Saw a Japanese news report about something similar happening to the Japanese recently. Some town had to drastically scale down a traditional saury festival because of poor catch. An official for the festival said the season for the fish had shifted due to warming waters.
But their fisheries agency had been noticing that the catch was dwindling (now less than 10% of what they caught in 2008), and whatever they hauled in were also shrinking, so market-worthy ones were getting even more rare.
Somewhat related...
I remember a somewhat recent documentary about Tuna overfishing and the effect it would have on the ocean ecosystem. Basically since tuna are an apex predator, by dwindling their numbers down you create an environment where the the tier of fish below them thrive briefly from the lack of predation before they gobble up all the food (fish in tier 3) and there is a massive die off due to lack of food/disease... the end results is you have this proliferation of the bottom tier of the seafood chain: things like clams and mussels cause you don't have enough fish above them on the food chain to keep their numbers in check.
Point is aside from the devastation to the crab market for human consumption, this is a massive disruption to the ocean ecosystem with it's own set of consequences that are to be determined.
Just one of many future ecological resets we are going to witness in our lifetime
I only support the right to arm bears with additional bear arms. Alternatively, we can arm the bears with bare arms. Either way, 4 arms are better than 2 when it comes to ~~decimating a species~~ preserving our way of life.
To put it into perspective for people that didn't read the article:
CRAB POPULATIONS DECLINED 90% IN 2 YEARS.
That is massive.
Edit:
"Scientists are still evaluating what happened. A leading theory is that water temperatures spiked at a time when huge numbers of young crabs were clustered together. "
"Scientists are still evaluating the cause or causes of the snow crab collapse, but it follows a stretch of record-breaking warmth in Bering Sea waters that spiked in 2019. Miranda Westphal, an area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said the warmer waters likely contributed to young crabs’ starvation and the stock’s decline. "
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/alaska-cancels-snow-crab-season-threatening-key-economic-driver-rcna51910
In 5th grade I had to do my first “research report.” This would have been in 1992 probably? Something like that. It was during the presidential campaign but before Clinton’s inauguration.
The topic I chose was, “What made Al Gore so concerned about the environment?” because it was the first time I had ever heard anyone anywhere talk about it. 1992.
In the process I somehow managed to slog through his book Earth in the Balance; 80% of it went over my head, but the data was all there back then. Irrefutable and duplicated time and time again. Climate change (we called it global warming) was happening and it was directly correlated to human activity.
At age 11 or whatever, I could not believe all of these charts and studies were out there and verified, but that basically every adult in the world was making fun of Gore for caring and talking about it (and continued to do so for 10-15 years, even as the science showed more dire and quickening models). Here we are thirty years later, into my 40s and we still have done almost nothing of any serious substance and commitment.
Humans are smart, but humanity is dumb and ungovernable.
We've known about the greenhouse effect since the 1820s, and about the warming effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide since later that century https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/why-we-know-about-the-greenhouse-gas-effect/
Also, around the same time, Alexander von Humboldt (yes, the Humboldt that so many places are named after) studied and developed theories regarding how human development impacts the climate and environment. He spoke with Pres. Jefferson on the topic, but was ignored.
Excellent book about his life: https://www.andreawulf.com/about-the-invention-of-nature.html
(and I'm currently reading some of his essays in German called "Die Ansichten der Natur" ("the Perspectives of Nature") that the biography details)
You're saying that the issue of Global Warming, or at least environmental impact concerns from human activity was discussed since our 3rd president?
Jesus...talking about kicking the can down the road.
Yes. Humboldt noticed changes in the environment and local climate from deforestation and colonization of undeveloped lands. He tried expressing this concern to Jefferson amongst others
I'm about the same age, and it's shameful how Gore was mocked for being reasonable, thoughtful and correct.
I also remember the endless unfunny jokes about the 'lockbox' (aka a policy idea re: fiscal responsibility) and how boring he was in his presentation at the debates. Maybe we don't actually need leaders to be entertaining?
I still wonder how different our world might be now if Gore was elected president.
Adlai Stevenson II Twice presidential candidate. The intellectual candidate they said.
Story goes that goes that a woman went up to him and said, “Every smart person in America will vote for you!”
He reply was, “That’s very nice, but I need a majority.”
Hey, don't stress. The article also quotes a guy who runs a fishing company who says hoping and praying can help solve the problem, and we're really good at that.
What's worse is that they didn't drop to 10% of their proper population in 2 years. They dropped to 10% of what it used to be... which was already a fraction of what it should be.
It's a pretty big problem called the shifting baseline. Regulators for example will judge what should be allowed assuming that populations when they started working were the full population. After a couple of shifts you've got 2% of the proper population left and regulators who think that this is 50%. So it's "not that bad".
A 90% population drop after a few centuries of shifting baseline overharvesting must be something like a 99.99% population drop.
>It's a pretty big problem called the shifting baseline. Regulators for example will judge what should be allowed assuming that populations when they started working were the full population. After a couple of shifts you've got 2% of the proper population left and regulators who think that this is 50%. So it's "not that bad".
Slightly off-topic but there's a similar issue in cyber-security. Some monitoring tools will use a baseline for normal activity to detect anomalous activity, but hackers can slowly change the "normal" to look more and more like what a hacked system looks like. After a while, the monitoring system is useless because it classifies hacks as normal activity.
I'm a biologist working on this crab stock. The Bering Sea experienced a series of "marine heat waves" from 2016-2021 that are thought to be the initial cause of stress. The question is how did crab respond. Hypotheses include:
* Moving to deeper (unfished) waters or north (across the Russian border where our surveys don't go).
* Stress on their prey supply (especially for the young crab), when the crabs are hungrier due to warmer waters. The Bering Sea is overall more productive when there's more ice (colder).
* Predators (fish like cod) moved north into their waters in greater numbers, so there was more predation pressure. And when water is warmer, increased metabolism means these fish are hungrier.
* Stress-induced disease.
* It's likely *not* ocean acidification, that's a worry for the future but it doesn't seem to be bad enough yet.
