I just spent three weeks at sea in the Andaman, and... it's grim out there. The sea is virtually lifeless. Small pockets of sea-life survive on reefs in national parks, but as you look up from the water, you see trawlers scattered across the horizon - soundly <i>within</i> the nautical boundaries of the national parks. They operate day and night, as the article says, and the size and brightness of the arrays of floodlights they deploy to attract squid and other nocturnal creatures is astounding.<p>The crew I was with have been sailing all over the planet for the past several decades, and unanimously reported that they'd seen a steep decline in the variety, quantity and quality of all sea life, particularly in the past five years. Places which once thrived with dolphins are now devoid of them, others which were rich with seals and birds are barren rocks at the same time of year, and propspeed (anti-marine-growth coating for propellers) is increasingly pointless with the amount of near-surface debris. In addition, they noted that sea temperatures were way out of whack, weather was "odd" everywhere they've been in the last few years (pretty much everywhere on the planet), and worryingly, that even recent charts and depth soundings were often significantly wrong, due to the seabed shifting in storms.<p>All of this is common talk among the yachting crowd, and they're worried - people are selling boats and moving back ashore after decades of "marine life", and brand new marinas are rotting absent of tenants. It's not the economic crisis that's forcing these folks out, as they mostly either subsist or are independently wealthy, and they're all pretty clear about it being due to their fears for the future viability of faring the oceans.
I sometimes wonder if shopping for groceries is as frustrating for most people. I like Nutella, but when I see Palm Oil as the second ingredient I picture dead orangutans. I like beef, but I sympathize for a fellow mammal and think of the enormous amounts of diverted water and fertilizer runoff that goes in to producing feed. I enjoy fish, but thinking of this makes me sick to my stomach. I enjoy many beverages that come in plastic bottles, but that plastic, even if recycled, comes at substantial cost. Even veggies are largely wrapped in plastic anymore. Even though it's a small thing compared to everything else in life Keurig machines fill me with rage. And yet, I am guilty too. I love to travel, and this generally means flying since I live on an island. Therefore I contribute to ocean acidification, climate change, and of course the industrial processes that go into making planes.<p>When people ask why I prefer not to buy fish and I say it's because of concern over the world's fisheries (I'd rather not dive in a global jellyfish swarm) they look at me like I'm from another planet. Who gives a crap, after all? One person's actions will not stop the destruction of our only planet.<p><i>sigh</i>
There was an "What If"[0] on xkcd about the ocean and ships' weight. The question itself was innocuous, but inside a parenthesis was this sentence:<p><pre><code> (Marine fish biomass dropped by 80% over the last century,
which—taking into consideration the growth rate of the
world’s shipping fleet—leads to an odd conclusion:
Sometime in the last few years, we reached a point where
there are, by weight, more ships in the ocean than fish.)
</code></pre>
I'm afraid of the future. Very, very afraid.<p>[0]: <a href="http://what-if.xkcd.com/33/" rel="nofollow">http://what-if.xkcd.com/33/</a>
The astounding decline of the ocean's fisheries is an incredibly important issue. But we all know that.<p>What we all don't know is the solution. What we've got is a classic tragedy of the commons. It's made more difficult due to the international nature of oceanic fisheries - those little guys like to swim around, paying no heed to national boundaries. Plus there's all of that international ocean to police. Who's going to ensure that 3rd world fishermen aren't catching too much tuna, inadvertently killing too many dolphins, etc etc? Is it reasonable to expect the US to police the entirety of the Pacific Ocean's fish stock?<p>We've seen this play before. And the <i>only</i> practical solution is not something which the leftists here are going to like.<p>We have to privatize the oceans fisheries. It is imperative. It has to happen now. It has to happen <i>yesterday</i>. Fish stocks are collapsing. Fish stocks have collapsed.<p>The fisheries have to be delineated by whatever means appropriate (species and/or location, depending upon the migratory/wandering patterns of each fish in question) and auctioned off to the highest bidder. The highest bidder will then have the right to determine how many fish each year/month are harvested, and by whom. The highest bidder can police the fish themselves. If they fail to police the fish, their ownership is revoked and the rights are re-auctioned.<p>This is simple stuff. It's been done before with other natural resources. We all need to get over our political differences and make it happen.
