Tuna species popular in sashimi and poke bowls in sharp decline
phys.org
phys.org
Passenger pigeons were hunted by Native Americans, but hunting intensified after the
arrival of Europeans, particularly in the 19th century. Pigeon meat was commercialized
as cheap food, resulting in hunting on a massive scale for many decades. There were
several other factors contributing to the decline and subsequent extinction of the
species, including shrinking of the large breeding populations necessary for
preservation of the species and widespread deforestation, which destroyed its habitat.
A slow decline between about 1800 and 1870 was followed by a rapid decline between 1870
and 1890. In 1900, the last confirmed wild bird was shot in southern Ohio.
[1] https://oceansfirstjournal.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/ocean...
Tuna and herring are not grown en masse in aquaculture... yet. That will change.
> This article is more than 4 months old
In fact it came like ten years late. Probably more.
It does also occur that popluations become so low that they can't recover. Atlantic Northwest Cod are the most obvious example, still not having recovered from overfishing in the latter half of last century [3].
[1] https://time.com/6199237/is-farmed-salmon-healthy-sustainabl... [2] https://wildfish.org/latest-news/main-uk-populations-of-atla... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...
That's not why it went extinct, of course, but does put in perspective what may have been a more "natural" population level for the bird, previously—the shocking decline may have been from an aberrant many-times-larger-than-normal population, not from the range in which the population had tended to stay before extensive contact with Europe. It may also explain why it was possible for it to go extinct so seemingly-easily—they weren't truly thriving as much as one might suppose from the numbers, and in fact were quite vulnerable, especially if people got accustomed to eating lots of them and their population was already destined to rubber-band back to something under its ordinary level.
Which reminds me of a conversation with a relative of mine from the Eastern shore of Va. He worked for a company that caught Horseshoe Crabs. These crabs were then ground up and used for bait to catch Conch. I pointed out to him that down the street from his company was another company that caught and released Horseshoe Crabs. They used their blood to produce medicine at great profit. Since that time Va has sadly had to place restrictions on harvesting Horseshoe Crabs. So not only did we over fish Horseshoe Crabs - we did it to over fish Conch.
We set up the laws of the sea basically on the same model as the United Nations. They’re there to keep the peace between international powers, not produce good governance.
Yes, but not when you are the US of A. /s
I hesitate to think that Japan could do something about it though. If they stopped over-fishing, that would just attract Chinese fishermen who would fill the gaps. Just can't win without global cooperation.
And this plan will be a failure from the start. The pool of edible species is just a very small part of the total.
Leatherback turtles eat jellyfishes. What if we stop killing them instead? or increase the ludicrous amount of resources allocated to protect turtle nests?
They are not even remotely substitutes nutritionally
That is something that can be done at a local level without global cooperation. Don't harvest all the food for the larger fish we like to eat.
You're assuming some foreign operator won't come to your local waters to illegally fish. China has shown they will fish literally anywhere they can get away with it.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/26/world/asia/ch...
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/japanese-leg...
The question wasn't about whether Japan is appropriately managing their fish stocks, the question was whether or not they had massive illegal fleets gutting the ocean around the world (which China is currently doing).
For reasons, it doesn't win you any friends when you complain about them, though.
You should really include a citation when you claim countries are "on a list". For all I know they are #3 and #6 on "vkou's list of least favorite countries".
Korea doesn't appear on the NOAA's list at all for 2023. Taiwan's impact is a tiny fraction of China's. While that's still not OK, we're comparing apples and atomic bombs.
>Angola, Grenada, Mexico, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, The Gambia, and Vanuatu were identified for reported or alleged IUU fishing that occurred between 2020 and 2022. PRC and Taiwan’s identifications include information related to seafood-related goods produced through forced labor.
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/s3/2023-08/2023.ReportSummary...
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/s3/2023-08/2023RTC-ImprovingI...
https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/IUU-...