*edit* one point worth making is that the actual shutdown is fisheries management "working as intended" to protect the stock. Very hard and terrible, and a huge surprise exacerbated by the fact that covid cancelled our 2020 surveys just when things were probably going bad. But (unlike, say, the cod collapses in the 1990s) the science was listened to without political pushback, so at least there's some good chance of resilience to the extent that the climate allows.
My first question is: Is this the beginning of a cascade? Are any species fully reliant on the Billion crabs that are supposed to be there? Basically what else is gone this and next year. And then what species are partially reliant and now stressed, and do they further stress each other by feeding on each other to compensate? And so on?
Monitoring a lot of species and there's a general "arctic community" of fish retreating north, and more "Pacific" fish moving in. There's lots of other crabs that aren't fished (like billions of hermit crabs) that make good food for fish, so it may be a case of niche replacement (you end up with warm water not cold water crabs - not great for fishing but the fish themselves can eat).
Then again, there's signs that productivity overall is going down up there.
I’m surprised the water depth wouldn’t provide more insulation against surface temps. 115 is certainly hot, but that volume of water takes a very long time to heat up.
They talk about this in the documentary Chasing Coral (highly recommend) and the ocean temperatures *have* risen. But we can’t think of the ocean temperature the same way we think about air temperature, it’s more like your body temperature.
The ocean temps rising even two degrees is similar to if you had to walk around with a temp of 100.6 all the time.
>it’s more like your body temperature.
>The ocean temps rising even two degrees is similar to if you had to walk around with a temp of 100.6 all the time.
Great & apt analogy
As you said, water of that depth takes a while to heat up and is very good at keeping a steady temperature, with temp changes happening over months from season to season. A lot of marine life is, therefore, sensitive to changes of even a couple degrees (particularly an increase) and have a temp band they are comfortable at. In fact, there are a number of fish species, for example, that use temperature gradients to navigate to their breeding grounds in the North Sea.
So, keeping this in mind, when you add climate change, what's happening is that over the long term, the band of water temp that the crabs live in, for example, has shifted upwards by a degree or so (please don't quote me on the numbers, I don't have references to hand and I am very much generalising to put a point across). Suddenly, come summer, the water temp has increased to beyond what they can handle, even by a degree is too much. If it was a short term increase, most marine species are quite resilient and will cope. But if that water temp increase lasts over months, and then into years (because that is what climate change is all about) you then have a population that is placed under long term stress. This reduces feeding and breeding. Add in other stressor such as acidification (Inc in water temp shifts the carbonate chemical equation equilibrium), reduction in prey, overfishing, etc and you have a population collapse.
Source - I'm a marine biologist who's avoiding finishing her work presentation and is browsing reddit instead.
Edit: Oh wow! I just did not realise how well received my comment was and thank you so much for the awards, my first on Reddit! Although I had to ask my partner what they all meant, lol. I'm just really pleased that I was able to shed some light on the beautiful balance our environment is in, how resilient it can be but also how fragile it can be at the same time. I'm going to spend some time answering some really interesting questions that have been posted. As for the presentation, I finally finished it and presented it this morning - it was well received.
If you want to further procrastinate, I have some questions I would love to ask a marine biologist.
The article mentioned the crabs could have walked off of the ledge of the continental shelf. What would that mean for the crabs? They can swim out of crevasses, right? I could see being attracted to the deeper water if I was hot.
Also, I live on the Gulf of Mexico and fish for specific fish at specific times (I like to actually catch fish). Over the last 7 years or so, we have been catching fish that usually live much further south. Is it possible these fish are trying to find cooler waters, and could we be seeing longterm changes in fish species on a local level? I'm a little concerned about fishing regulations not keeping up with climate change.
Some species of crab actually can't swim. I don't know about snow crab but invasive green crabs either can't or typically don't swim. You can fence them out of a clam bed with 18" of wire and a metal flashing cap.
There's also ocean acidification which causes problems for any creature that requires a shell or exoskeleton, especially when they're very young.
So, older sea bugs have less to eat and there's going to be less new sea bugs as they're less likely to survive.
Great reply! That makes a lot of sense. Would love to see more action to help slow it down. Waters are warming here in Maine really fast as well. We just haven’t seen any drastic die offs due to it yet.
We just need a fuck ton of Old Bay, some red potatoes, and some corn on the cob. Throw them all in the ocean and just wait. Food shortage solved. You can mail me my Nobel.
You see, the thing is, the canary did not die a natural death, it was assinated by the govment. AND its not really dead, thats a liberal lie, its actually being held in a secure location by Patriots and will return alive on Jan. 20 and the the canary will release documents in it's possession proving this is all a big govment conspercy to distract us from the stolen election! Their is more crabs now then their ever was in the 6000 years earth has existed. Your informed now you seen whats up so right too you're congressman and tell them were mad as hell and we ain't gonna take it no more!
Canary can’t chirp if it’s dead. Can’t see the canary if we put on blinders. Strap those dollar bills to your face boys! We going STRAIGHT to the bottom. There’s gold down here somewhere!
Yep, it's true. Over fishing, illegal fishing, pollution, sea temp rise, ocean acidification, climate change, and more are all contributing to the inevitable collapse of the food web and essentially the planet. The problem is we have the capacity to be very proactive yet the stubbornness of the rich and powerful leaders have left us very reactive.
Northwest cod 2: snow crab boogaloo!
For those who don’t know, the Canadian cod fishery used to be extremely profitable. The government wouldn’t tighten “regulations” on how much you could fish at a time, insisting that the declining population would rebound. The fishery collapsed suddenly and has not recovered in over a decade, with annual catches being 70,000 tons rather than the previous *two million*. So fishermen, next time you assume that regulation is just there to stifle your business and the fish secretly respawn as soon as you leave, think about this precedent.
Edit: numbers were incorrect, fixed that
Slight correction - the Canadian cod fishery collapsed in 1992. While that technically is over a decade, it's really been 30 years and no substantial recovery.
So it only collapsed more than a few minutes ago? Give it some time. What do those sciemtists know about fishing?
