I find this to be a false dichotomy of a statement: "either we eat fish or we don't". Unfortunately, supply and demand are clashing here - overfishing is a real and tangible problem!
The most likely path forward, and third option, is farmed fish and other seafood. One such company making excellent in-roads is TransparentSea, a pretty cool shrimp farming operation.
Too bad I think shrimp are disgusting, lol. Farmed tilapia it is for me!
We should stop eating fish that has collapsed populations. We should have more marine reserves and marine biology research and continue to scale up fish farming. However, overfishing will continue more or less unabated unless it's handled at an international level, which for geopolitical reasons doesn't seem to be happening. Once fish populations recover we should allow limited fishing, but I think many fish populations are basically doomed at this point or irretrievably genetically altered.
How could you read that as their most-likely (not even most-charitable) intended meaning when they start with "Of course overfishing is bad"? Surely, fishing to the point of extinction would be an example of over-fishing, right?
There is an unsourced, potentially dubious fact on wikipedia that I ran across the other day: "Whitefish live on or near the seafloor, and can be contrasted with the oily or pelagic fish which live away from the seafloor.[citation needed][dubious – discuss]" [0]
I never really thought much about the difference between pelagic and benthic/benthopelagic fish before, but it seems like the lifecycle of bottom-feeding fish tends to be much longer than that of their more active pelagic cousins, which has a direct impact on the quality and texture of their flesh.
> Fish are dumb as hell, and I have no problem eating them.
Having pet fish as a kid, seeing them form bonds with each other and then get distressed when their "friend" died (I swear we had a loach get depressed, their behavior dramatically changed after, and even a "replacement" for the lost fish didn't help) is what made me drop the pesco part of my pescovegetarianism.
Seriously though, I think it's folly to evaluate something's value based on its intelligence. I think ethical judgements about what to eat should be based on its subjective experience, with a goal of harm reduction and minimization of suffering. Of course, the only way to cause no harm by eating is to be dead, so it will never be perfect.
>I have an amount of respect for hunters, especially those that choose to hunt and eat invasive species or over populated species. I'm not super thrilled about the idea of killing an intelligent being, but I don't think our societal framework for understanding animal intelligence has caught up to reality. I actually suspect that, as a species, we'll get to sidestep and approach this issue from an easier perspective due to lab grown meat.
In the US, hunters also contribute hundreds of millions of dollars annually that is put towards the conversation and preservation of wildlife and their habitats. Thanks to the Pittman-Robertson Act which is a 11% tax on all firearms, ammo, and archery equipment sold in the US.
Another example is the geoduck (pronounced /ˈɡuːiˌdʌk/). Geoducks typically live to ~140 years and are considered a delicacy in certain parts of the world.
wow, had no idea. I've only ever (barely) caught (dug?) one on the shore of Hood Canal as the tide was coming in and my arm was up to my shoulder in mud. Caught seems appropriate as they do dig down pretty quickly to escape once you grab the neck. It was a long time ago now (early 80s) but it seemed like it took a good 30 to 45 minutes to actually get it - and towards the end the tide was coming in pretty quickly. It required a lot of persistence.
I married a marine biologist, and dinner parties with her friends were eye opening in the way they talk so matter-of-factly about the ecological collapse that’s already happened in our oceans.
Compared with 100 years ago, the total biomass of predatory fish (basically, the ones we eat) is down by roughly 70%. And that’s accelerating.
Some people change their behavior when they learn they their current behaviors are contributing to significant harm and there is a viable alternative to reduce harm.
We've got a choice about whether we contribute to the harm caused by commercial fishing or not.
Seems this is a sensitive topic for you; is there perhaps some cognitive dissonance at play? If so, it’s probably worth teasing out the details and reassessing behaviors or beliefs.
You hear this kind of argument a lot, people like to accuse one another of "virtue signaling". I like to call it the Joker argument- "You're just like me underneath, Batman." It's an argument you can trot out in any situation too, even if you don't have any real point to make, because it isn't an argument at all, but rather a character attack. It's lazy and dishonest.
Presumably you responded to the wrong comment by mistake, but if not what argument are you referring to? All I see is a simple question that most certainly doesn't say anything about anyone's character. It is true that any possible answer to the question won't tell us much in the grand scheme of things, but that shouldn't stop someone from having a little curiosity now and again. Curiosity is the spice of life, as they say.
I don’t eat a lot of fish, and what I do eat is mostly aquacultured here in New Zealand: freshwater salmon and green-lipped mussels are the lowest impact options available to me.
I sometimes have wild-caught fish when I’m away with friends who spearfish. On the very rare occasion I buy wild-caught fish, I’m very picky about species and method (long lines or maybe set netted, never trawled)
We've already caused it. The overwhelming majority of land mammal mass is either humans, or farm animals raised for humans to eat. Almost half of the world's land surface is now farmland.
