Sustainable Fish

[Moral Libertarians]

If you stop harvesting fish, you increase their average lifespan. This means that each fish can reproduce more times in its life than would otherwise have been the case. Therefore, the rate of population growth will increase.

Erm also most fish that people like (Cod etc.) do not reproduce at all until their fully-grown, adult stage. Because so many people do not even begin to understand that Fish Are Not Really Like Mammals, fishing policy is one of the most backwards things in the universe.

How does that affect my point? Sweep up a fish before it reaches adulthood, and it will never reach the reproductive stage. Result: less fish produced.

[Slaybackia]

Full private property. This is what economists call the Tragedy of the Commons.

[Yootwopia]

How does that affect my point? Sweep up a fish before it reaches adulthood, and it will never reach the reproductive stage. Result: less fish produced.

Yeah it doesn't affect your point, it's just that many, many fish don't reproduce more than a couple of times, so "we'll get them when they're sort of big" just leads to fish stocks absolutely collapsing.

[Sociobiology]

Full private property. This is what economists call the Tragedy of the Commons.

fish do not stay in one place, so it will always bee a TOC unless we have a monopoly which defeats the economists yet again, full private property is useless for highly mobile resources.
the same goes for air and water pollution, and even more useless in a system with more than one government and thus more than one system of liability or lack thereof.

[Yootwopia]

Full private property.

Only really viable when it's properly protected, which is near-impossible even for states to do, see the Cod Wars. If you reckon that Haddock Habitats PLC is going to be able to afford to do enough to stop poaching then you might have another thing coming.

[Nazi Flower Power]

That sucks, but I don't really have a lot of brilliant ideas...

Fish farms are a nice reliable supply, but I don't think all types of fish are practical to farm.

[Barringtonia]

The problems with the idea that limited supply will raise prices is that an individual will still buy the last fish of its kind for whatever price.

Additionally, we're killing the oceans with plastic and other forms of pollution, there's a gyre the size of Texas out in the Pacific and others in the other oceans. If that amount of trash was found in Texas (well, not the human kind) and if we had helicopters trawling 5km nets over the plains of Africa there'd be outcry but outta sight...

I suppose it is slightly a case of the Tragedy of the Commons..

[Set the Unbound]

Full private property. This is what economists call the Tragedy of the Commons.

fish do not stay in one place, so it will always bee a TOC unless we have a monopoly which defeats the economists yet again, full private property is useless for highly mobile resources.
the same goes for air and water pollution, and even more useless in a system with more than one government and thus more than one system of liability or lack thereof.

^ This, unfortunately.

It is uneconomic to brand fish, and they are difficult to herd.

We are unlikely to do better than the usual negotiations and treaty-making, which will be gamed and rorted by some, but what can you do? More transparency, more sanctions for violators and more public debate can help.

It baffles me that Un-Governed-Market worshipers can ignore the "Tragedy of the Commons" and everything else written by serious economists of the two hundred years.

Un-governed markets have worked SO WELL with illegal drugs and arms and poached ivory, so lets de-govern the rest of our economies to be more like them, that'll work.
The only difference between "Ungoverned Markets" and the illegal drug market is that (in theory) un-governed, unregulated market participants won't be able to use force. Everything else wrong about them will remain just as f--ked.

[Yootwopia]

We are unlikely to do better than the usual negotiations and treaty-making, which will be gamed and rorted by some, but what can you do?

[Mosasauria]

People should be raising their own fish, appreciating how long it takes a single species of fish that is commonly eaten(ie: Salmon, trout, carp, some cichlids) to mature, reproduce, and get to eating size, with all the proper nutrients and environmental effects.

[Nazis in Space]

Not quite. Regardless of how high the demand goes, it's line will always intersect supply's on the standard demand-supply chart. I'm guessing that the demand fish is highly price elastic initially, based on what you said about bluefin; even if it is, all that means is that an increase in price will drive a much bigger % increase in supply, until stocks of fish begin to decrease so quickly that fisherman begin to cut back on their catches. At this point, demand will become much more price inelastic; large increases in price will only result in small % increases in supply, as fisherman realise they have to conserve the stocks.

If the market remains stable, then in the long run, the annual supply for fish will be such that (assuming the rate of fish reproduction remains constant) it causes the total fish population to remain constant. Perfect sustainability.

Unfortunately, this is not what is happening. Instead, the fishermen catch the stock until basically nothing is left. That's the whole reason the north atlantic cod population isn't recovering - if the fishermen acted the way you think they do, they wouldn't catch entirely too small (Sexually immature) specimen, for one thing.