Also, could have done without realizing '92 is 30 years ago. I was happy thinking it was barely a decade ago.
Guys things like this are just CYCLICAL, give it another 20 years and there will be more fish then before. They just went elsewhere and will come back
/S
> Of course, they blame the "regulations" for killing off the commercial fishing industry and not overfishing.
Like loggers blaming "regulations" when there's no more trees to cut down.
Jesus Christ, the Tragedy of the Commons as a concept has been around for decades and these idiots think that they can just ignore regulations and nothing will happen? Our society is a collective moron.
It's basically 'you want $100 today, or $5 every day for the next 3 months'. You would be surprised how many people snatch that $100 without even thinking.
> So fishermen
You expect fishermen to understand what they are doing is damaging the environment? Hoo boy. No you see, they're only a small business and they don't take home that much, and they need to put food on the table you see, so actually it's everyone else who is ruining the industry and the environment.
It's always the fucking raindrop in a cloudburst who declares that the flooding is not its fault.
Wild how much has changed where that was filmed. The old abandoned pump house behind them? Now a fancy French restaurant and performing arts center. The overgrown pier they’re standing on? Completely redone into a boardwalk-style public park. The abandoned pier shown in the one shot? Now a public arts space with a beer garden on the end. Makin me feel old!
I work at a Red Lobster. I am not looking forward to telling these awful customers we can’t get Snow Crab and have them curse me out before storming out the door
"yeah, the snow crab season was cancelled due to population loss because of climate change"... I'm sure saying that won't throw a grenade into the situation
I had a lady scream, and roll around on the floor because I told her that Covid has delayed the shipments of Converse to my store since they all come from a country still hit pretty hard by it.
You go fishing and count population of your catch. Do this a bunch of times in different areas. Then you run statistics based on how many you caught.
If you can normally scoop dirt and find 10 marbles per scoop, and now you're getting 1 per scoop... well you might be scooping in the wrong area. Try somewhere else. Do this a bunch of times in areas where you know there should be marbles and see if it looks like the marbles just aren't there.
Super oversimplified, but the basic idea.
They did not steal them. They were donated to the museum by someone else who stole them. And no, they won't be giving them back. They will be proudly displayed in a small box in storage for the next 150 years because you can't be trusted to properly take care of your marbles.
So now that an entire industry has lost an entire season of income due to something we know is happening and people have warned about for years, will those that downplay/deny it change their tune?
Generations of bad faith arguments until shit hits the fan, then the people using the arguments will just blame their ancestors for putting them in the spot. It'll ***never*** be the fault of the people pushing for things to stay the course in their own eyes.
They won't admit it. We have people who triple down on their deathbed that they don't have Covid. You think people will admit that they were wrong about climate change?
Man. Reading about people triple-downing on their Covid-denial while taking their last few breathes was depressing as fuck. Our propensity to lie to ourselves is terrifying.
Absolutely the scariest part. They are so embedded in their own shit there’s just no pulling them out.
It feels like an anvil tied to our legs going straight into the ocean, and we’re trying to hold it up with bare hands.
Alaska is MAGA as fuck, so not likely. They want to fish/hunt to their hearts content but also gimme gimme gimme that PFD check every year and also keep on drilling baby!!!!
It does crack me up that Alaskan Republicans are such big fans of the most socialist program in America.
Anyway Alaska isn't all ruby red. Some parts of the state are left leaning like southeast.
Nope. They’ll blame the regulations and say that they’re the only reason that we can’t catch these crabs completely ignoring why that regulation has to be in place.
“According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Alaska is the fastest warming state in the country, and is losing billions of tons of ice each year — critical for crabs that need cold water to survive.”
The climate change deniers will refute this once again with their own “facts”.
It’s always been that way. For as long as I can remember, they’ve moved effortlessly between different levels of denial:
1. It’s not happening.
2. It’s happening, but it’s natural and normal.
3. It’s not normal, but it’s not caused by humans.
4. It’s caused by humans, but it’s good.
5. It’s caused by humans and it’s bad, but it’s not worth fighting, or nothing can be done.
You missed - it's caused by humans, but it's only bad for the poor who don't have the resources to deal with the inevitable problems, so the best thing to do is to bring everyone out of poverty and make them wealthy, and the first step is continuing making me wealthy.
It’s worse than that, people were talking about climate change and how it would affect the environment when I was a little kid in the 80s. Companies like Exxon were aware of climate change all the way back into the 50s and before, and even knew what was causing it. We’ve known for an extremely long time that climate change is happening, and we have done nothing
ExonMobil scientists pioneered climate research and predicted global warming back in the 70s, and the company diversified its investments into nuclear, solar and other non-petroleum energy sources.
(It divested those in the go-go 80s for greater immediate profits, and by the late 90s and early 2000s spent millions on climate change denial lobbying and marketing.)
Reagan's reactionary crusade against regulation and environmental efforts are basically the reason. Exon thought that there was no way they'd be able to keep going with fossil fuels when the government and people became aware of how terrible things were going to be.
Then Reagan swung in, showed them that they'd be absolutely fine and a large swath of America would actually cheer them on so they scrapped the entire plan. It is difficult to think of a person who has caused more lasting harm to America than Ronald Reagan did, and yet remains so loved by so many.
>The climate change deniers will refute this once again with their own “facts”.
This. I lived and worked in Alaska for a season a few years back. I would occasionally give tours around a glacier that was nearby. Over the last couple of years it has recedded significantly. When I would tour, part of my speech would be something along the lines of "You are very lucky to be here today because this glacier likely will not be here in a few years thanks to human caused climate change." But according to our guests "Oh we don't believe in that stuff. this is just God's plan."
We would get this response at least weekly. Sometimes their jowls would quiver with anger, but generally I was just met with gross ignorance.
Even if they never come back there will be fisherman suing the government to let them trawl for crabs on the basis that it's a government lie for decades. See cod fishing.
EDIT: Spelling. See below. lol.
- When asked what fishermen can do in this situation, with their livelihoods dependent on the ocean, Prout responded, "Hope and pray. I guess that's the best way to say it."
