
Ocean fish could disappear in 40 years  - DrSprout
http://www.news.com.au/world/ocean-fish-could-disappear-in-40-years/story-e6frfkyi-1225868059675
======
RyanMcGreal
>THE world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 unless
fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover, UN experts warned.

An important lesson from the Canadian cod collapse is that when populations
drop below a critical threshold, the stocks _never_ recover.

~~~
hga
That may be due to the cod being an apex predator. I.e. has the total biomass
of the region collapsed?

However this is a classic Tragedy of the Commons example and the fact that
Canada dithered long enough for it to reach what looks like a point of no
return is sobering (I was living in the Boston area in the dozen years leading
up to Canada's closing of fishery and remember reading articles about this).
Some governments are simply not going to handle this well for the regions of
the ocean they economically control, and plenty of the ocean (although I don't
know how much of it is how productive) is beyond those areas.

All that said, we're likely to see a continuation of farm raised fish
replacing wild catched. Something akin to this happened thousands of years ago
as we converted to agriculture.

~~~
ilovecomputers
If we're gonna farm fish, we best do it right:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EUAMe2ixCI>

~~~
warfangle
Couldn't watch the talk at the moment (bookmarking for later), but
additionally (saw this on HN a few months back):

<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/garden/18aqua.html>

~~~
hga
_Very_ cool; I've mused about raising catfish in the basement before, but
obviously you can go a lot further, more diversified and more full cycle.

Thanks!

------
jbrun
Make sure to watch the film The End of the Line: <http://endoftheline.com/> \-
which explains the Canadian Cod collapse,the current state of affairs, and
potential solutions.

Also take the time to watch some of the recent TED talks from Mission Blue
which offer a good outline of the state of the ocean's and potential
solutions.

<http://www.tedprize.org/mission-blue-voyage/>

------
miguelpais
In my country for long there were no such problems because the government
imposed the proihibition of fisherman to go out to get some kinds of species
during their mating and growing time. That way fish was allowed to reproduce
and grow. Every time the fish you're eating has eggs a few dozens of new
fishes could have been spared if the reproduction was allowed to take place.
Also sometimes the nets used to catch the fish are too tight not allowing baby
fishes to get out.

The problem with the law was that it was in reality imposing a time of
starvation every year to the fishermans and their families, while the same
species could be bought at the markets imported from other countries. The
measure was one of the first to be abandoned when the political regime
changed.

I don't really know what is the possibility of fishing companies to cycle
between the fishing species during the year to let the other species grow, but
that still seems like an alternative to me.

I also think that a fish diet is much more healthy than a meat diet, so a
danger like the possible extinction of fishing species shouldn't be taken
lightly just because we can get the proteins somewhere else.

~~~
ghoerz
The issue with having individual fishing companies determining policies is
that it invokes the tragedy of the commons.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons>

This is addressed in part by the Law of the Sea Treaty, but this only
addresses waters out to 200 nautical miles.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_Sea_Treaty>

Living resources past this zone are free game. If any fishing companies pull
out of a region to allow the populations to grow, it only opens up
opportunities for other companies to come in.

------
stretchwithme
when there's every incentive to take all you can before everyone else does,
this is bound to happen. as someone has already said, this is a repeat of the
tragedy of the commons

we need a system of property rights for the seas, rights to fish at certain
places and times, that create incentives to not overfish and to protect this
valuable resource.

If you own the rights to a stream of income, you don't have the incentive to
gut it and sell whatever you can sell now before everyone else.

Agriculture is impossible without property rights also. Why would you plant
and take care of plants if anyone can just take what they want?

~~~
anigbrowl
I see your point, but the difference is that land is fixed and generally
easier to enforce authority over. International waters are outside normal
jurisdictions by definition, so how do you grant and enforce property rights
in non-coastal fisheries?

Say you want to divide up Atlantic fisheries for this purpose, trying to
balance the demands of 40 or 50 countries that operate fishing fleets is going
to be a nightmare. If you go just by coastal size, where do you draw the line
over which countries are allowed to participate? Developed countries with
better fishing and food distribution industries, like Canada or the EU, are
going to claim larger chunks based on the size of their existing economy,
whereas poor countries on the west coast of Africa that don't have blue-water
fleets are naturally going to object that they're being cut off from future
access to resources.

~~~
moultano
That's the great thing about marine sanctuaries. You agree upon a region in
the middle of the ocean to declare off-limits for fishing. The fish population
of those regions repopulates the rest of the ocean, and you have the best of
both words. Unrestrained fishing, and stable fish stocks. You can even find
perpetrators using satellites, which helps with enforcement.

The hard part is agreeing upon regions both large enough and spanning enough
biomes.

