
The Ocean is Broken (2013) - drone
http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1848433/the-ocean-is-broken/
======
madaxe_again
I just spent three weeks at sea in the Andaman, and... it's grim out there.
The sea is virtually lifeless. Small pockets of sea-life survive on reefs in
national parks, but as you look up from the water, you see trawlers scattered
across the horizon - soundly _within_ the nautical boundaries of the national
parks. They operate day and night, as the article says, and the size and
brightness of the arrays of floodlights they deploy to attract squid and other
nocturnal creatures is astounding.

The crew I was with have been sailing all over the planet for the past several
decades, and unanimously reported that they'd seen a steep decline in the
variety, quantity and quality of all sea life, particularly in the past five
years. Places which once thrived with dolphins are now devoid of them, others
which were rich with seals and birds are barren rocks at the same time of
year, and propspeed (anti-marine-growth coating for propellers) is
increasingly pointless with the amount of near-surface debris. In addition,
they noted that sea temperatures were way out of whack, weather was "odd"
everywhere they've been in the last few years (pretty much everywhere on the
planet), and worryingly, that even recent charts and depth soundings were
often significantly wrong, due to the seabed shifting in storms.

All of this is common talk among the yachting crowd, and they're worried -
people are selling boats and moving back ashore after decades of "marine
life", and brand new marinas are rotting absent of tenants. It's not the
economic crisis that's forcing these folks out, as they mostly either subsist
or are independently wealthy, and they're all pretty clear about it being due
to their fears for the future viability of faring the oceans.

~~~
dredmorbius
I ordinarily avoid "me too" posts, but I'd really like to emphasize
joeguilmette's request: do you have specific pointers to any sources for
discussions among yachters of concern over the state of the oceans, and of
their abandoning boats, marinas, etc.?

~~~
madaxe_again
Not really, I'm afraid to say, as a) I'm not part of their community, more of
a passerby and b) this was all face-to-face conversations over shared
meals/tasks/adventures etc.

It's all hearsay/anecdotal evidence, but I'm inclined to respect the opinions
and views of folks who've spent more than half their lives on the water. It's
unbelievably sad... it really feels like "last chance to see" for the seas.

~~~
dredmorbius
I appreciate the response.

Where was this, if you don't mind? I've got a few docks I can walk myself. And
yes, I've seen changes to the sea as well over the past few years.

~~~
madaxe_again
Andaman sea - Thailand, Similans, Surins, Andaman & Nicobar isles.

One thing I forgot to mention are the jellies. Driving everyone mad, as a)
they clog pumps and filters like you wouldn't believe and b) stinger suits are
boring.

------
CalRobert
I sometimes wonder if shopping for groceries is as frustrating for most
people. I like Nutella, but when I see Palm Oil as the second ingredient I
picture dead orangutans. I like beef, but I sympathize for a fellow mammal and
think of the enormous amounts of diverted water and fertilizer runoff that
goes in to producing feed. I enjoy fish, but thinking of this makes me sick to
my stomach. I enjoy many beverages that come in plastic bottles, but that
plastic, even if recycled, comes at substantial cost. Even veggies are largely
wrapped in plastic anymore. Even though it's a small thing compared to
everything else in life Keurig machines fill me with rage. And yet, I am
guilty too. I love to travel, and this generally means flying since I live on
an island. Therefore I contribute to ocean acidification, climate change, and
of course the industrial processes that go into making planes.

When people ask why I prefer not to buy fish and I say it's because of concern
over the world's fisheries (I'd rather not dive in a global jellyfish swarm)
they look at me like I'm from another planet. Who gives a crap, after all? One
person's actions will not stop the destruction of our only planet.

