Oceans Empty By 2048? 589
F34nor writes to mention a CBS news article about the depopulation of ocean species. According to a study by a scientist in Halifax, Nova Scotia and assisted by research from all around the world, the world's oceans will be emptied of large lifeforms by 2048. From the article: "Already, 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90% — a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries. But the issue isn't just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide. 'A large and increasing proportion of our population lives close to the coast; thus the loss of services such as flood control and waste detoxification can have disastrous consequences,' Worm and colleagues say."
Every bit helps (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I see your point (Score:1, Informative)
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/2006/10/31/21
Re:Harrumph (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's so self-evident (Score:5, Informative)
the wastes produced by farming
the fish that escape
the diseases and parasites that occur in farms
the chemicals used to treat diseased fish
the problems of stock depletion and contamination of feed.
See:
http://www.focs.ca/fishfarming/index.asp [www.focs.ca]
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2000/july12
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Oceans/Aquaculture/Sal
http://www.westcoastaquatic.ca/article_fishfarms_
And many others.
What I find to be self evident is that the real issue is simply to many people, not enough planet.
Re:what a hard-nosed skeptic you are (Score:5, Informative)
The Heartland Institute, which you sited, is a FUD site. [sourcewatch.org] You've been had.
300 year old trees in rainforest areas never used to burn down every decade or so--and the rainforests of the west coast that people are acting to preserve are precisely these areas. The brush which does burn down every 10 years or so is not preserved for environmental reasons, but because it is typically near housing developments which it will take down with it when it burns. British Columbia has been dealing with this problem for the past ten years--towns that are threatened by wild burns that have been prevented unnaturally. Frankly, we've gotten too good at fighting forest fires--but rainforests are too wet to burn. Old growth stands are taken down for lumber purposes. They are old growth precisely because they do not burn down regularly. But these are precisely the trees most valuable for lumber purposes. They're also very good at conserving water tables, which is of critical importance to Northwest agriculture.
Yellowstone scrub falls in the category of forests that typically burn down on a regular basis.
As for the fish, anyone who has been following reports on fish stocks could see this coming for the past ten years. The Salmon are dying off on the West coast, the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, once the most plentiful fishing grounds on the planet, are dead, plankton, the basis of oceanic ecology, is dying off, the coast of China is pouring billions of tons of effluents into the Pacific, and bottom dragging nets have been destroying spawning habitats for decades. If this is a surprise to you, you really need to pull your head out of your ass once in a while and look around.
So, no trees, no water, no crops, and no livestock which depend on those crops. No fish, no seafood. What, exactly, did you think your kids were going to eat?
Re:current trends (Score:3, Informative)
It really isnt that complex. In some places, two decades ago, you could go out and fish for a few hours from, or nearby the shore, and have enough fish to eat for a week. In those exact same places you can now fish for a week and not have a single fish.
I mean, this isnt some nebulous long-term effect; if you're ever fishing for sport in areas affected, it's quite noticable, and within the timeframe of 'your dad took you fishing and it was fun and you got fish, now you can take your kids and fish for seaweed and jellyfish'.
"That's easy for me to say, though, as my family's well-being isn't tied to my success as a fisherman."
Yes, well, I really pity anyone whose well-being is tied to being a fisherman. Many will be faced with the unpalatable choice of failing because of regulation or failing because there simply is no fish to catch. For many, success just isnt on the menu anymore. Just like fish.
I saw a decrease... (Score:5, Informative)
It really helps to get a handle on this if you stop thinking of it as fishing, and no, I am not kidding. Just a little mental trick works well. Switch the term from fishing to "oceanic market hunting", then go back and look in history what market hunting did to wild terrestrial animal species, passenger pigeon, bison, migratory wildfowl, the dodo, etc. It did not take long historically speaking to see humongous stock depletion. Ocean fishing is market hunting, it will have the same effect eventually, there's no way around it. The time frame may be arguable, but the effect won't if let to go on like it is now, because there will be demand, even if it is only from the top 2% of thee wealthiest. I mean, they used to serve *plovers tongues* in restaurants. That's the sort of goofy market pressure that can happen, all the way to extinction or near extinction.
The only way we managed to even remotely save a lot of terrestrial species was with a total ban on wild game hunting for commercial purposes(I will only speak of the US now I really don't have much knowledge of this from other countries). We have personal sport hunting now and that has worked with a lot of good game management in place, and that only came about from enough people noticing "hey, where did all the animals go to???" It was an almost too late collective "duh" moment, and one would hope we have a bit more data and scientific sophistication to work with now than we did in the late 1800s. And even with game management laws in place, some times desperate times can negate those factors. If you go back and look at the great depression era, some species that are in good shape suffered near total collapse, eastern white tailed deer got hunted to severely low levels back then, even though the laws were there, desperately poor people just had to eat, so they did, and the laws were just flaunted.
I agree with another poster above, in the oceans, trawling is responsible because it is so deadly efficient in killing a lot of animals. In the US they used to allow "punt guns" for waterfowl hunting, basically short barreled boat-mounted small cannon, very efficient in harvestng ducks, so efficient that during market hunting times they about wiped out some species in short order, they had to be banned outright, and now shotguns are limited to 10 gauge maximum size. I think we as humans are going to need to address this sort of thing with wild ocean hunting of fish if we don't want to suffer the same fate we did with the land animals. Heck, there has to be some more older New England and Candian slashdotters here who can remember when cod was dirt cheap in the store, I mean rdiculous cheap, I sure can, because they were so abundant, and there were still a lot of other species that were abundant so cod was considered a second tier-class fish, now it ain't so, and cod is now in a decline state and expensive.
Re:I see your point (Score:3, Informative)
Despite the extremist language, no one is actually talking about the fish being gone. Fisheries "collapsing" means there's not enough to fish. (Or even just that there's a lot less than there used to be.) No one is talking about species going extinct. If you figure out a way to farm any of these species of fish they're all still there to capture are breed and raise your farm.