#1 China - 3.86 #2 Russia - 3.04 #3 South Korea - 2.91 #4 Somalia - 2.90 #5 Yemen - 2.89 #6 Taiwan - 2.88
Neck and neck with two states undergoing decades of civil war, and one that's a bit of an international pariah at the moment. A truly glowing endorsement.
> Taiwan's impact is a tiny fraction of China's.
Do you have any citation for this? The reports you cited do not give any numbers, and only put blame on both countries for use of forced labour, and for catching sharks (on the basis that both violate a US shark fishing ban, that was only passed by Congress in 2021[1]).
Taiwan also received a positive citation for closing some loopholes in its laws (With no evaluation for whether it enforces them.)
[1] Which is a good thing, but it is not an international shark fin ban. It's not entirely clear to me why either Taiwan or China have to follow domestic American law...
for IUU fishing scores by type, for all types of state responsibilty:
China, Russia, South Korea, Somalia, Yemen, Taiwan, Ukraine, Eritrea, Egypt, Libya.
[0] https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/IUU-...
https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/The-...
Basic economics would suggest that a country with low nominal GDP/capita would not be the final destination for a global commodity (with relatively high production cost) like deep sea fish. Given that your production site is in the Pacific Ocean, why would you sell in Shanghai when you can sell in San Francisco where the average person spends ~10x or more USD on food?
TFA even says the West Pacific (i.e. China, Japan, Korea) is the region suffering the least, due to local conservation measures.
Just maybe the fishing grounds close to Chine are all fished out.
[1] https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/chilean-navy-increases...
[2] https://globalfishingwatch.org/data/analysis-reveals-false-v...
To be in that rank, a country would need first to declare the real number of the captures officially.
But it does not really matter. Is all about collateral effects.
"we catch only herrings and respect the Tuna (liar, liar, fins on fire), so why 9 of each 10 tuna in the planet vanished?".
Hem... Are we talking about the herring-eating tuna?"
Oh, my sweet summer child. Is more like the opposite of losing money, in fact.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X1...
Take a look to the keywords section first
"Much of what China does, however, is legal — or, on the open seas at least, largely unregulated." -- quote from your link.
Fishing "right up to the exclusive economic zone", means you're in international waters and can fish freely. They continue their activities because there are no legal means to stop their behavior. It's completely legal to fish in international waters.. just as it's legal for the US military to conduct freedom of movement operations in international waters. Countries can complain, but it doesn't give them the right to stop the behavior.
That's the problem.
Top fishing countries aren't going to agree to that (most of whom are US allies that media doesn't report on despite having comparable suspicious activities in same distant regions PRC operates in). The only reason PRC fishing got media play / propaganda push in the last few years is US wanted to beef up influence of pacific nations playing up PRC fishing so they can drive the issue to forward deploy coast guard and build influence. It's geopolitical lawfare, and it's unlikely to do anything substantive because any agreement by PRC on curtailing distant fishing would be on per capita basis which would first involve everyone else (JP,SKR,TW etc) to essentially kill their entire fishing industry before PRC would even need to make any cuts. Someone else pointed out the SUV analogy when it comes to global warmning which is apt.
E: some embarassing math mistakes
There's a way to deal with intruders (or, let's call it by its name, pirates) into maritime space: stop their ships, seize them or torpedo them. It's only a question of time IMHO until this happens, China has been making enemies at sea in its neighborhood, even up to Africa, for years now.
Maybe that's true, but isn't this the exact same argument used by Americans: "Why should I stop driving my SUV, when China will burn that gas anyway?"
When the gas is gone those SUVs will simply stop working. When the fish are gone large populations of people will not have sufficient food to eat.
SUVs/Trucks -> Midsize by individuals driving 95% < 30 miles is less meaningful change than many other changes. (especially considering the future of the SUV is hybrid/electric). The math changes if the question becomes, instead of size of car, reducing the car/household for walking, biking, or carpooling.
