[HN Gopher] California cancels salmon fishing season ___________________________________________________________________ California cancels salmon fishing season Author : makerofspoons Score : 111 points Date : 2023-03-13 20:57 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.cbsnews.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.cbsnews.com) | mikeg8 wrote: | Great news. I live in the area this story was filmed in and have | been to that pro shop. I really hope they can weather a lost | season and feel bad for the tough times ahead. But I'm happy and | proud that our state is willing to take drastic measures to | protect the resource. I hope that as we focus on balance and | stewardship, populations of salmon, and abalone, to continue to | rebound so that the fisheries are healthy and reopened, and we | can all enjoy the bounty from this region's ocean. | mulmen wrote: | Well, we can't _all_ enjoy the resource. That's how we got into | this mess. | yesenadam wrote: | And maybe the life in the ocean is more than just a "resource" | for humans to exploit. | dcwardell wrote: | Reminds me of the Alaskan Snow Crab population collapse last | year. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207372 | kposehn wrote: | I've been Salmon fishing in California since I can remember. | There are few things I love more than being on the water going | for Kings as the sun comes up. | | I'm really bummed we won't have a season, but having more fish in | the future is worth the short term cost. | bradleyjg wrote: | It can't hurt, but I don't think something like this is really | going to fix the problem. Dams, water levels abs temperatures, | ocean trawling, acidification ... there's lots and lots of | stress on salmon population aside from anglers. | mikeg8 wrote: | Fixing a multifaceted problem requires multifaceted | solutions. It can definitely help. | NegativeLatency wrote: | The publicity from the cancelation seems like a really | valuable aspect too | kposehn wrote: | Absolutely. We definitely need to put a spotlight on this | and other dwindling fish stocks. Even though there are | other populations to draw from, once they're gone they | are very, very hard to get back. | NegativeLatency wrote: | Car tire debris: | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/03/coho- | sal... | hadlock wrote: | There was a bombshell report about an immediate moratorium on | crab fishing in Alaska, that came out of nowhere, seemingly. | About a month later there was a (very, very quiet) report | justifying the moratorium. The short version is that | effectively scientists had been asking for reduction in | fishing in the area for decades and finally the remaining | stock in the area was so low it was critically endangering | the ecosystem there. So they finally put in a hard stop after | years of kicking the can down the road. | | I suspect we'll see additional cessation of fishing in other | areas as it further unravels that we've been chronically | overfishing for decades. | | Britain after WW2 overharvested mackerel from their seas for | so long that they had to put permanent fishing quotas and | even today the mackerel have not fully recovered from | overfishing over half a century ago. Anglers have an enormous | impact on fish and wildlife stocks. | qqtt wrote: | See also cod fishing in Newfoundland: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_fishing_in_Newfoundland | | Cod stocks collapsed in the early 1990s, with a moratorium | on fishing enacted in 1993. It took until 2011 for signs to | show that the ecosystem was recovering. | bradleyjg wrote: | They did a moratorium on crab fishing by crab fishermen but | allow trawling for groundfish that a) picks up crab as | bycatch and b) destroys their spawning grounds. | | It's not a great example of an effective policy response. | kposehn wrote: | It won't fix it for sure, but it will help. Reducing the | pressure on the population can go a long way to improving | future prospects. | insane_dreamer wrote: | > For years, the salmon fishing industry has been locked in a | political struggle in the legislature and the courts over how | much water is being allocated to Central Valley farmers. An | estimated 80 percent of the state's water goes to agriculture, | leaving cities and fisheries to fight over what's left. | | This is the core issue. With droughts tending to increase rather | than decrease, CA probably needs to reevaluate its commitment to | supporting its (very large) agribusinesses. | bradleyjg wrote: | CA needs to rethink its water law. Parts of the agribusiness | industry are at least providing decent bang for the gallon. But | the fact that there are fields of low value alfalfa being | watered tells you the incentives are all screwed up. | Teever wrote: | I've read online that a large portion of the water is used to | grow alfalfa that is sold to Saudi Arabia as cattle feed. | | I'm not from the area so I don't know how the water system | works but I was wondering if it was susceptible to domestic | terrorism like what was happening to the power grid in an | eastern state. | | It seems to me that a few well placed explosives could take out | the water supply to these cash crops during a very hot period | which would ruin the crop and free up the water to be used else | where for the rest of the season. | MuffinFlavored wrote: | > Last year, 196,000 adult fish were expected to return to the | Sacramento River to spawn but only 