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Comment by Qworg | Hacker News Reader

Fishing is both gigantic and unprofitable (roughly $44B/year in the hole with subsidies, as of 2014)[1]. Illegal fishing is also a gigantic problem. In fact, illegal fishing is the 3rd largest crime in dollars after smuggling weapons and drugs (up to $36.4B/year)[2]. It also contributes to human trafficking.

Plug: We're working to stop illegal fishing at Vulcan (with satellites!): http://www.skylight.global/. If you're interested, we actually have an open position on the team - http://www.vulcan.com/About/Careers/Job-Listings?p=job/oCIB6...

Hit me up if you'd like to discuss - email in profile.

[1] https://qz.com/1195914/the-way-the-world-catches-fish-defies... [2] https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/illegal-fishing

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In his (really great) book Four Fish, Paul Greenberg says that research shows it takes today's modern fleet roughly 36x the effort to catch the same amount of fish that the fleet of 1900 could catch with sail power. So even radar, sonar, and satellite hunting technology can't keep up with the disastrous decline in ocean stocks.

https://www.amazon.com/Four-Fish-Future-Last-Wild/dp/0143119...

> Fishing is both gigantic and unprofitable (roughly $44B/year in the hole with subsidies, as of 2014)[1].

This is a misunderstanding of economics. To determine whether an industry would be profitable if subsidies were removed, you can't just subtract numbers on a balance sheet; you need to know the demand elasticity of their product.

Demand is strong, certainly, but productivity has topped out (ie: we're overfishing/we can't find new fish). Do subsidies lower the price for the consumer or simply keep output high given the decreasing stocks (therefore decreasing the price)?

It's been a couple years since I last looked but a quick glance at the explosion of farmed fish proves how wildly wrong you are.

This is a non sequitur. Fish farms are not receiving the subsidies GP decries. Still, they remain profitable enterprises. Thus they are much better uses of scarce resources than wild fisheries that lose money despite subsidies. Thus "the explosion".

Its not so much that we can't find new fish, it is that only a small portion of species is considered commercial profitable and those get fished to extinction. It is the least functional way to handle a ecosystem, and that is getting subsidized.

Its like when nation subsidies farmers that is growing singular crops that kills the soil, decreasing prices while keeping output artificial high while each year get worse and worse. Its not that farming is inherently unprofitable or that farmers can't find fresh soil, but rather a system failure. The eco industry, while often subsidized, has gotten quote profitable but the equivalent thing for fishing seems to still be rather small. I have seen some minor political efforts in trying to give subsidies money to fishermen that target overpopulated or invasive species, but nothing big.

It seems like you're viewing this as an optimization problem, which strikes me as just a way of kicking the proverbial can down the road - just like the subsidies are doing.

There simply need to be less people.

Which is at odds with current political and economic trends. Right or left, no matter what kinds of social or environmental causes people seem to care about, there is almost universal support for economic policies of unending growth. You almost never see Japan get touted as a model first world country - with both a shrinking population and economy - but maybe that's the way we all should be heading.

Retirement investments and real estate be damned, maybe immigration and jacked up trade isn't so important if we care about having a diverse and healthy biomass for future generations to enjoy.

Discussing the global population will sooner or later turn into a discussion about space colonization, which then usually becomes a debate about current population, cost of space programs vs welfare, and a lot of politics.

Some time down the road we will have to leave this rock. Today is not that day, so yes its an optimization problem in the (not very) short run and one that has rather big repercussions to the ecology.

> Fishing is gigantic and unprofitable

Well, we certainly could stop fishing; but then, several hundred millions of people will die of famine

> We are not fishing well, there is a big problem with illegal fishing, etc...

100% agree. We (occident and asian) are literally grasping the fishes from the hands of people dying of starvation.

Whoa, surprise running across this! I’m just finishing up a contract with the Shared Services team, supporting Skylight. :)

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