[HN Gopher] An undersea art gallery that ensnares illegal trawlers ___________________________________________________________________ An undersea art gallery that ensnares illegal trawlers Author : unripe_syntax Score : 179 points Date : 2022-11-16 08:37 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.wired.co.uk) (TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.co.uk) | dementis wrote: | This reminded me of a burial trend I heard about in Florida to | help build artificial reefs. Burial at sea is legal in the | US(with restrictions) but the Mediterranean has a ton of | ecological restrictions and a quick google search doesn't reveal | if burial at sea is legal within those protected waters. | | https://www.cremation.com/cremation-memorialization/eternal-... | troymc wrote: | Here's the website of _La Casa dei Pesci_ : | https://www.casadeipesci.it/ | elnatro wrote: | The fish house in English. | ambicapter wrote: | This seems like a genius idea that I want to get involved in. Are | there any projects like this in the northeastern US? | shagie wrote: | I am not aware of any... though I _do_ know that some of the | largest marble quarries in the world are in New England. | | http://www.vermontquarries.com/danby-quarry | | And then there's also large granite quarries... like the Rock | of Ages. | | https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/rock-of-ages-granite-qua... | olivermarks wrote: | It's a cute arty way to draw attention to a huge problem, but lax | legislation and penalties are the real culprit here. Net | inspection and huge fines would make industrial scale strip mine | fishing economically very risky. Again, the issue is that no one | can police the offshore globalists who hide behind a veneer of | philanthropy, woke virtue signaling and greenwashing. | ajmurmann wrote: | Why are you blaming globalism for this? I'd argue that a lack | of globalism is at fault here. Fishing in international waters | is a problem that can only be solved by the global community. | The problem here is that corporations and monetary interests | act globally and always will while governments aren't. | rthomas6 wrote: | No, this is incorrect. They already do regulate it. It is | already illegal. The problem is the regulations and penalties | are pretty hard to enforce when any ship in the world can go | anywhere else. Italy can pass all the regulations it likes, and | a Chinese ship full of somewhat desperate people can illegally | fish there anyway with whatever equipment they brought with | them, until the ship gets individually caught. And please note: | Italy's coastline is ... Big. Really big. | tmnvix wrote: | For anyone interested in seeing a short documentary about this, | DW covered it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-SPiCVTKiY | wffurr wrote: | What's the impact on climate change of just enforcing the laws | already on the books against bottom trawling and such? | jstanley wrote: | Are you suggesting that instead of coming up with ways to catch | criminals, we should just catch criminals? | a_shovel wrote: | If the goal was solely to ensnare trawler nets, then it could | probably be done a lot more efficiently by just sinking some | concrete blocks. But by putting _sculptures_ down there instead, | it gets media attention and public interest as well, which leads | to funding to continue the project. | kawsper wrote: | That's what Greenpeace is doing in the UK: | https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/live-greenpeace-boulders-... | overlordalex wrote: | Huh, seemed pretty effective at first glance. It also lead me | down a wiki rabbit hole from the dogger bank to similar | nearby features, which came full circle with the Cleaver Bank | where Greenpeace also sunk some boulders. Except apparently | they were removed by the fishers... The | Cleaver bank is in 2015 considered for protection as a Marine | protected area. The Greenpeace organisation considered the | actions of the Dutch government in this direction too slow | and sunk some large boulders on the seabed in May 2015 to | increase the nature value.[7] Dutch fishers lifted the | boulders on 16 June 2015, because they were afraid the | boulders would damage their fishing gear.[8] | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleaver_Bank | theptip wrote: | Maybe that's a benefit of something like artwork - removing | it would presumably be a crime? | a_shovel wrote: | If not a crime, at least it would look way worse in the | press than removing some featurless concrete blocks. | arcticfox wrote: | This seems like an asymmetric win for Greenpeace. It has to | be like 10x easier to chuck boulders around than find and | retrieve them. | ambicapter wrote: | > If the goal was solely to ensnare trawler nets | | It's not. The sculptures also serve as a base for the plant | life. | jrwoodruff wrote: | And probably as an attraction for divers and others in the | area. | chrisweekly wrote: | It started w concrete blocks -- but it proved too difficult to | fund them in sufficient supply to be effective. Sculptures OTOH | were a stroke of genius, flipping the script so they actually | generate revenue and a virtuous cycle of attention and more | installments. | ISL wrote: | Artists are also likely to be real interested in the | opportunity to have free marble in large formats on which to | work. | | Furthermore, if the sculpture works out well, you can get a | bunch of press. If it doesn't, you get to sink it in the | ocean forever. | gumby wrote: | Great project. But it makes me think that just dumping some tank | traps down there (Three steel bars welded normal to each other) | would work