DECLINES IN FISH STOCKS WORLDWIDE_the ecology of exinction

@msolga,

msolga wrote:

So, what are are individual nations, or concerned people around the planet supposed to do, then? Sit around & twiddle our thumbs till some coordinated activity finally miraculously appears?

Well, as i pointed out with the example of tuna in the United States, the most effective action would be to hit them in the pocket book. And, just organizing school children can be effective.

The problem is with Japan (and possibly China in the future). So long as the majority of the Japanese people are hostile to, or even just indifferent to these problems, then it is unlikely that anyone will be able to stop their rapacious policies. Of course, there's always the United States Navy . . .

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@spendius,

Spendius

I have no desire to side-track the thread on this issue, but I have noticed that you follow farmer around from thread to thread. I have talked to you about this on another thread, if you recall.

Presumably there was some point of heated (?) disagreement at some stage ... it happens to many of us. But do you not ever let go? Is he following you around from thread to thread to even some "score"? Does anyone else do that?

I am not apologizing for something that I have actually observed with my own eyes. I just wish you would stop it. It is ... how shall I say? ... unseemly behaviour in a grown-up. I find it embarrassing to observe.

Now what do you have to say about overfishing?

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@msolga,

The problem with the interconnection of the world's oceans is exactly that - everyone is acting independantly. We are trying to herd cats.

We have rivers with many countries on them that flow into the ocean which also has more countires surrounding it. We neeed to break up countries into eco-systems. Lets say Queensland for example, which is one State in Oz, it has many councils all with different development strategies and local laws for almost everything. If we were to take all the coast and the barrier reef as far inland as the middle of the great Dividing Range was one authority for development and conservation, without a State government, and acting under federal guidelines which are in accord with a world governing body, say the UN for the time being, we would have someone who was directly responsible for everything in that giant eco-system. The housing, sewerage, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, crops and animals and conservation all under one authority. Overseeing these large eco-states would be a mega state, say one for the Pacific Ocean and its rim. There are other reasons for this, which include reaction time and a central authority in a disaster.

The way we have it now, one State goes from a longitude in the middle of the desert to the far side of the barrier reef which also doubles up on the federal governemnts area of resposiblity, but the local councils are doing the damage and whether or not they get away with it depends on if they are a marginal seat and whose electorate it is. This is counter intuitive to how efficeiency acrues to an organisation. It should be handed as mentioned above, with an other eco-state handling from the top of the range westward to ...where ever it can be determined is a good place to stop. Another example would be the Mississipi, its tributaries and it head waters would be one eco-state.

The current system, esp in the old world, has nations bickering over everything. One state has less than desirable policies to its water because it is poor, whilst the state upstream has excellent water management. We have reached the situation in Turkey where every now and then they think about daming the Euphrates. Iraq would have to go to war over this or perish in a dust cloud.

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@msolga,

Your hero threatened someone with physical violence. I think you set the bench mark way to low, or you have bad tatse in who you fancy.

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@msolga,

Quote:

that it is extremely difficult to bind all member nations to the majority vote of the organization,

So what is to be gained by going it alone ? The oceans is not only one body, they are all interconnected and affect each other.

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@Ionus,

I'd pretty much go along with that assessment, Ionus. Everyone is acting independently & it is rather like trying to herd cats, as you say. I wish it wasn't like this either, but it's what we're stuck with for the time being, at least.
Where I differ from you, though, is that in the absence of a better, more coordinated way of doing things, I do see the value in local action. That, to me, is a far better option than no action at all.

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@spendius,

Yay, back on topic!

You're a hero, spendy!

And you didnt arrogantly commit any crime by threatening someone with violence as the uneducated and poverty stricken are prone to do, especially when faced with intellect and discussion.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

just organizing school children can be effective.

So if you teach children religion, whether there is a God or not it does benefit many people emotionally, you are brainwashing them. But if you teach them about Mother Earth, the pagan goddess, then that is just common sense not brainwashing children.

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@msolga,

By doing things locally we rob motivation from doing things globally, because they have all put up their hands and said it is way to hard to convince the neighbours, lets just go it alone. We have one atmosphere and one aquifier system and time is running out. Increasingly we have limited resources to change direction. We need food, power and minerals, and these are the very things being attacked locally. We need these resources to enact major change.

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@Ionus,

Quote:

So what is to be gained by going it alone ? The oceans is not only one body, they are all interconnected and affect each other.

But you see, it often isn't "doing it alone". Because other individual nations are doing similar things. As I said in my last post, it would be far preferable, if on an issue like overfishing, we could have every nation agree & actual in unison, for the good of all. For the good of the oceans & health the marine life which exist within in them. You have no argument from me that this would be a good thing to happen. But this doesn't look like happening any time soon, sadly. The question then, is what do we do in the meantime?

