Slashdot Mirror
Nations Agree To Ban Fishing in Arctic Ocean For At Least 16 Years (sciencemag.org)
Several readers share a report: Nine nations and the European Union have reached a deal to place the central Arctic Ocean (CAO) off-limits to commercial fishers for at least the next 16 years. The pact, announced last week, will give scientists time to understand the region's marine ecology -- and the potential impacts of climate change -- before fishing becomes widespread. "There is no other high seas area where we've decided to do the science first," says Scott Highleyman, vice president of conservation policy and programs at the Ocean Conservancy in Washington, D.C., who also served on the U.S. delegation to the negotiations. "It's a great example of putting the precautionary principle into action." The deal to protect 2.8 million square kilometers of international waters in the Arctic was reached after six meetings spread over 2 years. It includes not just nations with coastal claims in the Arctic, but nations such as China, Japan, and South Korea with fishing fleets interested in operating in the region.
Since it's in international waters, the only result of this will be that the nations that signed up won't be doing any fishing while the ones that didn't will still be doing business as usual.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Good. Hopefully all nations will be complaint and this is the start of something big.
...Think they are about 40,000 years too late for that.
Because I recall an article where some countries get around bans like this by saying it's for scientific purposes.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Meanwhile the Antarctic is being sucked dry of everything that swims as quickly as the massive seafood concerns can fish.
Lots of it is illegal fishing, and using slave labour.
Also the Pacific is being fished empty, illegally by vast foreign fishing fleets, despite the Pacific nations protests.
In my view commercial fishing is unsustainable long term, and should be outlawed completely.
Jeremy Wade is more into freshwater, but I'm pretty sure he would approve of this. Do I speak out of turn?
While I'm here using a supposed celebrity endorsement that is entirely of my own imagination, I think this is a move in a good direction. It does seem hard to count the fish accurately even with some major change like cancelling most fishing... the fish should be increasing in number, so any detrimental effects would be masked for a good while, right?
When asked for comment, a Japanese spokesperson said they were too busy stabbing whales and dolphins to death with sharp sticks to concern themselves with the Arctic Ocean.
Are we sure President Trump knows about this deal? I find it hard to believe he'd sign off on not exploiting a natural resource... any natural resources to the fullest of its extent.
The most bizarre thing is it's not made up, why the fuck do they insist on killing whales for no apparent reasons.
What do you mean, no reason? They want to eat the whales.
if vegans love animals so much, why do they keep eating their food?
They want to eat the whales.
Actually, they don't. Whale meat is not very good, and there is not much of a market for it. Japanese whale harvesting is really about subsidies to a special interest group which donates liberally and is adept at exploiting nationalism and the "culture" angle in their propaganda. Much of the whale meat ends of in dog food.
On the other hand, minke whales are plentiful and I don't see any moral difference between killing them and killing cows.
Disclaimer: I am a vegetarian, and I don't eat whales or cows.
I'm glad it was 16 years and not 15 or 17.
I tried minke whale in Iceland last spring. It's really delicious, like filet mignon.
So now that they will have to eat farmed fish whether they like it or not, what happens?
Theses are international waters. What prevents a ship from a non signatory nation to come and fish there?
https://www.ft.com/content/e7b.... Exactly. Chinese gov subsidizes their fishing fleet to go into others waters.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
How about chimpanzees? Or is eating intelligent beings with complex social lives only distasteful when they're relatively closely related?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
How about chimpanzees? Or is eating intelligent beings with complex social lives only distasteful when they're relatively closely related?
Well let's flip that around, are you ok eating a potato? At what point on the biological hierarchy between potato and human do you define the boundary between living thing with a social life and things that are allowed to be eaten?
"It's a great example of putting the precautionary principle into action."
Which is a great example of what's wrong with government. The People reserve freedom unto themselves and not that they get on their knees to beg those in power for permission to do things.
Government shouldn't be outlawing things without good reason, and the precautionary principle self-admittedly is not.
It isn't up to free people to prove to those in power why they should be free to do somethimg.
I will now await my downmod by those who want to hide challenges to their worldview. See my .sig.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I've always thought that veganism in general would be more popular if fewer vegans were absolute doses of shit.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
in this paper i cover most of the wrongs industry has caused life on earth since the industrial revolution, and in the middle there is a long section on overfishing. just read about what really happens in the fishing industry when you digest news about some part of the ocean being "protected from fishing x years". if you've ever argued with fishing industry professionals when they are being told to cut it out, you know firsthand what a bunch of lying phoney bastards they are when it comes to the environment.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fbs0...
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Central Nervous System.
Self-awareness perhaps?
Personally, I try to avoid commissioning the death of anything that demonstrates sophisticated tool-use and problem-solving skills. Which pretty much rules out most whales and higher primates, elephants, etc.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Perhaps you should learn more about cows. Their social lives are very complex, and they have distinct personalities.
I don't eat whales, but I don't eat cows either. If you eat cows, but are outraged about people eating minke whales (which are plentiful), they you are being hypocritical. There is no moral difference.
Central Nervous System.
So no animals at all? Boring...
Self-awareness perhaps?
Personally, I try to avoid commissioning the death of anything that demonstrates sophisticated tool-use and problem-solving skills. Which pretty much rules out most whales and higher primates, elephants, etc.
What if the trade-off is a good life in exchange for your corpse? To demonstrate, if someone offered me a guaranteed good life on the condition they'd eat me when I'm dead, I'd take it. What right do you have to deny that to others?
Even if "when you were dead" involved them probably killing you before age 20? Because that's about the norm for farm animals.
Typical slaughter age --- Natural lifespan --- Animal
1.5y --- 15-20 y --- Cow (beef)
4y --- 15-20 --- Cow (dairy)
1.5y --- up to 8y --- Chicken(laying hens)
3-5y --- 10-12 y --- Pigs (breeding sow)
And of course farm animals have been long bred to be stupid/placid enough to not realize/put up a fight when being led to slaughter, not exactly problem-solving tool users, even if many are more intelligent than they're typically given credit for.
And while some farms may indeed offer the "good life", in the US at least the vast majority of meat comes from farms that offer anything but. And *none* offer a choice in the matter, even if the animals could comprehend what they were choosing.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Even if "when you were dead" involved them probably killing you before age 20? Because that's about the norm for farm animals.
More context is probably required such around what is the life expectancy of a farmed animal compared to wild? If infant mortality and life expectancy were similar to the 16th century then 20 good years might be a good deal.
Even in the 16th century, life expectancy at birth was ~40 years. And if you survived your first few years it went way up.
A lot of domestic animals don't have close wild relatives anymore, but we can make rough comparisons - like cows, elk can live to be 20, but their life expectancy is 10-13. Similarly wild boars typically live to about 12 in captivity, or about 6 in the wild. And the trend continues - like 16th century humans, it seems wild animals have a life expectancy of roughly middle-age, about halfway to the point where they'd die of old age.
Meanwhile, farms typically slaughter them at a much younger age, once their youthful growth spurt begins to plateau.
You still up for it? Knowing your "good life" will likely mean living alone in a small, filthy cage with an unending supply of food, and a distracted slaughter that you probably won't be conscious for as puberty begins to slow down?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You still up for it? Knowing your "good life" will likely mean living alone in a small, filthy cage with an unending supply of food, and a distracted slaughter that you probably won't be conscious for as puberty begins to slow down?
Maybe where you live has lower standard of living both for humans and animals. Where I live, cows and sheep roam free in paddocks. Not a bad life compared to a lot of other species.