 _sigh_

~~~
sliverstorm
I can't think of anything at the grocery store that doesn't have some sort of
negative implication. Heck, just driving to the grocery store burns fuel and
supports the automotive industry. Biking to the grocery store burns food (of
which all food has negative implications) and supports the bicycle industry.

You can work yourself into knots over it; there is no way in which you can eat
food and not have _some_ negative impact. So, IMO, you either give up the
battle entirely, or you can stop killing yourself over it but still make
intelligent choices. For example, I eat fish because I believe fish farming
could be a better choice for the future than cattle farming, and I eat chicken
because the feed-to-meat ratio is better than beef.

As not only animals but meat-eating animals, it's just a fact of life that
our/your existence costs something, means some sort of sacrifice for another
organisim. You can try to reduce your impact, but you can't _not_ have an
impact.

Also, a little bit of my personal philosophy here- one way we _could_ reduce
our impact is by doing as little as possible, never moving about and burning
more calories than absolutely necessary. Never performing strenuous activity
that results in regenerative & anabolic processes, which require extra
nutrients. But the way I see it, _just existing_ costs the world "100
externality". If living to the fullest costs "110 externality", I feel like I
am doing a disservice if I chose the first option, saving so little
"externality" and spending my life miserable. For have I not then utterly
wasted the costs I imposed on the world?

~~~
secstate
Fish farms are some of the worst pollutants in the ocean. Remote stretches of
Patagonia are becoming cess pools of salmon shit as a result of salmon
farming.

Don't get me wrong, there are sustainable ways to farm fish and other seafood,
but most are a complete ecological disaster. Even something as seemingly
harmless as mussel farming has detrimental impacts on the local ocean ecology,
as _surprise, surprise_ mussels produce waste and accumulating it in one place
is not a good thing.

~~~
sliverstorm
Yup. To elaborate more fully, I buy wild-caught fish because of how
unsustainably many fish farms are run right now. I buy particular _varieties_
of fish based on what species are most sustainably fished. I buy _fish_ to
support the fish industry ("vote with your wallet") in hopes that people will
see the demand and continue to pursue & improve fish farming in the future.

------
BoppreH
There was an "What If"[0] on xkcd about the ocean and ships' weight. The
question itself was innocuous, but inside a parenthesis was this sentence:

    
    
      (Marine fish biomass dropped by 80% over the last century,
      which—taking into consideration the growth rate of the
      world’s shipping fleet—leads to an odd conclusion:
      Sometime in the last few years, we reached a point where
      there are, by weight, more ships in the ocean than fish.)
    

I'm afraid of the future. Very, very afraid.

[0]: [http://what-if.xkcd.com/33/](http://what-if.xkcd.com/33/)

~~~
leobelle
And yet, are you still eating meat? Fish? What are you doing for your part?

~~~
tolmasky
"What are you doing for your part" is equivalent to nothing, UNLESS you are
perhaps paradoxically working in finance to become rich enough to have enough
money and/or influence to someday have a real effect on these problems. Or
maybe actively researching sustainable technologies, or part of a pro-
environmental lobbyist group or something.

Don't kid yourself: if you want to stand on a high horse understand that your
lack of eating meat makes absolutely no difference here. If you actually want
to take the position that individual initiative is needed, then you have to be
doing pretty crazy things to make a dent. Arguably its worse than doing
nothing because you assuage your own guilt by convincing yourself that you are
no longer part of the problem and disincentivizing yourself from being part of
the actual solution.