And the vast vast majority of this farmland that could be used to raise human-edible crops is used to feed domesticated animals. While humans die of starvation.
> Almost half of the world's land surface is now farmland
This is a BS statistic meant to shock and inappropriately counts the entire area of wilderness that might be used for grazing which is just wilderness that would have supported similar animals anyway.
Managed crop monoculture, which ~half of farmland is - is not 'something similar' to natural forests, plains, grasslands, scrubland, etc.
Even grazing land rarely looks anything like it does before we've shaped it for our use. And even when it does, at first glance, it gets a monoculture of animals, instead. Farmers are not keen on seeing their herds deal with competition or predation from the wild.
On the other hand, we have local biodiversity regulations which require certain land to be grazed and/or cut (as for hay), since the 'meadow' biomes and the associated birds and insects have adapted to the many centuries of land being farmed and can't survive if the plains aren't grazed and are left to just grow.
> Managed crop monoculture, which ~half of farmland is
That doesn't seem right. According to the FAO (United Nations), only 1.3 billion hectares of land are arable while nearly 5 billion hectares are used for agriculture. That's more like ~25%. And the latter figure only accounts for 38% of the world's land area, so the earlier half figure claim doesn't seem right either.
I suppose if the margin of error on those approximations is exceptionally large...
>In 1800, it was estimated there were forty million bison, by 1883, there were few wild bison in the United States - most were in Yellowstone National Park. By 1900, there were less than a thousand left in North America.
It absolutely boggles my mind that people can be unaware that this world is collapsing. One would have to deliberately avoid the media. Or, I guess, just shut the information out. “Too scary to think about” might be quite literal.
Can I ask a stupid question in earnest? Is it bad for them to die out? Is the fear that if we lose 90% of this life that there will be complete collapse of the worlds ecosystem?
Maybe a better question would be: where can I find more information on the consequences of this?
I believe that when a fish population declines by 80–90% it never recovers, that's it. Even if you leave them alone. It happened to cod in Newfoundland.
The excellent 2009 documentary "The End of the Line" was the first place I heard discuss catastrophic fish population crashes, and it covers this dramatic topic and its very serious implications in detail. It also talks about the mind-boggling, almost unbelievable scale at which modern fishing vessels such as supertrawlers operate.
Frankly, I was horrified by what I learned about modern fishing watching this movie.
I don't think the data supports the notion that there is a collapse. A lasting 70% reduction without the ongoing interference (overfishing) by humans would be a problem, but even that would not be a collapse.
A couple decades ago the concept of overfishing became more well-known, and the industry was forced to change. The reason that the industry reacted also has to do with the fact that a true collapse of the fish population would also decimate the entire industry - they have an interest in keeping it stable.
If 99% of a fish population goes away, it would take decades for the population to recover to normal levels. During those years, there would be no profit.
The true reason why the fish population is down 70% is due to the fact that every year the fishing industry takes out as many fish as possible without causing a lasting depression of fish population.
If all fishing would be stopped right now, the global fish population would recover to pre-human levels within probably 20 or 30 years.
Here's what someone from the Australian fishing industriy has to say about this:
"We have learned from the ’60s to ’90s era and today most large fisheries are well managed (some in Asia/Africa are not) and either recovering or operating at maximum economic yield. You cannot catch fish to extinction – they will always recover if you stop fishing. It’s the recovery time that is the issue – and the time to when you can recommence harvesting, sustainably."
Of course these people are heavily biased, and the industry is rotten to the core and full of corruption, but it's hard to argue against this self-evident logic.
That all relies on the fact that all actors involved have some shiny long term sustainability goals and behave strictly morally. Which as all know damn too well is a pure fantasy. Chinese fleets swiping parts of oceans clean anywhere they can and are not caught couldn't care less what will be there in 50 years, or some treaties of western countries.
Also, you completely ignore 2nd and 3rd order effects - decimation of populations dependent on those missing fish that can't and won't recover as easily as fish can.
You might find this paper interesting- it's focused on adapting fisheries management to climate change, but some of the core principles of fisheries management are touched [1]. Check out some of the figures.
There are some paradoxical concepts in fisheries management, not least is that the Maximum Sustinable Yield often supports aligned interests between fisherman (who want to profit/eat) and fish populations (who want to persist). Overfishing is a tragedy of the commons; managing those fisheries properly can produce MORE fish in the ocean even if yields go up. Not always, but this stuff is not cut and dry and the dynamics of population growth and extraction in these animals have to be understood.
That's fine if your population model is just an independent logistic function for each species. But ecosystems aren't like that.
I'll take an example from New Zealand because it's where I live and what I know about. New Zealand has a huge fishery EEZ and is, I believe, widely regarded has having one of the most "well managed" fisheries in the world.
