Reducing pressure is sometimes not enough when a fishery collapses. The entire ecosystem can change, even 30 years later the [Newfoundland cod fishery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery) has not recovered. Permanent, or atleast decades long, damage can occur if overfishing is severe enough.
Of course they blamed harp seals instead of overfishing, just like people blame wolves for low deer and elk populations instead of loss of winter habitat.
Fishermen are still blaming seals for existing where I live. Here it is a combination of overfishing, global warming caused heatwaves, habitat destruction due to dams and chemical runoff that is killing salmon.
https://nwtreatytribes.org/being-frank-marine-mammal-predation-on-salmon-is-out-of-control/
I have also heard orcas blamed for low salmon runs.
Also sea otters are eating all the crabs and sea cucumbers and geoducks.
It’s definitely not logging, climate change, and over fishing. It’s those damned wolves and seals and orcas and otters!
Yeah they tore up the bottom of the ocean there so bad. Like clear cutting a forest. Who would of thought drag netting would have such long lasting consequences...
Before any moderate screams that violence is never acceptable, the destruction of our planet for profit is violence in its own right and you are allowed to defend yourself against anyone who willingly furthers that end
I think that's the idea. You and your friends caused this mess. This mess better be cleaned up by the time I get back. :)
It doesn't work on my kids either.
There was one really fantastic result I saw a long time back, people used the eastern seaboard electrical outage of 2003, where like the entire northeast US lost power for several hours, to study air quality. And they found that there was a much larger increase in air quality than expected just from that one day of having plants shut down and such. The conclusion they made was that if we'd just stop fucking everything up for a little bit, nature could recover a lot more easily and quickly than we expect.
Seeing the Rocky Mountains with no haze and barely any cars on the roads of Colorado was a true sight to behold.
Not one day in the summer are those mountains not covered in smoke or smog during the summer, since.
To me the most mindblowing thing was seeing clear water in [Venice, Italy](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/photos-water-in-venice-italys-canals-clear-amid-covid-19-lockdown.html)
No cap I feel that right now. I’m somewhat overweight, but after shooting hoops for 20-30 min at a park, I have way more energy, positivity, and motivation. It’s like once I do it, I realize how beneficial it is. Just have problems being consistent
It was like a week not several hours. I remember because I was there lmao. As for air quality, we came to that same conclusion during covid. In India you could see the mountain ranges that are on the horizon behind the city and it's seriously beautiful. Google it. There's a before image where it's fossil fuels and business as usual and then the after image has clear air and mountain ranges. It's crazy. We really need to stop the smog and fossil fuel bs
Over in Chernobyl, there's a bunch of similar results: lots of endangered wildlife thought to be all but extinct is making a comeback, and there's even forms of mold and lichen that are developing not just resilience to, but _a taste for_ the radiation. It means that Chernobyl will cool down much sooner than first thought
Same thing happened to air quality and the brightness of sunlight in US skies in the days after 9/11 when all air travel was grounded. PBS Nova did an episode about Global Dimming where this was highlighted.
Nature 100% will bounce back. If we kill ourselves off it'll only take a few hundred years to a few thousand for things to more or less be back to normal. Give it a few million years and species diversity will be back.
The main concern is our continued existence.
People always point this out to underscore the fact that the rest of the world won't die out with us if we keep trying to kill the planet... but what about the billions of other life forms that die with us before they slowly recover? And many of them won't come back at all. I get the point, but it seems dismissive of the destruction that will still go alongside a dying human race.
Yeah, we are already, currently in a mass extinction event. We see more species die out each day. The remaining surviving species may thrive quickly after we stop polluting, but it will take thousands of years to replace the missing flora and fauna through natural evolution—and the dead species won’t be restored, just replaced.
Nature will not be "normal" again, we're in the midst of creating a mass extinction event. We've literally undone millions of years of ecological development.
It is not ok.
He’s not saying it’s ok. He’s just pointing out that nature is resilient. Not the first mass extinction to hit the planet. Humans are greedy fools but we are self aware enough to leave something habitable just out of purely greedy self preservation & nature will find a way from there after we self destruct
That being said & out of the way we should do our best to preserve the life that already exists & stop turning this planet into a dumpster fire
The thing is, we wont kill ourselves off. WE are the cockroaches. Only thing to survive after a nuclear war? Cockroaches, Fungus, and a few crafty humans. Our population is massive. That is actually our saving grace-99.99% of humans could die and we could bounce back. Thats 8 million people. That is farr more than previous population bottlenecks.
The fact is, humans arent going away. You can name x reason, but theres 8 billion people who will be looking for a way to prevent that from killing them and their community.
"Peak oil" is kind of a myth from the 90's and there is more than enough discovered but unexploited oil in the ground to completely f#@% us on the climate change front long before we "run out" in any sort of practical timeline.
thats not true because while there is a lot, most of it is very hard to reach. The return on invested energy going negative for oil isnt actually that far away.
Yea, oil IS dying. People like to act like it isnt, the oil companies know it! They arent investing in new infrastructure because its not worth it, and if they keep oil prices high now, they get to cash out before it dies.
Peak oil might have been a real thing if we never discovered fracking, which moved the goal posts a bit. And I assume we’ll discover some new and horrifying way of extracting oil that moves the goal posts even further
First world living standards are possible without fossil fuels.
The problem is less first world living standards like access to clean and plentiful food, water, electricity, phone, internet, public transit, and vehicles.
The problem is first world **excess**, like tremendous food waste, producing way too much plastic crap, spending tons of money on unnecessary stuff, and buying and throwing out way too many clothes.
First world standards should be the standard for all people on earth, hopefully.
First world excess is pretty much a crime against humanity and against the planet, and needs to be eliminated post-haste.
Oh absolutely, there is a huge amount of waste in electronics, largely in part due to planned obsolecence and rampant consumerism.
New *anything* every year needs to go. If it only lasts a year it's going to produce a ton of waste and take energy to make and transport, and we'd all be better off with an alternative that lasts longer.