Way cheaper. Can’t get so fat and unhealthy. And far healthier since most vegans and vegetarians live long and healthy lives compared to other groups.
Poke tastes great with tofu btw. We shouldn’t destroy the oceans.
Anyway I’m bracing for the inevitable downvote to oblivion
That's why this isn't great. Because this is not "we went vegan to save the oceans". It is "the oceans look like they are already destroyed".
Besides that, I haven't seen any studies that show a vegan or vegetarian diet makes someone healthier.
We can attempt to fix it before ecosystems collapse, if we do it afterwards, the only meat you will be eating will be worms.
That's not evidence that they're healthier for it.
This is an extensive review of many papers from 10 years ago, most data agrees that vegetarian diet is considerably healthier.
More modern literature merely adds that if you go full vegan you need to eat quite some if you want to preserve lean mass.
Most people who are vegan are more likely to be health conscious
Obviously, physically active vegetarians who carefully consider their diet (and eat specifically balanced non-ultraprocessed food) compares well to 100% fast food eating couch potatoes. Also obviously, it's far easier to have a nutritional deficit with vegetarian food.
I have yet to see a study where vegetarianism is just imposed with no other guidance. If you have one, I would love to see it.
There's plenty of Harvard studies too.
There's an abundance of literature that meat causes cancer, cardiovascular diseases, etc, but people aren't different to 50s smokers.
Seriously. It's so obvious that cattle farming is among the most earth destroying activities but people prefer not to see, because it impacts their life. Easier to she'll 50k on a Tesla to feel good.
Also, just to point out, I'm not a vegan, all I'm saying is that meat should be heavily limited, which is what I do myself.
[1] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/11/twin-diet-veg...
Or copy-paste vegetarian culinary traditions. They have worked out most of the dietary kinks.
You must not have looked. Almost all (except for commercially funded) studies prove plant-based diets are much healthier; it's literally the scientific consensus in nutrition.
Otherwise, there are plenty of studies that show that those vegans who neglect to take appropriate supplements have various health problems, e.g. osteoporosis or anemia.
I also have heard of many (and I know personally someone) who were forced to abandon the vegan diet after some time due to health problems, but it is very likely that all such problems have been caused by not taking a complete set of supplements, because most have heard only about B12, and that is not the only substance missing from plants.
Non-vegans have just as many nutritional deficiencies, if not more, like a total lack in fiber. And for every neglectful vegan, there are ten unhealthy animal product-eating individuals with even more debilitating diseases, like diabetes, for example.
Also, DHA/EPA is synthesized in the body; it's not necessary to supplement them, nor any other vitamins you had listed, other than B12 and possibly D3 (depending on your latitude).
But not nearly as tasty :-(
[UPDATE] Why all the hate? I thought I was making a serious point: food is not just about health, it's also about enjoyment. You can survive on beans and rice, but there are people, myself included, who would happily give up a few years of life expectancy for a more diverse diet.
Lean meat provides proteins with very little of anything else, so it is extremely easy to choose a menu providing enough proteins but not too much energy.
Among vegetable products, only the seeds contain decent amount of proteins (this includes the cereals and the legumes), but all seeds contain much more of either carbohydrates or fats than proteins.
There are vegetable protein extracts aimed at vegans, but I do not consider those as an acceptable solution, because they are several times more expensive than meat, so it is likely that their environmental impact, due to the consumption of energy and chemicals for the protein extraction is greater than that of meat. Chicken meat is only about twice more expensive than legumes like peas, lentils or beans, so it is not easy to find a method of protein extraction from vegetables that can compete with that.
In Europe, where I live, there exists only one method that I am aware of that can be used to obtain enough proteins in a vegan diet with no more than 2000 kcal/day, when paying no more than for a chicken meat-based diet, which is to get more than half of the proteins from wheat flour from which the starch is removed at home by washing the dough made of it.