And yet, in large parts of our inland waters a combination of soil runoff and bottom trawling has turned millions of acres of seabed from incredibly productive nurseries of seagrass beds and shellfish-covered rocky reefs... into featureless swathes of sediment called "Kina barrens" (basically, dominated by a kind of spiky sea-urchin). These areas have passed a tipping point, there's basically no getting them back. Shellfish can't attach to the mucky sediment to regenerate the reefs or filter the water, and seagrass is instantly eaten by the sea-urchins, which run amok because there's no nursery for the snapper population that would normally keep them in check.
I don't know what my point is, really, other than to say that I think it's hubris to think we have a sophisticated enough understanding of ecosystems to balance thousands of species on the knife-edge of fishing them to maximum sustainable pressure. Sometimes we'll get it wrong and an ecosystem will go "pop". Then we can't get it back.
As for positive prescriptions -- The main thing I've heard is that we should be urgently pushing for marine reserves. And that they absolutely have to be large and NO-TAKE. The goal should be something wildly optimistic like 50% of EEZs. Fishing can happen in the other half. (For reference here's where we currently are: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-no-take-areas-and... )
I'm responding to your other claim further down that got downvoted into oblivion with no responses, and therefore no explanation. You are quite wrong, but you deserve to know why.
"It's basic school knowledge that any population will recover, as long as you have a couple organisms left who can reproduce and the environment itself hasn't fundamentally changed."
I just recently took a biology class, and that is fundamentally not the case. One of the major causes of population collapse leading to extinction is lack of genetic diversity once a population is small. Once diversity is too low, even if conditions are relatively favorable, a population is much more vulnerable to disease or seemingly small changes to the environment. One of the ways biologists try to "rescue" populations these days is by introducing genetic diversity where possible.
I wanted to emphasize that the final part of the article links to Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch, which is a great way to identify which fish are coming from a sustainable fishery, and are okay to eat: https://www.seafoodwatch.org/
Anyone know any similar resources for selecting sources based on humane fish slaughter methods? I understand the method of catching them is important, but I am looking out for ways to avoid suffocation/freezing death.
Go out and fish it’s one of my favorite hobbies, kayak fishing specifically. I prefer to eat saltwater fish except trout. Both my wife and my families have beach places but I’m still limited to 6 or so trips a year.
It’s hard to tell but you could research the types of fish plus the methods it’s caught. Lots of fish need to be bled out so they are incapacitated before bleeding. You can kill a fish instantly by a brain spike (ikejime) or bash to the head with a blunt object. As you said some fish are just thrown on ice but it can depend on the species. Even worse, methods are going to vary wildly from fishermen to fishermen and region to region. Wild caught is probably better than farm raised death wise.
"Wild caught is probably better than farm raised death wise."
I would be curious to hear your reasoning or evidence for this. From what I know, the ability to control conditions and processes is much easier in the farm context.
Interesting video, but it doesn't show slaughter at all, just impressive machinery for quickly processing massive amounts of fish.
I disagree that having a person rather than a machine process food products is related to the ethics of animal consumption, but I tend to think about this stuff in terms of how do you continue to feed 9B people, around 3B of whom rely on seafood for their primary protein source. I consider it a great privilege to buy bespoke premium products that cater to my perceptions of the world, but it doesn't really solve the problems around mass producing enough healthy food to sustainably feed the world population. Having a human handle all of those dead fish and turn them into marketable products would drive their price up so much that it would push people to protein sources that are much more carbon-, water-, and nutrient-intensive. Making the processing humane is super important, but it needs to be rational and efficient.
I'm not sure if there is a well-trusted authority on this akin to MBA but it is certainly a leading issue in the seafood industry. More governments are codifying an acknowledgement of animal sentience in various ways [1] and there is a lot of active research into the various slaughter methods used for ethical and quality reasons [2]. You can find a lot of research into existing and novel methods for "stunning" fish (i.e., rendering them unconscious to then slaughter), even the use of things like EEG to measure brain activity of animals [3]. This is not my area of expertise, but I think that the overall conclusion is that we could be doing a much better job of minimizing the suffering of animals in farmed and wild fisheries. The good news is that people are realizing that and working on correcting it.
Thanks. I had done some reading on things like electro-stunning, and it seems like we're still in the awkward stage where it's generally recognized as better by all the major players, but there's still no reliable way to identify it when you're shopping. I'll ask the next time I go to the hippie grocery store, too.
If it's to put an animal out of misery when there's no way of treating an injury or illness surely it qualifies.
But I agree the word "humane" gets somewhat abused when applied to situations where animals are more useful to us dead than alive. I don't mind "cruelty free", and that really should be a minimal criteria for how we treat other species.
I should have added a qualifier for humane slaughter in regards to meat processing.