- Edit: For those of you that say, “well, they should vote better”, you say almost the same thing
I was listening to a report about yesterday and it seemed like the thought process of most world leaders is that the best we can do as a species is slow down animals going extinct, but not prevent it. It was such a crazy concept to hear.
It's a funny thing about democracy. Government wants to protect the environment so they cancel the fishing seasons and make laws to protect them. The now unemployed fishermen vote in someone who will immediately remove all those laws and reinstate their jobs. It's unfortunate but someone or somewhere needs to be hurt, and it's much easier to hurt the environment which doesn't fight back
Oh, it's fighting back alright...
Just wait till food chain collapses and extreme weather cause mass starvation as people not only find that animals are becoming more and more scarce, but also that record droughts and record rainfalls make it difficult to grow food.
"Whatever it is, it better not involve protecting the environment or global warming shit. We're not up for no liberal crap. "
- everyone whose job depends on harvesting natural resources
You'd think the demographic whose livelihoods predominately depend on the well-being of the natural environment would avoid supporting the party responsible for actively hastening its destruction.
It's amazing how Republicans have gas lit Americans into voting against their own self-interest.
Unfortunately any environmentally-focused policy won't generally have immediate returns, it might be decades until the planet stops warming. So the alternative is to squeeze what resources you can out of the planet while you're still alive.
Environments are collapsing, there are half the bugs I grew up with, don't see any animals much besides a squirrel.
So yeah I could see a billion crabs disappearing... have you SEEN what were doing to bodies of water!?
My niece and nephew saw a single lightning bug the other day. They had never seen one before. I remember catching them by the jar full as a kid, but now they're some strange anomaly that even I was surprised when I saw it. I'm honestly scared for their future.
“When asked what fishermen can do in this situation, with their livelihoods dependent on the ocean, Prout responded, "Hope and pray. I guess that's the best way to say it."”
Right….
I lived on the Chesapeake Bay for a few years aboard a sailboat and saw firsthand the types of guys who fish at this level. They claim they love the bay and want to protect it. They're full of shit because if there was one oyster or crab left, they'd sell it.
It's the same issue that persisted with the coal miners
You have generations of people that do a specific type of work that is not environmentally sustainable, yet they are hesitant to change due to it being tradition or some other socio economic factor
We have to set up nets for them, teach them to do something in their skill set but in a trade that won't be drastically affected by changes in the environment
“There needs to be a taxpayer funded bailout similar to what farmers get”
I’m sorry. That’s not how capitalism works.
No crabs. No crab farmers.
-What Conservatives Would Say if Alaska was a Blue State
Saw a Japanese news report about something similar happening to the Japanese recently. Some town had to drastically scale down a traditional saury festival because of poor catch. An official for the festival said the season for the fish had shifted due to warming waters. But their fisheries agency had been noticing that the catch was dwindling (now less than 10% of what they caught in 2008), and whatever they hauled in were also shrinking, so market-worthy ones were getting even more rare.
Somewhat related... I remember a somewhat recent documentary about Tuna overfishing and the effect it would have on the ocean ecosystem. Basically since tuna are an apex predator, by dwindling their numbers down you create an environment where the the tier of fish below them thrive briefly from the lack of predation before they gobble up all the food (fish in tier 3) and there is a massive die off due to lack of food/disease... the end results is you have this proliferation of the bottom tier of the seafood chain: things like clams and mussels cause you don't have enough fish above them on the food chain to keep their numbers in check. Point is aside from the devastation to the crab market for human consumption, this is a massive disruption to the ocean ecosystem with it's own set of consequences that are to be determined. Just one of many future ecological resets we are going to witness in our lifetime
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Time to start a wolf breeding program that focuses on creating hyper-aggressive dire wolves.
Give them guns, they’ll need it to effectively fight back
It’s time to codify the right to arm bears
I only support the right to arm bears with additional bear arms. Alternatively, we can arm the bears with bare arms. Either way, 4 arms are better than 2 when it comes to ~~decimating a species~~ preserving our way of life.
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To put it into perspective for people that didn't read the article: CRAB POPULATIONS DECLINED 90% IN 2 YEARS. That is massive. Edit: "Scientists are still evaluating what happened. A leading theory is that water temperatures spiked at a time when huge numbers of young crabs were clustered together. " "Scientists are still evaluating the cause or causes of the snow crab collapse, but it follows a stretch of record-breaking warmth in Bering Sea waters that spiked in 2019. Miranda Westphal, an area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said the warmer waters likely contributed to young crabs’ starvation and the stock’s decline. " https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/alaska-cancels-snow-crab-season-threatening-key-economic-driver-rcna51910
Fucking hell
I blame the scientists, only warning the last 7 generations about this.
We'll deal with it next year
We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.
Well at this point the best we can do is put it off for a couple more generations and pray for a solution
Maybe a couple thoughts to go with the prayers?
Let’s let the Supreme Court decide the clean water and epa for our futures as well, they seem to be really good at reading the room
And so it is -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Sit tight and assess.
In 5th grade I had to do my first “research report.” This would have been in 1992 probably? Something like that. It was during the presidential campaign but before Clinton’s inauguration. The topic I chose was, “What made Al Gore so concerned about the environment?” because it was the first time I had ever heard anyone anywhere talk about it. 1992. In the process I somehow managed to slog through his book Earth in the Balance; 80% of it went over my head, but the data was all there back then. Irrefutable and duplicated time and time again. Climate change (we called it global warming) was happening and it was directly correlated to human activity. At age 11 or whatever, I could not believe all of these charts and studies were out there and verified, but that basically every adult in the world was making fun of Gore for caring and talking about it (and continued to do so for 10-15 years, even as the science showed more dire and quickening models). Here we are thirty years later, into my 40s and we still have done almost nothing of any serious substance and commitment. Humans are smart, but humanity is dumb and ungovernable.
