Atlantic Dawn: The Ship from Hell | Hacker News Reader

Atlantic Dawn: The Ship from Hell

britishseafishing.co.uk

189 pointsmosiuerbarso65 comments

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There's a link down the article to an even more gut-gnawingly huge fishing vessel, the Russian-flagged 'LaFayette'.

It's longer and has only a slightly smaller displacement than the UK's new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers :\

Article: https://britishseafishing.co.uk/the-lafayette-floating-fish-...

Images: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=lafayette+fish+factory&sou...

AFAIK it cannot catch fish, but only process and freeze it. That doesn't make it less grim though.

BTW, it seems it's declared as an IUU (pirate) ship. Don't know whether it's still operating or is it possible to operate under these conditions.

That ship was renamed as Vladivostok 2000 and is currently moored in Russia.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:34...

Unless the penalities are prohibitively expensive, proportional to the capacity (the more fish the ship can catch, the higher the penalty) and extreme (confiscation and destruction in case of N no. of repeat offences), unscrupulous operators will continue to use such ships.

And there is the problem you immediately point to this individual McHugh and others like him, and I'm not defending him, but the problem is that the corruption went right the whole way to the top of "democratic" system of Ireland. It was politically untenable for the Irish government to admit this vessel was breaking the rules and they should/did know it would but tried their damnedest to make it work, for whatever popular brownie points they'd get for it.

I watched Serpico last night and it really captures this phenomenon perfectly, albeit in the context of the NYPD.

Declare it piracy and sink-on-sight.

Perhaps confiscation of the cargo and immediate sale at well below market rate?

That would tank the market and hurt all fishermen. Thus all fishermen would have a vested interest in policing themselves.

That has the same tone as executing the family members of convicted killers.

A better solution is to confiscate the ship and sell it to the breakers.

There's no self policing in that situation, just a greater emphasis on not getting caught.

By selling the cargo below market rate, everyone has a stake. They'll either collude on large scale or turn on each other in acts of self preservation.

Countries like the UK should designate large sections of their sea territory as marine conservation areas - where trawling is completely and permanently banned - this would be far more effective than quotas in enabling fish stocks to recover.

I think so too... but the political fallout from the job loses is too great. It reminds me of the oil industry in America. It's clearly harmful, it and clearly needs to be reduced going forward, but no one wants to be the one to do it, so the can just gets kicked further down the road.

No one wants to do it, because our entire society is dependent on oil industry. It’s not about job losses: society at large won’t care about job loss of some relatively small part of population. It hasn’t cared for loss of coal miner jobs, and it won’t care about oil either. What they do care about is their ability to get places, to heat their homes, to buy inexpensive food and consumer products etc. When they are able to do that in a way that doesn’t depend on oil, they won’t shed a single tear after the death of oil industry. However, as of now, killing oil industry would be exceedingly stupid, because the alternatives to it are not yet available to fully replace oil use cases. We are slowly getting there, though.

I don't think we can eliminate fossil fuels usage entirely, but we can dramatically reduce our usage. Consider that the carbon output per person in the USA is roughly double that in Europe. Europeans live pretty comfortable lives imo. And besides, something has to give eventually. It is much better to manage the change than have it forced upon you.

> I think so too... but the political fallout from the job loses is too great.

Folks should look at Canada and cod collapse:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...

At some point, you may not have a choice. Better to dial things down over years to prepare people.

It should literally remind you of the east coast cod fishery in Canada which was once the most productive fishery in the world and is now basically nothing.

It got wrecked by giant all in one factory trawlers out competing local boats, causing a feedback effect where to complete you needed trawlers as well helped along by a corrupt government that was willfully ignorant of the situation until (almost literally) one day there just weren't any fish left.

That destroyed an entire region's economy (a region I happen to be from), and has led to generational depression, joblessness and frankly hopelessness.

That’s not quite what happened, Canada banned foreign fishing well before the collapse. Unfortunately, they simply set the allowed catch vastly to large, ignoring internal recommendations to half it, and caused a near total collapse almost a decade later.

It's so tragic it's almost comical. The whole fishing industry is about £700 million industry and yet somehow is a huge dog whistle in politics.

Compare to the night time entertainment industry which is a £66 billion industry. When it was effectively shut down indefinitely by covid-19 the governments response was to tell them to go retrain as cyber experts.

As I understand it, fishing is a very important part of the UK & IE identity. I guess similarly to firearms in the US or labor protection in France (I'm French). It doesn't matter how small a part of the economy it represents, it's still a highly emotional topic. This explains why politicians go to great lengths to protect the fishing industry there.

This is what confuses me: before the brexit campaign, I don't think anyone here (brit checking in) cared about fishing. Naval battles maybe, but not fishermen. It was never a part of national identity for me at least...

There was that whole COD WAR thing which was pretty intense at the time, and fishing quotas have been a thing in The Sun for a while, but I agree it doesn't feel like a huge part of the general identity.

I feel like people trying to build a national identity around hating Europe are really keen on fishing. Though only as far as it's useful for that end, no one actually cares about fishermen etc. That's what's so confusing to me about all this (brexit etc): it's all a very thin "papering over the cracks". As soon as someone has to make a hard choice, they renege. How anyone still supports it baffles me.

