The US should cap exports of wild fish. The US actually doesn't eat that much seafood, and most of the seafood captured along the Pacific is sent to China and other importers.
We're destroying our local ecosystems for a quick buck, and a cap on exports would be the quickest fix. In the long term we should turn more to fish farms.
Without meaning to judge, the US as a whole seems happy to overexploit itself at the expense of its citizens.
Fisheries would be one example, agriculture which a sibling comment mentioned, another. But it's also pollution, labour laws, access to housing.
It's tricky because the US is literally the most powerful economy ever, so it must be doing something right, equally it seems other countries care more about their citizens. Not China or North Korea ofc but Europe or Canada etc.
I worked summers in Homer, Alaska at the cannery (four decades ago, before it burned down).
Herring season was interesting since all the herring roe went, apparently, to Japan. A Japanese inspector would arrive and test the herring that the cannery had stored in large brine vats, stacked around the facility. Only when he said it was "ripe" would we begin processing (separating) the roe from the herring.
The non-egg part of the processing was, I was told, to become crab bait or cat food.
China could do a much better job at regulating their fishing industry though...
In the West we eat Tilapia, but we probably should learn to eat Carp. Unfortunately as a family of fish, it gets a bad rap for a few reasons (Americans don't like bones, Carp has a low-class association, Carp can be "muddy" if not raised and prepared right).
It's more complicated than that, because there is a substantial trade in fish export to China, where processing happens, followed by re-export back to the US.
2019 figures:
* U.S. commercial fishermen landed 9.3 billion pounds of seafood
* Americans consumed 6.3 billion pounds of seafood
Given imports are more processed than exports, a part of that difference is presumably waste & less desirable byproducts. So it seems fair to conclude that the US eats pretty close to the amount of seafood that it produces.
In $ terms (because of the value add of processing), US seafood imports are roughly 4x exports.
Haven't the Faroe Islands managed to develop a highly profitable and sustainable salmon aquaculture? Let's hope it's not too much to ask Alaskans to learn from what has been done successfully in other parts of the world.
One complexity with this plan is that the vast majority of the seafood processing occurs overseas. We export fish to China to be processed, then ship it back.
If fishing was done on land and not miles off sea and underwater where the public can't see what's going on - I'm sure there would be much more care about how we fished and it wouldn't take a massive collapse in fish populations before something was done about it.
It seems no matter where in the world the same thing is happening in different ways and there seems to be a common response: it's not us - its foreign fisherman, big fishing companies, climate change, different types of fisherman, marine use etc.
I feel like I've been reading this same article again and again my entire life, from the collapse of the cod fishery in '93 until now, we continue to learn nothing and make the same mistakes.
It's really weird, science has pretty much figured out the maths of how to fish a stock sustainably, and doing so would give good yields for the forseeable future (climate change may have an impact).
However in most regions the industry and politics alwas keep setting quotas too high, with ever decreasing yields that end in a stock collapse. And this is not in developing nations with other problems, the latest example is the cod stock collapse in the Baltic Sea.
I read many years ago, the fishing fleet in the NE US was outdated, but Pres Carter provided subsidies in the 70s to modernize the fleet due to foreign competition.
The result was the same as what the Article mention for Alaska. Boom times for quite a while, then the crash which the NE is still working through.
The obsolete fleet provided more employment and was not as efficient, providing for some recovery on the ocean.
What matters is the total amount of fish caught, along with bycatch and other damage from lost fishing great (ghost nets). The size of the vessels doing the catching is irrelevant. Fisheries should be managed based on quotas and allowed fishing techniques rather than boat size. Larger vessels also tend to be safer for the crews.
> Trawl industry representatives say that bycatch, which the industry is required by law to discard, is not the driving force behind recent crab, salmon, and halibut declines. They point to climate change and warming waters as well as natural population variability as the primary culprits.
I don't think they are wrong here. I think blaming trawlers is looking for rounding errors. But there are still a litany of reasons to start sensibly restricting trawling.
I remember having to take a class about The Blockchain for professional development about ten years ago and they gave fisheries as an example industry where blockchain would help guarantee whatever fish was caught on whatever day and delivered to the store. What a joke.
I feel pretty impotent and helpless clicking an upvote button as my contribution to these types of calamities that I, due to other priorities in my life, can otherwise do nothing about. I have almost zero faith in the government to remedy these issues when there is large corporate interest in the status quo.
You can. Your actions matter. Simply refuse to to participate in that. Even saving a small piece of nature has a meaning. Maybe not to you, but to what is saved it has.
If there was no demand, it would not be happening.
Your example can help others to see what's wrong with their way of living. If lot of people change, the laws shall be changed.
> almost zero faith in the government ... when ..is large corporate interest
All (western) governments are puppets of corporate interests. Just look behing most armed conflicts of the last century, and also how are goverments handling the climate crisis. We can expect no meaningful change from their actions.