But they do.

The same applies to Tuna et al.

The reason is quite simple - the fishermen don't have much of a choice. They have to catch whatever they can, or they'll go broke and starve not in the future, when all cod is gone, but immediately, while there's still a little bit of cod around. And there's the element of competition between the fishermen, too - 'If I don't catch it, someone else will, and the population will crash, anyway. So it may as well be me who catches it.'

The market, and particularly individual interest, don't protect fish populations, they annihilate them. It's not a hypothesis - it's what's happening, right now.

[Moral Libertarians]

Not quite. Regardless of how high the demand goes, it's line will always intersect supply's on the standard demand-supply chart. I'm guessing that the demand fish is highly price elastic initially, based on what you said about bluefin; even if it is, all that means is that an increase in price will drive a much bigger % increase in supply, until stocks of fish begin to decrease so quickly that fisherman begin to cut back on their catches. At this point, demand will become much more price inelastic; large increases in price will only result in small % increases in supply, as fisherman realise they have to conserve the stocks.

If the market remains stable, then in the long run, the annual supply for fish will be such that (assuming the rate of fish reproduction remains constant) it causes the total fish population to remain constant. Perfect sustainability.

Unfortunately, this is not what is happening. Instead, the fishermen catch the stock until basically nothing is left. That's the whole reason the north atlantic cod population isn't recovering - if the fishermen acted the way you think they do, they wouldn't catch entirely too small (Sexually immature) specimen, for one thing.

But they do.

The same applies to Tuna et al.

The reason is quite simple - the fishermen don't have much of a choice. They have to catch whatever they can, or they'll go broke and starve not in the future, when all cod is gone, but immediately, while there's still a little bit of cod around. And there's the element of competition between the fishermen, too - 'If I don't catch it, someone else will, and the population will crash, anyway. So it may as well be me who catches it.'

The market, and particularly individual interest, don't protect fish populations, they annihilate them. It's not a hypothesis - it's what's happening, right now.

The fishermen overfish. The populations collapse. The fishermen go bankrupt. The populations recover. The new fisherman (who may be the old ones) have learned an important lesson. Perhaps they will set up voluntary agreements to restrict catch sizes on their local area. Perhaps not.

The market punishes mistakes harshly.

[Nazis in Space]

The fishermen overfish. The populations collapse. The fishermen go bankrupt. The populations recover. The new fisherman (who may be the old ones) have learned an important lesson. Perhaps they will set up voluntary agreements to restrict catch sizes on their local area. Perhaps not.

The market punishes mistakes harshly.

You'll forgive me for thinking that the oceanic ecosystem and the socio-political stability of fishermen and their countries is a little too important on the global scale to be left to the whims of trial and error.

Markets are a wonderful thing, but they're not suited for every purpose. We don't let the market dictate nuclear proliferation policies, and neither should it determine the functioning or not of the oceans, and whether they remain an exploitable, or an exhausted resource.

Somalia already serves as a nice example of what happens when fishing becomes unsustainable. I dare saying that the rising insurance premiums and the sums paid to the fishermen cum pirates - not to mention the running costs of military deployments - exceed the costs of pre-emptive market correction by a considerable margin.

[Xsyne]

Unfortunately, this is not what is happening. Instead, the fishermen catch the stock until basically nothing is left. That's the whole reason the north atlantic cod population isn't recovering - if the fishermen acted the way you think they do, they wouldn't catch entirely too small (Sexually immature) specimen, for one thing.

But they do.

The same applies to Tuna et al.

The reason is quite simple - the fishermen don't have much of a choice. They have to catch whatever they can, or they'll go broke and starve not in the future, when all cod is gone, but immediately, while there's still a little bit of cod around. And there's the element of competition between the fishermen, too - 'If I don't catch it, someone else will, and the population will crash, anyway. So it may as well be me who catches it.'

The market, and particularly individual interest, don't protect fish populations, they annihilate them. It's not a hypothesis - it's what's happening, right now.

The fishermen overfish. The populations collapse. The fishermen go bankrupt. The populations recover. The new fisherman (who may be the old ones) have learned an important lesson. Perhaps they will set up voluntary agreements to restrict catch sizes on their local area. Perhaps not.

The market punishes mistakes harshly.

Where you go wrong is assuming the populations will recover. They don't.