/Rant

Pelagic fishing in Britain literally only employs about 10,000 people. Prawns, crabs, lobsters and fish farming employ more but they have all been thrown under the bus by the brexit deal that the halfwits in charge have negotiated. The industry is just waking up to the fact it has been conned.

Mon ami, please don’t equate us (IE) with the British.

What’s “night time entertainment “?

Pubs, clubs, theatres etc.

What's wrong with having a big, efficient fishing ship? Are all the little guys really needed any more? Maybe work this like oil leases - you bid on exclusive fishing rights to a square, and only some squares are fished each year. Big ships are easy to track. They have AIS, and can be seen from orbit if they're not sending.

I agree I’d prefer 1-10 big ships for the whole region and then just put all your inspectors on those boats with the ability to impose heavy fines. The problem isn’t the ship is the tiny fines that are imposed for illegal activity

The costs of fishing are finding, catching and processing the fish. This boat might increase the efficiency of the last two and only marginally the first.

Increasing the stock of fish might reduce the costs of finding the fish.

Perhaps an exclusive lease of a fishing area would give boat owners an incentive to reduce fishing pressure, increase fish stocks and reduce the cost of finding the fish. Potentially outweighing the investment required to build a boat like this?

Let's not attribute to malice what is a result of dysfunctional government regulations with unintended consequences.

The seas are huge, but fisheries aren't. Seafood is actually getting pretty scarce, and fisheries don't scale link agriculture on land does. We have overfished the oceans and this is having dreadful ecological effects.

With a little research it seems that these type of factory vessels are becoming the norm especially in Asia. However I’m not seeing much you can do about them. It seems like this is similar to many problems on the high seas: it depends on who’s flag fly under. That’s why most vessels fly under the flags of very tiny and obscure nations.

European trawlers have been fishing in African waters for decades after depleting the North Sea. You can buy fishing rights in Mauritania and its perfectly legal.

One of my favourite parts of Blade Runner 2048 is where they show the insect farms.

Could you imagine the total cost of replacing biological systems with man-made ones? We are playing with fire.

We are on fire but won't put down the cigarette

There is actually a very good reason why many people have already replaced fish consumption with algal farms: bioamplified and persistent environmental pollution, particularly mercury. The only unique nutritional value of fish is in long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, which the fish get from algae. This is commonly marketed as "Algae EPA DHA" at very large markups (I pay about $20 for two months' supply at my local rich people organic food store).

This is simply terrible.

Nations can't properly coordinate these things. We're going to deplete our oceans, and affect climate in unforeseen ways.

I wish there was something we could do.

There is a simple way to fix this.

1. Introduce tight quotas and enforce them strictly. 2. Only allow imports from nations that follow the same, or a stricter, protocol. 2.a Alternatively, enforce an import quota or prevent imports completely. 3. Measure the effect and adapt quotas if necessary.

Now I am not a marine biologist, but I presume that the areas where quotas are enforced are of utmost importance in that matter. So the difficult part is to get many nations on board and define meaningful areas of the high seas that are then protected.

Isn't that already the case? Fish prices are kinda high, too. I personally don't like fish, it's a bit surprising that over-fishing is still a huge problem around Europe.

I'd say the system for coordination is pretty good in Europe.

There is a specialist EU agency for fisheries inspection (The EFCA located in Vigo, Spain) A lot is being done there to ensure the rules are abided. Placing inspectors on board, tracking the behaviour of the boats, and so on. But of course the budgets of this agency are nowhere near that of the agency for medicine or chemistry, and cheating is easy when you're alone at sea (using hidden compartiments for example).

The European Commission has a Directorate-General for fisheries, which does research on how much fish there is, and negotiates treaties on fisheries quotas with other nations. I believe they have great intentions, but not every one cares about sustainability, and if money talks countries like China can outbid the EU.

Source: My dad was known as the Eliot Ness of fisheries.

>Nations can't properly coordinate these things.

Sure they can, at least in theory and sometimes in practice. The article describes several countries’ navies intercepting the Atlantic Dawn, arresting members of her crew, and convicting them of crimes. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) defines who can fish where. Many countries vigorously enforce this treaty.

Unfortunately, the ability to regulate overfishing does not imply a willingness to do so, and signatory status to UNCLOS does not imply a willingness to abide by its rules. For instance, the country with world’s largest navy is currently using its sea power to fish in other countries’ waters, in stark violation of the UNCLOS and good environmental sense:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56474847

>Two years ago, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte defended his non-confrontational approach to the maritime dispute with a quip about Chinese President Xi Jinping.

>"When Xi says 'I will fish' who can prevent him?" he said, quoted by the Associated Press. "If I send my marines to drive away the Chinese fishermen, I guarantee you not one of them will come home alive."

If China, the US, and the EU all agreed to enforce UNCLOS and help smaller countries regulate overfishing, they could do it. The technical capabilities exist. The legal frameworks are already in place. It’s a matter of political will.

That appears to be a territory claim dispute, not fishing.

