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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

It can’t hurt, but I don’t think something like this is really going to fix the problem. Dams, water levels abs temperatures, ocean trawling, acidification … there’s lots and lots of stress on salmon population aside from anglers.

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There was a bombshell report about an immediate moratorium on crab fishing in Alaska, that came out of nowhere, seemingly. About a month later there was a (very, very quiet) report justifying the moratorium. The short version is that effectively scientists had been asking for reduction in fishing in the area for decades and finally the remaining stock in the area was so low it was critically endangering the ecosystem there. So they finally put in a hard stop after years of kicking the can down the road.

I suspect we'll see additional cessation of fishing in other areas as it further unravels that we've been chronically overfishing for decades.

Britain after WW2 overharvested mackerel from their seas for so long that they had to put permanent fishing quotas and even today the mackerel have not fully recovered from overfishing over half a century ago. Anglers have an enormous impact on fish and wildlife stocks.

See also cod fishing in Newfoundland:

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

Cod stocks collapsed in the early 1990s, with a moratorium on fishing enacted in 1993. It took until 2011 for signs to show that the ecosystem was recovering.

The Atlantic (2016) is a good documentary on natural resources in Ireland and Newfoundland:

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

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5744820/

My understanding is that the cod are not expected to recover to numbers previously seen at all, though. The smaller number present today seem likely to comprise a permanently smaller proportion of the new habitat that has formed in their absence.

I looked into this many years ago so perhaps that has changed. I hope so. Otherwise it means the Canadian Atlantic was irreparably altered by modern fishing in the blink of an eye, and the rest of the world is working hard at doing the same thing right now.

They did a moratorium on crab fishing by crab fishermen but allow trawling for groundfish that a) picks up crab as bycatch and b) destroys their spawning grounds.

It’s not a great example of an effective policy response.

Yeah I suspect there's quite a lot of claw back by local government. Fishing is a rare industry where most boats are owner-operated and almost all their revenue is funneled back into the local economy (shipyards, shiphands who are employed on the boats themseves, marinas (usually owned by the city) etc) so for a place like alaska getting rid of fishing is hugely crippling for their local economy and the people who work in those towns. Take away fishing and the economy in these towns stops. There is no Fortune 50 company with infinite pockets to swoop in and "make things right" either via the goodness of their own hearts, or by lawsuits.

And this is the irony of short-termist policy making. By blocking reforms in order to maintain some localized status quo, you are very often dooming the future of that localized status quo. Instead, you should be planning ahead to scale it down or transition out of it entirely, and attempting to help people make that transition smoothly over the course of a generation. Ultimately it's just another form of greed and selfishness: "my desires today are more important than your needs tomorrow."

Yes, and never once did any of these owner-operator fisherpeople say: "Hey, we might be overfishing. Let's fish less." In my whole life, it is 100% opposition to any quotas. They are fishing themselves into poverty. It is bizarre. The future is aquaculture for 90+% of what we eat from the oceans/rivers/lakes.

Has anyone figured out how to make aquaculture sustainable? Last I checked it was so bad that it was actually worse than catching wild fish

It depends on the species. "Sustainably farming carnivores" is not a thing that actually exists on land or sea, and a lot of people's favorite fish are carnivores. Herbivores like tilapia could often be raised on agricultural waste, but in practice are raised on corn and soy.

> There was a bombshell report about an immediate moratorium on crab fishing in Alaska, that came out of nowhere, seemingly. About a month later there was a (very, very quiet) report justifying the moratorium. The short version is that effectively scientists had been asking for reduction in fishing in the area for decades and finally the remaining stock in the area was so low it was critically endangering the ecosystem there. So they finally put in a hard stop after years of kicking the can down the road.

The Atlantic cod industry waves hi.

Or, it would, if there was still an Atlantic cod industry.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Historical-Atlantic-cod-...

You had me until the last sentence:

    Anglers have an enormous impact on fish and wildlife stocks.

In English, the term "anglers" generally means hobby fishers -- hook and line, if you like. Are you saying that individuals have an enormous impact? I doubt it. I tried to Google about it, but I find nothing. The damage is mostly caused by industrial fishing and global warming.

I'm saying I'm refuting his statement, and using his language and wording to add impact and tie my post to his.

Understood. Thank you to clarify!

Fixing a multifaceted problem requires multifaceted solutions. It can definitely help.

The publicity from the cancelation seems like a really valuable aspect too

Absolutely. We definitely need to put a spotlight on this and other dwindling fish stocks. Even though there are other populations to draw from, once they're gone they are very, very hard to get back.

Car tire debris: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/03/coho-sal...

Local divers have been removing some tires but they can only get a tiny fraction of what has been dumped.

https://www.leeoceans.org/initiatives/ptlobos-tire-removal

Luckily, the dams start coming down this year. https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/18/klamath-river-dam-rem...

It won't fix it for sure, but it will help. Reducing the pressure on the population can go a long way to improving future prospects.

To add to the doom and gloom.

https://www.science.org/content/article/common-tire-chemical...

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