eating that too. Mercury is another problem. Occasionally we'll have cholera warnings too, saying don't eat oysters caught in Mobile bay or whatever. Mmmm, cholera! So given all that, I just gave up seafood altogether. Everyone else seems to love it and I've always barely tolerated it so it only seems fair for me not to waste it on me.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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Their brain makes you smarter, but their tongue makes you squeal like a 14 year old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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For a minute I was confused about Telp and Storm Saxon posting, but then I realized it was just aspectre bumping an extremely old thread again.
Posts: 1658 | Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: We can't do anything right.
As long as we keep consuming like we do and looking at the world (an all that is in it) as neverendingly consumable.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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And to think.. I've been trying to gag down MORE fish for health reasons.
Oh well, back to Steak for me!
Lyr: Anyone could have told you turning food into fuel was a stupid idea. There are plenty of other organics you can make high priced oil out of without sucking up farm land and taking food out of people's mouths.
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The Pixiest, what are you saying about MTBE? That it is worse than the lead that it replaced?
And almost all of the biofuel people I encounter are against this insane corn-based ethanol methods. Everything about them seems to be bad, unless you're in the business. Biofuels should not be ruled out, but they should not continue on the path they are on now.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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It figures this thread would be resuscitated on a day when my family plans to go to Red Lobster. Way to guilt trip me from afar.
quote:From Pix Lyr: Anyone could have told you turning food into fuel was a stupid idea. There are plenty of other organics you can make high priced oil out of without sucking up farm land and taking food out of people's mouths.
I don't think that's automatically true. Granted, I don't support the use of corn or soy for fuel, as there are other crops out there that don't take up food growing farmland and are much, much more efficient carriers of energy, but using something than can be consumed doesn't automatically make it a bad idea. Algae is consumable, after some processing, and but it's also grown on non-crop land, and is far more productive than any other large scale biofuel crop.
The problem obviously comes from taking food out of the market and putting it into making fuel, which is obviously a bad idea, but if you were to offset that with new cropland elsewhere, there wouldn't be a problem. Just because we weren't and aren't doing it right doesn't mean the idea is automatically wrong. It does however make it very complicated, burdensome, and in the end, a bad idea because of a lack of interest in the problems named, but not automatically.
quote:From The White Whale Biofuels should not be ruled out, but they should not continue on the path they are on now.
I'm not sure how I feel about that statement. If you mean that we should just kill ethanol cold turkey, I would hesitantly lean toward favoring that idea, with the caveat that I'd want to know what that would mean practically. But nearly all the research going into biofuels right now concerns second, third and even fourth generation biofuels. Corn was a first step, and a worst step, and everyone throwing money at biofuel startups realizes that now, which is why the money is going to a variety of different, some more exotic, potential crops. We need to continue exactly along the path we're on, because that path leads away from corn. We just need to hurry the hell up.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Lyrhawn, yes, that's what I mean. Corn ethanol is doubleplusungood, but it's still where commercialization of ethanol is heading right now. I'm all for non-corn ethanol, but the corn lobbies are a lot bigger than I am.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I think the fastest way, other than Congress just cutting off funding of course, to kill corn ethanol subsidies would be to change the presidential primary schedule so Iowa falls some time in February, rather than January.
Everyone hates ethanol except the farm belt, but no one dares touch it for fear of never making it past the early stages of the primary. That's the fault of the primary calendar, and the fault of the media, for thinking that New Hampshire and Iowa are somehow indicative of the entire country in such a way that not surviving those two states means not surviving anywhere else.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Alaska's ocean turning more acidic. Colder water dissolves gases more readily than warmer water. As the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide goes up, more is entrained in the cold waters nearer the poles than in the warm waters nearer the equator. Dissolving more CO2 into water produces higher levels of carbonic acid, which in turn makes it more difficult for shellfish and plankton to extract calcium carbonate out of the sea water to build their exoskeletons.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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"At this point 29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed -- that is, their catch has declined by 90 percent. It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating," Worm said.
Am I the only person who noticed that WORM is an expert on fish?
Posts: 270 | Registered: Apr 2009
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