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@msolga,

The problem was somewhat stated by you backhandedly. We have been doing this for how long now ? What would we have achieved if we had set of on a global track to begin with..where would we be now ? Where do we want to be in the future ? Because that is what we should be doing.

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@msolga,

Overfishing of cod has reduced the pelagic form and has, instead, favored the deeper bottom feeding form. This kind of broad adaptive evolution is what has happened to the swordfish industry where smaller and younger swords are becoming sexually mature. This means that the subsequent generations of post overfished swords are significantly smaller and, in some estimates, of little value economically, especially in an industry where fishing boats can cost over several millions for a basic hull and several million more for rigging. .

Quote:

Unnatural Evolution: Fishing Eliminates Cod Adapted for Shallow Waters

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The fishing boats that relentlessly sweep the northern Atlantic Ocean looking for cod may be changing the genetics of the species, researchers say, in a case of “fisheries-induced evolution.” Commercial fishing techniques used to harvest the valuable fish are wiping out the cod that swim at shallower depths, which have a genetic variant that’s not seen in cod that stick to deeper water. If overfishing of cod continues, the research team believes the genetic variant will be lost all together. “Man the hunter has become a mechanised techno-beast,” the team writes. “Modern fisheries are uncontrolled experiments in evolution” [New Scientist].

Evolutionary biologist Einar Árnason and his colleagues studied the changing population of the cod fishery around Iceland; it’s one of the largest in the world, yielding roughly 200,000 metric tons a year. The stocks are in far better shape than the collapsed fisheries in the western Atlantic [ScienceNOW Daily News]. In the new study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers examined how the genotypes of Icelandic cod have changed between 1994 and 2003.

It was already known that Icelandic cod that live at a shallower depth have a different variant of the pantophysin I gene than those that spend most of their time in deep water, although it’s not clear what is the functional difference. In their comparison, researchers found that the shall0w-water gene is rapidly becoming scarce, which fits with the fact that most Icelandic cod fishing uses lines and nets to catch fish in fairly shallow coastal waters.

Previous studies have suggested that hunting and fishing are removing the largest animals from species’ gene pools: For example, stags with the largest antlers are routinely hunted and may therefore fail to reproduce, while smaller stags with scrawny antlers"the ones least prized by hunters"may live long, fruitful lives. The researchers suggest that cod are rapidly evolving due to similar human-caused pressures. If fishing remains intense, Árnason predicts, “shallow-water fish will disappear” within 10 years. If the deep-water cod don’t then spread into the shallows"and Árnason doubts they will, because their genetic difference suggests they are adapted to deep water"the size of the total population would shrink. Moreover, the industry would have to switch to expensive deep-water trawling [ScienceNOW Daily News].

Árnason also believes that the changing population could collapse entirely, as other cod fisheries have. He notes that the study also found that cod in the Icelandic fishery are becoming sexually mature while still smaller and younger. Something similar occurred in Newfoundland cod just before that fishery crashed. “We think this too is an evolutionary response to the selective pressure of fisheries,” says Árnason [ from New Scientist].

This article underscores the disconnected basis of all the fisheries. Since fish populations are adapted to pecific environments, theyve basically evolved into subspecies that each have separate market attributes.

THE Atlantic cod was shallow pelagic and was EASY TO CATCH by mid level netting. (Early codfishing was anchor line and mid level jigging)

The ICelandic cod are smaller and more adapted to colder waters . These are fished like "snagging cinder blocks" with Swedish jigs on stainless rigs and swivels.
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@farmerman,

Acting in a broad base is not very viable at all. Its only when we realize that a specific species is crashing do we even wake up to some sort of action plan. Only then does the entire story of overfishing and local environmental degerdation, coupled with severe predation even begin to be understood.

When we are trying to bring back the blue crab or the oyster, or the cod, we work on thise species because to do otherwise would never achieve any results. I know of NO species that have been saved by a broad multi ocean or multi-environmental niche approach.

Fishing boats are more and more, instruments of high tech and (at least the ones Ive been on) the fish dont really have a chance without specific rules for catch, zones, off limit areas, and seasons.

Northern lobster fisheries are prime examples of success in managing a species for its market potential. European lobster fiasheries are in trouble and (Ive been told) that a significant amount of MAine lobsters are exported to France because the Biscay lobsters are almost gone due to overfishing.

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@msolga,

[qwote]I have no desire to side-track the thread on this issue, but I have noticed that you follow farmer around from thread to thread. I have talked to you about this on another thread, if you recall.[/quote]

You can't have noticed as I proved in my last post. You think you have noticed because you want to notice in order to make a scurrilous and unfounded attack on me which has not only nothing to do with the topic but nothing to do with anything except your need to make scurrilous and unfounded attacks on anybody who calls into question your position on a subject you don't know anything about nor ever will do if you carry on as you are doing.