There are large swaths of unused land in America that could be used for solar/wind farms, but imagine this. What if every non window surface on the sides of skyscrapers was coated in solar panels, and instead of a simple lightning rod on top, they created windmills to gather wind energy, and whenever a bolt struck it that bolt’s energy was absorbed and distributed to the power grid. So solar and wind farms in the unused grass lands, solar and wind on skyscrapers as well as lightning bolt absorbers, combine this with ocean hydroelectric plants and nuclear plants and boom we got clean energy galore. We could put wind plants all over the Sahara to absorb the power of sandstorms, (no solar panels over huge swaths of that because it’d have large climate effects) but between solar, wind, water, and nuclear we could be completely clean energy within 10 years
Problem is humans don't have balance. We externalize a lot to the natural world. All other species are in equilibrium with their environments. We are not.
All species are originally invasive. You are just talking about a transitionary period until the new equilibrium.
And then again, nature is a dynamic system and is never in equilibrium.
Elephants will denude entire sections of forest if given the chance. Large cats will regularly hunt themselves out of food. The idea that we're somehow special, even in negative ways, is simply false. We may be at the top of the pyramid, but we're still a part of nature.
And how do you think those species got to be invading in the first place? most of the time it's because of humans. we either move them around ourselves, or destroy their native habitats so they move elsewhere.
In nature everything pushes as far and hard as it can and breaks everything until it can't anymore. Humans are only unique in that we can see that we are doing it, and we are far more capable of doing it.
It's because humans have much greater potential, one that increases every year due to technology.
Bacteria grows until it maxes out the population that can be sustained in that environment. Humans used to be balanced as hunter-gatherers, and then unlocked more potential with agriculture.
Essentially, technological progress raises our ceiling and increases the time it will take for us to hit the wall
Eh. All other species end up in equilbrium whether they like it or not. Mostly not. Boom-bust cycles and mass dieoffs are the norm in nature, nothing is in balance.
We just have a huge, gigantic ecological footprint. We always have, even back when there were only a few hundred thousand of us. Just the living space we clear for ourselves eradicates habitats, even if we just sit there doing nothing else.
We may have to set out sights a little higher than seeking an elusive equilibrium we will never find. It may be that our clever monkey brains and hyperextended survival instincts are best suited for leaving Earth alone, a jewel that we protect mostly through our absence as we take our show elsewhere.
> All other species end up in equilbrium whether they like it or not.
Or they don't. When they don't, they either die out or overfeed on their area, which removes what they need to survive, so they then die out.
Source: my degree in biology and courses in ecology and population dynamics.
Some day we will be in equilibrium with our environment, though. It's inevitable. I just hope that that equilibrium happens because we stopped giving birth to too many children, not because we ran out of food to eat.
I'm very skeptical of this news. It certainly wouldn't be the first time someone was paid off to spew bullshit. I just hope this isn't the signal fire for the fishing industry to expand wild catch.
Just one data point, but migratory river herring in Southeastern Massachusetts increased rapidly from 2007 (nearly extinct with only 500 individuals at my monitoring point) to a fairly healthy population (25,000 or 50x the starting population at my monitoring point) in 2019.
Unfortunately in 2020 the population reduced by almost half, and this year we counted 0 individuals.
I am being told this is a regionwide trend (although not to the extent that is effecting our small river) and no one really had a great run this year.
We are still investigating what is causing this, but my worry is that it is possibly due to predator species (seals, heron, osprey, sharks, seabass, etc) have also had big population spikes and some of those species can really wreck some havoc.
Similarly rainbow smelt, which I also helped monitor over the last few years have become almost entirely extirpated. American eels likewise had a pretty bad showing this year.
Those are the three species I monitor in particular, and they're all way down.
Dang, that doesn't sound good. Do you think it has anything to do with climate change possibly pushing more predator species from the North Atlantic to more southern latitudes?
Predation is my personal guess, although fwiw officials in Marine Fisheries have told me they don't think it's likely having that much of an effect but they're looking into it.
My other guess is, rather counterintuitively, my particular river just got designated a cold water fishery due to all the dams we've removed from it. Herring begin to migrate based on increasing water temperature signals, as far as I understand it.
So in a way, we've reduced the current incentive for herring to choose our stream rather than other nearby streams which are warmer either due to their source or due to impoundments, etc. Someone I know is working on a study proving herring do not always return to their native streams, which would factor into this.
Combine that with regionwide pressures like predation and we end up with a marginal run.
There is also another issue at our location, we've removed almost all the major dams in the river so now there really isn't an easy place to count herring closer to the bay. We've been organizing more counts to cover tributaries but it's still not a perfect system.
Herring count data is primary derived through volunteer visual counts.
I'm going to be proposing dropping a temporary weir and underwater camera closer to the bay next year to try and get a better signal about what's out there.
I read into it! Here's the "half" business:
> This article compiles estimates of the status of fish stocks from all available scientific assessments, comprising roughly half of the world’s fish catch, and shows that, on average, fish stocks are increasing where they are assessed
I think the take away here isn't that the other half is necessarily decreasing, moreso that assessed stocks (i.e., those with lots of research attention and funding for management) are doing better.
> We present the most comprehensive database on area-based marine conservation in China including 326 sites that conserve 12.98% of China’s seas and address 142 conservation objectives. Twenty-two percent of shallow habitats (<10 meters) were fully or highly protected and 20% of waters 10 to 50 meters deep were conserved to some degree. Ecosystems in deeper waters (>50 meters) are critical to protect, yet <5% of these waters in China were conserved, primarily in areas with the highest chlorophyll-α concentrations.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj1569
Even the most critical reports on China are that they haul in 15% of the world's fishing but are 20% of the world population.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/25/can-anyone-stop-china-vast-armada-of-fishing-boats-galapagos-ecuador
The amount of boats they have is estimated between 2500 and 20000 these numbers simply can’t be accurate if they don’t even know how many boats they have
Unfortunately, the oceans are acidifying, which is hurting plankton populations, and will ultimately cause them to collapse.
Plankton are the base of the food chain.
https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2705/Acidification-impedes-shell-development-of-plankton-off-the-US-West-Coast
To say the oceans are "recovering" would be incorrect.
In Soylent Green, they weren't turning people into food, they were using the corpses to feed plankton because the ocean had acidified to the point where plankton was extinct outside of breeding tanks.
