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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

As a fisherman who practices sustainable fishing and abides by the regulations in place, and has witnessed the rebound of several species I target, I call bullshit.

If the regulations lead to a complete disappearance of the fishery then they are definitionally unsustainable.

How are you able to implicate the regulations here directly? The fishery collapsed 90% in 2 years, something else is at play.

said every fisherman ever.

In the maritimes when the cod collapsed they blamed seals.

Pushing a species to the brink of extinction and then blaming whatever natural event dealt the fatal blow is standard for humans.

Cod collapsed 90% in _30 years_ and was not regulated in nearly the same way as snow crab is. Your dismissive tone isn't constructive and betrays your lack of knowledge.

By 'rebound' do you mean slightly above such catastrophic depletion that action was finally taken? Kind of a low baseline.

it's crazy how you think you know more about this than the person who wrote the comment you replied to.

Ah yes, how dare I challenge a fisherman whose income is based on 'harvesting' from the ocean (imagine an entire industry the existed by going into national forests and harvesting whole herds of elk or flocks of birds, people wouldn't stand for it, but somehow fisherman are ok). I read through his previous comments, nothing indicates it is beyond the pale for me to ask he expand on this 'rebound'. He stated there was a rebound, I asked what 'rebound' means as he provided pretty nebulous information. Should I not be allowed to ask him to expand on his statement? Especially since he claims his 'rebound' allows him to call 'bullshit' on others.

Apparently the definition of "sustainable" comes from the United Nations, not NOAA: https://ocean.si.edu/conservation/fishing/sustainable-fishin...

They also disagree with you that they've never been sustainably fished.

The problem is that "sustainable" is always based on past observations. There were 40+ years of observations for these crab and a stable fishery. But if the environment changes for the worse, the data-based definition of "sustainable" for a stock might not change fast enough to compensate.

So the "new sustainability" under climate change has to be much more precautionary than before, and yet not shut down on false signals. It's tricky science even when intentions are good.

Agreed, just making lucid the details of this argument. It's easy to take away from what you said that we haven't even tried.

> Humans have never practiced truly sustainable fishing at any time or place in history.

Oh shit, something I know about!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DqH2DPSw4g

Yea, people have actually done this sustainably.

What about farmed trout? https://www.clearsprings.com

According to clearsprings

>Farmed seafood, in general, is a sustainable option, requiring far less feed per pound compared to other farmed sources of protein like beef, pork, and chicken.

That is one advantage if true but that just means more sustainable than beef, pork, and chicken.

Is there a condition that would prevent their farming? Like the accessibility of the feed?

> Conventional operations use large amounts of fishmeal and fish oil (and hence more wild fish) in their feed. All rainbow trout on the U.S. market is farmed-raised in the U.S., where farming operations are held to strict environmental standards. Improvements to feed have enabled less wild fish to be used.

https://seafood.edf.org/trout

So I guess they harvest wild fish to feed the farmed fish?

Fishmeal and oil are byproducts of processing the filets

They can’t feed the fish only parts of previous fish or they’d run out of material pretty fast - like a recycling center with no external inputs.

...byproducts of processing the wild filets. I'm saying I doubt they're catching wild fish for the purpose of selling them to fish farms. Of course, it improves profit and hence incentive

If humans don't buy them they have no value and may as well be extinct anyways.

What a horrifying worldview.

It really is. I will never understand the "i got mine" attitude. I'm no angel, but holy shit.

Crass, sure, but true. Humanity is the reason certain animals are even capable of continuing existing. For example, chickens, pigs, cows, etc. The populations (and genetic diversity) would be far less if they were allowed to roam naturally all the time. With farmers releasing cows to free range, as well as keeping and breeding cows, the cow as a species is guaranteed to survive.

It's a complicated subject but the simplest answer goes back to the circle of life. There are two survival strategies of a species. Either becoming a predator, or become very useful prey. Which, in crass terms, basically means that if humans don't buy it (don't eat it, therefore don't insure it's survival), it will die out (e.g. it's "worthless") if it cannot evolve into a predator species.

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