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Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

We badly need some sort of industrial fish farming at a large scale. Oceanic fishing at this point is basically like hunting gathering at an industrial scale: we just catch whatever we can and who cares if it grows back, not our problem, "nature" will take care of it. The same way we seed, till, etc., we should be doing the same thing with oceans and "hunting" aka fishing should only be allowed as a hobby.

In a somewhat "positive" side effect of what they're doing, traditional Chinese medicine will probably go extinct together will all the fish and animal species they will wipe off the face of the Earth...

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"industrial fish farming at a large scale"

They're doing that. Bring up an areal view of china's coast, zoom in on most any protected bay and you can see they have some kind of aquatic farming going on at a pretty impressive scale.

https://www.google.com/maps/@23.8785992,117.6354366,322m/dat...

https://www.google.com/maps/@23.6576045,117.4483416,171m/dat...

https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=d1e87c14-b29f-4173-a4f5-cbd56...

>> We badly need some sort of industrial fish farming at a large scale.

> They're doing that.

IIRC, most farmed fish are fed with fish meal, which is basically less-desirable wild-caught fish, so fish farming does not take the pressure off the oceans as much as you'd think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_meal

> The production and large-scale use of fishmeal are controversial. The lucrative market for fishmeal as a feed encourages corporate fisheries not to limit their yields of by-catch (from which fish meal is made), and thus leads to depletion of ecosystems, environmental damage, and the collapse of local fisheries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_farming

> Farming carnivorous fish, such as salmon, does not always reduce pressure on wild fisheries. Carnivorous farmed fish are usually fed fishmeal and fish oil extracted from wild forage fish.

(Salt water) fish farming is still hunting on an industrial scale because the farmed fish are mostly carnivorous and are fed with feed derived to a large part from hunted fish. It's mostly a tool to strip the oceans even harder (with fish farms converting undesirable catch into species people like to eat, everything becomes a target)

I don't understand why we eat carnivorous fish. It'd be like feeding on lions...

I read some of piketty's book, capital and idéologie, and he sources work that show that if India and China have historically had a greater population, it's because Europeans love meat. And feeding a population on meat requires much more agricultural space than feeding on veggies and cereals alone. I had always wondered why it was, and I liked this explanation!

Because in the open water of the oceans, not only the herbivorous level of the food chain is on the plankton scale but also the first carnivorous level or levels. The small fish that are eaten by the larger fish that we eat are already feeding off carnivores.

They should farm the prey too then? I still wonder where those mice that pet snakes eat come from. Never had a pet snake so I don't know much about them.

Yeah, I agree. Otherwise it's like saying we can't grow corn because you need water, minerals and these days, fertilizers. When we really want to, we can take care of the whole chain.

If you continue that line of thought long enough you end up declaring the entirety of the world's oceans one big fish farm and truly sustainable fishing that doesn't deplete populations your method of farming.

The alternative is farming fish you can feed other things you can grow instead. Ultimately artificial meats and what have you will be the ultimate goal to sustain the whole system.

We also have a lot of issues getting salt water fish to reproduce in captivity, like only a couple universities have been able to get tuna to reproduce in captivity and not at scale.

Aquaculture is huge in Asia. China produces 61% of all of the farmed fish in the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture#/media/File:Global...

What we need is to reduce the popularity of consuming "predator" fish species -- there is an abundant supply of forage fish, but these are often caught and fed to farmed fish! Sardines and herring aren't popular today, but they'd be a lot more appetizing and sustainable if we just froze them on the boat instead of grinding them into fishmeal to be fed to tilapia or salmon. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forage_fish

But they are also overfished and under pressure

They are overfished largely in order to be fed to other animals. Similarly we clear too much land to farm corn but we do it because it gets fed to animals. But nobody would refer to this to argue against eating corn.

I don't know how to quantify the potential sustainable yield of forage fish vs. the human diet, but I know that eating small fish is more sustainable than feeding them to larger fish and eating those.

Farmed fish are fed wild-caught fish generally, so their environmental impact is comparable. There is an ongoing effort to remove that from the chain, but it remains an unsolved problem.

Well, I have a feeling that the resolution of this problem will accelerate in the following decades. With China and other developing countries rising, we're going to need to feed 2-3 billion people more at developed country standards.

We'll literally suck all the fish out of the ocean at the rate we're going, with our current processes.

It's a good example of the Tragedy of the Commons. We mostly solved that problem on land, and even ended up with industrial farming by allowing people to own pieces of land to run their own farming operations.

Would be nice to be able to replace off-shore oil rigs with off-shore fishing farms that sell the produce directly to retail markets. Might even be able to run aquatic "farm to table" restaurants!

