Hacker News Reader

Comment by rolobio | Hacker News Reader

I watched a documentary years ago about jellyfish invading Japan. Basically, the jellyfish population was exploding because the fish didn't exist to eat the baby jellyfish and keep them under control. The Japanese fishermen were furious that they kept catching jellyfish, rather than the fish that they wanted. They were the cause of their own suffering. Sounds like things haven't changed...

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.

View on HN

Fish management doesn't really require global cooperation. It does require some sacrifice. Where I live 100 years ago herring spawn covered nearly every shoreline. I live in an archipelago so there is a lot of coastline. Now there are sporadic patches of herring spawn. The herring fishery is a multi million dollar industry. Herring is also the base of the larger fin-fish population. We can't harvest all the food for larger species and harvest larger species and expect everything to just be fine. If there is an abundance of food for a species they will spawn in greater numbers (well known predator-prey dynamic). Sacrificing the herring fishery would allow larger species a path to build populations.

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.

>That is something that can be done at a local level without global cooperation.

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...

Read that article again closer, paying attention to separate the examples of illegal behavior from simply fishing.

"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.

Aren't there international treaties regulating fishing in international waters? I know they exist but not sure if they're weak and vague. That is what we need but not realistic to happen in today's geopolitical climate

High seas is global commons. Any meaningful regulation / quota for potential enforcement is going to be on per capita basis (like emissions), in which case PRC significantly _underfishes_ relative to other top IUU violators. PRC would need to have distant fishing fleet of 60,000-120,000, or 20-40x times larger than current (3000-6000) to match per capita fleet of Taiwan (2000). Even if you take high end estimate of PRC DWF at 16000 that motivated actors use to bundle PRC fishing in their near shores (east/south seas, most of which are maritime militia that doesn't actually fish), they would still be "entitled" to 4x current fleet size. The reality is PRC has 20% of worlds population and limited EEZs so they're going to have to fish more in high seas / international waters for consumption and commerce. Unless one thinks PRC citizens aren't entitled to seafood or PRC fishers aren't entitled to a living.

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

My recollection of how this works in the Pacific is that you won’t be eligible to buy fishing days in an EEZ if you do this.

It's worth noting that Korea and Taiwan are right behind China in illegal fishing (#3 and #6, respectively).

For reasons, it doesn't win you any friends when you complain about them, though.

>It's worth noting that Korea and Taiwan are right behind China in illegal fishing (#3 and #6, respectively).

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...

They are #3 and #6 on the IUU list.

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...

The IUU report[0] gives such a ranking in Table 4. Ten worst-performing countries.

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-...

You should probably reference the up-to-date version which has Taiwan at #7 and Korea at #9.

https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/The-...

That is what a military is for...

Aka global cooperation by force.

So has Japan.

Citation? Because as best I can tell Japan has been doing what they can to prevent fish obtained by illegal means from hitting their market.

https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/japanese-leg...

How could Japan be having its jellyfish problem, stemming from overfishing allegedly, if the rules were actually enforced?

There's a very, very big difference between "we're exhausting the fish supplies off our coastal waters" and "we have an entire dark fleet we send to South America to pillage their waters because they can't defend themselves".

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).

I guess it's technically not illegal, but they fish just outside those boundaries everywhere, they also buy up massive amounts of legally caught fish elsewhere, leading to over fishing in those areas as well. Fisherman elsewhere get paid, but it's the same end result.

If in fact they are not enforcing their own rules in their own waters, then it wouldn't be a relevant example?

I doubt it's perfectly enforced though, another problem is that Japan's legal fishing regulation is poor.

I know China-bashing is popular on this website, but a quite search of market data reveals that China isn't even in the top 10 of tuna producers NOR consumers.

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.

Maybe their population size explains a difference. Say 10% of a billion people can afford expensive fish - 100 million people. 1/3 the population of the US. One might also notice the preponderance of Chinese fishing vessels in areas far from China. [1] And just maybe those vessel are not properly identifying themselves so the true numbers are unknown. [2]

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...

> but a quite search of market data reveals that China isn't even in the top 10 of tuna producers NOR consumers.

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?"

It's global market data, not political propaganda. If people get these numbers wildly wrong, they lose money. The "Chinese numbers can never be trusted" canard can only be stretched so far when it comes to global economic data that is materially validated on a daily basis by countless non-Chinese stakeholders.

> If people get these numbers wildly wrong, they lose money

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

Not tuna, but China sends fishing boats for other kinds of fish to South America.

> If they stopped over-fishing, that would just attract Chinese fishermen who would fill the gaps.

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?"

False Equivalence

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.

When enough CO2 is in the air large populations of people will not have sufficient food to eat either.

moreso, "why should the government [because private industry would anyway with the prices] invest in solar and wind instead of coal, China will burn the coal anyway"

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.

> If they stopped over-fishing, that would just attract Chinese fishermen who would fill the gaps. Just can't win without global cooperation.

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.

They could start eating jellyfish to pick up the slack.

Yes, that is the second half of the documentary. They were trying to come up with delicious recipes to take advantage of the situation. I don't imagine I would like to eat jellyfish either, but I would certainly give it a try.

> They were trying to come up with delicious recipes to take advantage of the situation

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?

it doesn't taste like anything... it's 90%+ water, and water solid remains is basically tofu: absorbs the flavor of what it's cooked with

The Chinese prepare it quite well! It's great with some chili oil in a salad

95% water. The economics just don't work. Is spending dollars in fuel to move tons of water from the sea, trow the 90% again to the sea and sell the remains for pennies.

Unfortunately not

They are not even remotely substitutes nutritionally

Maybe? I mean sea urchin is delicious, popular, and sells at a high price but still seems to threaten a lot of kelp forest

Reply on news.ycombinator.com