Demand for change must come from the people, and it must come from a significant part of the population (majority is not required, though), otherwise the status quo and business as usual will prevail.
Maybe you can't do much about this directly, but what about being part of the bigger solution by not consuming fish. I get my protein en omega 3 from plant based foods.
I was listening to a piece on the local news radio about fish hatcheries in the PNW and the numbers are shocking with the fish that make it back to spawn; Chinook salmon sound like they're barely holding on with all our best efforts.
I have a lot of pessimism about our ocean health, we really need to do anything we can to support fish populations -- if those collapse it's just a matter of time before the rest of the ecosystem follows.
Take a look at Patagonia's Artifishal film[0]. The best thing to support anadromous fisheries might be just leaving them alone - in the rivers, and in the ocean.
Eh. Overfishing isn't a problem for the earth, or for the oceans, or for ocean life. It's a problem for the fishing industry.
We send certain types of boats with certain types of gear out to certain small areas where we have found concentrations of certain kinds of fish, and they catch lots and bring them back to factories with certain kinds of processing equipment which then send the product out to be consumed.
And after a while we've caught a good percentage of that concentration of fish, and then they start to peter out and it become uneconomical to run that entire costly process. And so we then identify other kinds of edible ocean life, and we change our boats and gear and locations and seasons and factories at great cost, and consume a different batch of fish.
And while we're on that second effort, the first area is being repopulated with the first type of fish, or maybe another, because the food sources for fish are still out there and available - the planktons and smaller fish - and nature abhors a vacuum.
It's all just a cycle. Fish stocks may move around in response to our overfishing - more reproduction over here, bigger schools back in the same place once we move on - but the net effect is that the biomass remains the same.
But change is expensive, and so we hear from the payers about how we're overfishing "their" fishstocks.
We're a tiny blip on the oceans' consumption radar. Don't mourn for the fish. Mourn for the people who need different boats and gear and territories every ten years or so.
I remember Ecology lectures, starting from Lotka-Volterra model... And getting into more complex scenarios. One, was an actual model of how much fishes the industry can predate while guaranteeing the sustainability of their biz. Of course, it only happens in books. Sadly, the seas are largely unregulated.. Or even if regulations are in place, enforcing is so difficult. In fact, it can very easily turn into conflict between nations.
Too early to tell, but my cynical mind expects the 30% requirement will be fulfilled by choosing parcels of ocean smack in the middle of nowhere with the least economical and thus ecological value.
I walked into the local Asian grocery store, and saw that Alaskan King Crab was something like $80/lb, and then I realized I'll never eat Alaskan King Crab ever again.
[+] [-] nostromo|3 years ago|reply
We're destroying our local ecosystems for a quick buck, and a cap on exports would be the quickest fix. In the long term we should turn more to fish farms.
[+] [-] rich_sasha|3 years ago|reply
Fisheries would be one example, agriculture which a sibling comment mentioned, another. But it's also pollution, labour laws, access to housing.
It's tricky because the US is literally the most powerful economy ever, so it must be doing something right, equally it seems other countries care more about their citizens. Not China or North Korea ofc but Europe or Canada etc.
[+] [-] JKCalhoun|3 years ago|reply
Herring season was interesting since all the herring roe went, apparently, to Japan. A Japanese inspector would arrive and test the herring that the cannery had stored in large brine vats, stacked around the facility. Only when he said it was "ripe" would we begin processing (separating) the roe from the herring.
The non-egg part of the processing was, I was told, to become crab bait or cat food.
[+] [-] RajT88|3 years ago|reply
https://www.statista.com/chart/2280/the-global-fish-farming-...
China's being smart about it too - they are farming fish which are ubiquitous and easy to farm (Carp and Tilapia):
https://thechinaguys.com/aquaculture-in-china/
China could do a much better job at regulating their fishing industry though...
In the West we eat Tilapia, but we probably should learn to eat Carp. Unfortunately as a family of fish, it gets a bad rap for a few reasons (Americans don't like bones, Carp has a low-class association, Carp can be "muddy" if not raised and prepared right).
[+] [-] awhitby|3 years ago|reply
2019 figures:
* U.S. commercial fishermen landed 9.3 billion pounds of seafood * Americans consumed 6.3 billion pounds of seafood
Given imports are more processed than exports, a part of that difference is presumably waste & less desirable byproducts. So it seems fair to conclude that the US eats pretty close to the amount of seafood that it produces.
In $ terms (because of the value add of processing), US seafood imports are roughly 4x exports.
Source: https://media.fisheries.noaa.gov/2021-05/fus-2019-fact-sheet...
[+] [-] yowzadave|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] berkle4455|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giantg2|3 years ago|reply
One complexity with this plan is that the vast majority of the seafood processing occurs overseas. We export fish to China to be processed, then ship it back.