Any vegan diet that does not use some method of protein extraction would lead to a daily intake of around 3000 kcal when providing enough proteins for a healthy male, which is acceptable only for someone who does heavy physical work, but not for someone who works by sitting in the front of a computer.
Regarding the amino-acid balance, 167 g/day of lentils can provide enough of each essential amino-acid for a 75-kg human, with the exception of methionine. Similarly 500 g/day of wheat flour can provide enough of each essential amino-acid for a 75-kg human, with the exception of lysine.
If only wheat flour would be the source of proteins 1000 g per day would be needed to provide all essential amino-acids, but that alone would provide about 3500 kcal. If only lentils would be the source of proteins, about 600 g per day would be needed to provide all essential amino-acids, but that alone would provide about 1900 kcal (and eating so much lentils per day would be more expensive than eating chicken meat).
Combining wheat flour with lentils can satisfy the amino-acid requirements with much more reasonable quantities, but the daily intake of calories remains too high, unless most of the starch (i.e. about 75% of the starch) is removed from the wheat flour.
“In conclusion, our study showed that many vegan diets in the present survey failed to meet the daily protein intake requirements, both on single days and on all three days. Furthermore, the diets were particularly limited by the essential amino acids lysine, the sulphur-containing amino acids, leucine and valine.”
> the recommended energy intake was not met on any of the days by more than half of the participants (55%) (Table 3), and only 10% met the recommended energy intake on all three days.
Fig. 1 even directly demonstrates my point: https://bmcnutr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40795-02...
Nah you can eat just as bad vegan food. Most vegan burgers are just fat patties much worse than those made of lean beef.
As with any type of food it depends on the choices you make within the class and the amount of it.
I think the reason vegans and vegetarians are healthier is mainly because they are more conscious of what they're eating in the first place.
And depending on where you are it can take a lot of effort so it rules out "comfort food" people. I'm not sure about the US but here in Spain it's actually quite difficult to be vegetarian, there's not many local restaurants that serve veg options. More so when it comes to touristy places but still.. In Holland in comparison the supermarkets and restaurants are full of them.
> We shouldn’t destroy the oceans.
Totally agreed here.
Sources 2 and 3 studied 37 and 58 individuals in 2004 and 1997, respectively. How has the field evolved since then?
Well, beef used to mean the actual animal in old English. The point here is that saturated fat is not the enemy.
> Sources 2 and 3 studied 37 and 58 individuals in 2004 and 1997, respectively. How has the field evolved since then?
Compared to the saturated fat theory of the 1960s?
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/11/twin-diet-veg...
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/you-are-what-you-eat-...
That being said, I think that an unhealthy vegan diet can be worse than an unhealthy omnivorous diet, because you really do have to be careful to eat a variety of foods and supplement in order to get everything that your body needs. This is especially true for children.
I follow a vegan Youtuber who regularly points out how unhealthy the advice that other vegan influencers give can be. Here's her video on beginner tips for becoming vegan:
They aren't. This repeated claim has been never confirmed scientifically.
Society overall is in a level of denial towards the very negative impact of cattle farming on the planet like it was in the 50s towards tobacco.
People will bitch about a cigarette being smoked 10 meters from them, but will shove sausages and stakes down their throats every other day pretending it doesn't have a gigantic cost in terms of earth's resources or the many studies pointing about how unhealthy it is.
Mind you, I don't advocate for people to cut off meat entirely, I myself have no intention to do so, but if we globally halved this crazy meat culture the impact on the planet would be huge.
We eat unhealthy and we're killing the planet while pretending to be green with Tesla SUVs. We're doomed to keep making this planet worse.
Why can't someone get as fat and unhealthy with a vegan diet? I'm friends with vegans who eat a LOT of processed foods - Gardein crispy tenders, Carl's Jr. for Beyond Burgers, etc.
> And far healthier since most vegans and vegetarians live long and healthy lives compared to other groups.
How much of this is attributable to a specific diet vs highlighting that those who care about what they eat generally perform better?