> It's a good example of the Tragedy of the Commons. We mostly solved that problem on land, and even ended up with industrial farming by allowing people to own pieces of land to run their own farming operations.

That's a myth. This "problem" wasn't much of a problem, historically, since real-world communities would spontaneously develop regulatory practices to prevent over-exploitation of the commons:

> Political scientist Elinor Ostrom, who was awarded 2009's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for her work on the issue, and others revisited Hardin's work in 1999.[45] They found the tragedy of the commons not as prevalent or as difficult to solve as Hardin maintained, since locals have often come up with solutions to the commons problem themselves.[46] For example, it was found that a commons in the Swiss Alps has been run by a collective of farmers there to their mutual and individual benefit since 1517, in spite of the farmers also having access to their own farmland. In general, it is in the interest of the users of a commons to keep them functioning and so complex social schemes are often invented by the users for maintaining them at optimum efficiency.[47][48] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Non-gov...)

Privatization is one solution, but it seems to often be falsely portrayed as the only solution. The wiki article has a decent list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Solutio...

> Would be nice to be able to replace off-shore oil rigs with off-shore fishing farms that sell the produce directly to retail markets. Might even be able to run aquatic "farm to table" restaurants!

There's definitely at least an order magnitude more offshore aquaculture farms than there are oil-rigs currently.

As it happens, China has extensive fish farming. It is huge and China may be the country where it is the most developed.

It may also be helped by the fact that Chinese eat quite a lot of fresh water fish compared to what we eat in Western countries.

Of course an issue is that it creates further pressure on agriculture/traditional fishing to produce fish feed...

What we need is to stop consuming animals and animal products, or we’ll keep having economy destroying pandemics. Not to mention the obvious problem that farming is horrendous for the animals. Animals aren’t some inanimate object.

We need to be realistic. Reeducating several billion people from something very addictive, culturally engrained and with no direct negative effects for consumers is almost impossible.

The more these discussions progress, the more I wonder if there is really only one solution. We need less people. Trying to convince 8 billion people to do something like never eat meat or fish seems like an impossible goal. We need to raise the standard of living in countries that reproduction rates > 2. We could also remove tax breaks for kids after the second in developed countries to mitigate the incentives for extra children. Maybe if we only had 4 billion people, we might be able to have everything be sustainable. Such a hard problem to solve.

Overpopulation is a racist myth. Developed countries use far more resources and waste significantly more food than developing nations and wealthy people have a larger footprint than their working class counterparts.

https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/all_publications/living_...

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/chart-of-the-day-thes...

https://theconversation.com/emissions-inequality-there-is-a-...

This is one of the question that every such discussion about population management wanted to avoid.

Understandably, it's much harder to ask people to reduce their current way of life.

But technology still is the key here.

US household energy consumption actually dropped, resulting into overall leveled national consumption total [1]

[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/homes.php

I'm not sure why you are claiming racism. I'm suggesting we raise the standard of living in poorer countries. That we empower women in these countries. Honestly, how is that racist?

Also, yes, wealthy countries over consume. Collectively we just don't care. We can't even get people to wear a mask. I don't think there is a pragmatic way to convince the west to consume less.

The thing is, fertility rates are going down across the world.

What are you going to do with the current people? They will all want a decent quality of life. Will you sacrifice your life and quality of life to achieve this greater goal you mention? Or do you just want "others" to sacrifice themselves for it?

Fish farming is a disease disaster that can harm wild populations. This gets discussed a lot in relation to Scottish Salmon, for example.

Salmon is general is a bad fish to farm because it consumes more protein than it produces. There are better fish (in terms of sustainability) that can be famred, and proper regulations (which the US has, compared to other countries) exist to help. In general, I don't believe the US is the problem with overfishing or polution problems caused by fish farming, compared to other countries who don't have or want the ability to keep things in check.

>Salmon is general is a bad fish to farm because it consumes more protein than it produces.

That counts for all animals, no?

Its about using protein that has other uses. E.g. free-range chickens eat bugs; I don't want to eat bugs, but I'll gladly eat chickens.

What do farmed salmon eat, and is that better used for something else?

Dunno. Maybe less efficient use of the same feedstock?

Further, now they're putting oil in Salmon feedstock so they have imaginary dietary advantages i.e. Omega-3 fatty acid, which farm-raised salmon don't have much of normally.

So add that cost to raising salmon.

It might make sense, especially for where salmon farms are usually placed, or it might be overly destructive in terms of resources and environment. The analysis needs to be done before we can make a conclusion about it, but I'm sure other parties have already come to the conclusion they want.

Yes, but my point stands. Any animal "wastes" protein.

Ya. I’m not sure why you are being downvoted but with animals you always get out less than you put in. Plants are the same way, but can grab other inputs (solar, minerals from the ground).