> The Philippines says the fishing boats do not appear to be fishing and are crewed by China's maritime militia.

> the country with world’s largest navy

Not particularly relevant, but this is only true by the metric "number of boats". If you weigh by boat size other countries are much larger.

No, they can't, not when China is able to buy the whole country's leadership to plunder their waters:

https://twitter.com/HeshmatAlavi/status/1378305883399159812

Sea Shepherd puts it well:

How to save the ocean:

1) Don't eat marine animals

2) Be a voice for marine animals

3) Repeat steps 1 and 2

We shall do photosynthesis then.

1. We harm marine ecosystem, we shan't eat marine animals.

2. Land animals are too cute, also we eat a lot of them, and we shan't.

3. Forest has a communication net, so plants also have some kind of intelligence, eating them is cruel.

I understand that excessive of everything is damaging the environment, and we do a lot of damage to our planet, but this is not the way to solve the problems.

We shall become sustainable, not prohibitive.

BTW, if I could do photosynthesis without damaging anything, I'd happily do it.

So what action are you suggesting?

h̶i̶p̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶e̶n̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ soylent of course.

Actually nothing too fancy. I don't believe in synthetic foods not because they're not natural, but because I think human body is at least one order of magnitude more complicated than we know, and we don't know the peculiarities of dietary needs.

There are some big problems in food supply chain as I see it. Oversupply and too much waste. Moreover, I believe this waste is fueling the oversupply trend.

It's not possible to reduce waste to exactly zero, but throwing away food just because it's not eaten today (by restaurants, hotels and similar establishments) is creating a big waste, which can be used in a much better way. It's also same for baked goods (remember reading a homeless guy's story which volunteered at Starbucks and got free food from the "will be trashed today" pile). Even if we able to feed some people with this so-called waste, that'd be something.

For the oversupply part, it's much more easier said than done, because human and corporation greed comes into play. Free market economy is generally the survival of the fiercest, so who can sell more thrives. So to sell more, you need to catch more. To limit this damage, quotes are put in place, but they're not enforced strictly by anyone AFAICS.

In short, there shall be a system which strictly applies quotas & really punishes the damaging parties, a good scientific commission which decides on quotas with worldwide collaboration and future planning, and an unanimous consensus on climate change and sustainable fishing & farming.

However, while this is a good plan on paper, human is in it and, this makes it a very hard idea to implement, because politics, country economics, personal and corporate interests and everything in between will come into play.

So, these things called growth and hard capitalism is damaging our planet. Mobil knew global warming since 80s and they just hid it. It's the same thing. Greed. Just under different names.

2) happily do

1) eh. I would pretty much prefer a system where externalities are embedded in taxes and levies to the point the consumption becomes sustainable

Wow.

I'm prepared for seeing, in my lifetime, the day when bananas are gone: no more, done, only a memory. I'm prepared for seeing bees gone: no more, done, honey doesn't exist now.

It had not occurred to me that I might live to see a day when FISH were not a thing.

Fish have been in trouble for a long time. Eg collapse of cod 30 years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_nor...

If the bees went it would be a lot more serious than no more honey. It would cause the total collapse of a significant chunk of the ecosystem.

Well, it's the only species that is mostly hunted (as opposed to farmed), so it shouldn't be that surprising.

What's that about honey? I can send you pure, natural, seasonal (tastes different depending on month/flowers) honey anytime. We've got more than we can sell every year. ~5-10 Euro/L.

Expanding on that, it's really strange how expensive and poor tasting honey is in western Europe. The normal cheap stuff (still expensive imo) is the usual mix of everything, just tastes sweet/bland, none of the spring/summer/autumn tastes that I'm used to.

It's not like it goes bad (it does saccharize after a while though), there's an oversupply in eastern Europe, how come no one is importing it en masse? Strange, to say the least. Perhaps there's a good business opportunity there.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/884kq4/your-fancy-honey-migh...

> Grab any random bottle of honey from your kitchen, coffee shop, or restaurant: According to a number of honey experts who spoke with VICE, the odds are high that your honey isn't what it claims to be. Honey imported from overseas is often adulterated—either by having sugars added to it or by being cleaned, heated, or filtered—and then is blended with small amounts of true honey until the sticky substance is uniform.

> In a small experiment of my own, I bought honey from different stores to test them at two different honey labs. In half of the samples I sent to a lab in Germany, and more than half of those I sent to a lab in Missouri, the results indicated adulteration may have taken place.

Oh wow, what the hell. It's not enough to just blend all the honey into one, they add sweeteners and filler? Must be really profitable, I guess.

Heating, I can understand, it's a way to re-liquify crystallized honey. It's done at a low temperature over some time, so the taste remains mostly the same. Fresh honey straight out of the hive is the best, though.

Now I wonder if people would even buy real, untouched honey. It's less viscous than the usual stuff in stores, and it crystallizes/hardens after a while, so it may actually seem fake, but that's natural honey.

Grocery store honey crystallizes too. What I've found is that people who grew up on cheap honey just don't know what they're missing. Once they try the good stuff, they're ruined for the national brands.