Tragedy of the commons is where the price paid for a resource is merely the extraction cost. The cost of replacing the resource or losing it entirely is ignored.<p>Private property creates an incentive to preserve the goose that lays the golden eggs.<p>Some things, like fishing rights, can work to preserve resources while still allowing their use. It doesn't work with everything.<p>Either way, we are going to have to pay more than just the extraction cost if we expect a resource to continue. We are going to have to pay more for fish. Privately owned fishing rights forces action to prevent collapse. Without something like it, the collapse of the resource will surely force a higher price. Just not now, when it actually could help prevent the collapse.
>"They told us that his was just a small fraction of one day's by-catch. That they were only interested in tuna and to them, everything else was rubbish. It was all killed, all dumped. They just trawled that reef day and night and stripped it of every living thing."<p>This makes me sick. So sad to see such waste and disregard for the ecosystem.
Reading stories like this are incredibly depressing. I love the ocean and aquatic ecosystems, always have. I grew up fishing and boating and still spend as much time as I can on those hobbies. I moved from Ohio to Maine in large part to be by the Ocean. I wish there was more that I could do to help affect real change. I volunteer, I try to be as environmentally friendly as possible, and I support a lot of different conservation groups but what I wish was that there was an open source like community to help with the science and education. I mean I would gladly help to contribute to some thing like that. For me that's worth more than chasing all the startup success in the world.
Maybe it's worthwhile to spend more time and brains on saving our environment. At least until we are able to leave this planet. Which I don't see in the near future. We are able to walk on the moon, build atom bombs and heal deadly diseases. Are we smart enough to not destroy this planet?
You may care to read the discussions from previous submissions:<p><a href="https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ocean+broken" rel="nofollow">https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ocean+broken</a>
This is a great story--unfortunately, it's just that, a story.<p>It's not surprising to me that there are people recklessly over-fishing, but without any numbers, no government can take action to stop it.<p>On a tangential point, earth-life has survived five mass-extinction events, and a future one is almost certain. This doesn't negate the tragic, useless destruction of life, but the earth itself--and some form of life on it--will endure.
Well this is the main reason I prefer to buy farm raised fish. It might not do much to help the eco system, or my health, but I feel at least the fish I am eating was raised with the purpose of being eaten. Further, I find it rather gross that fishermen essentially "throw away" everything they don't want.
Well we can start by taking pictures of it instead of just writing walls of text about it hoping the average person will read about it and care.<p>Here's what pisses me off. Guy writes about how devastated the ocean is, doesn't take a single picture. The only photo in the whole article is him and his boat.
I really wish this story had had more pictures. It's a shame that all this is happening and no one seems to be really documenting it with photos and video and these images aren't being shown with these stories.
It is changing, like everything, adopting to having less fish and animals. Interface is changing, it is becoming hostile with human life, more demanding and unforgiving, reflecting us in every step and way.<p>"What can I do? I am only one person?", throws plastic wrapping against the wind.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world (or the ocean). Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”<p>May Ms. Mead be with us always.
I agree that we need to sound the alarm.<p>December 2013, North Atlantic Ocean between Florida, Bermuda, and the Eastern Caribbean: nearly devoid of sea birds and fish; plastic garbage common.<p>January 2014, Coastal Everglades of Florida: silent. No birdsong. None.<p>February 2014, Florida Bay and the Keys: enough lobster pots that you could walk from Cape Sable to Key West without getting your shoes wet. This is absolutely not a sustainable fishery--this is an unmitigated rape of the planet for the almighty dollar, even inside the supposedly protected waters of the marine sanctuary.
This prompted me to do some googling and I found this:<p><a href="http://www.oceanhealthindex.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.oceanhealthindex.org/</a><p>Does anybody here have knowledge about this organization?
The ocean will recover after we're gone.
Or after we've managed to put an end to poverty and educate everyone, though this seems an extremely distant dream.
I am really interested in companies like this: www.cleanseas.com.au that are trying to breed fish on their own. They still need to grow them in the ocean. Not sure of the cost to get there, but interesting none the less.
"Sailing" on Google Trends. Going down (generally) over the last 10 years.<p><a href="http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=sailing" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=sailing</a>
If the ocean is really broken and all the fish are gone, how come the amount of fish caught has not declined dramatically?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_fish_production" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_fish_production</a><p>This story is anecdotal. Actual data would be better.