Comment by 0xbadcafebee

2 years ago

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

  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.

So too shall go the tuna. The size of a single tuna is already 50% to 70% smaller than normal. Soon their populations will go into freefall once there's not enough mature ones to spawn. The fishing will continue until there's no more. Even if legal limits are imposed, fishing will just continue illegally as it already does today.

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0xbadcafebee

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wharvle  2 years ago

1491 (or is it the sequel, 1493? I could see this topic ending up in either) makes the case that there's nowhere near as much evidence of Native Americans eating passenger pigeons as one might expect given the vast populations (and incredible ease of hunting) reported in later decades. Instead, the vast numbers may have been a sign of a badly screwed-up ecosystem, with huge swaths of native-managed agriculture and land suddenly going unmanaged, freeing up tons of cheap calories of exactly the kind the birds could use, leading to a gigantic boom in species perfectly-situated to take advantage of it, which would include the Passenger. All this, on account of the continent experiencing an apocalyptic drop in population after European disease arrived (and for other reasons, of course, but the diseases did a great deal of it).

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.

strangattractor  2 years ago

The worlds fisheries are almost universally mismanaged.

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.

thfuran  2 years ago

Maybe. Cod suddenly collapsed by like 98% but never went extinct.

  • xutopia  2 years ago

    Cod benefited by a moratorium on fishing in the areas with the most stock (eastern Canada). Without it there would have been a complete disappearing of cod.

  • morkalork  2 years ago

    Probably a dumb question but why hasn't cod rebound on the east coast? The fishing moratorium has been in place for decades now, shouldn't the population have increased exponentially since then?

paulmd  2 years ago

Because of the laws of international waters etc it’s essentially impossible to police, short of aircraft/naval patrols being willing to fire on violators on sight. There is no legal basis to keep another nation from overfishing as long as it happens in international waters, and china largely just does what they want even in territorial waters. Unless you’re willing to start an international incident the best you can do is get one boat while the other 49 slip by with their haul.

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.

  • hulitu  2 years ago

    > Because of the laws of international waters etc it’s essentially impossible to police, short of aircraft/naval patrols being willing to fire on violators on sight.

    Yes, but not when you are the US of A. /s

anovikov  2 years ago

That's not how fishing works. After some threshold growing fish in aquaculture becomes cheaper than fishing, and things get back in balance. Otherwise, salmon would've been extinct by now.

Tuna and herring are not grown en masse in aquaculture... yet. That will change.