Don’t know about “unhealthy”, but “fat” is actually less likely, according to a research:
“our results suggest that self-identified semivegetarian, lactovegetarian, and vegan women have a lower risk of overweight and obesity than do omnivorous women. The advice to consume more plant foods and less animal products may help individuals control their weight.”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...
I bet there are people out there who eat semi-vegetarian diets basically by accident, who wouldn't think to label themselves semi-vegetarian, and that the beneficial effect is less pronounced among them.
Japan, where tuna sashimi is popular (apparently they eat more tuna by far than any other country), has the lowest obesity rate of the OECD countries, and one of the highest life expectancies.
There is no science to backup the vegan diet is "far healthier". Also, if the entire world stopped eating meat, we'd have a series of other problems to deal with.
Just make intellectually honest arguments and try and win that way. It's a much better way to "convert" people to your cause.
It's super easy to be vegetarian/vegan and eat mostly junk food.
American supermarkets are filled to the brim with potato & corn chips fried in vegetable oil and sugar drinks of all kinds.
Good health is achieved by regular physical exercise, and clear choices of unprocessed raw foods without added sugars. Being vegan can get you there, certainly, provided you don't indulge daily in pastries and deep fried seed oils.
But the reason I bother to reply is to point out that the same goes for high protein keto based diets, and even the carnivore diet, which has a growing body of support. We should all be striving to keep healthy bodies and healthy minds. There is plenty of information out there for all of us to live long and healthy lives.
In the United States when you eat meat it's a lot harder to know what you're getting thanks to the tireless efforts of the meat industry to lobby against any change to food labeling.
And it's hard to feed this much trash to a carrot: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/stz2j1/plast...
My healthy breakfast of donuts and a soda ;)
Jokes aside, I don’t think the health point stands, but the animal health perspective probably does.
Humans deterministically deplete ingenious populations of megafauna to extinction
The counter to this to date was megafauna herding via property boundary permanence. aka fencing for cattle
So the only solution would be to figure out how to do ocean megafauna herding because reducing consumption is unlikely. Which would require massive scale 3 or 4 dimensional fencing.
Sounds like a technical problem that can be solved if extremely difficult
Also the externalities would be bonkers most likely
Edit: Looks like this is starting to happen for tuna as of last year https://www.sojitz.com/caravan/en/special/tuna/1.html
That is a whole different kind of problem to farm than having a humdrum sub-mega fauna fish farm
Problems are more akin to trying to raise farm grown Elephants
How to save the ocean:
1) Don't eat marine animals
2) Be a voice for marine animals
3) Repeat steps 1 and 2
Hopefully other countries can also start using more commonly available fishes for sushi/sashimi and don't just stick to tuna because of historical reasons.
> Atlantic salmon (pictured) is placed in the “near threatened” category. New evidence says that globally, the population has declined by 23% between 2006 and 2020.
https://www.fishfarmermagazine.com/2023/12/13/wild-atlantic-...
https://wrt.org.uk/atlantic-salmon-now-near-threatened-on-iu...
(And actually when I try to look it up, it does not look like Yellowfin Tuna is actually on the "near threatened" or worse list officially? So atlantic salmon may be more threatened than yellowfin tuna according to IUCN?)
https://www.marinefinland.fi/en-US/Humans_and_the_Baltic_Sea...
https://www.npr.org/2015/09/18/441530790/how-the-desperate-n...
Eat less, meat people.
Because I personally struggle to find a reason for why fish should be an exception, and at least Wikipedia also defines meat as "animal flesh that is eaten as food".
- the amount of Bering Sea ice has dropped significantly
- the amount of 100-year storms has increased
- crab numbers have decreased
- crab seasons have been outright canceled due to major population collapses
- crab that remain are seeking deeper/colder water
As much dissembling as people want to do about climate change, you can see with your own two eyes the difference between season 1 and now. They almost never mention climate change on the show. They complain a lot about how "regulations" are destroying the fishermen's livelihood.