60,000 showed up. | | 70% decline | | If your business depends on this fishing season, what do you do? | Go bartend? | comonoid wrote: | I saw a bartender fishing in 2020 when everything was closed. | So, why not? | swatcoder wrote: | If I set up shop as a Blackberry developer and RIM goes out of | business, I have a tough year as I regroup and figure out next | steps for myself. | | Every business has dependencies outside of its control, and | yeah, sometimes you may have to go bartend for a bit. It sucks, | but business never comes with total guarantees. Planning for | this stuff can help. | SQueeeeeL wrote: | I'm not sure if it's in the best long term interest of the | entire state if a few niche businesses based entirely around | salmon fishing have a bad year. The calculus is those | businesses will either struggle now or struggle forever when | most of the fish are gone | nradov wrote: | Start a catfish farm. | | https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/reeling-in-the-doug... | geraldwhen wrote: | Catfish is not great. | aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: | It's hardly a substitute for salmon. | nradov wrote: | Some people prefer catfish over salmon. Tastes vary. | | Catfish is a pretty good substitute for salmon in terms | of macronutrients. Salmon does have higher levels of | omega-3 fatty acids. But catfish may be safer in terms of | heavy metals and other toxins, depending on where the | fish were raised. | myshpa wrote: | >> 196,000 adult fish were expected to return | | > If your business depends on this fishing season | | It seems that there's more people than fish. Draughts, | overfishing, pollution ... not much perspective in that. | | If I may ... plant based has a future, fishing ... not so sure. | Teever wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north... | mrguyorama wrote: | In my state, all the lobster fishing people have a "co op" to | jointly decide how to manage the public resource of the fish in | our waters so that they can come together and make the kind of | conservation decisions together, and create some force to | prevent anyone from defecting and catching everything in a down | year. This gives them more stability year to year and a little | bit of possible price fixing. | | Just don't call it a union. | mulmen wrote: | Why is a private organization managing a public resource? | Shouldn't a government agency do that? | InitialLastName wrote: | > Just don't call it a union. | | Of course not. The more accurate word is "cartel" (note: I | see management of a shared resource as a perfectly legitimate | justification for cartel behavior). | twblalock wrote: | Catch different kinds of fish. | myshpa wrote: | It's not just the draughts. | | https://www.seaspiracy.org/facts | | "Species like thresher, bull and hammerhead sharks have lost up | to 80-99% of their populations in the last two decades. | | Seabird populations have declined by 70% since the 1950's. | | Studies estimate that up to 40% of all marine life caught is | thrown overboard as bycatch. | | Six out of seven species of sea turtles are either threatened or | endangered due to fishing. | | Over 300,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises are killed as bycatch | every year. | | 2.7 trillion fish are caught every year, or up to 5 million | caught every minute. | | Fish populations are in decline to near extinction. | bradleyjg wrote: | _Studies estimate that up to 40% of all marine life caught is | thrown overboard as bycatch._ | | This is a fairly important part. It's one thing to fish and | eat. It's another thing to fish and destroy. Trawling is the | strip mining of the sea. | yesenadam wrote: | It makes me ashamed to be human. Reading stuff like that, and | thinking about what we do to cows, sheep, lambs, chickens, etc, | it dawned on me a while ago that humans have no right to treat | animals like they're just a bunch of cells to be treated | however we want, like a serial killer treats their victims. But | that animals are fellow beings, a lot like us in many ways. I | didn't want pain, or someone to kill me, so I figured they | didn't either. | | It was so easy to stop eating animal "products". The whole | thing started to seem obscene, like a nightmare - ads on TV | trying to tempt people to eat slaughtered baby sheep etc. I | thought I'd miss the taste of meat but never have. (I feel so | weird writing that sentence now.) | | I encourage everyone reading this not to be a part of the | problem, to stop contributing to this desecration. If no-one | ate meat, this genocide of sea life would just stop. For every | person that stops, we get closer to that. I realize in some | cultures, it's not so simple, but in many, it is. | nimbius wrote: | wild...as a hunter who has made the trek to California a few | times for Javelina hog and black bear, i had no clue they even | offered a permit for salmon at all...its just not something | advertised much. | wazoox wrote: | And in EU, the French government just announced that it will | "strongly oppose" forbidding deep ocean scrubbing nets in | "protected areas" (which are therefore totally unprotected). | They look like caricature villains from a comic book or | something. Bonkers. | | For history, here's the criminal, senseless moron, shame on | him, shame on them all: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtfGFt1c5H8 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-13 23:00 UTC)