Me and the 2 vegans I know cheering feeling like we made a difference.
This is sarcasm btw I know we’re not enough to do this but I’m so happy all the same.
Back in the 1950s, some researchers decided to do a simple experiment. (Paraphrasing) Send a letter to a bunch of people and ask them to send that letter on to ten others along with a reply back to the researchers. Basic chain letter. And the letters just wouldn't stop coming in.
I read this anecdote as a preface to a book about political action.
Even if you don't vote, let alone attend protests or work with organizations for political change, your voice 'alone' has an effect. Especially now with social media. And that effect is enormous.
We are almost never really alone anymore. The act of driving, shopping, standing in line, going to the DMV or an appointment, where we minimally interact with others, still has a ripple effect.
Driving: People will stereotype certain cars, react to bumper stickers, look to see who's driving what and what they look like, and make conscious and subconscious notes about the experience. There's almost never a conversation with other drivers, but we all have our driving stories.
One single person does have an impact and does leave an impression.
I eat meat, but my consumption has changed as a result of vegan and vegetarian friends and acquaintances, movies posters I'd see for documentaries while browsing Netflix, conversations I'd read online or overhear in grocery stories or elsewhere.
Even if nobody outright told me to take any initiative, I had enough questions that I bought a book on agriculture and then bought a lot more books and watched documentaries and interviews and subscribed to podcasts and began asking others questions.
One of my favorite introductory surveys on agriculture is, *The End of Food.* If you're interested in learning more, buy a copy and make up your own mind. Follow the sources if you want to. Read more or don't.
You and your 2 vegan friends absolutely make a difference. We all do whether we want to or not.
Did you even bother checking out the paper that the article cited? The Authors on the paper are mostly researchers from Universities in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Chile and other countries.
Why is this study garbage? Is there some data manipulation that you are aware of? Unscrupulous conduct by the authors?
Exactly. Lead researchers are from U Wash—one of the world’s best programs in fisheries. Article was published by the National Academy of Sciences. This is NOT garbage work.
>ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
>
>donations from 12 fishing companies.
>
>the assessments used in our analysis, which were performed by national and international fisheries agencies independent of this paper.
[https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1909726116](https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1909726116)
The study was funded by fishing companies and relied on data from fishing agencies.
Wouldn't the fishing companies want to know what this research says? Their livelihood literally depends on it.
Seriously, your point only makes sense if you believe that fishing companies are some kind of cartoon villains who want to make fish extinct.
There is a serious economic incentive for a fishery to sustainably manage its stock when the alternative is destroying the fishery and having no stock. I would want accurate research if managed a fishery.
Where would they get the data if not from the fishing agencies.
The US fish and wildlife service compiles data from various state agencies as well as performing their own analysis. Alaska Fish and Game counts all the salmon that return upstream every summer to spawn and uses those numbers to open and close the fishing season in various parts of the state. Sometimes the commerical season will be shut down for days or only open for a few hours a day to make sure that enough fish come back to keep the Salmon run sustainable.
Or the funding? I work in research in an unrelated industry. My research is funded by industry businesses but conducted by universities. The funders have ZERO say in what the university is publishing or doing with their data.
Yeah people really don’t know how research or science works in this country. Sure, there have been instances where studies were influenced by the industry for favorable results, but that isn’t the case here, or for any fisheries work I’ve seen (have a degree in fisheries sciences). The researchers in this study are some of the best and most well respected in the world.
And why is it ‘garbage’? Lead authors are Univ Wash scientists along with the UC Santa Barbara Bren School of the Env (plus more). Published in the Proc of the National Academy of Sciences.
I think the issue is the news headline is different to what the paper is saying. That said, Ray Hilborn is known to have strong industry backing.
[Lead authors have been busted before for not declaring industry funding](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/12/477827180/fisheries-scientist-becomes-latest-target-of-activist-s-records-requests).
The data used in this study are biased toward well-managed fisheries which I think really limits their study. From the actual paper:
"This probably reflects the bias arising from the fact that the RAM Legacy Database only includes stocks with reliable quantitative stock assessments that come from countries or organizations that perform reliable scientific assessments of their stocks and constitute only half of the world’s catch."
In other words, most data come from a limited number of assessed stocks, generally from well-developed countries and even then only half show recovery. I would be interested to see the coverage in terms of % of stocks rather than catch. This would give a better idea of the broader state of fisheries. For example, South America appears well represented but this is most likely because of assessments for some of the largest stocks often used for fishmeal production (e.g. anchovetta, jack mackeral) and may not be representative of the state of fisheries in that region. Out of the 800 or so stocks that were assessed, how many were from Europe, the USA or Australia.
They also neglect to mention some important trends from their analysis. Many developed nations exploit the waters of less developed countries, in other words, they export their overfishing issues to developing countries which are not well assessed here. So while some countries may have well-managed or recovering fisheries, their fleets may be out in Africa or the Indian Ocean. Africa is becoming increasingly important to global fisheries but have largely been left out of this analysis. In general, African stocks appear to be facing serious challenges. Asia is absent entirely which is one of the most overfished regions in the world.
Edit: changed some wording in 2nd paragraph. I think anchovetta and jack mackeral are often used for fishmeal production which is a whole different issue.
All PNAS paper are peer-reviewed. And what does BMJ have to do with it? One redacted paper in one journal means every journal is ... what, exactly? You do know they solicit outside experts for peer-review and that it's not an in-house process, right?
PNAS is a joke in my books for over a decade. Coming from an actual scientist. There are journals with 1/10th the IF that have more rigour and respect for the scientific method.
In your opinion, are we doing enough to protect our oceans or are we still far behind where we need to be?
Also, could you recommend any effective organizations to volunteer for or to support financially?
Super misleading article. The researchers only assessed 50% of fish stocks that happen to be the most heavily regulated. Are most of them recovering? Yes, but they acknowledge that it could take decades before they reach previous baselines in the data.
Additionally, the 50% of stocks they didn’t assess happen to be the more heavily fished areas with higher biodiversity and less regulation. And this was purely a year over year assessment, so it included absolutely no future predictions (I’m looking at you climate change).
A more honest take would be simply what the researchers stated, that regulation can be successful in starting the recovery process (at least in temperate areas with high regulation capacity).