~~~
leobelle
I don't kid myself, you're kidding yourself if you do not think that
individual behaviors cause considerable impact on a vast scale in aggregate.
The "high-horse" line is just a personal attack that doesn't have any merit in
the argument, and really I shouldn't have bothered to respond to you because
of it.

~~~
tolmasky
This is classic "if everyone just ___" logic, which is a logical fallacy. You
admit to as much yourself, these things only matter _in the aggregate_ , and
our individual behaviors are _independent events_ that do not affect each
other, and thus do not affect the "aggregate". That is to say, you're not
eating meat does not cause others to not eat meat in any way that scales,
which is the only possibly valid reasoning to it ever making a difference. If
it did, if it had some sort of domino affect, it would be a valid criticism,
but it isn't. You not eating meat has only the measurable affects on your life
and margin of error effects on this problem. To further understand the
absurdity of this thinking, apply it to anything else: let's say you don't
want to go to the movies, and I say "but what if NO ONE goes, then the movie
theaters will go bankrupt!" You would appropriately call me insane, but this
is the _exact same reasoning_. I could respond in the exact same way:
"leobelle, don't you understand that individual actions have considerable
impact in the aggregate". Yes, they do, but that's besides the point because
your individual action does not on its own affect the other individual actions
making up "the aggregate".

The "high horse" comment, btw, is completely justified due to _your_ clear
moral judgement on OP for not "doing his part", which you then proceeded to
give ineffectual advice regarding.

------
alexeisadeski3
The astounding decline of the ocean's fisheries is an incredibly important
issue. But we all know that.

What we all don't know is the solution. What we've got is a classic tragedy of
the commons. It's made more difficult due to the international nature of
oceanic fisheries - those little guys like to swim around, paying no heed to
national boundaries. Plus there's all of that international ocean to police.
Who's going to ensure that 3rd world fishermen aren't catching too much tuna,
inadvertently killing too many dolphins, etc etc? Is it reasonable to expect
the US to police the entirety of the Pacific Ocean's fish stock?

We've seen this play before. And the _only_ practical solution is not
something which the leftists here are going to like.

We have to privatize the oceans fisheries. It is imperative. It has to happen
now. It has to happen _yesterday_. Fish stocks are collapsing. Fish stocks
have collapsed.

The fisheries have to be delineated by whatever means appropriate (species
and/or location, depending upon the migratory/wandering patterns of each fish
in question) and auctioned off to the highest bidder. The highest bidder will
then have the right to determine how many fish each year/month are harvested,
and by whom. The highest bidder can police the fish themselves. If they fail
to police the fish, their ownership is revoked and the rights are re-
auctioned.

This is simple stuff. It's been done before with other natural resources. We
all need to get over our political differences and make it happen.

~~~
manachar
> We have to privatize the oceans fisheries.

Somehow the world managed to bring many whales back from the brink of
extension without throwing up their hands and claiming "tragedy of the
commons" or privatizing the ocean.

It's not easy, but recognizing this as a global problem and doing the
international consensus building needed to solve this problem should be a
priority. The solution will probably need to be a mix of commercial work
(properly certified fish farms perhaps), public relations/marketing (i.e.
convince people this is important), and funded governmental work (i.e. ban
importation of fish not collected in a sustainable fashion).

Governments have shown several successes (of various degrees) in the last 50
years with various endangered species and resources. From whales and ivory, to
bald eagles to clean air. Throwing them out of the mix for solutions seems as
short sited as not leveraging market dynamics to solve it.

~~~
secstate
Come again? North Atlantic Right Whales are already functionally extinct. Fin
Whales are still on the endangered list as are Blue Whales.

No major whale population has been removed from the endangered list since
being placed on it.

And yet fisherman still complain bitterly when they're asked to use sinking
lines for their lobster pots to help avoid entanglement. Whales are not a
great example to trot out of a healthy ocean.

------
stretchwithme
Tragedy of the commons is where the price paid for a resource is merely the
extraction cost. The cost of replacing the resource or losing it entirely is
ignored.

Private property creates an incentive to preserve the goose that lays the
golden eggs.

Some things, like fishing rights, can work to preserve resources while still
allowing their use. It doesn't work with everything.

Either way, we are going to have to pay more than just the extraction cost if
we expect a resource to continue. We are going to have to pay more for fish.
Privately owned fishing rights forces action to prevent collapse. Without
something like it, the collapse of the resource will surely force a higher
price. Just not now, when it actually could help prevent the collapse.

~~~
pekk
You have mischaracterized the tragedy of the commons. These premises form an
intellectualized rationale for crony capitalism, but your suggestion doesn't
solve the tragedy of the commons.