Yes, there are times when euthanasia may be appropriate - but it’s tough still to mete out the morality when no intent or consent is communicated, no?
Most “cruelty free” labeling is also farcical, unfortunately. The amount of suffering involved with animal agriculture is repulsively shocking when fully grasped, and difficult to unsee unless willful ignorance takes the proverbial wheel.
Perhaps that is true if you solely interact with food after it is dead and processed. Many people live much closer to their food production. I don't view the phrase "humane slaughter" as an attempt to insulate "us"; I think it is an acknowledgement by practitioners that they are mindful of what they are doing and to whom. It is also a direct reference to applicable laws where that term is codified.
Some people view killing animals for food as entirely humane, which is to say some combination of natural and ethical. You may not view any kind of animal slaughter as humane, but if pressed could you describe how humane your soy, wheat, etc. production is?
Huh, I had considered consumption to be necessary for my own persistence.
Most increase in land-based agricultural productivity in this day and age comes from intensification on existing land or removal of forested habitats. Those come at a huge cost to biodiversity and ecosystem services. They also have social costs to other humans.
> "Surely you can figure out how eating beans is a little more kind."
I don't think this snarkiness is very productive, but I'm super used to hearing this sentiment; often the people who express this type of idea have really good intentions that I am totally aligned with, but they also fall into logical fallacies usually due to missing information around ecology, agriculture, and food systems. It makes perfect sense if you take a very narrow view of how food is produced and what alternatives there are for land and water use: just eat a bean because it doesn't scream! Totally. But growing that bean comes at a cost and ignoring that because you read Sinclair or can afford to shop for high-end foods isn't helpful. I think it is a fantasy to suggest that the problems will be solved if peoples and cultures around the world just subscribe to my view of what is ethical or desirable.
Any fish would prefer you eat a bean. But the animals and plants that would use the land on which its grown would prefer you eat a fish. Those of us working to build sustainable food systems that minimize the overall impact on natural systems, biodiversity, and ecosystem services will fail if we take such a simplistic and naive view of the tradeoffs.
The vast majority (>75%) of soybeans grown are simply to feed cattle. The majority of rainforests being cleared in Brazil are for cattle. Animal agriculture is the leading contributor for GHG and anthropogenic climate change. Plenty of data breakdowns can be found here: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use , but this shouldn't be news to you.
Snarkiness is hard to avoid when you're legitimately attempting to compare the humanity of an industry responsible for killing 100 billion animals each year versus growing and eating plants; it's like comparing Hitler to a person who kills a housefly.
You wanna minimize your impact to natural systems and biodiversity? Stop eating animals. Peter Singer is a great place to approach the issue from a modern, truly ethical lens.
Hopefully we both can rid ourselves of simplistic and naive views, but for now, discussions about how we should best function in this universe ought to be had.
Yeah sorry I tried to anticipate and cover this response briefly by pointing out that the population of the world simply is not going to stop eating animal protein because you told them you find it unethical. Their beliefs are not morally dissonant because they do not share your view that killing a sentient being for food is wrong. This thread is about fisheries and my argument is in support of using both wild and farmed fish as a much better alternative for protein production than land-based agriculture, whether that be in support of livestock or soy milk. Your response is "everyone should eat plants exclusively because that works for me with minimal negative unintended consequences."
I also tried to point out the inherit issue with the comparison of "killing 100 billion animals each year" with "growing and eating plants" as though the latter avoids all 100 billion animal deaths. It doesn't. It might move those deaths to other species that you care less about or to a different time or make them lives that never existed rather than lives taken, but it still comes at a cost. So your premise is just incomplete and focuses entirely on the issue that seems to be most important to you personally.
If "you" want to minimize your impact, stop eating animals is an argument that only works for a subset of the human population and is only an accessible solution to a fraction of that. Putting aside the gross ethnocenctricity, it simply is not going to work as a solution. The converse is that "some land is not suitable for crop agriculture but is usable for grazing" and I also routinely see that argument abused even though it is true. Some livestock are raised totally sustainably and even provide ecosystem services (trampling is good for some systems and cattle do it in lieu of the native grazers that are now gone). But that doesn't mean that all cattle can be raised at no cost. You're making that argument, just about row crops, I guess.
FWIW, soy production in Brazil in the service of foreign markets is... not very sustainable even if it's not for feed [1].
I remember when I was younger and I was like, "I survive fine on <2 gallons of fresh water a day... how can there possibly be a water supply issue anywhere?" Or, more generally, "I can modify my behavior with few personal consequences to fit into a sustainable model." So that is great. Do it. But I would argue you are avoiding grappling with the full impacts of your own choices and, even if they'd be better alternatives anyway, you're failing to recognize that your choices are not available to everyone.