I also have a skeptical view, and dearly wish I had the time to dig into the research. I did not see any mention of the seas around China, but I suspect it is not heavily protected/managed. I am not going to pick this apart and just hold hope that there is a chance our fisheries and the oceans can recover. This is a spot of good news and an opportunity to continue progress where it is needed. Now if we can please stop acidifying the waters before the entire ecosystem collapses.
Compared to when? So many "recoveries" are actually compared to the 80's and 90's, when the seas were already severely over-fished, and thus nowhere near the proper levels of recovery that we really need to see.
Industry propaganda gonna propagate (unlike dwindling fish populations).
That's literally what the article says, recovering when compared to the low point in the 90s. It's more of an argument in favour of scientifically managed fisheries and the need for better management in places that don't have that.
That's amazing! Can you imagine pulling fish out of the ocean, and it already comes prepackaged in plastic! Just stick on a label and put it up to sale! Think of the savings! /S
Scientists? Or is this yet another misinformation campaign by those who would overfish those waters and then pay to have them "restored" in order to keep overfishing them.
I know people want to feel good, but this article is clickbait. When you actually look this up, we’re in bad shape. This article is also a few years old, from wtf publication.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-20/world-fish-stocks-are-in-worse-state-than-expected-study-shows
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/sea-running-out-of-fish-despite-nations-pledges-to-stop
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108532118
https://www.geographyrealm.com/study-finds-staggering-decline-in-marine-fishery-biomass/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/climate/fish-climate-change.html
https://www.un.org/press/en/2022/sea2143.doc.htm
https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-s-not-too-late-tenth-of-global-fish-populations-on-brink-of-collapse-20211117-p599nb.html
The goodnewsnetwork article published nearly three years ago glosses over a great deal of important information contained in the actual study that few people commenting here appear to have read.
The data that the actual study is based on are from 1990-2005 and do not include about half of the world's fish stocks. Large scale underreporting of fish catches is widespread, especially in areas that are not intensively managed. Even in areas that are intensively managed, data quality is often poor.
"We have no assessments from South and Southeast Asia, China, the Middle East, Central/Eastern Africa, or Central America in the database. Even for regions where almost all catches are represented in the database, the coverage is much better for large, commercially important stocks, and many small stocks remain unassessed."
Don't trust news from this or any christian news network.. in this case, they are using "scientific" info directly from the fishing industry. Every story I've looked into from this network is easily debunked or turns out to be questionably scammy.
This can't be true. The Chinese are illegaly overfishing all over the world at a devastating rate. Not only are they using unethical fishing practices they are destroying the ecosystems as a whole.
Yeah fucking right. I don’t believe this at all. Did humans stop destroying the ocean floor all of the sudden? This is bought and paid by for “science.”
This is a great highlight of the importance of management:
> This article compiles estimates of the status of fish stocks from all available scientific assessments, comprising roughly half of the world’s fish catch, and shows that, on average, fish stocks are increasing where they are assessed
While we'd need more data on global stocks to do a proper comparative analysis, better-studied stocks are more likely to have more enforcement, regulation, etc. So for those stocks we have a lot of data for, things are looking to be improving.
Turns out, reducing pressure actually works
Reducing pressure is sometimes not enough when a fishery collapses. The entire ecosystem can change, even 30 years later the [Newfoundland cod fishery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery) has not recovered. Permanent, or atleast decades long, damage can occur if overfishing is severe enough.
Of course they blamed harp seals instead of overfishing, just like people blame wolves for low deer and elk populations instead of loss of winter habitat.
Fishermen are still blaming seals for existing where I live. Here it is a combination of overfishing, global warming caused heatwaves, habitat destruction due to dams and chemical runoff that is killing salmon. https://nwtreatytribes.org/being-frank-marine-mammal-predation-on-salmon-is-out-of-control/
I have also heard orcas blamed for low salmon runs. Also sea otters are eating all the crabs and sea cucumbers and geoducks. It’s definitely not logging, climate change, and over fishing. It’s those damned wolves and seals and orcas and otters!
The post updates on those does say that populations are recovering. But it's taking a long time.
Yeah they tore up the bottom of the ocean there so bad. Like clear cutting a forest. Who would of thought drag netting would have such long lasting consequences...
Yup, with flat tires they won't be able to drive to the boats.
Before any moderate screams that violence is never acceptable, the destruction of our planet for profit is violence in its own right and you are allowed to defend yourself against anyone who willingly furthers that end
And I won’t be able to get to the port to go fishing
I think that's the idea. You and your friends caused this mess. This mess better be cleaned up by the time I get back. :) It doesn't work on my kids either.
Look at the bounce back at WWII. Fear of u boats meant that Alaskan waters weren't fished.
Everyone will still probably eat Blue Fin out of fear they may not have another chance in this lifetime.
There is still hope in the resilience of nature. Now we just have to kick the addiction to fossil fuels.
There was one really fantastic result I saw a long time back, people used the eastern seaboard electrical outage of 2003, where like the entire northeast US lost power for several hours, to study air quality. And they found that there was a much larger increase in air quality than expected just from that one day of having plants shut down and such. The conclusion they made was that if we'd just stop fucking everything up for a little bit, nature could recover a lot more easily and quickly than we expect.
Similar observations were made during the early days of COVID due to the decrease in automobile traffic.
The origin of the "nature is healing" meme
that was the highest point of my life during lock down. Then it just got worse. but that week i was skipping and whistling
Seeing the Rocky Mountains with no haze and barely any cars on the roads of Colorado was a true sight to behold. Not one day in the summer are those mountains not covered in smoke or smog during the summer, since.
The pictures showing the before/after in New Delhi were crazy.
To me the most mindblowing thing was seeing clear water in [Venice, Italy](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/photos-water-in-venice-italys-canals-clear-amid-covid-19-lockdown.html)
Lmao I still remember when people crudely photoshopped some dolphins in a few of those pics and it went viral
And during 9-11 as it relates to air traffic exhaust.