Suppose that you hand over Yellowstone to some big company (say, Wal-mart) for
a song, because they are politically connected. Now Yellowstone is not part of
the commons, so there is no tragedy of the commons, right? No, you have only
obscured the problem, but the problem remains. Because Wal-mart has no special
interest in preserving it _as a common good_. If it makes the most money for
them to sell Yellowstone piece by piece to ranchers and fast food franchises,
or install a lot of fake geysers as if it were the Bellagio, they will do that
for their profit, but that doesn't eliminate the negative externalities.
Starting with how the land was handed over to someone connected, which is how
this kind of intervention you suggest is frequently corrupted.

Just because you own something doesn't mean that you won't spoil it, let alone
that you won't spoil things for other people with a legitimate interest if it
happens to profit you. More ownership is not a silver bullet.

~~~
dredmorbius
I think stretchwithme is actually fairly accurate in his portrayal of the
tragedy of the commons. The key is _the externalities must be internalized_.

The problem arises where "privatization" is floated as the answer to a
resource overconsumption situation, but where the property boundaries of what
is privatized don't encompass the entire set of externalities. You nail this
in your criticism of the hypothetical WalMart sale of Yellowstone: "Wal-mart
has no special interest in preserving it as a _common good._ " If that's the
case, then what was privatized _isn 't_ the full set of externalities. And
that's where Hardin's tidy solution starts getting messy.

If you're familiar with his works, you'll also note that a second essay of his
addresses another challenge: "lifeboat ethics". While privatizing a commons
(properly) can address the economic inefficiencies of privatized gains and
socialized costs (banking, anyone), _what it cannot do is fundamentally
increase the carrying capacity of a resource beyond its absolute limits._ Yes,
it's possibly that privatization might lead to technical optimization, but
_some_ limits remain. And ultimately, the ability to provide for people (and
ecosystems) has bounds.

There's also the challenge of properly valuing a resource over time, and
that's a place where any market solution seems fundamentally limited, at least
as presently implemented.

~~~
stretchwithme
The future value of a resource is reflected in its resale value. Most people
don't destroy their homes because they hope to resell them.

Of course, some resources have value simply because they exist. And nobody
pays for the privilege of knowing or looking at them. A body of water provides
such value to everybody that can look out the window at it.

If we did have ways to "own" the view, better decisions could be made about
conflicting potential uses.

Whats clear to me is that deciding these things politically doesn't work well
a lot of the time, especially in a system where lobbyists have so much
influence.

~~~
dredmorbius
_The future value of a resource is reflected in its resale value._

No: the market's _present assessment_ of an asset's future value _with
relation to the present state of the market_ is what its (re)sale _price_
shows.

There is a difference between "price" and "value", and it's a long, long
discussion. Smith reflects on it at length in _Wealth of Nations_ ,
particularly the distinction between the "natural" and "market" prices of
commodities:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2H...](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3300/3300-h/3300-h.htm#link2HCH0007)

The longer discussion involves much of what is now called economic discourse
prior to Smith, see generally Backhouse, _The Ordinary Business of Life_
[http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780691116297-1](http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780691116297-1)

In particular, the market can grossly overvalue items (bubbles), and it can
put premiums on present consumption during times of crisis (e.g., burning
books or artworks for their heat value in wartime).

And there are goods of immense value for which no or limited markets exist:
air and water, in general (assuming you can capture these from the skies or
collect them from the land).

~~~
stretchwithme
I think resale value generally refers to its price.

~~~
dredmorbius
I wanted to make explicit the distinction between "value" which can denote a
range of concepts, and "price" which specifically refers to a sum of money.
Since value itself is at question here.

Though yes, "market value" generally equates to "market price". And the
pedants will note that "price" needn't be strictly limited to monetary
assessments, though that's how I'm using the term here.