I'm not sure what you mean by "net increase in happiness". Like, if the universe was a big bank of emotions from which we all made withdrawals and deposits? That's a weird premise to accept.
In any case, the act of killing a sentient being is wrong. We've got that more or less universally codified for other humans (and most pets); seems we may just need a few more uncomfortable ethical discussions before we reach consistency.
Yes, but it doesn't have to be the universe. It could just be a farm. Suppose a cow has a happy 3 year life munching grass in the field but is killed after that. There's more happiness on the farm. So should there be more of those cows on the farm? Or would it be better if those cows had never lived.
Interestingly, Monterey Bay Aquarium is located on Cannery Row (see their address, it's right at the end of the street).
Cannery Row used to be the site of extremely unsustainable sardine fishing. They used to pump sardines out of the ocean with essentially fire hoses. Until one year there just weren't any. People would ask "where did all the sardines go?" and the answer was "they went into cans".
It took over 50 years for the fish population to recover but the fish canning industry went extinct there first.
There are a lot of issues around ocean conservation worth caring about, studying, and accepting a cost to solve. However, it is worth pointing out that fisheries management works well and has been working where it is deployed to the extent that many many populations that were overfished and in serious trouble as recently as the 1990s are now healthy and can be ethically fished. Many issues around overfishing wild populations are occurring in regions of the world where fisheries management is difficult or impossible due to a combination of logistical (they're fishing in the middle of the ocean, not returning to shore for many months at a time) to political (they're from a country with a government that cannot or will not intervene in fishing practices) to technical (we need data on extraction and population dynamics to be able to manage fish populations) reasons.[1]
I take serious issue with the idea that the ethics of eating animals is related to how similar they are to humans ("it's ok to kill them for food because I perceive them to have low intelligence"), but I don't really think it is worth arguing over. Sustainable harvest is much more important than your personal feelings around the ethics of individual animal or plant extraction. If you kill one less wild fish, what will you eat instead and what are the impacts of that?
Eating things that are very old is not unethical persay, IMO, except to the extent that with fish populations older animals contribute disproportionately to reproduction (a 2x bigger fish produces >2x more eggs; I find it hard to convince people that the logical conclusion is that it is more ethical to take younger animals). It just comes down to whether they're being taken at a rate that is sustainable or not. I used to do rockfish research in California and individuals of species that are routinely taken as commercial and sport fish are well over 50 yrs old (China rockfish, vermillion rockfish, yellow-eye rockifsh)[2]; most consumers who have fish and chips or a "cod" sandwich or whatever in California are eating one of these species, but at the point of sale you can almost never find out which species. Is that an issue? I think so because I believe traceability is a key component of a good, modern, sustainable food system that I'd like to see. But it isn't a problem necessarily if whatever species it is was caught within the confines of a well managed fishery.
I've had many dinner parties with too many academic ecologists (I am/was one of them) and I get that they can be depressing because many are so focused on things going poorly. I think it is worth being reminded that when we take cooperative approaches grounded in decent science, we can all win, Earth first and foremost.
[1] One example paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1909726116
[2] https://www.bookdepository.com/Rockfishes-Northeast-Pacific-... I don't have a copy of this book or institutional access any more, but this is the one place I have ever seen a whole bunch of age-growth curves of Sebastes printed in a single location; it is a great reference if you are curious about these species or about these issues in the context of California ecosystems.
I'll just note: Having previously participated in threads about "the environment" here: The punishment is generally immediate and insanely fierce if you stray out of their Overton window on any such topic. Be aware.
Rockfish are among the least-expensive fish at our local market. I stopped buying them when I learned that there was a very good chance that they were older (1-200 years) than I am. Eating my elders simply seems like an incorrect thing to do.
I feel like the opposite. Eating your youngers seems like an incredibly greedy thing for an older generation to do. Sacrificing the young to maintain the old.
94 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadThe most likely path forward, and third option, is farmed fish and other seafood. One such company making excellent in-roads is TransparentSea, a pretty cool shrimp farming operation.
Too bad I think shrimp are disgusting, lol. Farmed tilapia it is for me!
That seems short sighted to say the least.
I never really thought much about the difference between pelagic and benthic/benthopelagic fish before, but it seems like the lifecycle of bottom-feeding fish tends to be much longer than that of their more active pelagic cousins, which has a direct impact on the quality and texture of their flesh.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitefish_(fisheries_term)
You can train a goldfish with a clicker, they are not so dumb
https://www.clickertraining.com/node/30
Having pet fish as a kid, seeing them form bonds with each other and then get distressed when their "friend" died (I swear we had a loach get depressed, their behavior dramatically changed after, and even a "replacement" for the lost fish didn't help) is what made me drop the pesco part of my pescovegetarianism.
