Slashdot Mirror
A Global Fish War is Coming, Warns US Coast Guard (usni.org)
schwit1 shares an article from the U.S. Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine. It includes this warning from the Coast Guard's chief of fisheries law enforcement:
Nearly two decades into the 21st Century, it has become clear the world has limited resources and the last area of expansion is the oceans. Battles over politics and ideologies may be supplanted by fights over resources as nations struggle for economic and food security. These new conflicts already have begun -- over fish... In 1996, Canada and Spain almost went to war over the Greenland turbot. Canada seized Spanish vessels it felt were fishing illegally, but Spain did not have the same interpretation of the law and sent gunboats to escort its ships. In 1999, a U.S. Coast Guard cutter intercepted a Russian trawler fishing in the U.S. exclusive economic zone. The lone cutter was promptly surrounded by 19 Russian trawlers. Fortunately, the Russian Border Guard and the Coast Guard drew on an existing relationship and were able to defuse the situation...
Japan protested 230 fishing vessels escorted by seven China Coast Guard ships entering the waters of the disputed Senkaku Islands. Incidents in the South China Sea between the Indonesian Navy and Chinese fishing vessels and China Coast Guard have escalated to arrests, ramming, and warning shots leading experts to suggest only navies and use of force can stop the IUU fishing... The United States needs to show it is serious about protecting sustainable fisheries and international rule of law. It needs a fleet that not only will provide a multilateral cooperation platform, but also take action against vessels and fleets that are unwilling to cooperate... If cooperation cannot be achieved, the United States should prepare for a global fish war.
When I read "fish war," I was imagining it more like this.
Japan protested 230 fishing vessels escorted by seven China Coast Guard ships entering the waters of the disputed Senkaku Islands. Incidents in the South China Sea between the Indonesian Navy and Chinese fishing vessels and China Coast Guard have escalated to arrests, ramming, and warning shots leading experts to suggest only navies and use of force can stop the IUU fishing... The United States needs to show it is serious about protecting sustainable fisheries and international rule of law. It needs a fleet that not only will provide a multilateral cooperation platform, but also take action against vessels and fleets that are unwilling to cooperate... If cooperation cannot be achieved, the United States should prepare for a global fish war.
When I read "fish war," I was imagining it more like this.
Ah, the exclusivity of our times — surely, nothing like this has ever happened before. Except around Newfoundland:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is a literal example of the case example known in economics as "tragedy of the commons."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You do understand the oceans are all connected right?
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
It's too late. This is already going to happen even if we went to zero today. That would lead to big wars and even more release of carbon. It's so inevitable (as I have been told numerous times) that I gave up caring and never felt better about my own personal future.
Mr. President, we must not allow a fish gap!
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Something fishy going on here, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
It isn't. Humans are the only species on this planet that have even bothered to stop and think about their own ecological impact. Any other species whether predator, prey, or somewhere in between will just multiply endlessly with the only thing limiting their growth being the ability for the environment to support the population.
Equating humanity to a disease is just going to lead to bad thinking, because your solution is that humanity should be wiped out. That's what any person would tell you they'd want to do if they had cancer. So if you think humanity is a cancer, why haven't you taken the first logical step towards fixing the problem and ended your own existence? If you won't even do that, then what makes you think you get to demand that the lives' of others is ended?
The idea that you can beat the differential equations describing large population dynamics with trying to convince individuals is preposterous to begin with.
No, but conservation efforts do work. Deer and Turkey in the USA are a perfect example. At one point they were practically extinct but regulating seasons has helped them come back in record numbers. On the extreme side, outlawing fish consumption in the USA would certainly reduce the global fish demand. Much more moderate options like outlawing wild caught fish, certain species, certain species from certain countries, etc... would also likely work to some extent.
But I agree that trusting consumers to always do the right thing is likely not going to work. Although everyone thinks they want to save the environment, it's much harder for an individual to pay $10/pound for sustainable fish each week when they can get unsustainable fish for $5/pound.
No, it isn't. It is sensationalist headline bullshit.
The article -- which is very good -- is referring to enforcing international agreements about fishing in U.S. exclusive economic zones (EEZ). According to the various international agreements on the seas, fishing, etc. -- it is up to the boundary nation to take care of these things.
It points out the China not only frequently fishes near U.S. borders (among other locations), they haven't ratified key U.N. agreements on international fishing. They are also aggressively using their military to protect illegal fishing in other nation's territorial waters (Indonesia & the Philippines comes to mind). Let's not forget manufacturing artificial islands so they can use them as a basis for territorial claims. (South China Sea)
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Solution: Don't eat fish.