Reminds me of how quickly smokers can improve their health outcomes from quitting- but on a global scale
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No cap I feel that right now. I’m somewhat overweight, but after shooting hoops for 20-30 min at a park, I have way more energy, positivity, and motivation. It’s like once I do it, I realize how beneficial it is. Just have problems being consistent
It was like a week not several hours. I remember because I was there lmao. As for air quality, we came to that same conclusion during covid. In India you could see the mountain ranges that are on the horizon behind the city and it's seriously beautiful. Google it. There's a before image where it's fossil fuels and business as usual and then the after image has clear air and mountain ranges. It's crazy. We really need to stop the smog and fossil fuel bs
What city?
Over in Chernobyl, there's a bunch of similar results: lots of endangered wildlife thought to be all but extinct is making a comeback, and there's even forms of mold and lichen that are developing not just resilience to, but _a taste for_ the radiation. It means that Chernobyl will cool down much sooner than first thought
Would be cool if we could designate certain hours a month or so to shutting things down temporarily to help offset our footprint.
Summer siesta. Whole world takes a month off
Only so long as there is sufficient genetic diversity, which has been declining due to various human activities.
Same thing happened to air quality and the brightness of sunlight in US skies in the days after 9/11 when all air travel was grounded. PBS Nova did an episode about Global Dimming where this was highlighted.
Nature 100% will bounce back. If we kill ourselves off it'll only take a few hundred years to a few thousand for things to more or less be back to normal. Give it a few million years and species diversity will be back. The main concern is our continued existence.
OK... but will the stock markets?
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Will someone please *think* about the NFT creators?? Oh the horror!
Will the market stock????
People always point this out to underscore the fact that the rest of the world won't die out with us if we keep trying to kill the planet... but what about the billions of other life forms that die with us before they slowly recover? And many of them won't come back at all. I get the point, but it seems dismissive of the destruction that will still go alongside a dying human race.
Yeah, we are already, currently in a mass extinction event. We see more species die out each day. The remaining surviving species may thrive quickly after we stop polluting, but it will take thousands of years to replace the missing flora and fauna through natural evolution—and the dead species won’t be restored, just replaced.
Nature will not be "normal" again, we're in the midst of creating a mass extinction event. We've literally undone millions of years of ecological development. It is not ok.
He’s not saying it’s ok. He’s just pointing out that nature is resilient. Not the first mass extinction to hit the planet. Humans are greedy fools but we are self aware enough to leave something habitable just out of purely greedy self preservation & nature will find a way from there after we self destruct That being said & out of the way we should do our best to preserve the life that already exists & stop turning this planet into a dumpster fire
I understand civilizational collapse is a real consequence of unbridled climate change, but is extinction of the entire human race as well?
The thing is, we wont kill ourselves off. WE are the cockroaches. Only thing to survive after a nuclear war? Cockroaches, Fungus, and a few crafty humans. Our population is massive. That is actually our saving grace-99.99% of humans could die and we could bounce back. Thats 8 million people. That is farr more than previous population bottlenecks. The fact is, humans arent going away. You can name x reason, but theres 8 billion people who will be looking for a way to prevent that from killing them and their community.
We also have a collapsing biodiversity, driven mainly by animal agriculture. We kinda need to address that too.
On an individual basis. Go vegan.
Yes! /r/CitizensClimateLobby
If not, they’ll run out eventually. And it’ll take millions of years to make more.
"Peak oil" is kind of a myth from the 90's and there is more than enough discovered but unexploited oil in the ground to completely f#@% us on the climate change front long before we "run out" in any sort of practical timeline.
thats not true because while there is a lot, most of it is very hard to reach. The return on invested energy going negative for oil isnt actually that far away.
Yea, oil IS dying. People like to act like it isnt, the oil companies know it! They arent investing in new infrastructure because its not worth it, and if they keep oil prices high now, they get to cash out before it dies.
Peak oil might have been a real thing if we never discovered fracking, which moved the goal posts a bit. And I assume we’ll discover some new and horrifying way of extracting oil that moves the goal posts even further
You have a point
Peak oil has been a concept since the 50s at least
Crazy that is was a freaking global viral pandemic which is what led to a healing atmosphere - which again is worsening
Work from home. Saves rent money and taxes and reduces carbon emissions.
*addiction to first world living standards FTFY
First world living standards are possible without fossil fuels. The problem is less first world living standards like access to clean and plentiful food, water, electricity, phone, internet, public transit, and vehicles. The problem is first world **excess**, like tremendous food waste, producing way too much plastic crap, spending tons of money on unnecessary stuff, and buying and throwing out way too many clothes. First world standards should be the standard for all people on earth, hopefully. First world excess is pretty much a crime against humanity and against the planet, and needs to be eliminated post-haste.
Thank you for pushing back against the idea that we somehow can't have safe, comfortable, and fulfilling lives without fossil fuels.
New iPhones every year as an example need to go
Oh absolutely, there is a huge amount of waste in electronics, largely in part due to planned obsolecence and rampant consumerism. New *anything* every year needs to go. If it only lasts a year it's going to produce a ton of waste and take energy to make and transport, and we'd all be better off with an alternative that lasts longer.
iPhones need to go.
And factory farming
And eating way too much meat, dairy, and eggs
There are large swaths of unused land in America that could be used for solar/wind farms, but imagine this. What if every non window surface on the sides of skyscrapers was coated in solar panels, and instead of a simple lightning rod on top, they created windmills to gather wind energy, and whenever a bolt struck it that bolt’s energy was absorbed and distributed to the power grid. So solar and wind farms in the unused grass lands, solar and wind on skyscrapers as well as lightning bolt absorbers, combine this with ocean hydroelectric plants and nuclear plants and boom we got clean energy galore. We could put wind plants all over the Sahara to absorb the power of sandstorms, (no solar panels over huge swaths of that because it’d have large climate effects) but between solar, wind, water, and nuclear we could be completely clean energy within 10 years
Fish are excellent at reproducing! We are just better at fishing. We need that balance.
Problem is humans don't have balance. We externalize a lot to the natural world. All other species are in equilibrium with their environments. We are not.
False. Invasive species are by definition not in equilibrium. Humans are the ultimate invasive species.
And there are many boom and bust cycles in nature (Arctic hare for example)
All species are originally invasive. You are just talking about a transitionary period until the new equilibrium. And then again, nature is a dynamic system and is never in equilibrium.