Seriously though, I think it's folly to evaluate something's value based on its intelligence. I think ethical judgements about what to eat should be based on its subjective experience, with a goal of harm reduction and minimization of suffering. Of course, the only way to cause no harm by eating is to be dead, so it will never be perfect.
In the US, hunters also contribute hundreds of millions of dollars annually that is put towards the conversation and preservation of wildlife and their habitats. Thanks to the Pittman-Robertson Act which is a 11% tax on all firearms, ammo, and archery equipment sold in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittman%E2%80%93Robertson_Fede...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoduck
https://www.eater.com/2016/7/17/11691958/what-is-geoduck
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/geoducks-happy...
Compared with 100 years ago, the total biomass of predatory fish (basically, the ones we eat) is down by roughly 70%. And that’s accelerating.
Some people change their behavior when they learn they their current behaviors are contributing to significant harm and there is a viable alternative to reduce harm.
We've got a choice about whether we contribute to the harm caused by commercial fishing or not.
I don’t eat a lot of fish, and what I do eat is mostly aquacultured here in New Zealand: freshwater salmon and green-lipped mussels are the lowest impact options available to me.
I sometimes have wild-caught fish when I’m away with friends who spearfish. On the very rare occasion I buy wild-caught fish, I’m very picky about species and method (long lines or maybe set netted, never trawled)
This is a BS statistic meant to shock and inappropriately counts the entire area of wilderness that might be used for grazing which is just wilderness that would have supported similar animals anyway.
Even grazing land rarely looks anything like it does before we've shaped it for our use. And even when it does, at first glance, it gets a monoculture of animals, instead. Farmers are not keen on seeing their herds deal with competition or predation from the wild.
That doesn't seem right. According to the FAO (United Nations), only 1.3 billion hectares of land are arable while nearly 5 billion hectares are used for agriculture. That's more like ~25%. And the latter figure only accounts for 38% of the world's land area, so the earlier half figure claim doesn't seem right either.
I suppose if the margin of error on those approximations is exceptionally large...
[1]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115
[2]: https://github.com/milo-lab/biomass_distribution/blob/master...
Most of the worlds land megafauna are gone because big slow things are really easy to kill for groups of primitive humans with pointy sticks.
>In 1800, it was estimated there were forty million bison, by 1883, there were few wild bison in the United States - most were in Yellowstone National Park. By 1900, there were less than a thousand left in North America.
48% of bird species in decline: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/05/global-bird-populat...
among other examples. In 2018 it was estimated by the WWF that 60% of the animal population was lost between 1970 and 2014: https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/living-planet-report-2018
Maybe a better question would be: where can I find more information on the consequences of this?
The excellent 2009 documentary "The End of the Line" was the first place I heard discuss catastrophic fish population crashes, and it covers this dramatic topic and its very serious implications in detail. It also talks about the mind-boggling, almost unbelievable scale at which modern fishing vessels such as supertrawlers operate.
Frankly, I was horrified by what I learned about modern fishing watching this movie.
https://theendofthelinemovie.com/
A couple decades ago the concept of overfishing became more well-known, and the industry was forced to change. The reason that the industry reacted also has to do with the fact that a true collapse of the fish population would also decimate the entire industry - they have an interest in keeping it stable.
If 99% of a fish population goes away, it would take decades for the population to recover to normal levels. During those years, there would be no profit.
The true reason why the fish population is down 70% is due to the fact that every year the fishing industry takes out as many fish as possible without causing a lasting depression of fish population.
If all fishing would be stopped right now, the global fish population would recover to pre-human levels within probably 20 or 30 years.
Here's what someone from the Australian fishing industriy has to say about this:
"We have learned from the ’60s to ’90s era and today most large fisheries are well managed (some in Asia/Africa are not) and either recovering or operating at maximum economic yield. You cannot catch fish to extinction – they will always recover if you stop fishing. It’s the recovery time that is the issue – and the time to when you can recommence harvesting, sustainably."
Of course these people are heavily biased, and the industry is rotten to the core and full of corruption, but it's hard to argue against this self-evident logic.
It’s not a collapse of “the ocean”, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...
Also, you completely ignore 2nd and 3rd order effects - decimation of populations dependent on those missing fish that can't and won't recover as easily as fish can.
There are some paradoxical concepts in fisheries management, not least is that the Maximum Sustinable Yield often supports aligned interests between fisherman (who want to profit/eat) and fish populations (who want to persist). Overfishing is a tragedy of the commons; managing those fisheries properly can produce MORE fish in the ocean even if yields go up. Not always, but this stuff is not cut and dry and the dynamics of population growth and extraction in these animals have to be understood.
[1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aao1378
I'll take an example from New Zealand because it's where I live and what I know about. New Zealand has a huge fishery EEZ and is, I believe, widely regarded has having one of the most "well managed" fisheries in the world.
