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Gulf Oil Spill Disaster — Spawn of the Living Dead
grrlscientist writes "A recently published study, intended to provide data to commercial fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico so they maximize their catch of Yellowfin Tuna, Thunnus albacares, whilst avoiding bycatch of critically endangered Atlantic (Northern) Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus thynnus, suggests that the Deepwater Horizon oil leak may devastate the endangered Atlantic bluefin population, causing it to completely collapse or possibly go extinct."
When a single bluefin tuna can bring $75,000 at market, it's not Deepwater Horizon, no matter how horrific, that's causing bluefin tuna to go extinct.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
It's pretty simple actually, biological diversity is important.
crazy dynamite monkey
Straw man much? No one is claiming we should save every species. You yourself say we shouldn't poison or hunt species into extinction. That is all anyone is talking about here, so you could have just said that and left out the straw man completely. It's not as if these tuna were about to go extinct on their own, and now there is a huge campaign to save them. We are responsible, and not to the tuna but to the people whose livelihood depends on them, and to the people like me who find them delicious.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Well, in this case, it is in humanity's self-interest, if nothing else, because bluefin tuna are legendarily tasty.
The ethical duties, if any, of environmental preservation are debatable. The fact that crashing the population of a species you like to eat is stupid and self-defeating isn't.
I don't think it is our responsability to save "every" species...but I think it's our responsability to save species that we have directly endangered through our own actions, whether those actions are on purpose or a mistake.
Living With a Nerd
Like the other poster said, biodiversity is key. It makes natural systems resilient; it means every ecological niche has a backup plan. Everything's in a web of relationships.
When a species goes extinct, the species in some relationship with it are put under stress or imbalance; it ripples through the system. Eventually the system gets overwhelmed and collapses.
Just to be clear, our petroleum and pesticide-based agriculture can go so far, and you do not want to live on a planet with collapsed ecosystems after you've destroyed it for a quick buck. It'll be like Easter Island - miserable survivors with no wood to repair their boats, fighting and cannibalizing each other.
The problem is that, in their guilt trip, biologists have blamed man for the state of pretty much every endangered species on the planet. Can you name a single endangered species (or even variety of species) that man is *not* blamed for right now? I doubt there is even one. So that means that we are supposed to preserve every single species that happens to exist at this particular moment in our planet's history, like some weird zoo where we've effectively stopped natural selection?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Dude you're not a genius just a nutbag.
There is no Karma this is just greedy assholes being greedy assholes. No amount of you whining and playing hackysack is going to fix it. Only laws against this sort of shit and maybe hanging a few fat rich bankers.
The ecosystem survives but typically the top predators are all replaced.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I really have to agree with this sentiment. Both of these are Tragedy of the Commons events, where single individuals (corporations) are overexploiting all of us, consequences be damned. Unfortunately, we've built a system where corporations have no responsibilities to anything or anyone beyond their own profit motive.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I'm afraid you're mixing up "the origin of species" with Highlander. "Survival of the fittest" implies that within a species, only the ones that are most fit to deal with their environment will survive. Darwin never claimed that "in the end, there can be only one". In fact many species live in mutual beneficial relationships with each other.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
And to be very specific, I don't think you, or anybody else, is going to die because one species of tuna collapsed in the North Atlantic.
Very true. But at some point, the accumulation of species extinction is going to hit us, and especially if that species happens to be a keystone species. God help us all if krill happens to become extinct. It'll be Soylent Green for all of us.
The point is that arguing that a) in the long run, it's all a wash and b) it's just one species manages to both be way to far-sighted and way to short-sighted. The collapse of the blue-fin Tuna has to be seen in the context of the collapse of a lot of other fish species. It's not that it is just one species that might disappear, it's that it is another one in a long line of species.
Finally, the big problem is that disappearance of one species indicates that more issues might be afoot in the environment, which could cause more species to disappear.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I can't help to ask what makes you think we humans are so much more special than dinosaurs that we deserve to survive as a species
Absolutely nothing. This is merely self-preservation talking, just like for every other species. I'm pretty sure if dinosaurs could write, we would have found loads of discussions around the theme of what to do with the dying, the cloud ash, and how to survive the dark and burning skies.
Reality is simple: Nature is tough, and we have but two choices: deal with it, or check out.
Spot on. I'd prefer not to check out. Which requires dealing with nature, which in turn requires making sure that nature has a place for us in it. Unfortunately, we haven't figured out how to survive without nature (see the failed Biodome experiments), so we're stuck with making sure that we don't need a biodome.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
We're blamed because, quite frankly, we've been the single biggest coherent force on this planet for the last 12000 years (give or take a few thousand depending on how remote a location is). Yes, you'll see a few volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and asteroids, but they're either not particularly harmful, not widespread, or not continuous over a long period. Individually we're not powerful, but we've been diverting large rivers, clearing jungles and leaving deserts, introducing new species that overwhelm the local food web (Kudzu, Argentine Ants, the various domesticated animals that killed the Dodo) or even just changing wilderness into plowed fields and suburbs. The areas we don't inhabit long term, we toss our junk into without a second thought (see the garbage patches in the ocean).
Yes, if we disappeared tomorrow, the planet would be back to it's old self in a million years. But we won't disappear tomorrow. We'll still be here. And the day after that. And the day after that. And short of a disaster that wipes out every other vertebrate, we'll probably keep on going somehow. But we have to ask ourselves if we really can't do any better (and no, I'm not a neoluddite here, I just hope to live awhile). Should we prefer slightly cheaper gas or beaches that aren't contaminated with oil?
Having two fish species compete in the same ecological niche means that you can lose one of them without catastrophic consequences. However, it also means that if you do lose Bluefin, and then something happens to Yellowfin - a plague, for example - there are no more Bluefins to take over.
Having multiple species that fill the same role is good precisely because it makes the ecosystem more robust; ergo, losing those redundant species makes ecosystem more fragile, even if it doesn't collapse oturight.
No. All data we have points to more diverse ecosystems being more robust. The only exceptions are situations where a species has been introduced to outside its normal ecosystem and lacked any natural enemies to keep it in check in the new environment.
And even if your speculation was correct - and there's no reason to think it is - there would still be no reason to assume that it applies to Bluefin and to this situation.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Cool.
So it's really not about saving the Bluefin Tuna after all, but about preserving existing diversity so we humans can continue to thrive within it in ways that we're already familiar with.
Thanks for clearing that up.
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