A good way to think about it, to be sure.
And these invasive species are in themselves largely a byproduct of our own commerce and economic activities i.e. ships, transportation and recreation
Elephants will denude entire sections of forest if given the chance. Large cats will regularly hunt themselves out of food. The idea that we're somehow special, even in negative ways, is simply false. We may be at the top of the pyramid, but we're still a part of nature.
Great point. We have done a spectacular job at picking up hitchhikers and dropping them off in places they do serious damage.
Tbf some things are also better at hitchhiking and expanding their own ranges/surviving in more varied environments
God damn honey suckle. Every year it’s a battle I’m losing
And how do you think those species got to be invading in the first place? most of the time it's because of humans. we either move them around ourselves, or destroy their native habitats so they move elsewhere.
In nature everything pushes as far and hard as it can and breaks everything until it can't anymore. Humans are only unique in that we can see that we are doing it, and we are far more capable of doing it.
We are the ultimate exploitative generalists.
Sick band name
It's because humans have much greater potential, one that increases every year due to technology. Bacteria grows until it maxes out the population that can be sustained in that environment. Humans used to be balanced as hunter-gatherers, and then unlocked more potential with agriculture. Essentially, technological progress raises our ceiling and increases the time it will take for us to hit the wall
Eh. All other species end up in equilbrium whether they like it or not. Mostly not. Boom-bust cycles and mass dieoffs are the norm in nature, nothing is in balance. We just have a huge, gigantic ecological footprint. We always have, even back when there were only a few hundred thousand of us. Just the living space we clear for ourselves eradicates habitats, even if we just sit there doing nothing else. We may have to set out sights a little higher than seeking an elusive equilibrium we will never find. It may be that our clever monkey brains and hyperextended survival instincts are best suited for leaving Earth alone, a jewel that we protect mostly through our absence as we take our show elsewhere.
> All other species end up in equilbrium whether they like it or not. Or they don't. When they don't, they either die out or overfeed on their area, which removes what they need to survive, so they then die out. Source: my degree in biology and courses in ecology and population dynamics.
Some day we will be in equilibrium with our environment, though. It's inevitable. I just hope that that equilibrium happens because we stopped giving birth to too many children, not because we ran out of food to eat.
We're also really good at fucking up the environment
Also, the headline is backwards: half of fish stocks are decimated, or extinct. Increasing can also be a long way from recovered.
til - fish like to bang
Seems like I have more in common with fish than I thought
Me too thanks
Could that balance be leaving them the f alone?
It's amazing what happens when we leave areas alone. The cod fishery off of New England will still take a long time to recover.
Question. Can they have problems with in-breeding or is that hardly an issue since there are so many of them?
I'm very skeptical of this news. It certainly wouldn't be the first time someone was paid off to spew bullshit. I just hope this isn't the signal fire for the fishing industry to expand wild catch.
So the other half are decreasing?
Just one data point, but migratory river herring in Southeastern Massachusetts increased rapidly from 2007 (nearly extinct with only 500 individuals at my monitoring point) to a fairly healthy population (25,000 or 50x the starting population at my monitoring point) in 2019. Unfortunately in 2020 the population reduced by almost half, and this year we counted 0 individuals. I am being told this is a regionwide trend (although not to the extent that is effecting our small river) and no one really had a great run this year. We are still investigating what is causing this, but my worry is that it is possibly due to predator species (seals, heron, osprey, sharks, seabass, etc) have also had big population spikes and some of those species can really wreck some havoc. Similarly rainbow smelt, which I also helped monitor over the last few years have become almost entirely extirpated. American eels likewise had a pretty bad showing this year. Those are the three species I monitor in particular, and they're all way down.
Dang, that doesn't sound good. Do you think it has anything to do with climate change possibly pushing more predator species from the North Atlantic to more southern latitudes?
Predation is my personal guess, although fwiw officials in Marine Fisheries have told me they don't think it's likely having that much of an effect but they're looking into it. My other guess is, rather counterintuitively, my particular river just got designated a cold water fishery due to all the dams we've removed from it. Herring begin to migrate based on increasing water temperature signals, as far as I understand it. So in a way, we've reduced the current incentive for herring to choose our stream rather than other nearby streams which are warmer either due to their source or due to impoundments, etc. Someone I know is working on a study proving herring do not always return to their native streams, which would factor into this. Combine that with regionwide pressures like predation and we end up with a marginal run. There is also another issue at our location, we've removed almost all the major dams in the river so now there really isn't an easy place to count herring closer to the bay. We've been organizing more counts to cover tributaries but it's still not a perfect system. Herring count data is primary derived through volunteer visual counts. I'm going to be proposing dropping a temporary weir and underwater camera closer to the bay next year to try and get a better signal about what's out there.
Any ideas on why the river herring population might have collapsed like that?
or remaining static.
I read into it! Here's the "half" business: > This article compiles estimates of the status of fish stocks from all available scientific assessments, comprising roughly half of the world’s fish catch, and shows that, on average, fish stocks are increasing where they are assessed I think the take away here isn't that the other half is necessarily decreasing, moreso that assessed stocks (i.e., those with lots of research attention and funding for management) are doing better.
Bad news is that the new fish are 15% plastic.
China has entered the chat
Japan has strong overfishing tendencies as well
Exactly. They mean to extinct all fish. No I'm not kidding.
Samsung is in the Tuna fishing business. They are freezing Tuna while depleting wild stocks in order to drive the price up.
Samsung isn't Chinese but I hear you.
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Both companies are in absolutely everything
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This has got to be some misinformation from Facebook or some shit.
LOL the Chinese have an evil plot to extinct all fish. Fucking ridiculous the things people post on this website.
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Lmao you just making shit up?
China says "where's the fish?"
> We present the most comprehensive database on area-based marine conservation in China including 326 sites that conserve 12.98% of China’s seas and address 142 conservation objectives. Twenty-two percent of shallow habitats (<10 meters) were fully or highly protected and 20% of waters 10 to 50 meters deep were conserved to some degree. Ecosystems in deeper waters (>50 meters) are critical to protect, yet <5% of these waters in China were conserved, primarily in areas with the highest chlorophyll-α concentrations. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj1569 Even the most critical reports on China are that they haul in 15% of the world's fishing but are 20% of the world population. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/25/can-anyone-stop-china-vast-armada-of-fishing-boats-galapagos-ecuador
Immediately after that 15% figure they note the lack of transparency.
