Friday, September 10, 2010

[txgbuiul] Overfishing

What will happen if we stupidly continue overfishing the oceans?

Certainly the fish we like to eat will disappear, as will other creatures who like to hang out in the vicinity of fish we like to eat (e.g., dolphins with tuna).  The ecosystem will be affected, including humans who may starve with their food source depleted.

But let's not selfishly stop the analysis having just concluded that humans will be affected negatively.  What happens next?

Evolution predicts that fish that people don't like to eat will thrive.  But then we'll change our eating habits.  Perhaps then fish poisonous to humans?  But we eat fugu.  It'll have to be a fish (or probably other marine animal) where the poison is difficult to remove.  Can evolution exceed our technology at removing poison?

The oceans intensely beget life, and have for billions of years.  It is constantly bathed in an unending source of energy (the sun) to "feed" the bottom of the food chain (algae).  Will humans, by mechanical means only (fishing lines and nets), extinguish life, in a totalistic sense, in the ocean?  Or are these billion-year forces far greater than the sum of humanity's hunger?

We exclude, for this discussion, humans killing off the oceans by chemical means (fertilizer runoff) because that has already been done (Gulf of Mexico dead zone).

No comments :