And yet, in large parts of our inland waters a combination of soil runoff and bottom trawling has turned millions of acres of seabed from incredibly productive nurseries of seagrass beds and shellfish-covered rocky reefs... into featureless swathes of sediment called "Kina barrens" (basically, dominated by a kind of spiky sea-urchin). These areas have passed a tipping point, there's basically no getting them back. Shellfish can't attach to the mucky sediment to regenerate the reefs or filter the water, and seagrass is instantly eaten by the sea-urchins, which run amok because there's no nursery for the snapper population that would normally keep them in check.
I don't know what my point is, really, other than to say that I think it's hubris to think we have a sophisticated enough understanding of ecosystems to balance thousands of species on the knife-edge of fishing them to maximum sustainable pressure. Sometimes we'll get it wrong and an ecosystem will go "pop". Then we can't get it back.
As for positive prescriptions -- The main thing I've heard is that we should be urgently pushing for marine reserves. And that they absolutely have to be large and NO-TAKE. The goal should be something wildly optimistic like 50% of EEZs. Fishing can happen in the other half. (For reference here's where we currently are: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-no-take-areas-and... )
"It's basic school knowledge that any population will recover, as long as you have a couple organisms left who can reproduce and the environment itself hasn't fundamentally changed."
I just recently took a biology class, and that is fundamentally not the case. One of the major causes of population collapse leading to extinction is lack of genetic diversity once a population is small. Once diversity is too low, even if conditions are relatively favorable, a population is much more vulnerable to disease or seemingly small changes to the environment. One of the ways biologists try to "rescue" populations these days is by introducing genetic diversity where possible.
It’s hard to tell but you could research the types of fish plus the methods it’s caught. Lots of fish need to be bled out so they are incapacitated before bleeding. You can kill a fish instantly by a brain spike (ikejime) or bash to the head with a blunt object. As you said some fish are just thrown on ice but it can depend on the species. Even worse, methods are going to vary wildly from fishermen to fishermen and region to region. Wild caught is probably better than farm raised death wise.
I would be curious to hear your reasoning or evidence for this. From what I know, the ability to control conditions and processes is much easier in the farm context.
Here’s a link.[1] I’d rather have a person doing the work.
[1] https://youtu.be/FFYti5PHxE8
I disagree that having a person rather than a machine process food products is related to the ethics of animal consumption, but I tend to think about this stuff in terms of how do you continue to feed 9B people, around 3B of whom rely on seafood for their primary protein source. I consider it a great privilege to buy bespoke premium products that cater to my perceptions of the world, but it doesn't really solve the problems around mass producing enough healthy food to sustainably feed the world population. Having a human handle all of those dead fish and turn them into marketable products would drive their price up so much that it would push people to protein sources that are much more carbon-, water-, and nutrient-intensive. Making the processing humane is super important, but it needs to be rational and efficient.
I also agree that our perception of farm conditions for fish is probably not as accurate as for other animals.
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/08/farmed-fish-fe...
[2]: https://www.globalseafood.org/advocate/fish-producers-benefi...
[3]: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/are.14857
some methods are better than others (i.e., minimize suffering), but no slaughter is humane.
Yes, there are times when euthanasia may be appropriate - but it’s tough still to mete out the morality when no intent or consent is communicated, no?
Most “cruelty free” labeling is also farcical, unfortunately. The amount of suffering involved with animal agriculture is repulsively shocking when fully grasped, and difficult to unsee unless willful ignorance takes the proverbial wheel.
Some people view killing animals for food as entirely humane, which is to say some combination of natural and ethical. You may not view any kind of animal slaughter as humane, but if pressed could you describe how humane your soy, wheat, etc. production is?
Surely you can figure out how eating beans is a little more kind.
Most increase in land-based agricultural productivity in this day and age comes from intensification on existing land or removal of forested habitats. Those come at a huge cost to biodiversity and ecosystem services. They also have social costs to other humans.
> "Surely you can figure out how eating beans is a little more kind." I don't think this snarkiness is very productive, but I'm super used to hearing this sentiment; often the people who express this type of idea have really good intentions that I am totally aligned with, but they also fall into logical fallacies usually due to missing information around ecology, agriculture, and food systems. It makes perfect sense if you take a very narrow view of how food is produced and what alternatives there are for land and water use: just eat a bean because it doesn't scream! Totally. But growing that bean comes at a cost and ignoring that because you read Sinclair or can afford to shop for high-end foods isn't helpful. I think it is a fantasy to suggest that the problems will be solved if peoples and cultures around the world just subscribe to my view of what is ethical or desirable.
Any fish would prefer you eat a bean. But the animals and plants that would use the land on which its grown would prefer you eat a fish. Those of us working to build sustainable food systems that minimize the overall impact on natural systems, biodiversity, and ecosystem services will fail if we take such a simplistic and naive view of the tradeoffs.
