As cargo shipments boom, ship strikes imperil whales worldwide | Hacker News Reader

As cargo shipments boom, ship strikes imperil whales worldwide

latimes.com

69 pointsblacktulip50 comments

Speaking of whales, it would be nice if all cultures would give their taste for fish a rest. Japan just started commercial whaling again. They claim only non endangered species, but their research ships has been killing any whale for years.

(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48821797)

There is nothing wrong with eating fish as long as you do so in a sustainable manner. In many respects fish is a demonstrably much healthier option for you and the planet than meat, especially red meat.

Sure, I know in an ideal world we are all supposed to become tree-hugging vegans. But if the entire world switched 100% to vegetables you would soon find there are environmental and sustainable issues there. Its one thing growing a few carrots in your back garden, its another doing so on an industrial scale.

So its not so much what you eat, but the sustainability of it. The answer is not so black and white.

The source[0] below seems to contradict what you're saying about sustainability, at least with regard to land use - which seems (to me) to be the most pertinent issue in that aspect.

  "Livestock takes up nearly 80% of global agricultural land, yet produces less than 20% of the world’s supply of calories (as shown in the visualization). This means that what we eat is more important than how much we eat in determining the amount of land required to produce our food."

I know you aren't supporting traditional livestock (red meat), but the breakdown of the numbers from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization shows that plant-based food sources already account for 83% of the global calorie supply using only 23% of "Agriculture land". Based on that land use/calories ratio, we could increase to 100% by taking only ~4.7% of the total agriculture land from the livestock portion. If we assume that we definitely need all the protein listed, that would have to be increased to ~6.2%.

Obviously there would be other issues, but if we could return most of the remaining portion of the livestock land to its natural state (even scrub land can benefit from reducing livestock grazing), that seems like an enormous gain for sustainability.

Of course, this doesn't diminish your initial point about eating fish in a sustainable manner. How we could enforce the sustainable aspect is a another matter, given the number of news stories of issues with fish farms and continued over-fishing in protected areas, but that's beside the point. I just wanted to flag other potential gains from more vegetarian diets.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

Cattle aren't being raised on fertile Iowa topsoil. Cattle are raised where the land has essentially no other purpose.

You can see this in cash rent prices for farmland. Leasing it out for crops makes around $150 an acre, but for cattle it will only bring in $35 an acre.

The statistics about how a huge proportion of agricultural land is going to raise beef is misleading for this reason. It's not one or the other.

A lot of crops are grown to feed cattle. Most livestock in the US are fed on consolidated feed lots using feed like corn and soy. Grass grazing couldn't support the amount of meat raised, so it's a chain of fossil fuel fertilizer -> feed crops -> livestock

93 percent of cattle's lifetime diet intake is food that is essentially inedible to humans, for instance agricultural byproduct/waste such as the cornstalks, husks, and depleted cobs and therefore their diet is not in direct competition with the human food supply. They don't feed cattle valuable cornmeal and soybeans. Unlike humans, cattle can efficiently digest fiber and convert previously human-inedible feeds into nutritious, human-edible foods.

http://pods.dasnr.okstate.edu/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1...

When you have 7x the number of humans the planet can support with natural resourse there is not "sustainable manner" in which to operation when consuming natural resources.

Do you have a source for the 7x figure? Haven’t heard something that precise before.

Whales aren't fish but mammals. Anyway, what about countries which don't have an alternative to fishing?

Maybe not for whales but fish farming subsidies seem like a good idea for vegans to shoot down.

Can we really be trusted to orchestrate gigantic farmed fishing operations at scale? After this happened a few years ago[0] I think it's safer to just give it a rest so we don't compromise more ocean life.

[0]https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/fish-farm-caused-a...

>Slower speeds also reduce the amount of fuel needed — making a voyage cheaper — and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. “Slow speeds are a win for all,” said Leaper.

The article is incorrect. Ships travel at an economical speed based both on fuel consumption, delivery timing, and trying to maximize the utility to the shipper from the cargo vessel. Slowing down means fewer voyages for each ship, and would ultimately mean either fewer voyages total (less commerce) or more ships.

We can dance around environmental issues all we want. Everything reaches overconsumption and overpopulation eventually. Reducing both is straightforward and can be done with time-tested, strictly voluntary, noncoercive means that improve health, longevity, abundance, and stability. Nothing else works. On the contrary, generations trying other methods have increased the problems.

What "time-tested, strictly voluntary, noncoercive means" are you referring too?

Not the one you respond to, but I read it as something akin to Nudging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory

> Nudging contrasts with other ways to achieve compliance, such as education, legislation or enforcement.

For overpopulation, Mechai Viravaidya's work in Thailand on lowering birth rates, plus many peers, like Costa Rica, Iran, and more. I posted a bunch of podcast episodes and blog entries on him https://joshuaspodek.com/?s=viravaidya, and YouTube has more.

On overconsumption, I think of Bea Johnson https://joshuaspodek.com/guests/bea-johnson and Josh Becker https://joshuaspodek.com/guests/joshua-becker, just among people I know, improving life on individual basis, then systems people like W. Edwards Deming who showed systemic change begins with personal transformation. He worked in other areas, but led to national and global change on the scale we need in years.

Just improving womens' educational opportunities in the developing world would go a long way. It's the #2 thing on project drawdown https://drawdown.org/solutions/health-and-education

Just this month in the news in NL : shipped rammed whale in the Gulf of Biscay, drags it along to NL.