[The Archregimancy]

given how few fish are left, how should we harvest fish?

should we farm everything, give up on fish or just harvest to extinction.
I want everything farmed, or vat grown, but how do you think we should do it.

(Image)

no poll yet maybe after I hear a few more ideas.
source is here
http://www2.fisheries.com/archive/members/dpauly/journalarticles/2003/hundredyeardeclinenorthatlanticfishes.pdf

The problem with farming carnivorous fish is that the amount of fish you have to feed the farmed fish is itself unsustainable.

I've almost entirely given up eating fish because of the overfishing (and EU quota) problems, but encouraging farmed fish is regrettably not itself a panacea. Unless you eat vegetarian fish, such as tilapia.

The better solution is to only eat fish from independently certified sustainable fisheries and - recognising that even that process isn't perfect - to do so in small quantities.

[The Archregimancy]

The fishermen overfish. The populations collapse. The fishermen go bankrupt. The populations recover. The new fisherman (who may be the old ones) have learned an important lesson. Perhaps they will set up voluntary agreements to restrict catch sizes on their local area. Perhaps not.

The market punishes mistakes harshly.

As has been pointed out, the problem is that there's considerable evidence that once you reach a certain point of no return, the stocks may never recover.

The cod stocks off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland are a case in point.

The analogy is imperfect, but it may be that some fish species are like passenger pigeons; they have evolved to rely on large population groups for breeding and mutual protection. Reduce that population group below a certain critical mass through a combination of unregulated commercial exploitation and habitat disruption, and the population is unable to recover.

Which is precisely why there are no more passenger pigeons.

In 1866, a single flock of an estimated 3.5 billion birds was spotted in southern Ontario. The last wild pigeon was spotted between c.1900-c.1910. The last known passenger pigeon did in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

[Rambhutan]

Full private property. This is what economists call the Tragedy of the Commons.

How on earth would full private property solve the tragedy of the commons when it comes to sustainable fishing? Are you planning to have gangs of fishboys riding porpoises rounding up shoals of fish and branding them?

[The Archregimancy]

Full private property. This is what economists call the Tragedy of the Commons.

How on earth would full private property solve the tragedy of the commons when it comes to sustainable fishing? Are you planning to have gangs of fishboys riding porpoises rounding up shoals of fish and branding them?

If I remember correctly, when the private property argument is raised as a response to the tragedy of the commons as applicable to the global fishing crisis, it's typically with a view towards the buying and selling of set regional fishing quotas on the open market, rather than owning specific stocks of wild fish.

I have a book on this upstairs somewhere, so will need to take a look to see if I'm right; I'll concede the possibility that I might be remembering this incorrectly.

[Rambhutan]

If I remember correctly, when the private property argument is raised as a response to the tragedy of the commons as applicable to the global fishing crisis, it's typically with a view towards the buying and selling of set regional fishing quotas on the open market, rather than owning specific stocks of wild fish.

I have a book on this upstairs somewhere, so will need to take a look to see if I'm right; I'll concede the possibility that I might be remembering this incorrectly.

Even so that seems private property once removed. I suppose it depends how the quotas are decided.

[Set the Unbound]

If I remember correctly, when the private property argument is raised as a response to the tragedy of the commons as applicable to the global fishing crisis, it's typically with a view towards the buying and selling of set regional fishing quotas on the open market, rather than owning specific stocks of wild fish.

I have a book on this upstairs somewhere, so will need to take a look to see if I'm right; I'll concede the possibility that I might be remembering this incorrectly.

Even so that seems private property once removed. I suppose it depends how the quotas are decided.

And how they are enforced. We have abalone quotas here, and they were meaningless until the authorities started really investing in law enforcement - sting operations, random searches, patrols, hotlines etc.

[Glorious Freedonia]

I lol'd.

What country is "back home"?

Malaysia, the state of Sabah to be exact.

For some reason in Middle School we used to make fun of people from Sabah even though we never met one. I do not know why we did that. I think I started it.

[Glorious Freedonia]

We should really investigate what impacts we are having.

There's also more factors than straight mass-fishing affecting the fish populations. Unregulated agricultural waste sucks the oxygen out of the water in river deltas, and other sorts of pollution also impact ocean life.

Maybe something like a moratorium on ocean fishing by companies for a year or two could help also.

Yeah I do not see a problem with a year or two moratorium on fishing. We can even pay fishermen for their losses. That seems reasonable. I also think that after the moratorium is over we need to stop the purse seine netting of fish. It seems pretty destructive.