
In the Philippines, Dynamite Fishing Decimates Entire Ocean Food Chains - Osiris30
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/world/asia/philippines-dynamite-fishing-coral.html
======
vfc1
Its by far time for we to leave the fishes of the hook. Dynamite fishing is
bad but its just the tip of the iceberg in what concerns the global impact of
fishing. What about:

\- the widespread use of human slaves in southeast Asia still in 2018? \- Or
the massive ocean dead zones that keep getting bigger? \- Or the 25% of by-
catch (fish caught unintentionally and discarded)? \- or the estimates that
certain oceans will be fishless before 2050? \- or catching fish like
sardines, and instead of eating it directly, to feed it to farmed fish like
salmon, at a huge cost and waste

All of that for a food that has the highest concentrations of toxins that
humans consume, to the point that its no longer recommended to pregnant women.

The toxicity of fish is due to bioaccumulation (big fish eats small fish, eats
smaller fish etc.), and fish has in many cases the same or even more
cholesterol than meat.

Plus omega 3 have been shown to not be recommendable to the general
population, I think its time we stop eating it its completely unsustainable.

Seriously, what kind of planet are we leaving to our kids?

~~~
jazoom
You've got some good points there but also a lot of claims that really should
be backed up by solid references.

~~~
vfc1
You're right, here are some sources. Here is an article on the use of human
slaves for fishing in Asia, they get kidnapped in villages in india and many
other places, this is happening today, as we speak and at a large scale -
[http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-
reads/artic...](http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-
reads/article/2102498/tackling-slavery-thai-fishing-industry-one-victim)

Here is an article on how ocean dead zones quadrupled since 1950
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/04/oceans-s...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/04/oceans-
suffocating-dead-zones-oxygen-starved)

The fishing industry now impacts 55% of the world oceans -
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180222162124.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180222162124.htm)

For the health consequences of fish -
[https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/fish/](https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/fish/)

"Eating just a single serving of fish each week during pregnancy, for example,
can lead to more mercury in their infant’s body than injecting them directly
with about a dozen mercury-containing vaccines."

And from the American Heart Association "Fish oil supplements may help prevent
death after a heart attack but lack evidence of cardiovascular benefit for the
general population" \- [https://newsroom.heart.org/news/fish-oil-supplements-
may-hel...](https://newsroom.heart.org/news/fish-oil-supplements-may-help-
prevent-death-after-a-heart-attack-but-lack-evidence-of-cardiovascular-
benefit-for-the-general-population)

~~~
AuthorizedCust
Your article about fish oil doesn't prove that fish oil isn't helpful.
Supplements, in general, have often been shown not to have the protective
effects expected, but that doesn't disprove the substance's effect when
consumed in its natural host.

------
rdm_blackhole
When I think the human race cannot sink any lower, then I am brought back to
reality.

~~~
l5870uoo9y
Well, at least in the European waters fish are recovering beyond expectation.

~~~
dotancohen
Europeans now sail to Somalia to fish. They are doing terrific damage there,
and the local human and animal populations there are suffering food shortages
as a result.

~~~
pas
Could you elaborate on this please?

~~~
jackvalentine
Somalian pirates are the result of international fishing fleets depleting the
fish in the area giving the local fishermen few other options.

(It’s more complicated than that, but so is everything)

~~~
pas
Sorry, but that explains nothing for me.

OP said: Europeans now sail to Somalia to fish.

Why would Europeans go so South into the Gulf of Arden? Why would Norwegian
fishers go South? What's going on? Where's the data? What are the incentives?

Does Somalia have fishing quotas? Is there any anti-overfishing agreement
system for that region?

~~~
jackvalentine
Oh you want someone to explain something specific about European nations
motivations? I suggest that you then be more specific with your own request.

[http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892376,00...](http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892376,00.html)

> Ever since a civil war brought down Somalia's last functional government in
> 1991, the country's 3,330 km (2,000 miles) of coastline — the longest in
> continental Africa — has been pillaged by foreign vessels. A United Nations
> report in 2006 said that, in the absence of the country's at one time
> serviceable coastguard, Somali waters have become the site of an
> international "free for all," with fishing fleets from around the world
> illegally plundering Somali stocks and freezing out the country's own
> rudimentarily-equipped fishermen.

> High-seas trawlers from countries as far flung as South Korea, Japan and
> Spain have operated down the Somali coast, often illegally and without
> licenses, for the better part of two decades, the U.N. says.

They do it because there were a lot of fish there and no functional government
to stop them or enforce quotas.

~~~
pas
Thanks! It's really fucked up. Especially that quite a few navies were making
sure the trade route is secure, but they haven't bothered to stop or at least
somewhat deter these illegal trawlers.