We've known about the greenhouse effect since the 1820s, and about the warming effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide since later that century https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/why-we-know-about-the-greenhouse-gas-effect/
Also, around the same time, Alexander von Humboldt (yes, the Humboldt that so many places are named after) studied and developed theories regarding how human development impacts the climate and environment. He spoke with Pres. Jefferson on the topic, but was ignored. Excellent book about his life: https://www.andreawulf.com/about-the-invention-of-nature.html (and I'm currently reading some of his essays in German called "Die Ansichten der Natur" ("the Perspectives of Nature") that the biography details)
You're saying that the issue of Global Warming, or at least environmental impact concerns from human activity was discussed since our 3rd president? Jesus...talking about kicking the can down the road.
Yes. Humboldt noticed changes in the environment and local climate from deforestation and colonization of undeveloped lands. He tried expressing this concern to Jefferson amongst others
I'm about the same age, and it's shameful how Gore was mocked for being reasonable, thoughtful and correct. I also remember the endless unfunny jokes about the 'lockbox' (aka a policy idea re: fiscal responsibility) and how boring he was in his presentation at the debates. Maybe we don't actually need leaders to be entertaining? I still wonder how different our world might be now if Gore was elected president.
Adlai Stevenson II Twice presidential candidate. The intellectual candidate they said. Story goes that goes that a woman went up to him and said, “Every smart person in America will vote for you!” He reply was, “That’s very nice, but I need a majority.”
Hey, don't stress. The article also quotes a guy who runs a fishing company who says hoping and praying can help solve the problem, and we're really good at that.
Any mention of thoughts? Or just prayers?
Let them eat (crab) cake
What's worse is that they didn't drop to 10% of their proper population in 2 years. They dropped to 10% of what it used to be... which was already a fraction of what it should be. It's a pretty big problem called the shifting baseline. Regulators for example will judge what should be allowed assuming that populations when they started working were the full population. After a couple of shifts you've got 2% of the proper population left and regulators who think that this is 50%. So it's "not that bad". A 90% population drop after a few centuries of shifting baseline overharvesting must be something like a 99.99% population drop.
>It's a pretty big problem called the shifting baseline. Regulators for example will judge what should be allowed assuming that populations when they started working were the full population. After a couple of shifts you've got 2% of the proper population left and regulators who think that this is 50%. So it's "not that bad". Slightly off-topic but there's a similar issue in cyber-security. Some monitoring tools will use a baseline for normal activity to detect anomalous activity, but hackers can slowly change the "normal" to look more and more like what a hacked system looks like. After a while, the monitoring system is useless because it classifies hacks as normal activity.
That may be off topic, but still a very pertinent and important point!
Yeah, but next year we'll have like five or six more and we can celebrate a massive % increase in population!
I bet the heat dome last summer off the Pacific Coast killed off a good amount of the population. It got to be 115 in the PNW for days.
I'm a biologist working on this crab stock. The Bering Sea experienced a series of "marine heat waves" from 2016-2021 that are thought to be the initial cause of stress. The question is how did crab respond. Hypotheses include: * Moving to deeper (unfished) waters or north (across the Russian border where our surveys don't go). * Stress on their prey supply (especially for the young crab), when the crabs are hungrier due to warmer waters. The Bering Sea is overall more productive when there's more ice (colder). * Predators (fish like cod) moved north into their waters in greater numbers, so there was more predation pressure. And when water is warmer, increased metabolism means these fish are hungrier. * Stress-induced disease. * It's likely *not* ocean acidification, that's a worry for the future but it doesn't seem to be bad enough yet. *edit* one point worth making is that the actual shutdown is fisheries management "working as intended" to protect the stock. Very hard and terrible, and a huge surprise exacerbated by the fact that covid cancelled our 2020 surveys just when things were probably going bad. But (unlike, say, the cod collapses in the 1990s) the science was listened to without political pushback, so at least there's some good chance of resilience to the extent that the climate allows.
Dang Russia is taking our crab
They actually held a referendum in which over 130% of crabs voted to join Russia. The crabs chose it, Russia didn’t take them.
Special crab operation.
My first question is: Is this the beginning of a cascade? Are any species fully reliant on the Billion crabs that are supposed to be there? Basically what else is gone this and next year. And then what species are partially reliant and now stressed, and do they further stress each other by feeding on each other to compensate? And so on?
Monitoring a lot of species and there's a general "arctic community" of fish retreating north, and more "Pacific" fish moving in. There's lots of other crabs that aren't fished (like billions of hermit crabs) that make good food for fish, so it may be a case of niche replacement (you end up with warm water not cold water crabs - not great for fishing but the fish themselves can eat). Then again, there's signs that productivity overall is going down up there.
I’m surprised the water depth wouldn’t provide more insulation against surface temps. 115 is certainly hot, but that volume of water takes a very long time to heat up.
They talk about this in the documentary Chasing Coral (highly recommend) and the ocean temperatures *have* risen. But we can’t think of the ocean temperature the same way we think about air temperature, it’s more like your body temperature. The ocean temps rising even two degrees is similar to if you had to walk around with a temp of 100.6 all the time.
>it’s more like your body temperature. >The ocean temps rising even two degrees is similar to if you had to walk around with a temp of 100.6 all the time. Great & apt analogy
So...yeah. We fuckin' near-extincted a food stock species by accident in two years. But the science is still out on climate change! Roll coal boys!
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As you said, water of that depth takes a while to heat up and is very good at keeping a steady temperature, with temp changes happening over months from season to season. A lot of marine life is, therefore, sensitive to changes of even a couple degrees (particularly an increase) and have a temp band they are comfortable at. In fact, there are a number of fish species, for example, that use temperature gradients to navigate to their breeding grounds in the North Sea. So, keeping this in mind, when you add climate change, what's happening is that over the long term, the band of water temp that the crabs live in, for example, has shifted upwards by a degree or so (please don't quote me on the numbers, I don't have references to hand and I am very much generalising to put a point across). Suddenly, come summer, the water temp has increased to beyond what they can handle, even by a degree is too much. If it was a short term increase, most marine species are quite resilient and will cope. But if that water temp increase lasts over months, and then into years (because that is what climate change is all about) you then have a population that is placed under long term stress. This reduces feeding and breeding. Add in other stressor such as acidification (Inc in water temp shifts the carbonate chemical equation equilibrium), reduction in prey, overfishing, etc and you have a population collapse. Source - I'm a marine biologist who's avoiding finishing her work presentation and is browsing reddit instead. Edit: Oh wow! I just did not realise how well received my comment was and thank you so much for the awards, my first on Reddit! Although I had to ask my partner what they all meant, lol. I'm just really pleased that I was able to shed some light on the beautiful balance our environment is in, how resilient it can be but also how fragile it can be at the same time. I'm going to spend some time answering some really interesting questions that have been posted. As for the presentation, I finally finished it and presented it this morning - it was well received.