~~~
stretchwithme
Thank god you were here.

~~~
dredmorbius
Why stop there? You can thank my parents, God and Ayn Rand.

------
diogenescynic
>"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That
they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It
was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and
stripped it of every living thing."

This makes me sick. So sad to see such waste and disregard for the ecosystem.

~~~
drone
Indeed, and not to mention, depending on the by-catch, the stuff they're
throwing away more be more valuable than what they're targeting, pound for
pound, in different markets.

That is to say, just because you're fishing for tuna and pulled up aji doesn't
mean you've wasted your time. There is a great market for aji, and to be
honest, you'd pay more for it in a sushi restaurant in my town than you would
90% of the meat in a yellow fin.

By-catch is becoming a big deal as a general restaurant issue on the gulf
coast.[0] A lot of people have been pushing bycatch as delicacies in local
restaurants. Just last week, a chef prepared us several courses of bycatch as
sashimi or aged, depending on the fish - including scorpionfish and blue
runner. I definitely would not have had a better lunch if he brought out tuna
and snapper. (And wouldn't have ordered them, either.)

[0] -
[http://www.edibleaustin.com/index.php/food-2/cookingfresh/97...](http://www.edibleaustin.com/index.php/food-2/cookingfresh/971-the-
total-catch)

------
jaegerpicker
Reading stories like this are incredibly depressing. I love the ocean and
aquatic ecosystems, always have. I grew up fishing and boating and still spend
as much time as I can on those hobbies. I moved from Ohio to Maine in large
part to be by the Ocean. I wish there was more that I could do to help affect
real change. I volunteer, I try to be as environmentally friendly as possible,
and I support a lot of different conservation groups but what I wish was that
there was an open source like community to help with the science and
education. I mean I would gladly help to contribute to some thing like that.
For me that's worth more than chasing all the startup success in the world.

------
parasight
Maybe it's worthwhile to spend more time and brains on saving our environment.
At least until we are able to leave this planet. Which I don't see in the near
future. We are able to walk on the moon, build atom bombs and heal deadly
diseases. Are we smart enough to not destroy this planet?

~~~
prawn
No. We are too greedy on the whole to avoid slowly destroying it.

And even when we can leave this planet, we should still endeavour to keep
Earth as well as we can.

------
ColinWright
You may care to read the discussions from previous submissions:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ocean+broken](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ocean+broken)

------
hairama
This is a great story--unfortunately, it's just that, a story.

It's not surprising to me that there are people recklessly over-fishing, but
without any numbers, no government can take action to stop it.

On a tangential point, earth-life has survived five mass-extinction events,
and a future one is almost certain. This doesn't negate the tragic, useless
destruction of life, but the earth itself--and some form of life on it--will
endure.

~~~
pertinhower
Is this supposed to make me feel better? I'm real happy for the earth
surviving and all, but I want to survive too, and I want people to survive. A
philosophy of, "The earth will survive though we'll be gone—and maybe that
will be justice," is ridiculous, because if we're gone, who will be left to
celebrate the justice? Justice lies in the conscious mind, and if the
conscious mind is gone, justice goes too.

~~~
pm90
It isn't supposed to make you feel better at all; just to make you aware of
the fact that the Earth will probably survive even if you, me and all of our
descendents don't.

~~~
MereInterest
Not in the slightest. It is the conscious mind that gives meaning to the world
around it. There is no splendor in nature that is not in the eyes of those
watching it. We have seen no evidence of any intelligence beyond our own. If
we die, all meaning goes out of the world.

~~~
weirddog
Ironically, this is the same foolish anthropocentric sentiment that is
preventing most people to care about the environment. Congrats, you're part of
the problem.

~~~
MereInterest
I care about the environment, because it supports humanity. If at any point it
fails to do so, whether by its own shifting or by our destruction of it, our
course of action should not be to sit back and say "Oh well, I guess our death
is for the greater good of the universe.". Our duty would then be to grasp the
environment and mold it to best suit our needs.