There are plenty of fish species that are harvested responsibly. Learn which they are. As a general rule, eating small fish is better than eating big fish.
Good choices:
Catfish
Tilapia
Wild Pacific salmon
Pacific cod
Trout
Bad choices:
Atlantic cod
Bluefin Tuna
Rockfish
Atlantic halibut
Swordfish
Shark
Many of the big bad fish also have a lot of mercury, and should be avoided even if you don't care about overfishing.
Seafood Watch Consumer Guide
Well, it's a good thing that "forcing their laws on the rest of the world" has never been something that Europeans were into. Oh... Wait...
Look. The species hasn't evolved. That simply cannot happen in such short a time span. There's nothing particularly special about people, in Europe or anywhere else, that prevents imperialism. It's just not en vogue, politically or socially, in Europe these days. But Europe has, in fact, been rediscovering a taste for exporting their laws beyond their own borders of late. See, for example, the notion that the concept of a "right to be forgotten" includes censoring what Americans are allowed to see on google.com vs. just what the Spanish, for instance, are allowed to see on google.es.
It's really just what's socially acceptable. And humans, on the whole, can regress into utter bastardry fairly quickly; especially if they can be persuaded that an: "If it's us against them, I vote us." situation exists. "President" 45, and the Charlottesville types are the obvious evidence of the backslide here. But you people aren't immune. The UK has taken massive steps back into darkness with Brexit. And even though she was defeated, the fact that Le Pen did as well as she did in the recent election says very bad things about France as well. And don't forget that the important bits of Russia are also in Europe.
Imagine all the people...
Seriously, what is going on, is that Chinese boats come across the pacific filling up, and then sells in America. This is what allows them to then sell fish DIRT CHEAP at home. The worst part is, that not only do they do their legal limits on the way over, but then fill up again, with fish from American waters that they do not have a license for.
The only way to stop this is to prohibit their selling in America, or importing from Canada/Mexico if China sells there. Then no more licenses for CHinese boats to be in American economic zone.
As it is, they are fishing our waters and destroying these faster than their own.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If there is a fish war coming, who will be the belligerents, and which faction should I support?
There are two that will most likely be involved, but I am torn between backing the sea bass and the sharks.
This space unintentionally left blank.
The free market may create a self-rectifying problem. The more expensive it becomes to fish (because there are less fish) the quicker people will develop sustainable fish repositories to raise fish.
This does work to a certain extent. When commercial fishing becomes unprofitable or more expensive than farmed fishing then it will stop. The problem with this approach is that it requires a depletion of fish to a level where they may go extinct. It's not enough to stop when there are no more fish. You need to stop *BEFORE* there are no more fish unless you really think that having an ocean devoid of fish is a good thing. Passenger pigeons were once so plentiful that they darkened the sky. Humans didn't kill every last one of them but they killed enough that the numbers couldn't recover. Another example would be corn. A single stalk of corn can't survive on its own. It needs enough other corn stalks around so that it overpowers its predators. Every species has a minimal viable number that is required for the species to survive. If you cross below that level, even if you stop killing them, they will still die out.
The free market may create a self-rectifying problem. The more expensive it becomes to fish (because there are less fish) the quicker people will develop sustainable fish repositories to raise fish.
This does work to a certain extent.
One of the reasons why market self-regulation doesn't work in real life, at least when it comes to fisheries, is that as each species is fished out, they just move to a new one with little regard for the consequences. They are now heavily exploiting krill: the main prey of baleen whales like the blue whale, who are too specialised to exploit something else - the consequence may well be that they go extinct despite all the regulations and efforts the world community has put in to save them. Or take another consequence that most people are likely to feel the consequences of, if ever they venture to the beach or out to sea: we have depleted the stocks of species that prey on the larvae of jelly fish, which is why we now get reports of fishermen catching enormous loads of them. Fancy taking a dip in that?
As far as I can see, the market won't regulate itself - as long as at least some of the players are too stupid or selfish to actually hold back from making a short term profit, self-regulation isn't going to happen. We need global regulations strictly enforced by all major nations in cooperation. We do in fact have sufficient technology - such as supervising fishing vessels from satelites: they follow easily recognisable patterns when they are fishing, so it is relatively simple to follow them around until they reach harbour.