Earth Running Out of Fish

I love fish. I just wish it wasn't so expensive. This dying out doesn't bode well for future price drops.

I kind of liked the other biologist's name, too -- Ransom Myers. I'd imagine a person would get taken pretty seriously if his name was Ransom.

Achenfan - I'm begging you to reveal your pre-kaboodle alter-egos.

Ransom Myers. That could be a sentence fragment all on its own.

I love fish, too. I just wish I wasn't allergic to it all. I found out I was allergic to all of it by trying it all out. Not the best idea I've ever had . . .

Fisheries economics is extremely complicated and very confusing. Take this tidbit. Fishermen, understandably, try to maximize the effort they put into catching fish. Effort, however, is inversly related to profit.

I pretty much have, bostonreader. The answer is out there. And I should clarify something: They're not PRE-Kaboodle alter-egos; they're alive and well in the present-day Kaboodlesphere. They walk among us.

Great topic, Joel! One I can sink my teeth into. jw, you're right about the complexity of fishing economics. It is much different from, say agriculture, where the more resources/technology a farmer puts in, the better his production yields. In fisheries, we have a limited resource in public space that hundreds of fishermen are vying for in the space of a few weeks, days, or even hours, depending upon the open season. As a result, they employ the best technology they have to catch as many fish as possible during that time, with little thought to the future, thus decimating the populations.

There is no reason why they should not continue with this self-serving behaviour unless the industry structure changes. Many economists recommend the use of property rights to control overfishing. This involves giving a fisherman rights over a specific patch of sea, which he must maintain if he is survive on its abundance over the long haul. It is then in his best interest to only fish at a sustainable level, thus maintaining the population.

Another method that has met with some success is fishing cooperatives. Some wild salmon fishermen in Alaska tried it a few years ago and it works for them. Some members give up their fishing rights and allow only a few boats to do the fishing for the cooperative. I imagine those not fishing make money doing other work with their time, and those fishing are paid by the cooperative. Then, the profits are shared by the group. Again, this is an example of property rights working, as all fishermen become stewards of the area they fish.

I get a mental image of the Greek gods hangin' out on Mt. Olympus. Athene turns to Hera and says, "I can't seem to find my recipe for disaster. Mind if I borrow yours?"

now what am i going to do with all the tuna helper i have???

has anyone seen that discovery show on snow crab fishing? no wonder it's so darn expensive! makes me feel bad for eating it!

"If they run out of Chicken-of-the-Sea, life won't be worth living."

Maybe not in your lifetime, Joel, but the question is whether your grandkids will be able to stomach PB&J sandwiches day in and day out. Just a matter of complete proteins or complimentary proteins.

And didn't Piers Paul Reed just participate in a Washington Post chat this week on his latest work about actor Alec Guiness--can't help but think of his probably best-known book about the survivors in the Andes who survived remarkable well on complete human proteins with their full compliment of amino acids--because the word protein comes from the Greek, meaning roughly "first," as the human body's first need is for protein. Which loops us around to Kurt Vonnegut and his "long pig." Or to the old Charleton Heston movie, "Soylent Green."

"It's 2022, and now that mankind has exhausted the fisheries and the soil, we're all eating little squares of Soylent Green. Charleton Heston masterfully plays a jaded and corrupt New York City detective named Thorn, who is investigating a curious murder somehow related to the powerful monopoly producer of those little squares made from algae harvested from the oceans. Thorn eventually discovers that the oceans have long been dead, and that the Soylent Corporation is hiding an awful truth from the public. As Heston famously cries, 'It's People!'"

Or perhaps it's more serious than that...Will our scions be eating cows infected with prions? The Chinese gave up eating civet cats so as not to catch SARS, and some inept government bureau foolishly slaughtered hundreds of felines around Hong Kong. Sadly, civet cats are not felines at all, but marsupials.

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad dietary world.

Fascinating stuff, TA!

Linda - The book was even better than the movie (not surprisingly!)

I agree, this is fascinating and drastically important stuff. Joel (and anyone else), if you'd like to dig deeper, contact the folks at SeaWeb (www.seaweb.org), specifically in the COMPASS and Seafood Choices Alliance programs.