[+] [-] Gys|3 years ago|reply
Sadly, that happens all over the world. 'We' prefer to not see long term effects for having a 'better' life now.
[+] [-] quest88|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] helsinkiandrew|3 years ago|reply
It seems no matter where in the world the same thing is happening in different ways and there seems to be a common response: it's not us - its foreign fisherman, big fishing companies, climate change, different types of fisherman, marine use etc.
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|3 years ago|reply
Depressing.
[+] [-] shellfishgene|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twblalock|3 years ago|reply
After 20+ years, you need to realize the doomsayers were wrong.
[+] [-] softwaredoug|3 years ago|reply
I wonder if fisheries recover? For example what’s the state of North Atlantic fisheries?
[+] [-] jmclnx|3 years ago|reply
I read many years ago, the fishing fleet in the NE US was outdated, but Pres Carter provided subsidies in the 70s to modernize the fleet due to foreign competition.
The result was the same as what the Article mention for Alaska. Boom times for quite a while, then the crash which the NE is still working through.
The obsolete fleet provided more employment and was not as efficient, providing for some recovery on the ocean.
[+] [-] floatrock|3 years ago|reply
It was named Cape Cod for the plentiful fish back in the day.
[+] [-] nradov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Choco31415|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legitster|3 years ago|reply
I don't think they are wrong here. I think blaming trawlers is looking for rounding errors. But there are still a litany of reasons to start sensibly restricting trawling.
[+] [-] zackmorris|3 years ago|reply
https://www.intrafish.com/alaska-seafood-starring-in-new-tv-...
https://imgur.com/a/0pi3eQy
Unfortunately it looks like his 2006 ad's been pulled from all search results:
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ben-stein-commercial-stati...
http://www.alaskaseafood.org/tv%5Fad/
https://www.ispot.tv/topic/actor-actress/Ac/ben-stein
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ben+stein+fish+commercial&t=h_&iax...
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ben+stein+alaska+seafood&t=h_&iar=...
It's remarkable how even today, some of the smartest people in the world are happy to sound like morons for the right price.
[+] [-] nvr219|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] user3939382|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myshpa|3 years ago|reply
You can. Your actions matter. Simply refuse to to participate in that. Even saving a small piece of nature has a meaning. Maybe not to you, but to what is saved it has.
If there was no demand, it would not be happening.
Your example can help others to see what's wrong with their way of living. If lot of people change, the laws shall be changed.
> almost zero faith in the government ... when ..is large corporate interest
All (western) governments are puppets of corporate interests. Just look behing most armed conflicts of the last century, and also how are goverments handling the climate crisis. We can expect no meaningful change from their actions.
Demand for change must come from the people, and it must come from a significant part of the population (majority is not required, though), otherwise the status quo and business as usual will prevail.
[+] [-] wappieslurkz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myshpa|3 years ago|reply
We should acknowledge that it's our personal responsibility to lower demand, and protect (demand protection of) what remains.
"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." - Rumi
[+] [-] earlyam|3 years ago|reply
I have a lot of pessimism about our ocean health, we really need to do anything we can to support fish populations -- if those collapse it's just a matter of time before the rest of the ecosystem follows.
[+] [-] kristjansson|3 years ago|reply
[0]: https://www.patagonia.com/stories/artifishal/video-79192.htm...
[+] [-] JoshTko|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobby_bbb|3 years ago|reply
We send certain types of boats with certain types of gear out to certain small areas where we have found concentrations of certain kinds of fish, and they catch lots and bring them back to factories with certain kinds of processing equipment which then send the product out to be consumed.
And after a while we've caught a good percentage of that concentration of fish, and then they start to peter out and it become uneconomical to run that entire costly process. And so we then identify other kinds of edible ocean life, and we change our boats and gear and locations and seasons and factories at great cost, and consume a different batch of fish.
And while we're on that second effort, the first area is being repopulated with the first type of fish, or maybe another, because the food sources for fish are still out there and available - the planktons and smaller fish - and nature abhors a vacuum.
It's all just a cycle. Fish stocks may move around in response to our overfishing - more reproduction over here, bigger schools back in the same place once we move on - but the net effect is that the biomass remains the same.
But change is expensive, and so we hear from the payers about how we're overfishing "their" fishstocks.
We're a tiny blip on the oceans' consumption radar. Don't mourn for the fish. Mourn for the people who need different boats and gear and territories every ten years or so.
[+] [-] adr1an|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Depurator|3 years ago|reply
Please eat fish that is pelagic such as herring and sardines. Otherwise long-line fished cod and salmon are fine as well as farmed fish.
[+] [-] wappieslurkz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] V__|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jabl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shellfishgene|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] photochemsyn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jabl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] entropicgravity|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Choco31415|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] euroderf|3 years ago|reply
I do not use that verb lightly. I believe it is accurate and fair.