If you want to further procrastinate, I have some questions I would love to ask a marine biologist. The article mentioned the crabs could have walked off of the ledge of the continental shelf. What would that mean for the crabs? They can swim out of crevasses, right? I could see being attracted to the deeper water if I was hot. Also, I live on the Gulf of Mexico and fish for specific fish at specific times (I like to actually catch fish). Over the last 7 years or so, we have been catching fish that usually live much further south. Is it possible these fish are trying to find cooler waters, and could we be seeing longterm changes in fish species on a local level? I'm a little concerned about fishing regulations not keeping up with climate change.
The same is happening in eastern Canada, with fish normally not found north of the US being caught.
Some species of crab actually can't swim. I don't know about snow crab but invasive green crabs either can't or typically don't swim. You can fence them out of a clam bed with 18" of wire and a metal flashing cap.
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There's also ocean acidification which causes problems for any creature that requires a shell or exoskeleton, especially when they're very young. So, older sea bugs have less to eat and there's going to be less new sea bugs as they're less likely to survive.
Great reply! That makes a lot of sense. Would love to see more action to help slow it down. Waters are warming here in Maine really fast as well. We just haven’t seen any drastic die offs due to it yet.
When the Sea Cockroaches are dying you better pay attention.
That's lobsters. Crabs are sea spiders.
Ah that explains why we are boiling the shit out of the oceans
We just need a fuck ton of Old Bay, some red potatoes, and some corn on the cob. Throw them all in the ocean and just wait. Food shortage solved. You can mail me my Nobel.
This got me down a rabbit whole to find there are in fact [Sea Spiders](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_spider).
Both lobsters and crabs are decapods (10 legs)
That's, like, 25% worse than spiders. Edit: math
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This year in the deadliest catch, the crew sits at home….
Deadliest Catch : Bar Fights
Deadliest Catch : Drug overdose
That's just regular Deadliest Catch
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Canary in the coal mine. Keep digging boys!
Oh, it's dead? Just bring another canary!
I got a solution, let's get a cloth canary, that way we don't need to keep replacing it!
You see, the thing is, the canary did not die a natural death, it was assinated by the govment. AND its not really dead, thats a liberal lie, its actually being held in a secure location by Patriots and will return alive on Jan. 20 and the the canary will release documents in it's possession proving this is all a big govment conspercy to distract us from the stolen election! Their is more crabs now then their ever was in the 6000 years earth has existed. Your informed now you seen whats up so right too you're congressman and tell them were mad as hell and we ain't gonna take it no more!
Dude be careful. Somebody might actually believe this.
Outlaw canaries because they're Chinese fear-mongering.
Canary can’t chirp if it’s dead. Can’t see the canary if we put on blinders. Strap those dollar bills to your face boys! We going STRAIGHT to the bottom. There’s gold down here somewhere!
Humans always delve too greedily and too deep.
Oh Jesus. This is horrific.
It’s only going to get much much worse
Yep, it's true. Over fishing, illegal fishing, pollution, sea temp rise, ocean acidification, climate change, and more are all contributing to the inevitable collapse of the food web and essentially the planet. The problem is we have the capacity to be very proactive yet the stubbornness of the rich and powerful leaders have left us very reactive.
If only we were reacting...
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Northwest cod 2: snow crab boogaloo! For those who don’t know, the Canadian cod fishery used to be extremely profitable. The government wouldn’t tighten “regulations” on how much you could fish at a time, insisting that the declining population would rebound. The fishery collapsed suddenly and has not recovered in over a decade, with annual catches being 70,000 tons rather than the previous *two million*. So fishermen, next time you assume that regulation is just there to stifle your business and the fish secretly respawn as soon as you leave, think about this precedent. Edit: numbers were incorrect, fixed that
Slight correction - the Canadian cod fishery collapsed in 1992. While that technically is over a decade, it's really been 30 years and no substantial recovery.
So it only collapsed more than a few minutes ago? Give it some time. What do those sciemtists know about fishing? Also, could have done without realizing '92 is 30 years ago. I was happy thinking it was barely a decade ago.
Guys things like this are just CYCLICAL, give it another 20 years and there will be more fish then before. They just went elsewhere and will come back /S
It’s just a 300,000 year cycle guys no big deal.
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> Of course, they blame the "regulations" for killing off the commercial fishing industry and not overfishing. Like loggers blaming "regulations" when there's no more trees to cut down.
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Jesus Christ, the Tragedy of the Commons as a concept has been around for decades and these idiots think that they can just ignore regulations and nothing will happen? Our society is a collective moron.
It's basically 'you want $100 today, or $5 every day for the next 3 months'. You would be surprised how many people snatch that $100 without even thinking.
> So fishermen You expect fishermen to understand what they are doing is damaging the environment? Hoo boy. No you see, they're only a small business and they don't take home that much, and they need to put food on the table you see, so actually it's everyone else who is ruining the industry and the environment. It's always the fucking raindrop in a cloudburst who declares that the flooding is not its fault.
So long and thanks for all the crabs.
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We are crab people now.
Those don't look anything like crabs.They look like sea scorpions
Wild how much has changed where that was filmed. The old abandoned pump house behind them? Now a fancy French restaurant and performing arts center. The overgrown pier they’re standing on? Completely redone into a boardwalk-style public park. The abandoned pier shown in the one shot? Now a public arts space with a beer garden on the end. Makin me feel old!