~~~
hga
I think the really hard part is enforcement. E.g. see the Cod Wars
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars>) which were between two relatively
developed and sophisticated European countries.

It could get much messier, e.g. imagine the USNavy trying to enforce
restrictions in the open seas on trawlers from the PRC.

I'm not sure how useful satellites would be at finding perpetrators for the
purposes of enforcement, at least not without sending a ship to confirm
details.

~~~
j_baker
"As a result, a fleet of Royal Naval warships and tug-boats were employed to
act as a deterrent against any future harassment of British fishing crews by
the Icelandic craft. The conflict involved several cases of vessels ramming
each other."

Was that all it took to have a conflict classified as a war back then?

~~~
jacquesm
It was a definite case of Great Britain stepping way over its bounds as a
nation and bullying a much smaller nation with a navy of much smaller
proportions over a resource the British themselves had destroyed around their
home Island.

Very bad episode, and really reflecting bad on the security council as well,
which should have stepped in. Of course th e British had considerable clout
politically as well.

If it hadn't been for that NATO base who knows what would have happened.

------
nostromo
I'm conflicted -- I enjoy eating fish because of its health benefits but I
don't want to contribute to over-fishing. What's the ethical and healthy thing
to do? Tofu all day every day?

~~~
plesn
Our ancestrors did not eat meat or fish every day, today's vegetarians do not
eat tofu everyday either. The goal is to be complete in nutrients: you won't
be much wrong if you associate cereals, legumes, fresh vegetables,
fruits/dried fruits (to get glucids, fibers, proteins, vitamins and minerals)
and possibly some dairy products/eggs for lacking nutrients. Think of the
traditionnal associations (rice and beans, couscous, houmous and bread,
fallafels and pitta ...) and try to be diverse and curious. Cooking is a form
of hacking !

~~~
dmm
Who were your ancestors? How far back are you talking about? Hunter-gatherers?
I think you'll find that people ate pretty much everything edible around and
that meat was a highly desirable food and eaten whenever possible.

~~~
zavulon
You're right - meat was highly desirable food and eaten whenever possible,
HOWEVER - up until the 19th century, unless you were in the very small
percentage of rich/privileged, you got a chance to eat meat once a week -
tops. And in the agricultural societies, commoners wouldn't even get to eat
steak and all the nice parts - when a cow was slaughtered, all the premium
parts went to the lord.. all peasants got was some entrails to put in soup.

It's only when the 20th century rolled around, and meat became cheap/available
everywhere, that people started eating meat once a day, leading to a spread of
all kinds of diseases, heart attacks, cholesterol, cancer, etc.

~~~
dmm
> you got a chance to eat meat once a week

Really? Is that true? What groups are you talking about?

> It's only when the 20th century rolled around, and meat became
> cheap/available everywhere, that people started eating meat once a day,
> leading to a spread of all kinds of diseases, heart attacks, cholesterol,
> cancer, etc.

Ok, interesting hypothesis. So assuming this is true, people in 1830 ate less
meat and had less heart disease than people in 1930, right?

What if I told you, in the US, the opposite is true? That, on average, people
ate more meat in 1830 and had less heart disease than people in 1930?

If people aren't eating meat, what are they eating? grains? sugars? How would
you create a study to test your hypothesis than meat consumption causes heart
disease? Has this been studied? What were the results?

~~~
lena
_What if I told you, in the US, the opposite is true? That, on average, people
ate more meat in 1830_ Then I would ask you what your sources are.

 _If people aren't eating meat, what are they eating? grains? sugars?_
Vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, etc. Most people in the US
who eat tons of sugar are not vegetarians.

~~~
dmm
> Most people in the US who eat tons of sugar are not vegetarians.

How do you know this? Have you studied the sugar consumption of vegetarians?

~~~
lena
Since most people eat too much sugar (the _average_ American eats 20 teaspoons
of added sugar each day), and only about 5% of the population is vegetarian
this seems common sense to me.

------
antidaily
A recent WWF report says tuna (bluefin) could be wiped out by 2012.

~~~
epochwolf
Not really an issue, the world is ending by 2012 anyway.