------
lettergram
Well this is the main reason I prefer to buy farm raised fish. It might not do
much to help the eco system, or my health, but I feel at least the fish I am
eating was raised with the purpose of being eaten. Further, I find it rather
gross that fishermen essentially "throw away" everything they don't want.

~~~
cwal37
It does help. In terms of output farmed fish are far and away the most
efficient of livestock. It's been a few years, but if I recall correctly
farmed tilapia produce 1kg per 1.1kg of feed. That's incredible compared to
beef or even chicken.

Also, encouraging well run fish farming operations takes pressure off of the
wild stocks. In terms of eating meat, you're doing it right.

~~~
rprospero
A few years ago, I was at the local natural food market and I overheard the
manager explaining to a customer that the store did not and would not ever
carry farm raised fish. He explained how farmed fish lived in horrible
conditions and that the only moral and sustainable option is to only buy free
range fish which were caught from the ocean, where fish were part of their
proper ecosystem.

From an intellectual, sustainability standpoint, I suspect that you are right
and that farmed fish is the way to go. However, this is why I've completely
factored guilt and morality out of my environmental decisions - No matter what
I do, one of the employees at the natural food store will tell me that I'm
killing the planet.

------
ChrisNorstrom
Well we can start by taking pictures of it instead of just writing walls of
text about it hoping the average person will read about it and care.

Here's what pisses me off. Guy writes about how devastated the ocean is,
doesn't take a single picture. The only photo in the whole article is him and
his boat.

~~~
prawn
A writer interviewed the boatie. It was likely published in print first where
space is at a premium and/or only supported by the advertising at hand (they
don't just add extra pages). Then online editors or lackies put up the story.
News at that level and with that heritage is not at the level where they think
like many of the rest of us on the net - e.g., add a gallery, etc.

Even the Great Pacific garbage patch page on Wikipedia has no photos - the
cross-section of people out there able to take photos and people likely to be
editing Wikipedia don't seem to cross.

You can see some on Google Images though I suspect that many are general
garbage-in-water photos:
[https://www.google.com.au/search?q=great+pacific+garbage+pat...](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=great+pacific+garbage+patch&safe=off&espv=210&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

~~~
mikeash
A picture of the garbage patch would look like any other picture of the open
ocean. Many of these problems are not visible to the naked eye.

------
malandrew
I really wish this story had had more pictures. It's a shame that all this is
happening and no one seems to be really documenting it with photos and video
and these images aren't being shown with these stories.

~~~
lettergram
Apparently, there is nothing to see anways

~~~
pm90
What a tragedy :(

------
TausAmmer
It is changing, like everything, adopting to having less fish and animals.
Interface is changing, it is becoming hostile with human life, more demanding
and unforgiving, reflecting us in every step and way.

"What can I do? I am only one person?", throws plastic wrapping against the
wind.

------
katowulf
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change
the world (or the ocean). Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

May Ms. Mead be with us always.

------
ackydoodles
I agree that we need to sound the alarm.

December 2013, North Atlantic Ocean between Florida, Bermuda, and the Eastern
Caribbean: nearly devoid of sea birds and fish; plastic garbage common.

January 2014, Coastal Everglades of Florida: silent. No birdsong. None.

February 2014, Florida Bay and the Keys: enough lobster pots that you could
walk from Cape Sable to Key West without getting your shoes wet. This is
absolutely not a sustainable fishery--this is an unmitigated rape of the
planet for the almighty dollar, even inside the supposedly protected waters of
the marine sanctuary.

------
ra88it
This prompted me to do some googling and I found this:

[http://www.oceanhealthindex.org/](http://www.oceanhealthindex.org/)

Does anybody here have knowledge about this organization?

------
Nux
The ocean will recover after we're gone. Or after we've managed to put an end
to poverty and educate everyone, though this seems an extremely distant dream.

------
chrisgd
I am really interested in companies like this: www.cleanseas.com.au that are
trying to breed fish on their own. They still need to grow them in the ocean.
Not sure of the cost to get there, but interesting none the less.