[0] https://www.lacucinaitaliana.it/article/granchio-blu-cosa-pe...
Any regulation of this type has a pointy end poking into someones back, regardless of the overall goal or intent of the regulation. Doesn't mean the regulation is bad, simply that it impacts someone.
While climate change is certainly having an impact on the crab fisheries in Alaska, none of the population changes have been attributed to over fishing. While, like everyone, the fleet contributes to systemic climate change, it's certainly not "their fault". They're just another microcosm showing impact of the climate dynamic. The Alaska fisheries are some of the best managed fisheries in the world, and the fishermen comply and work with the regulations.
The change to a quota system over the free-for-all derby system impacted a lot of fishermen. No doubt those whose livelihood were disrupted probably have a low opinion of it. The survivors probably enjoy it more, as its a more deterministic and safer system without the racing aspects of derby fishing, and the fishery is better managed because of it.
Arguably an overall win. But not for those who dropped off the bottom, they were forced to find something else.
I have no idea if this is correct but i'm pretty sure around 1 billion rely on this food and can't imagine what would happen if this somehow got removed from the system.
Does anyone know if it's really that bad?
so it simply could be a shift in consumption
The countries that are doing the overfishing have no intention of stopping. Western countries already heavily regulate their fishing industries.
Commercial fishing is just unsustainable. So unless you're a guy with a fishing rod we'll eventually have to just stop the boats heading out to sea.
https://concito.dk/en/concito-bloggen/groen-reform-eus-landb... and https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-05/vcs-ms... , but I don't know much about it.
I found this a useful primer on the form that those subsidies take: https://farm.ewg.org/subsidyprimer.php
(edited to clarify US scope)
The EWG attempts to enumerate the federal subsidies, which, by its count, total some $50bn directly to livestock producers since 1995, plus $160bn to farms that produce mainly feedstock for the meat. [0]
To be fair, EWG’s count includes disaster assistance, COVID subsidies, and direct compensation for losses related to Trump’s trade war-all of which is consistent with what the feds provide for any industry.
But in agriculture particularly, in the US as in most territories, the stated rationale is to protect farmers. The idea being they can’t control the weather, but one bad year can wipe them out through no fault of their own. And these types of failure, from the vicissitudes of nature and of market conditions they couldn’t have foreseen, can be coordinated across a region or market in a way that makes it hard for conventional insurance to handle.
But they also don’t look at subsidy programs beyond those direct payments to meat and dairy producers; skilled (though motivated) observers seem to estimate that larger number at close to $36bn/yr in 2013 terms. [1]
To get to that larger number you’d probably include consumption-side subsidies like school lunch programs, marketing support, and backstopping private crop insurance; and you’d include the major crops like corn and soy that, while not directly bound for the supermarket shelf, will end up feeding humans as well as livestock in some form. Or as ethanol shrug. The kinds of subsidies that the EWG counted toward the 160bn-since-1995 in [0].
Their broader point though was that the latter type of subsidies aren’t subsidizing things you or I would call a fruit or a vegetable and buy at the grocer and eat directly (those are <1% of federal subsidies); instead they’re subsidizing inputs to livestock and processed food producers.
[0] https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news/2022/02/usda-livestoc...
[1] https://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/news/removing-meat-subsidy-our...
The EWG say:
> The Department of Agriculture has spent almost $50 billion in subsidies for livestock operators since 1995, according to an EWG analysis.
Analysis is akin to interpretation... and we can read that their mission is an environmental one:
> Since 1993, the Environmental Working Group has shined a spotlight on outdated legislation, harmful agricultural practices and industry loopholes that pose a risk to our health and the health of our environment.
So their analysis would say livestock is over-subsidised, as that is aligned their mission. It doesn't mean that my analysis would be in agreement with theirs.
I also looked at one of pdfs they link to:
https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/AMS%20Pur...