Animal husbandry is a great way of converting inputs unfit for human consumption (animal feed) into something that is (meat) but it’s never very efficient.

> Animal husbandry is a great way of converting inputs unfit for human consumption (animal feed) into something that is (meat) but it’s never very efficient.

Ideally, yes. In practice, we feed animals mostly things that we ourselves could eat ourselves - like corn, soy, and grains. Sure, you can find cute examples of cattle eating grass on rocky soil... but around 99% of animals are not grown that way... they are grown in factory farms where they're fed soy, corn, and grains.

Soy isn't very appetizing to humans in large quantities, so if it wasn't for animal feed, we wouldn't' grow nearly as much as it. Likewise for corn, which is a not so great staple for humans, and often just used as a sugar substitute. Yes, we can live on animal feed, but we can't really thrive on it, and a lot of land is only suited to such.

Meat is still a useful medium for converting what humans can't consume very well to something they can. Especially pigs, which in much of the world are used as recyclers (not in the west anymore, due to safety issues, and probably not for long in the undeveloped world, but they have bigger problems to worry about).

> but they have bigger problems to worry about

The undeveloped world or the pigs?

I'm thinking fish farming in urban centers, maybe tied to hyrdoponic greenhouses. I can picture more urban parks, with many fish ponds. The fish pond water used to grow labour intensive cash crops like raspberries (that are hard to pick).

Why on earth would you farm in an urban center with high ambient pollution levels and high land prices?

And we're not some magical creature free from biological needs.

Eating other animals is what got us here. Until we can print actual, chemically identical meat on a conveyor belt, our reliance on animals will continue.

> And we're not some magical creature free from biological needs.

Am I? I became 100% vegetarian a year ago. No one around me was vegetarian. I saved money. I never ate so well and I'm in my best physical form ever. What is magical?

You need supplements to grow healthily as a vegetarian. For example, it's difficult to get Omega 3, 6 and 9 from plants. You need supplements for that.

Also you've only been vegetarian a year. Being a vegetarian from birth to death without supplements would be much more difficult to do without major deficiencies.

Also vegetarians today have the option of buying food from all over the world, but that wasn't the case for the vast majority of human history.

And the distillates and supplements still aren't universally as "good" (bioavailability, cost, associated nutrients) as the real thing.

I'm all for lab produced everything, but it's not good enough yet for me to feel comfortable trying to outsmart nature.

You only need to look at cultures like in India, Taiwan and elsewhere that have large vegetarian population to see that your statement doesn’t hold water.

You shouldn't point toward us as an example.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6540890

https://m.economictimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/malnutr...

Guess where do you get folic acid, b12, etc from?

As a side note, OTC supplements are not as effective. You need prescription supplements if anyone is considering going vegetarian.

Guess where animals get their B12 from, supplemented to their feed

The myth of the Indian vegetarian nation

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43581122

It's possible to have a large population with deficiencies, which may be the case in India for example [1].

Another factor is, the number of insects that accidentally get into the food supply provide some protein. I remember reading about how a more primitive lifestyle leads to more insects being in the food supply, which provides some of the necessary protein for humans to thrive. But I can't find the link at the moment.

1: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/80-india...

Practical experience of trying to go vegetarian/vegan. I gave up after a while. I just felt constantly hungry. Maybe because I started working out and going vegan at the same time.

fwiw - "vegetarian" doesn't count for animal well-being. Egg laying chickens and milk cows are treated really badly and their agony is rather prolonged for the duration of their "productive life".

You are spreading misinformation.

Everyone needs Omega 3/6/9. You can get it from nuts and algae. IF you want to be inefficient and introduce a middleman, you can get it from fish.

B12 is needed by everyone. The meat you eat has it supplemented. Again, you can cut out the middleman and get it directly as a supplement rather than having a cow killed.

Growing 1lb of almonds requires ~1900 gallons of water.

Beef is ~1800lbs.

Not particularly efficient is it

Humans don't require animal products to live (or thrive). And your "what got us here" comment is a Naturalistic Fallacy.

400-500 million people in India are vegetarian [1]. Are these all magical creatures?

[1] http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/the-food-habits-of-a-na...

India is incredibly agriculturally productive, with amounts of arable land other countries can only dream of. Try doing the same diet just a few paces up in more arid and mountainous Central Asia and it would be famine.

aren't there lab-grown meat researches going on?

There are and I look forward to them. Cheap, USDA prime grade steak for everyone one will be excellent

Maybe something like this[0] will become more common. Seems to have had some success in increasing the Salmon population (via plankton boom) but was obviously quite controversial.

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fertilizing-ocean...

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