
One in three fish caught never makes it to the plate – UN report - YeGoblynQueenne
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/09/one-in-three-fish-caught-never-makes-it-to-the-plate-un-report
======
dajohnson89
One of the more depressing things to read, is how back in the early days of
America, one could just reach into the river/sea and grab a fish.

E.g. lobsters were once so plentiful that native americans used them as
fertilizer[0]. And there's photographic evidence of overfishing too. [1] is a
nice NPR piece about how the largest catch of the year at a particular spot in
Florida has been dwindling.

[0] -
[http://www.gma.org/lobsters/allaboutlobsters/lobsterhistory....](http://www.gma.org/lobsters/allaboutlobsters/lobsterhistory.html)

[1] -
[https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b...](https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/big-
fish-stories-getting-littler)

~~~
sametmax
Equally terrible is the same comparison about bugs, but it's easier to make
people flip because it happened in our lifetime (recent and so fast!):

When I was young, I was driving a small bike. Having mosquitoes or flies
clouds was a common occurrence on the road and the best motivator to wear a
helmet for a youngster not bothered by security.

Nowadays, I'm still driving a bike, although a bigger one. But I encounter a
bug cloud maybe once a year.

Our garden is also quite silent, and I have to go to the country side to hear
the bugs again.

Given the massive role of fishes and bugs in our ecosystem, this is more than
alarming.

We already have a hard time making people aware of one single issue, such as
global warming. But the reality of the scale of our fuck up is so beyond that,
as we have a bleak role in:

\- global warming

\- killing most animals, including fished and bugs

\- then selectively breading the remaining life to serve our interest only,
annihilating biodiversity and its balance

\- destruction of huge biomes by either exploiting it or polluting it

\- consuming resources at a rate that make even the most abundant of them seem
scarce

\- polluting air and water to such a scale it's becoming a health issue

Scientists are alarmed by one topic, saying we should do something before it's
too late.

However, take all those topics together and the big picture seems an
impossible battle to win, which ironically we fight against ourself, that is
leading us to the worst possible ending

~~~
swebs
Don't forget "solving world hunger" which means causing a human population
boom, exasperating the above problems.

~~~
sametmax
We never really had a technological problem about world hunger. It was
political. Social. But humanity has been able to produce food for everybody
for centuries.

It just happens we don't share it and we waste it.

I think energy, peace and hygiene are a better factor in baby booming. They
contribute to a better food distribution as well.

~~~
TheBeardKing
Efficiently transporting food or growing it where people need it is certainly
a technological/logistical problem.

~~~
sametmax
Right. I meant food production technologies.

But even then, people don't need that much food to be healthy. A regular human
being can live happy with one meal a day. We are just used to more.

The population was also much lower in the past.

The problem is more about:

\- war

\- people not helping each others

\- a small group of people keeping a lot of it for themself (royalty, rich
cast, etc)

And of course now we face a novel problem: the fact our population is getting
huge and want to eat meat 2 times a day.

------
purephase
> The FAO reports that 35% of global catches are wasted. About a quarter of
> these losses are bycatch or discards, mostly from trawlers, where unwanted
> fish are thrown back dead because they are too small or an unwanted species.
> But most of the losses are due to a lack of knowledge or equipment, such as
> refrigeration or ice-makers, needed to keep fish fresh.

This is so depressing...

~~~
belorn
It get worse when one consider that wanted species is only a tiny fraction of
the fish population, while invasive or overpopulated species continue to cause
problems because they are so unwanted that the most economical thing a
fisherman can do is to dump them back into the water.

~~~
emodendroket
As I understand it it's pretty controversial to promote fishing invasive
species, because the concern is it could motivate people to deliberately cause
the invasive species to spread.

~~~
belorn
Here in Sweden we have a invasive species called signal crayfish that carries
the Crayfish plague. People do eat the signal crayfish and I have only seen
encouragement to promote aggressive fishing of it. The voices of concern is
against illegal implantation, but those have (to what I have heard) been
mostly of a cautionary nature about people who unknowingly spread the invasive
type into lakes which so far has been spared.

The European crayfish is seen as more traditional correct so the beside
getting devastated from the plague it is also rather heavily fished. Getting
people to stop and only go after the invasive one would be a huge win, but as
the trend is currently it look like the European crayfish is going to get
extinct. A very clear example where a change in what kind of species we buy
would have a positive effect rather than a stop.

------
lprubin
A huge amount of the plastic in the ocean is discarded fishing gear as well.
[0]

[0] - [https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-
ga...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-garbage-
patch-plastics-environment/)

------
forkLding
[http://globalfishingwatch.org/map/](http://globalfishingwatch.org/map/)

If you're interested to see real-time data visualization of fishing around the
world that have been monitored.

------
GreeniFi
Fish catch in East Africa is down 75% in 30 years. That’s huge - given
increased population, hunting effort and “fishing down the food chain”, as
species previously not eaten are now fished. There will undoubtedly be
substitution - but we barely understand the 2nd order effects, let alone 3rd ,
4rth and 5th.

------
rollulus
If news like this upsets you, there's an easy solution: just stop eating fish.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Which solves exactly nothing, until a significant chunk of the world's
population does the same too. And then we'll have depressing articles about
poor fishermen who found themselves unemployed and unemployable.