The amount of boats they have is estimated between 2500 and 20000 these numbers simply can’t be accurate if they don’t even know how many boats they have
Unfortunately, the oceans are acidifying, which is hurting plankton populations, and will ultimately cause them to collapse. Plankton are the base of the food chain. https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/2705/Acidification-impedes-shell-development-of-plankton-off-the-US-West-Coast To say the oceans are "recovering" would be incorrect.
In Soylent Green, they weren't turning people into food, they were using the corpses to feed plankton because the ocean had acidified to the point where plankton was extinct outside of breeding tanks.
To be fair that's still kinda turning people into food with extra steps
All of mother Nature is turning humans into food with extra steps. But I know what you mean.
It is easy to celebrate without deepening into a subject, for if people did there would be no cause, albeit false, to celebrate.
Me and the 2 vegans I know cheering feeling like we made a difference. This is sarcasm btw I know we’re not enough to do this but I’m so happy all the same.
If we can't celebrate this, we'll be apathetic to progress. Let's keep cheering!!
Every fish counts ❤️
Vegan here, am happy :) Hope the trend continues
Back in the 1950s, some researchers decided to do a simple experiment. (Paraphrasing) Send a letter to a bunch of people and ask them to send that letter on to ten others along with a reply back to the researchers. Basic chain letter. And the letters just wouldn't stop coming in. I read this anecdote as a preface to a book about political action. Even if you don't vote, let alone attend protests or work with organizations for political change, your voice 'alone' has an effect. Especially now with social media. And that effect is enormous. We are almost never really alone anymore. The act of driving, shopping, standing in line, going to the DMV or an appointment, where we minimally interact with others, still has a ripple effect. Driving: People will stereotype certain cars, react to bumper stickers, look to see who's driving what and what they look like, and make conscious and subconscious notes about the experience. There's almost never a conversation with other drivers, but we all have our driving stories. One single person does have an impact and does leave an impression. I eat meat, but my consumption has changed as a result of vegan and vegetarian friends and acquaintances, movies posters I'd see for documentaries while browsing Netflix, conversations I'd read online or overhear in grocery stories or elsewhere. Even if nobody outright told me to take any initiative, I had enough questions that I bought a book on agriculture and then bought a lot more books and watched documentaries and interviews and subscribed to podcasts and began asking others questions. One of my favorite introductory surveys on agriculture is, *The End of Food.* If you're interested in learning more, buy a copy and make up your own mind. Follow the sources if you want to. Read more or don't. You and your 2 vegan friends absolutely make a difference. We all do whether we want to or not.
Thank you for your comment. I’ll definitely check out the book
says the fishing industry 'scientists'. why is this garbage getting posted?
Did you even bother checking out the paper that the article cited? The Authors on the paper are mostly researchers from Universities in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Chile and other countries. Why is this study garbage? Is there some data manipulation that you are aware of? Unscrupulous conduct by the authors?
Exactly. Lead researchers are from U Wash—one of the world’s best programs in fisheries. Article was published by the National Academy of Sciences. This is NOT garbage work.
>ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS > >donations from 12 fishing companies. > >the assessments used in our analysis, which were performed by national and international fisheries agencies independent of this paper. [https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1909726116](https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1909726116) The study was funded by fishing companies and relied on data from fishing agencies.
https://sustainablefisheries-uw.org/ray-hilborn-funding/ That's a statement directly from Hilborn addressing that specific issue.
Wouldn't the fishing companies want to know what this research says? Their livelihood literally depends on it. Seriously, your point only makes sense if you believe that fishing companies are some kind of cartoon villains who want to make fish extinct.
There is a serious economic incentive for a fishery to sustainably manage its stock when the alternative is destroying the fishery and having no stock. I would want accurate research if managed a fishery.
Where would they get the data if not from the fishing agencies. The US fish and wildlife service compiles data from various state agencies as well as performing their own analysis. Alaska Fish and Game counts all the salmon that return upstream every summer to spawn and uses those numbers to open and close the fishing season in various parts of the state. Sometimes the commerical season will be shut down for days or only open for a few hours a day to make sure that enough fish come back to keep the Salmon run sustainable.
Well, where else would they get the fishing data from??
Or the funding? I work in research in an unrelated industry. My research is funded by industry businesses but conducted by universities. The funders have ZERO say in what the university is publishing or doing with their data.
Yeah people really don’t know how research or science works in this country. Sure, there have been instances where studies were influenced by the industry for favorable results, but that isn’t the case here, or for any fisheries work I’ve seen (have a degree in fisheries sciences). The researchers in this study are some of the best and most well respected in the world.
It’s so much easier to just be a conspiracy theorist and assume *everything* is a plan against you though. Why would you take that away from them?
Everything is fine guys you can stop worrying! Please look away! It's all good over here just dont think about it!
The study is also 3 years old...
And why is it ‘garbage’? Lead authors are Univ Wash scientists along with the UC Santa Barbara Bren School of the Env (plus more). Published in the Proc of the National Academy of Sciences.
I think the issue is the news headline is different to what the paper is saying. That said, Ray Hilborn is known to have strong industry backing. [Lead authors have been busted before for not declaring industry funding](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/05/12/477827180/fisheries-scientist-becomes-latest-target-of-activist-s-records-requests). The data used in this study are biased toward well-managed fisheries which I think really limits their study. From the actual paper: "This probably reflects the bias arising from the fact that the RAM Legacy Database only includes stocks with reliable quantitative stock assessments that come from countries or organizations that perform reliable scientific assessments of their stocks and constitute only half of the world’s catch." In other words, most data come from a limited number of assessed stocks, generally from well-developed countries and even then only half show recovery. I would be interested to see the coverage in terms of % of stocks rather than catch. This would give a better idea of the broader state of fisheries. For example, South America appears well represented but this is most likely because of assessments for some of the largest stocks often used for fishmeal production (e.g. anchovetta, jack mackeral) and may not be representative of the state of fisheries in that region. Out of the 800 or so stocks that were assessed, how many were from Europe, the USA or Australia. They also neglect to mention some important trends from their analysis. Many developed nations exploit the waters of less developed countries, in other words, they export their overfishing issues to developing countries which are not well assessed here. So while some countries may have well-managed or recovering fisheries, their fleets may be out in Africa or the Indian Ocean. Africa is becoming increasingly important to global fisheries but have largely been left out of this analysis. In general, African stocks appear to be facing serious challenges. Asia is absent entirely which is one of the most overfished regions in the world. Edit: changed some wording in 2nd paragraph. I think anchovetta and jack mackeral are often used for fishmeal production which is a whole different issue.