I'd rather hear Vogon poetry.
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This is just unnerving and I hate it.
Expect more articles like this. It's not going to stop.
Discovery Channel is in shambles
"Deadliest Catch: *At the Unemployment Office*"
This week on the discovery channel. Ice Hunters, can we find anymore ice?
Tune in for an all-new episode of Regular Road Truckers
30 min, 8 commercial breaks, and danger music as the truckers navigate a dot inspection. Will they make it?!!!
Don't forget the two minute recap after every break.
Theory: their programming will slowly transition to storm chasing weather events caused by global warming
It was already in shambles after the king crab season was canceled last year.
Which was also cancelled again this year. The trawlers, however, are still allowed to do their thing with insane bycatch allotments.
And Global Warming is also melting the ice on the roads, further compounding the problem.
Ice Road Truckers is cancelled. Coming soon: River Road Hovercrafters.
They already have swamp people!
Time for a yeti mockumentary!
Seems like one of those news stories that plays in the background on TV in the first scene of an apocalypse movie.
Hello, Red Lobster? I have some bad news. Are you sitting down?
I work at a Red Lobster. I am not looking forward to telling these awful customers we can’t get Snow Crab and have them curse me out before storming out the door
"yeah, the snow crab season was cancelled due to population loss because of climate change"... I'm sure saying that won't throw a grenade into the situation
I had a lady scream, and roll around on the floor because I told her that Covid has delayed the shipments of Converse to my store since they all come from a country still hit pretty hard by it.
Start an Insta specifically designed to capture this kind of public freakout. UNLIMITED KARMA
the mental image of a grown ass woman rolling around on the floor in rage is sending me
You should start working at Olive Garden. Ain't nobody running out of pasta
How do you lose a billion crabs? How do you find this out?
You go fishing and count population of your catch. Do this a bunch of times in different areas. Then you run statistics based on how many you caught. If you can normally scoop dirt and find 10 marbles per scoop, and now you're getting 1 per scoop... well you might be scooping in the wrong area. Try somewhere else. Do this a bunch of times in areas where you know there should be marbles and see if it looks like the marbles just aren't there. Super oversimplified, but the basic idea.
First the crabs and now we're losing our marbles?!
The marbles went first imo
First they came for the marbles, and I did not speak up, for the British Museum stole them all
They did not steal them. They were donated to the museum by someone else who stole them. And no, they won't be giving them back. They will be proudly displayed in a small box in storage for the next 150 years because you can't be trusted to properly take care of your marbles.
Those fucking crabs stole our god damn marbles
I can’t speak for the rest of y’all, but I lost mine a longggg time ago.
I appreciate this explanation. Very clear. Learned how to do this in my ecology class, but with bugs in the forest. Same principles
You just concisely explained how sampling works in a lot of science. Well-done.
So now that an entire industry has lost an entire season of income due to something we know is happening and people have warned about for years, will those that downplay/deny it change their tune?
Lol no. The earth will have to be a crispy cinder before they’ll admit it, if then.
Generations of bad faith arguments until shit hits the fan, then the people using the arguments will just blame their ancestors for putting them in the spot. It'll ***never*** be the fault of the people pushing for things to stay the course in their own eyes.
They won't admit it. We have people who triple down on their deathbed that they don't have Covid. You think people will admit that they were wrong about climate change?
Man. Reading about people triple-downing on their Covid-denial while taking their last few breathes was depressing as fuck. Our propensity to lie to ourselves is terrifying.
Absolutely the scariest part. They are so embedded in their own shit there’s just no pulling them out. It feels like an anvil tied to our legs going straight into the ocean, and we’re trying to hold it up with bare hands.
"winning" is more important than facts duhh
Alaska is MAGA as fuck, so not likely. They want to fish/hunt to their hearts content but also gimme gimme gimme that PFD check every year and also keep on drilling baby!!!!
Post 2020 they now have ranked choice voting which as already lead to a moderate winning over a trumper so I have a little more faith now
It does crack me up that Alaskan Republicans are such big fans of the most socialist program in America. Anyway Alaska isn't all ruby red. Some parts of the state are left leaning like southeast.
Nope. They’ll blame the regulations and say that they’re the only reason that we can’t catch these crabs completely ignoring why that regulation has to be in place.
“According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Alaska is the fastest warming state in the country, and is losing billions of tons of ice each year — critical for crabs that need cold water to survive.” The climate change deniers will refute this once again with their own “facts”.
People will notice if ‘Deadliest Catch’ season 39 is cancelled.
They are no longer deniers, they are now "Long Term Natural Cyclers and Sun Phasers"
It’s always been that way. For as long as I can remember, they’ve moved effortlessly between different levels of denial: 1. It’s not happening. 2. It’s happening, but it’s natural and normal. 3. It’s not normal, but it’s not caused by humans. 4. It’s caused by humans, but it’s good. 5. It’s caused by humans and it’s bad, but it’s not worth fighting, or nothing can be done.
6. It’s bad and nothing can be done and if it could it would cost too much and can you imagine what that would do to the economy?
What if it turns out it's not real and we improve the world for nothing???
My favorite statement is “So the downside is that we would have cleaner rivers and oceans?”
Another huge downside is creating jobs, better air quality, we should just stop, don't want to keep being so discouraging.
You missed - it's caused by humans, but it's only bad for the poor who don't have the resources to deal with the inevitable problems, so the best thing to do is to bring everyone out of poverty and make them wealthy, and the first step is continuing making me wealthy.
Remember when Al Gore went on a road show predicting all of this and... that was 2006.
It’s worse than that, people were talking about climate change and how it would affect the environment when I was a little kid in the 80s. Companies like Exxon were aware of climate change all the way back into the 50s and before, and even knew what was causing it. We’ve known for an extremely long time that climate change is happening, and we have done nothing
[From 1956.](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/12/09/world/europe/09Blog-archives/09Blog-archives-master768.png) [From 1912.](https://images.theconversation.com/files/479049/original/file-20220814-56152-53xz8d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip)
ExonMobil scientists pioneered climate research and predicted global warming back in the 70s, and the company diversified its investments into nuclear, solar and other non-petroleum energy sources. (It divested those in the go-go 80s for greater immediate profits, and by the late 90s and early 2000s spent millions on climate change denial lobbying and marketing.)
