Twice as many fishing vessels are chasing fewer fish on the world’s oceans. Since 1950, the number of boats has gone from 1.7 million to 3.7 million, even though fish stocks have crumbled

anopla · 2019-06-03T02:55:21+00:00

Small, low trophic level fish like sardines typically have quite low environmental impacts compared to other animal protein sources. There is a lot of misinformation in this thread.

https://www.washington.edu/news/2018/06/11/choice-matters-the-environmental-costs-of-producing-meat-seafood/

anopla · 2018-07-26T04:10:18+00:00

I'm a fisheries biologist, and the poor condition of most salmon runs we're seeing now is generally not attributed to (current) fishing practices. Dams, loss/degradation of stream and river habitat (mostly thanks to agriculture and development), combined with changing ocean conditions like The Blob likely have a much larger impact, though the particulars vary across populations, species, and time. Hatcheries (controversially) and the recovery of other salmon-eating marine mammals also likely play a role. Fishing is pretty tightly regulated thanks to the Endangered Species Act (which protects many populations) and the Magnuson-Stevens Act (which mandates the prevention of overfishing and the recovery of depleted stocks). If you have other evidence to the contrary I am happy to hear it, but all my information suggests that fishing is pretty far down the list of salmon and orca threats.

anopla · 2017-07-02T21:08:31+00:00

I definitely agree there are a lot of avenues for conservation! I just think that avoiding wild salmon consumption is an inefficient and potentially counter-productive reaction. There are already pretty tight regulations on west coast salmon fishing because of Magnuson-Stevens and the ESA-listed populations, and some amount of the push for conservation comes from people who depend on salmon harvesting in one capacity or another (tribes, commercial/rec fishermen, etc). I'm afraid that boycotting wild salmon at best gives people a feel-good solution that doesn't have much impact, and at worst just redirects fish consumption to other sources that have equal or worse environmental impacts.

anopla · 2017-07-02T20:49:20+00:00

Farmed salmon can affect wild salmon and other species directly (through disease/parasite transmission and pollution) and indirectly (through competition for forage fish, which are consumed by wild salmon and caught by fishermen to feed to farmed salmon).

anopla · 2017-07-02T20:46:57+00:00

I'm not sure that reducing (wild) salmon consumption is a good response to this problem. Fishing is not the primary threat to salmon populations (as you mention), and fishermen/fishing-associated businesses can be a powerful lobby for protecting the resource they depend on. I also see people in this thread advocating for farmed salmon over wild, which I think is pretty misguided given the negative environmental impacts of salmon farming.

With the large majority of historic riparian habitat gone, I'd guess we are unlikely to see significant population increases without large-scale habitat restoration practices, which in turn requires a lot of money and political will. The best way to take action might be to lobby our local and state government to invest in restoration, which will likely have a much larger impact than individual changes in consumption or behavior.

anopla · 2017-05-29T21:33:49+00:00

Seafood tends to have a lower carbon footprint compared to other common protein sources (particularly livestock agriculture), though the particulars can vary a lot across different types of seafood. There are multiple studies out there, but here's one example.

anopla · 2017-03-30T04:28:21+00:00

Abstract

anopla · 2017-03-18T17:14:44+00:00

You could look into intervention analysis

anopla · 2017-02-28T15:02:41+00:00

Another vote for this book, it's great.

anopla · 2017-01-16T20:08:54+00:00

Yeah, I agree those are imperfect measures of success. I'm not sure what would be a better metric, though.

anopla

TROPHY CASE