Quote:

Presumably there was some point of heated (?) disagreement at some stage ... it happens to many of us. But do you not ever let go? Is he following you around from thread to thread to even some "score"? Does anyone else do that.

Me and farmerman go back six years. I don't follow him around and he doesn't follow me around. We are in dispute about religion/atheism/evolution/ teaching of evolution and I very much doubt the dispute will cease simply because of some strange figment in your imagination.

Quote:

I am not apologizing for something that I have actually observed with my own eyes. I just wish you would stop it. It is ... how shall I say? ... unseemly behaviour in a grown-up. I find it embarrassing to observe.

It looks like you can't let it go Olga despite you being wrong and proved to be wrong. And I don't like the idea of being grown up. Especially if it is anything like what your claque is like.

Quote:

Now what do you have to say about overfishing?

There's no such thing from an evolutionary or economic perspective. It is an idea to entertain city folks who are bored, over emotional and who think they can hold the idea of the earth in their heads. It's an idea used for filling up the spaces between the adverts which themselves focus on flattering people that they are more important than they actually are.

It is an idea associated with entertainment and bureaucratic job creation. It is intimately connected with mouths eating fish, including pets, and mouths eating other foods fed on fish.

No mouths eating no overfishing. And anyway I think it means overfishing of easy fishing. Fish near the surface in other words. In some areas tuna are living at depths the nets can't reach due to changes in the climate whether caused by overuse of fossil fuels or natural cyclical weather patterns.

When I said that a tin of tuna was 75 pence that is sufficient scientific information for anybody and anybody who concludes there is an issue in the face of that stark fact is looking for issues to thrum with indignation about.

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@Ionus,

Quote:

What would we have achieved if we had set of on a global track to begin with..where would we be now ?

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could you elaborate?

Quote:

Where do we want to be in the future ? Because that is what we should be doing.

In response to overfishing, specifically?
How would you suggest we (& other countries) realistically go about addressing the problem globally?

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@msolga,

Quote:

Ionus : What would we have achieved if we had set of on a global track to begin with..where would we be now ?

Quote:

msolga : I'm not sure what you mean by that. Could you elaborate?

We started to educate people about the planet in the 60's. What would we have achieved by now if we had of taught people that we need to act globally, not locally. people will always do things around themselves, so we would still have local action, but everybody would be trying to act globally with eco-politics. Saying dumb phrases like "think globally, act locally" suffers the problem of all catch phrases...it is totally up to the individual as to what it means.

Quote:

How would you suggest we (& other countries) realistically go about addressing the problem globally?

Overfishig of a species is handled by economic measures as Spendy has pointed out. There are no economic measures to safe guard the most important life in the ocean, microscopic life. Worrying about anything else is silly if we lose that. Surely we should have the greatest care for the greatest asset and the greatest asset is not tuna or whales. We should be pushing for politics on one subject within conservation ...global action. All the piecemeal efforts will take away the political ability to do anything more serious than poke our tongues at those who wont co-operate.

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@msolga,

Quote:

I do see the value in local action. That, to me, is a far better option than no action at all.

It's a ridiculous idea. The cans of fish would simply be imported into an area where local action is taking place unless you banned the sale of fish. It would make no difference to fish stocks if the demand to eat fish still existed at the same level.

There's no chance of "no action at all". There's market action ever present.

Why do local authorities not plant fruit trees in their urban prettification schemes? Free fruit. I know where there are ten damson trees which last autumn were laden with fruit. Apart from me picking enough for a year's supply of damson jam and pies those trees were ignored despite being next to a busy road.

That your claque think this is a simple issue which can be dealt with in a few self-flattering phrases proves you have no clue what you are talking about.

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@spendius,

Quote:

When I said that a tin of tuna was 75 pence that is sufficient scientific information for anybody and anybody who concludes there is an issue in the face of that stark fact is looking for issues to thrum with indignation about.

You're saying that tuna is over-fished for nothing but economic reasons?
If so, you don't have any argument with me on that.

Of course if world population growth was limited (how exactly?) there would be fewer mouths to feed & less need for exploitation of the planet's resources. If I've understood what you're saying.

As for any further discussion about you following farmer around from thread to thread, I've really said all I want to say on that subject.

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@spendius,

Quote:

That your claque think....

I am not part of any "claque" anymore than you are.

If you want to discuss any particular thread issues specifically with me, I'd prefer it without such colourful comments.

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Perhaps people do not understand why I keep mentioning microscopic life in the oceans. It controls our climate, it cleans our air, it grants life to everything in every ocean. So....who wants the climate screwed, dirty air and dead oceans (no whales, no tuna, no marlin, no cod, nothing....nada...zilch...zero)

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DECLINES IN FISH STOCKS WORLDWIDE_the ecology of exinction

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