I would need to go through all these numbers, check the sources, check how each was subsidised, work out what counts as "livestock" - eg is butter purchasing livestock, is bison, is farmed fish, etc. A long boring thankless task.
The topic here is eating habits that damage the environment.
It's something like a billion a year? Sounds like a lot; your part was $2.50 in taxes. Not very significant in a trillion-dollar budget.
Removing these programs would probably have the opposite effect: letting competition languish would leave one or two large players, who could set the prices anywhere they liked. Probably not lower.
I had assumed that this article would be talking about bluefin, was slightly surprised. It's kind of screwed up, if you ask me.
Not a fan of sushi, and I guess I didn't know what a poke ball, but it's not just the fish favored by Japanese cuisine. I don't even know when the last time I would've eaten real cod at Long John's... in the 1980's as a kid? Now it's all something like Alaskan pollock or whatever. Gulf coast shrimp, shellfish off the east coast, very little of it seems to be in good status.
That had nothing to do with supply. It was the first tuna of the season and people bid on it as a status symbol.
Hilsa, a fish from the Bengali delta (India and Bangladesh), periodically has similar crises, but seemed to be dredging along its cherished existence. Here is hoping that the Tuna fisheries will pick up a thing or two from that brood and execute some good measures.
That article's IUCN description is now wrong. I'll do it later today if someone doesn't get to it first.
I mean I expect those dish prices to go up regardless but I don't think that is near enough by itself. Fishing families have to pay their bills and corp fishing execs have to satisfy whoever they're beholden to. Those are powerful motivators and they commonly don't respond to anything less than enforced regulation.
Oversimplifying the problem for a punch line, since there's only a few viable solutions, as I see it now.
One day I ordered octopus tentacle from a tapas bar, and it arrived whole (and beautifully presented as a centerpiece of sorts). This surfaced many memories of nature documentaries demonstrating the wit and resilience of the octopus.
Looking at the delicacy artfully arranged on its plate, all I could think was "Jesus, that's _someone's arm_ we're eating!"
Took a bite, nearly threw up, and haven't eaten octopus since.
Melanie Joy speaks wonderfully on this subject and your realization: https://www.richroll.com/podcast/melanie-joy/
Alligators may seem "dumb", but they're smarter than us, if you go only by success. We don't know what all those nice sunbathes do for the animal.
Could bring the same joy and nastagia as climbing to the top of the mountain. Who are we to spoil this? How is it different from the joy we experience, or that of an octopus, pig, dog, ect as it frolics in the fields?
But considering that most fish species are endangered and basically all of them are contaminated by plastic, there is good reason to avoid seafood altogether. Unless perhaps if you know that it has been fished sustainably from a local stable population. Which still wouldn't change the issues with the plastic.
"Exclusively" is a big claim, but is reasonable to assume that the country with the supersized fleet catches more fishes
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/long-reads/arti...
Oh, that's a paywalled article. Well, here's another:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/25/can-anyo...
Nothing xenophobic or random. It's facts.
Here's one article:
https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-chinas-expanding-fishing-...
The drones just travel around the ocean scanning for illegal fishing. When they detect it, they determine who owns the vessel and send them a bill for fines. People respond to fines.
We can already detect illegal fishing, that's not a limitation. Illegal fishing fleets greatly out-scale the ability of naval forces to seize them, so the occasional seizure is just a cost of doing business, like with illegal drugs. There is little that will be effective at stopping illegal fishing short of using naval forces to sink them (which would scale), and that isn't going to happen.
My larger point in the GP is that you don't need to threaten anybody with force to get them to comply with a (hypothetical, future) law or treaty like this. The people doing this fishing are operating businesses, and if you make it costly for them to operate a certain way, they will change how they are operating to become compliant. This occurs all the time in other industries, so I don't see why fishing would be different.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/21/such-brutality...
If the ship hasn’t turned off its location beacon you can generally tell if they’re fishing although you can’t determine how much they’ve caught.
I suspect they are being eaten.