------
kpennell
"Sailing" on Google Trends. Going down (generally) over the last 10 years.

[http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=sailing](http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=sailing)

------
protomyth
What would go into building a vessel designed to remove all the junk from the
ocean? How would it capture and process the waste?

~~~
andrewfong
There was (and maybe still is) a project to build an open-source low-power
autonomous robot to clean up oil spills.
[https://sites.google.com/a/opensailing.net/protei/](https://sites.google.com/a/opensailing.net/protei/)

Not sure if still active. Presumably, you could build something to pick up
trash in general.

Bigger issue though is the trawling -- junk or no junk, trawling is incredibly
devastating to the ecosystem.

~~~
protomyth
I was curious about a ship designed to clean up the wreckage after a tsunami
or the pacific garbage.

------
spikels
If the ocean is really broken and all the fish are gone, how come the amount
of fish caught has not declined dramatically?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_fish_production](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_fish_production)

This story is anecdotal. Actual data would be better.

~~~
moultano
This is the fallacy that led to the collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod
fishery. Regulators assumed that cod catches would start to drop long before
the number of cod dropped to unsustainable numbers. This didn't happen. The
number of cod caught remained stable until it collapsed.

What they didn't account for in their models is that cod are schooling fish,
so the local density of them remains constant even as the global density is
dropping. Ships would have to travel further to find cod, but provided they
found them they would keep catching the same number until that region was
exhausted, and they would move on. This meant that regulators were blind to
the fact that the number of cod schools was dropping.

The same thing is likely happening with other fish, but due to whole ocean
areas being devastated rather than schooling. So long as each boat can find
some area of the ocean that is still alive, they will catch the same number of
fish, until there aren't any areas of the ocean still living.

~~~
api
A similar scenario is likely with fossil fuels re: declining EROEI. There is
always more oil, but as we use up the easy oil the harder oil takes more and
more energy to get. This is hidden though, as the process will just scale and
scale and use more and more energy to get the same amount of oil.

... until it can't do that anymore and production collapses. This will happen
when overall system EROEI drops below some unknown threshold, probably 5-10X.

In any iterated debate between an economist and a physicist the economist will
be right N-1 times and the physicist will be right once.

~~~
dredmorbius
_There is always more oil_

I know what you mean by that. And yet I've got a problem with the phrase. What
it suggests is "there's is always more oil ... available for useful
extraction". And that isn't the case. Yes, there's more in the ground, but (as
your EROEI argument says) there is a decidedly _limited_ amount of feasibly
extractable oil, and once _that_ limit is reached, _there is no more useful
oil in the ground_. The key being "useful".

I like your "iterated debate" quip.

~~~
api
That's exactly what I mean... energetically profitable oil.

~~~
dredmorbius
I know. It's ... trying to marshal the argument in the most effective way
possible.

A friend pointed me at a 1978 address Milton Friedman made on energy policy.
It ... boils my blood (I'm not a Friedman fan):
[http://fixyt.com/watch?v=hj1974Ek4nw](http://fixyt.com/watch?v=hj1974Ek4nw)

It starts out relatively well: Friedman is quoting W.S. Jevons. And then he
repeatedly simply asserts "he's wrong". And equivocates Jevons being mistaken
in other predictions (which are pretty vaguely unspecified) with being wrong
on this one. Etc., etc. I've been watching and reading a bit more of Friedman
recently, and what I'm realizing is that 1) his biggest tools aren't factual
ones but rhetorical ones, and that 2) he really likes making his debating
opponent look dumb, _even when the opponent is expressing views, however
poorly, that Friedman himself supports_. Makes me find him all the more non-
credible in general.

Nailing down the language of peak oil seems somewhat useful. So I wasn't
picking on you so much as trying to clarify (mostly to myself) what in the
"there'll always be more oil" phrase bothers me.