------
robryan
I'd assume this is slightly sensationalist? As in not all species of fish and
areas are fished simply because of depth, remoteness and species unsuitable
for eating.

~~~
anigbrowl
The article is very shallow, but th problem is very real. the economist has
had some very good coverage on this if you want to cruise their website for
it.

 _The main scourge, the UNEP report says, are government subsidies encouraging
ever bigger fishing fleets chasing ever fewer fish, with little attempt made
to allow the fish populations to recover. The annual 27 billion dollars in
government subsidies to fishing, mostly in rich countries, is "perverse," Mr
Sukhdev said, since the entire value of fish caught is only 85 billion
dollars._

This is the key issue. Being European, I remember since the 1970s that western
European nations, particularly Spain, started ranging further afield because
they had fished out most of the waters around their own coasts. The result was
'fishing wars' where trawlers would damage the nets or otherwise interfere
with boats from competing nations, which resulted in a few diplomatic
incidents. Now Euro fishermen catch way out in the mid-Atlantic, and indeed
there have been clashes between Euro and Spanish fishing vessels.

Property rights are offered by some Economists as a solution, and I can see
the logic of this; on the other hand I am unsure about the probity of just
handing people property title for no value, and I'm uncertain about how these
can be properly enforced in international waters anyway, absent solid maritime
treaties. So in the meantime we have this idiotic subsidy system, which
doesn't benefit anyone except the manufacturers of fishing vessels and
equipment.

~~~
jacquesm
> there have been clashes between Euro and Spanish fishing vessels.

Spanish fishing vessels are not Euro fishing vessels then ?

~~~
yardie
The way there economy is going (or not going) they won't be for long

------
jamesshamenski
stop eating fish. support no fishing zones. support desert based salt water
fish farms.

------
jarin
I love sensationalist titles. Bluefin tuna are not the only fish in the ocean.

------
intellectronica
So now it's a race with those Himalayan glaciers. Which will disappear first?
;)

~~~
intellectronica
Amazing - even just joking about green scaremongering gets you downvoted.

~~~
jbooth
You made it abundantly clear that not only didn't you read the article, you're
not the least bit interested in learning new facts, just in labeling any
concern about the environment as "green scaremongering".

~~~
intellectronica
Actually, it's quite possible to entertain an idea, accept, and joke about it.

------
jcnnghm
At a certain point economics would dictate that fish farms would be cheaper
than commercial fishing due to scarcity. Plus you could probably charge a
premium to gouge the hippies for their compassion, desire for 'clean-water'
fish, saving the planet rhetoric, and whatnot.

~~~
yesbabyyes
Farmed fish eats fish. For each kg of farmed fish, you have to catch two to
five kg fish in the ocean. Some of this is fast-growing and might be ok to
harvest in large quantities, but most of it, we don't know.

Farmed fish also spreads disease and destroys the local ecosystem. Chiles
coastline is in pretty bad shape because of extremely large scale salmon
farming.

~~~
glhaynes
Can it be done sustainably? Can a complete ecosystem be established where the
feeder fish don't have to be harvested from elsewhere?

~~~
yesbabyyes
I don't know, but usually, nature is better at creating ecosystems than we
are.

~~~
krschultz
That doesn't mean it is better at creating food for us.

Sun -> algae -> small fish -> medium fish -> fish we eat.

Very doable, the problem comes in dealing with the waste.

------
lionhearted
> THE world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 unless
> fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover, UN experts warned.

I dislike the rise of sensationalism and exaggeration in the media quite a
lot. I dislike the rise of sensationalism and exaggeration in the United
Nations even more.

~~~
Daishiman
It's not sensationalistic. You know damn well they're talking about edible
fish that we're accustomed to eating now. You're just being intellectually
dishonest.

~~~
lionhearted
> It's not sensationalistic.

The thread title was "Ocean fish could disappear in 40 years" - the first line
starts with "THE world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by
2050..." That's sensationalism.

> You know damn well they're talking about edible fish that we're accustomed
> to eating now.

Actually, the thread title - "Ocean fish could disappear in 40 years" made me
click on it, because I thought it was about ecosystems getting destroyed by
oil spills, or pollution, or something. And then the article was just about
overfishing. And it exaggerates the chances.

> You're just being intellectually dishonest.

C'mon now, that's totally unnecessary - nightmare scenario of fishless oceans
is sensationalism. There's an important point there, but the hand-wringing is
a bad trend in my opinion. Exaggerating the effects of terrorism, pollution,
fishing, copyright infringing piracy, and so on - it's a bad trend in my
opinion. And if you disagree, why not be civil about it? "I don't think it's
too sensationalistic because x, y, and z..." would work.

~~~
Daishiman
But the point is that it IS a nightmare scenario, since the situation is
virtually unrecoverable. Ask any marine biologist about the chances of
restoring any ecosystem of such dynamics past a point of no return (I work
with them, so I HAVE asked).

Again, you're making a huge fuss out of something that is a technicality,
because it IS a nightmare scenario, it IS coming, and for us as humen beings
it's as disastrous as claimed.