The problem is unfortunately very complex and in need of some large-scale,
targeted effort.

~~~
cageface
This is the appeal to futility fallacy and can be used to make an argument
against doing just about anything. By not eating fish you become part of the
solution instead of part of the problem. And the poor fishermen are going to
be unemployed soon enough at the current rate of overfishing because there
won't be anything left for them to catch anyway.

The bycatch for sushi fish is even worse than the figure given in the article:

[http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/sushi-obsession-
is...](http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/sushi-obsession-is-
destroying-our-oceans/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's not an appeal to futility, it's pointing out the reality of the problem.

My marginal impact on the problem is negligible. The issue only manifests
itself on a very large scale. Therefore, any solution involving "just stop
eating fish" needs to explain a strategy to achieve this change of behavior
_on a large scale_. Note that simply telling people on the Internet to change
is not a working strategy - for each individual, again, the impact is
marginal, but individual sacrifice required is great, so most people will just
shrug and go on with their lives.

Want to make a change? Sure, stop eating fish if you want to signal your
commitment. But _don 't stop at that_, because at this point you've achieved
nothing. Work to have more impact. Some particular bottom-up and top-down
areas I can outline that mesh nicely together:

\- Work to make the idea of not eating fish more popular. If you can convince
a few hundred thousand people to stop eating fish, then maybe it'll actually
show up somewhere on some spreadsheet in a fishing company. Be careful not to
become like PETA though - if you're too hard about the topic, people will
start eating _more_ fish just out of spite.

\- Make it easier for people to stop eating fish. That involves creating and
popularizing new foodstuffs that are substitute to fish, but have better
ecological footprint.

\- The ultimate goal: work towards making the cost of fish products correctly
account for externalities. That is, making them (much) more expensive. This
involves finding ways to correctly estimate the costs of ecological impact,
and then convincing regulators to make fishing industry pay this cost in
taxes. Also, you'll want to fight various fishing subsidies that further hide
the true costs. You'll make enemies along the way. But this is something that
_must_ happen, as it is _the_ real solution. The previous two examples I gave
are only supportive to this one. Fish must get more expensive. That's the
efficient way of achieving a mass change of behaviour.

~~~
cageface
Those are all good ideas, I agree, and I commend anyone with the dedication to
pursue them. But even just not eating fish and setting a positive example to
your friends and colleagues etc is still worth doing. I became vegan because
of the example of a friend and several of my friends, while not vegan, have
been eating less meat & fish as a consequence of my example and are more
conscious in the choice of the meat & fish they do eat.

I'd love to see the animal agriculture industries forced to pay for their
externalities but I doubt it's going to happen any time soon. But in the
meantime a lot of positive change has come just from people being made more
aware of where what they eat comes from and what it costs to get it there.
Non-dairy milks have become so popular, for example, that they've put a huge
dent in the dairy industry's profits.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Not denying that changing your habits and setting an example for your friends
has some impact. I'm only trying to frame it in the relation to the problem.
Its marginal first order effects are negligible. This concept was hard for me
to accept emotionally too, in the space of energy use - whether or not I
reduce my usage of electricity and gas has near-zero immediate impact on
anything except my wallet. Such is the problem of scale.

The irony is, that the very same thing that's individually almost meaningless,
is also _the_ solution once everyone follows it. And there's a point in the
middle somewhere, when the idea becomes popular - like vegetarianism today -
and suddenly its impact becomes much greater than before. It gets noticed by
the market, it starts flowing through feedback loops and begins affecting
everything else. One person in a million refusing to eat fish is meaningless.
One in a thousand starts to sound like a business opportunity, and business
begets more business.

The trick is, how to get from here to there. Basically, how to start and
sustain a movement.

I guess my whole point here is: if you care about a social problem then do
your individual thing (here: stop eating fish). But don't stop there, try to
do more. Try to speed up the change instead of just changing yourself and
_hoping_ others will follow. If we know anything about society, we know this:
there are two primary motivators for changing behavior - things that impact
one's sense of identity/ego, and things that impact one's wallet. Popularizing
fish abstinence is an ego-based solution. Taxing the fishing industry is the
economics-based one. We should pursue both.

------
cascom
Eat more oysters! It blows my mind all of the ecological (and gastronomic
benefits) of oyster-culture - especially in contrast to a report like this!

Edit: Farmed oysters

~~~
eitally
Oysters themselves have been at high risk, at least where I come from
(Virginia):
[http://www.virginiaplaces.org/natural/oysters.html](http://www.virginiaplaces.org/natural/oysters.html)

~~~
cascom
Edited my comment - I was referring to farmed oysters hence the oyster-culture
(vs aquaculture) comment

------
hurpaDurpa
So, honest question: Why are invasive species like the gigantic asian carp so
reviled, when they seem to be quite successful animals, thriving in an
otherwise unforgiving environment?

I get that invasive species can stress their environment until it collapses
and ruins even their own capacity to thrive or even survive, but sometimes I
get the sense that asian carp are denegrated because they annoy humans by
jumping out and slamming into people on boats. Are asian carp really a threat
to their surroundings, or simply inconvenient from a human perspective?

~~~
aaronblohowiak
They are an ecological destroyer and they don’t taste good

~~~
selectodude
They taste fine. No better or worse than tilapia. It's just that it's
impossible to get all the bones out because a lot of them aren't connected to
anything and are just floating in the meat.

------
vfc1
There are also huge human health concerns, because a lot of the feed of
aquaculture fish (53% of fish consumed by humans today) is made from other
caught fish, which leads to toxic bioaccumulation:

> farmed fish can harm wild populations because often their feed, made from
> wild fish such as sardines and anchovies, is caught at sea and they can
> cause pollution

------
edf13
Absolutely shocking statistic! But not surprising with the rate of overfishing
combined with fishing quotas resulting in redundant catches being thrown back!

------
singularity2001
What was the name of the recent book, which describes nature in its pristine
state? Not "Paradise Lost".

~~~
PokemonNoGo
Sounds interesting!

I don't think you're after The World Without Us but I guess it's on the same,
ish, topic. Looking forward to hearing the correct answer.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Without_Us)

------
jherrick
So, catch and release is included in this number. That makes the number very
believable to me.