I described it as unnecessary, because eating animals is simply not necessary to sustain a long, healthy life. Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/
The vast majority (>75%) of soybeans grown are simply to feed cattle. The majority of rainforests being cleared in Brazil are for cattle. Animal agriculture is the leading contributor for GHG and anthropogenic climate change. Plenty of data breakdowns can be found here: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use , but this shouldn't be news to you.
Snarkiness is hard to avoid when you're legitimately attempting to compare the humanity of an industry responsible for killing 100 billion animals each year versus growing and eating plants; it's like comparing Hitler to a person who kills a housefly.
You wanna minimize your impact to natural systems and biodiversity? Stop eating animals. Peter Singer is a great place to approach the issue from a modern, truly ethical lens.
Hopefully we both can rid ourselves of simplistic and naive views, but for now, discussions about how we should best function in this universe ought to be had.
I also tried to point out the inherit issue with the comparison of "killing 100 billion animals each year" with "growing and eating plants" as though the latter avoids all 100 billion animal deaths. It doesn't. It might move those deaths to other species that you care less about or to a different time or make them lives that never existed rather than lives taken, but it still comes at a cost. So your premise is just incomplete and focuses entirely on the issue that seems to be most important to you personally.
If "you" want to minimize your impact, stop eating animals is an argument that only works for a subset of the human population and is only an accessible solution to a fraction of that. Putting aside the gross ethnocenctricity, it simply is not going to work as a solution. The converse is that "some land is not suitable for crop agriculture but is usable for grazing" and I also routinely see that argument abused even though it is true. Some livestock are raised totally sustainably and even provide ecosystem services (trampling is good for some systems and cattle do it in lieu of the native grazers that are now gone). But that doesn't mean that all cattle can be raised at no cost. You're making that argument, just about row crops, I guess.
FWIW, soy production in Brazil in the service of foreign markets is... not very sustainable even if it's not for feed [1].
I remember when I was younger and I was like, "I survive fine on <2 gallons of fresh water a day... how can there possibly be a water supply issue anywhere?" Or, more generally, "I can modify my behavior with few personal consequences to fit into a sustainable model." So that is great. Do it. But I would argue you are avoiding grappling with the full impacts of your own choices and, even if they'd be better alternatives anyway, you're failing to recognize that your choices are not available to everyone.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-98256-6
In any case, the act of killing a sentient being is wrong. We've got that more or less universally codified for other humans (and most pets); seems we may just need a few more uncomfortable ethical discussions before we reach consistency.
Cannery Row used to be the site of extremely unsustainable sardine fishing. They used to pump sardines out of the ocean with essentially fire hoses. Until one year there just weren't any. People would ask "where did all the sardines go?" and the answer was "they went into cans".
It took over 50 years for the fish population to recover but the fish canning industry went extinct there first.
I take serious issue with the idea that the ethics of eating animals is related to how similar they are to humans ("it's ok to kill them for food because I perceive them to have low intelligence"), but I don't really think it is worth arguing over. Sustainable harvest is much more important than your personal feelings around the ethics of individual animal or plant extraction. If you kill one less wild fish, what will you eat instead and what are the impacts of that?
Eating things that are very old is not unethical persay, IMO, except to the extent that with fish populations older animals contribute disproportionately to reproduction (a 2x bigger fish produces >2x more eggs; I find it hard to convince people that the logical conclusion is that it is more ethical to take younger animals). It just comes down to whether they're being taken at a rate that is sustainable or not. I used to do rockfish research in California and individuals of species that are routinely taken as commercial and sport fish are well over 50 yrs old (China rockfish, vermillion rockfish, yellow-eye rockifsh)[2]; most consumers who have fish and chips or a "cod" sandwich or whatever in California are eating one of these species, but at the point of sale you can almost never find out which species. Is that an issue? I think so because I believe traceability is a key component of a good, modern, sustainable food system that I'd like to see. But it isn't a problem necessarily if whatever species it is was caught within the confines of a well managed fishery.
I've had many dinner parties with too many academic ecologists (I am/was one of them) and I get that they can be depressing because many are so focused on things going poorly. I think it is worth being reminded that when we take cooperative approaches grounded in decent science, we can all win, Earth first and foremost.
[1] One example paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1909726116 [2] https://www.bookdepository.com/Rockfishes-Northeast-Pacific-... I don't have a copy of this book or institutional access any more, but this is the one place I have ever seen a whole bunch of age-growth curves of Sebastes printed in a single location; it is a great reference if you are curious about these species or about these issues in the context of California ecosystems.
Snapper is great tasting and sustainable, slimehead is neither and fishing for it ruins the sea floor.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/rockfish-gettin....