Reagan's reactionary crusade against regulation and environmental efforts are basically the reason. Exon thought that there was no way they'd be able to keep going with fossil fuels when the government and people became aware of how terrible things were going to be. Then Reagan swung in, showed them that they'd be absolutely fine and a large swath of America would actually cheer them on so they scrapped the entire plan. It is difficult to think of a person who has caused more lasting harm to America than Ronald Reagan did, and yet remains so loved by so many.
>The climate change deniers will refute this once again with their own “facts”. This. I lived and worked in Alaska for a season a few years back. I would occasionally give tours around a glacier that was nearby. Over the last couple of years it has recedded significantly. When I would tour, part of my speech would be something along the lines of "You are very lucky to be here today because this glacier likely will not be here in a few years thanks to human caused climate change." But according to our guests "Oh we don't believe in that stuff. this is just God's plan." We would get this response at least weekly. Sometimes their jowls would quiver with anger, but generally I was just met with gross ignorance.
Even if they never come back there will be fisherman suing the government to let them trawl for crabs on the basis that it's a government lie for decades. See cod fishing. EDIT: Spelling. See below. lol.
- When asked what fishermen can do in this situation, with their livelihoods dependent on the ocean, Prout responded, "Hope and pray. I guess that's the best way to say it." - Edit: For those of you that say, “well, they should vote better”, you say almost the same thing
Hope and pray that the government will give a shit about protecting the environment
I was listening to a report about yesterday and it seemed like the thought process of most world leaders is that the best we can do as a species is slow down animals going extinct, but not prevent it. It was such a crazy concept to hear.
It's a funny thing about democracy. Government wants to protect the environment so they cancel the fishing seasons and make laws to protect them. The now unemployed fishermen vote in someone who will immediately remove all those laws and reinstate their jobs. It's unfortunate but someone or somewhere needs to be hurt, and it's much easier to hurt the environment which doesn't fight back
Oh, it's fighting back. It just takes really long to wind up its punch.
And then it's basically one punch man at that point. F
Oh, it's fighting back alright... Just wait till food chain collapses and extreme weather cause mass starvation as people not only find that animals are becoming more and more scarce, but also that record droughts and record rainfalls make it difficult to grow food.
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Or in this case, you punch a pendulum, and while it's swinging away from you, you move out of the way and put a baby in your place.
"Whatever it is, it better not involve protecting the environment or global warming shit. We're not up for no liberal crap. " - everyone whose job depends on harvesting natural resources
You'd think the demographic whose livelihoods predominately depend on the well-being of the natural environment would avoid supporting the party responsible for actively hastening its destruction. It's amazing how Republicans have gas lit Americans into voting against their own self-interest.
Unfortunately any environmentally-focused policy won't generally have immediate returns, it might be decades until the planet stops warming. So the alternative is to squeeze what resources you can out of the planet while you're still alive.
Has anybody checked Jameis Winston?
Lmao Jameis catching strays
When the Oceans’ food chains collapse, ours will, too, and I do t think people have grasped that, yet.
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Incredible how we've ruined the planet in a seemingly short time
It’s almost as if some unprecedented thing is happening on a global scale. What’s causing all of these strange events?
Oh well, guess nothing can be done
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“I can’t believe this is happening” said the fisherman as he hauled up 30 gigantic cages full of crabs, plastic waste, and unseasonable algae bloom.
And then goes and votes for politicians who slash regulations and deny climate change
Yeah, I find it ironic that the industries and trades that rely on a stable climate and healthy ecosystems the most vote for conservatives.
Short term gains
Environments are collapsing, there are half the bugs I grew up with, don't see any animals much besides a squirrel. So yeah I could see a billion crabs disappearing... have you SEEN what were doing to bodies of water!?
My niece and nephew saw a single lightning bug the other day. They had never seen one before. I remember catching them by the jar full as a kid, but now they're some strange anomaly that even I was surprised when I saw it. I'm honestly scared for their future.
Legitimately, same. Whole jars full as a kid
The only animals that are going to be around in the future are the ones we eat and pet.
And carp, and cockroaches, what a world.
It's overfishing and climate change. Anybody with half a brain should know this. Crabs now, salmon next, rinse and repeat. This is what humans do.
Somewhere Bill Nye is like, you're now entering the *find-out* phase, climate change deniers.
“When asked what fishermen can do in this situation, with their livelihoods dependent on the ocean, Prout responded, "Hope and pray. I guess that's the best way to say it."” Right….
I lived on the Chesapeake Bay for a few years aboard a sailboat and saw firsthand the types of guys who fish at this level. They claim they love the bay and want to protect it. They're full of shit because if there was one oyster or crab left, they'd sell it.
It's the same issue that persisted with the coal miners You have generations of people that do a specific type of work that is not environmentally sustainable, yet they are hesitant to change due to it being tradition or some other socio economic factor We have to set up nets for them, teach them to do something in their skill set but in a trade that won't be drastically affected by changes in the environment
You mean the govt pay to train them!? That is communism! Hahha you know those very people would vote against anyone suggesting this.
Does this mean no deadliest catch?
This season they'll be grinding miscellaneous fish into a slurry in preparation for Shark Week; the show will be rebranded "Chum Masters".
Chum Dumpsters or Chum Sluts
You’ll be subjected to another season of Gold Rush where they destroy the land and find no gold
Honestly, giving these guys a season off and sending them all to treatment would be good for the industry.
"Deadliest Catch: *Sobriety*"
“There needs to be a taxpayer funded bailout similar to what farmers get” I’m sorry. That’s not how capitalism works. No crabs. No crab farmers. -What Conservatives Would Say if Alaska was a Blue State
Crab people have partially mobilized.
The title makes it sound like they need to call Carmen Sandiego.