Don't we already use 'property rights' to allocate the seas bounty? Commercial fishing, in fact all fishing, is very licensed here. Your country and mine have some long standing commercial fishing issues about who has the right to fish what places and how much each side in the dipute can fish. Unless all nations on the planet cooperate with quotas and stop overfishing, it is not going to change. And if I am not mistaken there are already UN agreements in place for some species which are likely not being adhered to.

Not to be the bearer of doom and gloom, the Arctic Ice pack is smaller than its been in a hundred years. A comment from someone claiming to be in the know, put the question forward that it may be too far gone for recovery of that ice pack.

Makes me think of a Star Trek episode where a probe zoned into Capt. Picard's brain and played out the story of a people and their dying planet's last days. Heaven help me, but I made another Star Trek reference. It must be Friday. My brain is always fried by Friday. I have no other excuse.

Let's step back and consider.

On this no fish issue/question there were 13 some odd comments. The world really is coming to an end... really this is not some tuna fish packing plant firing a few workers... world end.(period)

The next question taxi, plane, crash yawn... 213+ comments...

My question is this; Why 10x more comments on the alarm, car, plane, crash abstraction and 10x less on the earth ending for all of us not just a plane load of rich Americans.

PS: How come the Brits can catch their bad guys and we have to invade two countries kill thousands, have thousands of our best die and spend billions$$$$$$ and we caught crap, nada, zero, zilch, etc? Should we outsourse our police, FBI, CIA, etc?

marko:
These are excellent questions.

I can't speak for everyone else, but when I hear bad news such as this story about the fish, I'm not usually surprised. I just think, "Well, of course -- what do we expect?" It's like reading in the newspaper every morning that there were more casualties in Iraq. Well, yeah -- of course there were.

The day I read a headline such as "Everything Currently Perfect in the World," THEN I might take notice.

I think there is more interest in Tom's Dumb Question than in the fish issue because Tom's question touches on something beyond the problems of the world -- it relates to something that might actually help us to transcend those problems. That's what people seem to be hungry for.

As for your second question, about the relative skills of the British police -- yeah, I thought the same thing.

Marko: maybe there are 215 comments on Tom's Dumb Question because 210 of them are Tom fan and her alter egos.

Seriously, it's just because there were two posts pretty close together and the crowd gathered at the most recent one. The SAO-15 doesn't care what they talk about; as I've said before, each of us has a (strong) opinion about Every Single Thing in the World.

Indeed, kbertocci; indeed.
(Seriously, you don't expect someone with a handle like "Tom fan" to hold back when THE Tom is the guest Kit-writer, do you?)

Ah ha! I first asked Tom Fan about the alter egos, then thought I had made a mistake and so I asked Achenfan, who told me the clues were out there. This past exchange makes me realize that I am getting to the bottom of the mystery, little by little. Carry on. I'm thinking about applying to Scotland Yard. They obviously hire good investigators like myself.

Good work, bostonreader, but I think kbertocci might be one step ahead of you.

And it is the taking of the big fish and it's bycatch
(20 percent other dead thrown-out species in the net is considered good)
that is a major part of the problem.
Small fish don't produce many more fish. Big fish do.

The seas are being combed of large life.
For the salmon farms they are catching junk fish as
fish meal to feed in juiced-up combos to the open-ocean penned salmon
and most of it falls to the ocean floor, further polluting
and putting off fish.
Like the fresh meat trade, the fresh fish trade (much is flash frozen)
is short-lived, the fish has to thrown out in a few days if not sold.
In Europe and America, the cancellation of no-meat Fridays (remember the calendars with fish on days of no meat) killed much
of the local market.
Of course in Germany there is the wonderful MacDonald's-like chain Nordsee Quick which serves fresh and pickled fish
everywhere. Quality is exceptionally high unlike most of America shops.

Hopefully this report, along with the recent announcement by the Bush Admin. regarding offshore aquaculture will jumpstart the general U.S. population into talking about these worldwide problems. Scientists have been talking about this for years yet their concerns fall on deaf ears because it is not a disaster, yet.
We are slowly turning our entire earth: land, fresh and salt water into a giant farm with no room left for wild species. It's good to see that we know how to run the natural world better than God.