------
chriselles
I’ve seen the results of “fish bombs” in the Solomon Islands.

From the use of Coke bottles filled with explosive filler from WWII unexplored
ordinance(UXO).

While that is pretty bad, the worst thing I saw was bleach used to scare out
tropical fish from coral reefs.

Seeing the dead white reefs is heart breaking.

------
drak0n1c
Why is fish farming so controversial? Overfishing will stop once factory
farming makes it unprofitable.

Are the downsides really worth hamstringing the development of a potentially
ocean-saving industry?

------
teekert
I have the feeling that soon the fishermen will have nothing left to catch and
will be forced to let nature recover. I see them just as out of balance
predators, killing of their own supply and subsequently they shall die
themselves (or be forced into other source of income). Will nature recover? I
do think so.

~~~
dayofthedaleks
It's nice to think the market would solve this but you're basically describing
the Horn of Africa, where overfishing has led to piracy because no other
viable options exist.

Meanwhile depletion continues by the last desperate fishermen who didn't turn
pirate.

------
nickthemagicman
In a world where 8 people have more money than the bottom 3 BILLION people
combined.

You can blame the poor for surviving...or blame the rich for the greed that
forces people to do this to survive.

~~~
lopmotr
Can you explain the causal link between those rich people's greed and this
fishing technique? Is it because rich people enabled dynamite to be produced
cheaply enough for them?

~~~
dotancohen
I'll explain it.

Maybe not _those_ 8 rich people, but generally Western nations were made rich
by exploiting the tragedy of the commons. Oil and other mining are the classic
examples.

Why should we expect these poor, poor fishermen to prioritize our poor, poor
planet over their poor, poor families when our own rich got that way through
exploitation of natural resources and pollution?

~~~
lopmotr
Wasn't every nation? Europe and China have lost almost all their forests. Pre-
European New Zealand natives exterminated the giant flightless moa. There was
a powerful ancient African civilization that died out because they used up all
the artesian water. I'd say nobody cared about conservation until rich people
we comfortable enough to stop worrying about their next meal and look at
broader issues.

~~~
ptaipale
BTW, elsewhere I just read that the amount of forests in England has now
recovered above the levels recorded in Domesday Book (William Conqueror's land
survey in 1086).

Same's happening in many countries in Europe. I have a picture of my birth
home, taken in 1903 from a nearby hill. The landscape is mostly bare, almost
everything except the actual fields is used for cattle. Now you can't take a
picture like that. Almost everything is covered by a forest, but you can't see
it from the trees growing on the hill.

~~~
orwin
England might have been lucky enough (blessed with rain and all). Southern
France and Greece, not so much, and will probably never recover pre-roman
empire forests.

~~~
ddnb
If there's not enough rain to sustain a forest, then even should they have
been left untouched in antiquity they wouldn't be there anymore now either
right?

~~~
ptaipale
Where I live, you can't really destroy a forest. You can hack it down and lay
concrete over the ground; if you then leave it there, in a matter of decades
or centuries it'll be a forest again, if you don't regularly weed it out and
hack it down again.

If climate changes - as it has changed in the Mediterranean, prior to
industrialisation - that's then different.

------
bshepard
This is a fairly big abstraction, but we live in a world system that's based
on discounting unseen externalities; sweeping the hurt under the rug, so to
speak. The world-system started with the theft of the American continent and
perpetual genocide of the natives, continued with the mass industrialized
kidnapping from Africa, and persists today in a cyberpunk, abstracted form
that some call "capitalism." There isn't any real name for what we have, the
name will come from the next world system, if there is one, a world system
where the collective genius of humanity will be free from the constraints of
nation, money, gender......

~~~
lopmotr
The Arab slave trade took more slaves from Africa than the American slave
trade. Maybe it's really the Muslims that are the cause of Philippine
overfishing? Still doesn't make much sense!

~~~
bshepard
Every single history I've read about slavery indicates that the middle passage
was orders of magnitude larger and more intense than pre-modern slave systems.

To the first comment: our world is changing. We are leaving the world system
that was created around 1500. That said, we're still inside of it, and so
social practices as manifestly illogical and inane as concentration camps
("prisons"), national borders, and the burning of carbon continue.

~~~
lopmotr
Most of them didn't go to America but it looks like the order of magnitude was
about the same for both ~10's of millions. The Arabs castrated their male
slaves so they didn't leave a black population for us to notice like America
and Sth America have.

------
zeristor
I take it David Attenborough didn’t cover this in Blue Earth II?

~~~
zeristor
I perfectly valid point.

Since he brought attention to astics in the oceans there’s been a consensus to
solve this issue.

Dynamite fishing is also very destructive, and if it were documented people
would be focused on ways to stop it.