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/08/05/dode-walvis-in-terneuze...

I do wonder if the world will "re-invent" ekranoplans so to speak. Improvements in engineering design, tooling and material science could make them economically viable in a niche of the global economy. The youtuber Mustard [1] has a great video on the mad ideas of Italian born Soviet engineer Robert Bartini. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD7xiWWs-bs

The problem was that they had so little room for error. But I guess landing a rocket vertically on a heaving ship is also tricky, so maybe the problem is surmountable.

> Ship strikes are not thought to be a predominant cause of the West Coast die-off of gray whales since 2019, but they are a factor, and an increasing concern.

There was an interesting HN article about air ships the other day; it would be so cool if those are used in the future to mitigate ocean damage.

You will need a lot of pricey Helium-filled airships to replace an average container ship.

I guess the airspace will look somewhat like the Cleveland Balloonfest '86...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloonfest_%2786

Great little documentary. The color palette and soundscape of the balloon release reminded me a bit of Starro in the recent Suicide Squad, and there’s a non-zero chance Gunn has seen this footage.

Did you know, sea stars are dying too?

https://marine.ucsc.edu/data-products/sea-star-wasting/

The article in questions did advocate for hydrogen. Cheap, abundant, more lift and according to the article safe enough.

>save enough

That probably won't convince neither aviation security authorities nor insurance companies. Beside, allthough helium is more expensive but far saver than hydrogen it isn't the reason for the economical infeasibility of air ship cargo on global scale.

We work with more dangerous fuels daily…

If we can design ships to go to mars, I’m sure we can use modern technology to design airships as safe as airplanes.

The CargoLifter CL 160 I mentioned above was planned to carry 160 metric tons with a volume of up to 3,200 cubic metres. Its body volume should have been 550,000 cubic meter filled with helium.

They probably chose helium for a reason. They didn't think it a good idea to plaster the skys with thousands of vehicles, each with half a million cubic meters of burnable fuel in its hull.

To save the whales from container and other ships with a cargo capacity of thousands of TEU's.

https://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/cargolifter/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit

And there is still the question of economic sustainability. Even for small operations like cargo to remote areas. Not to say the volume on a global scale like cargo shipping.

I just learned about this Ballonfest thing. How could anyone have thought it was a good idea?

Ha, then wait until your grandchildren ask you about carbon dioxide and why there are no more whales in the oceans anymore.

But you may find an answer to your question here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17370469

Oh and just because this thread is also about whales, you probably don't know about the exploding whale thing either, right?

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=exploding+whale

The balloonfest was one of the most obvious and dumbest fuckeries that have been orchestrated for the dumbest reasons.

I don't know what an airborn attempt at global shipping would be like, but I'm pretty sure it would be nothing like that stupidity.

>I don't know what an airborn attempt at global shipping would be like, but I'm pretty sure it would be nothing like that stupidity.

Well, since air freight on the scale of global cargo shipping is probably not economically feasible, especially to save the puny remnant of species that are no longer profitable to exploit, I'm afraid there are no steampunk airship fantasies on the horizon, I think.

Last time someone grounded the idea of air ship cargo at least a German province got a tropical island in the sun.

https://www.tropical-islands.de/en/tropical-world/attraction...

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

Then people will complain about airships killing birds

There is more space in the sky than the ocean.

Not a lot of birds in the oceans would be my guess.

Which leads to my question; With all the vastness of thousands of square miles of water, how is it that ships manage to strike whales of a few square metres? And when you factor in sonar and radar... how? I'm not knowledgeable in maritime routes, but even if you say that both whales and ships prefer ocean currents (maybe, just a wild guess) or the like it still seems hard. Even if the routes are congested

>And when you factor in sonar and radar

Well, its just not that easy.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X1...

'A decision-making framework to reduce the risk of collisions between ships and whales'

And by the way, it also happens not that often.

For the most part it's selling apocalytic news by exploiting a variant of the Bambi effect.

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

Whales as a species were finished a long time ago. Now it's just soothing a troubled conscience.

It's nice to have confirmation that i'm correct. Thanks

Ships don’t travel the vast open waters, they stick to well travelled shipping lanes.

I’m guessing human shipping lanes overlap pre-existing animal migration paths

Whales: the deer of the seas.

Gotta nuke something.

Hot take: Let’s not suddenly start acting like we care about whales (or ANY animal for that matter). Humans do not respect animals. Humans do not respect the earth. This is hardly news.

Without taking a stance on whether or not we should, humans do care if many species of animal dies. Not because of some altruistic drive, but because their welfare influences our own.

Species dying out can dramatically impact the environment we live in. We don't even really understand the degree to which it will change our environment.

Humans respect animals and the earth because both are liable to kill us if we don't. I agree there isn't some intrinsic respect for nature because it's nature, but humanity most certainly does care about nature.

Always suspected I wasn't human...

I think the more likely explanation is that we live in different worlds. I live in a world ruled by capitalism where people have come to value their lifestyles (food, possessions, etc) more than the natural world.

It's the same world, yours just has a shorter planning horizon.

This whole non-discussion upthread is summed up a whatabout|can't change. :( A serious lack of any self reflection. We are like kids that only want to eat cup cakes and buy crap only to open it and throw it away. Humanity needs to take a deep breath and mature.

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