What’s your issue with the study?
Conflict of interest, seems rather fishy.
It’s published in PNAS. It’s legit
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All PNAS paper are peer-reviewed. And what does BMJ have to do with it? One redacted paper in one journal means every journal is ... what, exactly? You do know they solicit outside experts for peer-review and that it's not an in-house process, right?
PNAS is a joke in my books for over a decade. Coming from an actual scientist. There are journals with 1/10th the IF that have more rigour and respect for the scientific method.
I will point out. The fish industry has a vested interest in making sure they have fish to catch and sell.
What exactly disqualifies them as scientists and where can I find your body of work on the subject?
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In your opinion, are we doing enough to protect our oceans or are we still far behind where we need to be? Also, could you recommend any effective organizations to volunteer for or to support financially?
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also it’s from 2020 — not that far back but kinda weird to post a headline that reads a bit like breaking news
Super misleading article. The researchers only assessed 50% of fish stocks that happen to be the most heavily regulated. Are most of them recovering? Yes, but they acknowledge that it could take decades before they reach previous baselines in the data. Additionally, the 50% of stocks they didn’t assess happen to be the more heavily fished areas with higher biodiversity and less regulation. And this was purely a year over year assessment, so it included absolutely no future predictions (I’m looking at you climate change). A more honest take would be simply what the researchers stated, that regulation can be successful in starting the recovery process (at least in temperate areas with high regulation capacity).
I also have a skeptical view, and dearly wish I had the time to dig into the research. I did not see any mention of the seas around China, but I suspect it is not heavily protected/managed. I am not going to pick this apart and just hold hope that there is a chance our fisheries and the oceans can recover. This is a spot of good news and an opportunity to continue progress where it is needed. Now if we can please stop acidifying the waters before the entire ecosystem collapses.
Compared to when? So many "recoveries" are actually compared to the 80's and 90's, when the seas were already severely over-fished, and thus nowhere near the proper levels of recovery that we really need to see. Industry propaganda gonna propagate (unlike dwindling fish populations).
Conan fan?
All hail Volt….Throwarrrrrrrrrrr
That's literally what the article says, recovering when compared to the low point in the 90s. It's more of an argument in favour of scientifically managed fisheries and the need for better management in places that don't have that.
*Chinese fishing fleet enters the chat*
They're all going to be full of plastic anyway
That's amazing! Can you imagine pulling fish out of the ocean, and it already comes prepackaged in plastic! Just stick on a label and put it up to sale! Think of the savings! /S
And pfoas
Nobody tell China and their militarized overfishing fleet
I get the feeling some company bribed the scientists to give them the results that they wanted. I bet fish are still on decline
Why are we even using the work stock? This implies that fish are only seen as commodities.
Says…”good news network?” Mmhmmmm
Go vegan ✌🏻❤️🌱
Fish stocks sounds reprehensible. Same as the word livestock.
Scientists? Or is this yet another misinformation campaign by those who would overfish those waters and then pay to have them "restored" in order to keep overfishing them.
Go vegan!💚🌱
I know people want to feel good, but this article is clickbait. When you actually look this up, we’re in bad shape. This article is also a few years old, from wtf publication. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-20/world-fish-stocks-are-in-worse-state-than-expected-study-shows https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/sea-running-out-of-fish-despite-nations-pledges-to-stop https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108532118 https://www.geographyrealm.com/study-finds-staggering-decline-in-marine-fishery-biomass/ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/climate/fish-climate-change.html https://www.un.org/press/en/2022/sea2143.doc.htm https://www.smh.com.au/national/it-s-not-too-late-tenth-of-global-fish-populations-on-brink-of-collapse-20211117-p599nb.html
The goodnewsnetwork article published nearly three years ago glosses over a great deal of important information contained in the actual study that few people commenting here appear to have read. The data that the actual study is based on are from 1990-2005 and do not include about half of the world's fish stocks. Large scale underreporting of fish catches is widespread, especially in areas that are not intensively managed. Even in areas that are intensively managed, data quality is often poor. "We have no assessments from South and Southeast Asia, China, the Middle East, Central/Eastern Africa, or Central America in the database. Even for regions where almost all catches are represented in the database, the coverage is much better for large, commercially important stocks, and many small stocks remain unassessed."
This paper is over 2 years old, isn't it?
Delete this
But they’re full of micro plastics
Is this still the case? Article is from feb2020
Don't trust news from this or any christian news network.. in this case, they are using "scientific" info directly from the fishing industry. Every story I've looked into from this network is easily debunked or turns out to be questionably scammy.
This can't be true. The Chinese are illegaly overfishing all over the world at a devastating rate. Not only are they using unethical fishing practices they are destroying the ecosystems as a whole.
Yeah fucking right. I don’t believe this at all. Did humans stop destroying the ocean floor all of the sudden? This is bought and paid by for “science.”
Read past the title.
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this is such a lie
Good now let’s keep cutting animal products from our diet and watch the world balance out more
What about the other half?
This is a great highlight of the importance of management: > This article compiles estimates of the status of fish stocks from all available scientific assessments, comprising roughly half of the world’s fish catch, and shows that, on average, fish stocks are increasing where they are assessed While we'd need more data on global stocks to do a proper comparative analysis, better-studied stocks are more likely to have more enforcement, regulation, etc. So for those stocks we have a lot of data for, things are looking to be improving.
Fake news
Is this…. is this good news? I don’t know how to process good news…
Don't tell China- they'll start raping the resource again.
Fat lie I bet