well to snag and tear nets and, if they don't | encounter a net, support some sea life. | ragingroosevelt wrote: | Where's the news-worthy-ness in that, though? I get the sense | that a large point of this isn't functional but rather to cause | people to talk and think about it. | gumby wrote: | Oh, I think the art makes it a great project (I should have | been less pithy and more fulsome in my praise in the first | sentence) for the vert reason you give. | | I just meant it inspires me to think of a cheap and easy way | to go "monkey wrench gang" in other places. In fact | governments could even do this in places where they are | trying to restore fisheries. | christkv wrote: | The illegal trawling on the African coast by Chinese trawlers are | destroying the livelihood in many African countries. I wish the | EU would work with those nations affected to intercept and arrest | those boats. | dementis wrote: | This is from 2021 but it does show how heavily China has | invested into Africa to support their Naval and Maritime | shipping. | | https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9554253/How-China-b... | | There has been some speculation that China is effectively | trying to take control over Africa and has been rather | successful at doing so on some fronts. | | https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18417/china-taking-over-a... | krisoft wrote: | So Chinese ships are doing something at the coast of African | countries and somehow you want the EU to do something about | that? | | How does that compute? | ornornor wrote: | And that's why it's called tragedy of the commons. | stuaxo wrote: | An article on the original "tragedy of the commons" | | http://links.org.au/debunking-tragedy-commons | ornornor wrote: | This argues that the only alternative is privatization. | | I don't think that's true. | | The issue here is that land that no one has authority | over means that there is also no enforcement and that | it's a race to the bottom as to who will manage to | exploit it to the point where it is destroyed and useless | to anyone anymore. And why wouldn't you, morals aside? | It's basically free resources for the exploiter with | externalities shared by everyone. It doesn't mean the | solution is private ownership. Look at national parks, | they're publicly owned but they're not a no man's land so | a government has authority to enforce conservation rules | there and punish those who pollute/damage the park. | | That's what parent comment was perfectly illustrating: | "not EU waters, not EU trawlers, why even lift a finger | if Africa is too corrupt or financially unable to protect | these ecosystems and the Chinese too cynical to refrain | themselves?" | foobarian wrote: | The semantics of those words are not quite right. Yes a | national park may sound like a "public" good. But it is | privatized in the sense that there is an owner who looks | after it. If international waters had an owner as | diligent as the National Park Service things would be a | lot different. | pstuart wrote: | Perhaps it's time for International Parks. | brianmurphy wrote: | The same question remains. Enforced by whom? | | It seems solvable with a consensus of the stakeholders. | ornornor wrote: | Well I reckon government (or a government-like entity) | owned is as close as you'll get to have laws enforced | while not being privately owned (as in by an individual | or a corporation). | dementis wrote: | "Generally, a state's exclusive economic zone is an area | beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea, extending | seaward to a distance of no more than 200 nmi (370 km) | out from its coastal baseline." | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone | | "China has by far the largest distant water fleet in the | world with at least 3,000 vessels, some of which have | been spotted off the coasts of Africa and as far as | Ecuador. This has raised concerns of overfishing at a | time when global fish stocks are plummeting. "It's their | strategy of establishing themselves as a big fishing | power," said Matti Kohonen, executive director of the | FTC. "Then they end up breaking a lot of fishing laws by | doing that." | | https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2022/10/26/Chinese | -fi... | | The issue with a lot of places globally that Chinese | owned fishing fleets(of highly questionable legal status) | go is that they will decimate the area like a plague of | locus and then just like locus they will move on once | there is no longer any viable marine wildlife to catch(or | even kelp / sea grass to collect). And the local | governments either don't have the resources required to | patrol their coastal exclusive economic zone or they | intentionally don't want to antagonize China by stopping | their illegal fishing fleets either because of political | corruption or due to other more serious reasons. | | Technically the International Criminal Police | Organization (INTERPOL) can enforce Maritime law but I am | not aware of them doing anything about illegal fishing | fleets. | marginalia_nu wrote: | To be fair the EU can barely prevent this shit in European | waters. | Nursie wrote: | This sounds like a great project. | | It has been a consistent disappointment to me over the years that | the EU failed to act to restrict these practices effectively. | It's always the poor, poor fishermen who need their livelihoods | protecting, never mind that their livelihoods are under threat | from their own actions. | chrisweekly wrote: | I saw this on Patagonia's youtube channel... what a great idea. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-11-17 23:00 UTC)