If you looked at the amount of fish that we currently eat, it’s just a tiny fraction of the human diet. You can expand that much more without wiping out all the fisheries. If you have significant climate change, that will result in more upwelling [seawater rise from the depth of the ocean to the surface], which will be like fertilizing the ocean surface, and you get more fish. Similarly we can purposely fertilize the ocean in order to get more fish. So then we have enough fish to feed everyone. How do you catch it all?
Then we started to look into how many ships exist—and if we converted all of them to fishing vessels, would that be enough in order to get enough fish harvested to meet demand? It turned out you end up with problems such as round trip distance. You can’t have little fishing boats go out and fish and then drive all the way back. The solution to that is ship-to-ship transfers of fish, which luckily, they already do now. So our fish solution is actually one of the better ones under certain circumstances. [But] it won’t work for everything. You still need some light.
Thanks for your interest—all of ALLFED’s published research is here. But what is not yet published is that it is looking like the ocean fertilization effect will not be as strong as we had originally estimated. However, there are ~10 billion tons of deeper water fish (200 to 1000 m down), though they would be expensive to harvest. We think producing seaweed would be low cost and feed many people.
There was this paper (not by ALLFED) saying fish catch would generally be lower in nuclear winter. However, the model does not take into account the fact that as medium and large fish are removed, there would be more small fish that people could catch (what I call, “fishing lower on the food chain”). We want to model this and the feasibility of converting fishing boats to catch the smaller fish.
Interesting. I was particularly curious about why you think the ocean fertilization effect will not be as strong as you had originally estimated, if you have readings to recommend there too.
I was too optimistic in the book Feeding Everyone No Matter What assuming that the fish production globally could be similar to that of current coastal upwelling areas. However, we did find that seaweed grows better in nuclear winter than in normal times.
Some information I found
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Could the oceans feed us?
If you looked at the amount of fish that we currently eat, it’s just a tiny fraction of the human diet. You can expand that much more without wiping out all the fisheries. If you have significant climate change, that will result in more upwelling [seawater rise from the depth of the ocean to the surface], which will be like fertilizing the ocean surface, and you get more fish. Similarly we can purposely fertilize the ocean in order to get more fish. So then we have enough fish to feed everyone. How do you catch it all?
Then we started to look into how many ships exist—and if we converted all of them to fishing vessels, would that be enough in order to get enough fish harvested to meet demand? It turned out you end up with problems such as round trip distance. You can’t have little fishing boats go out and fish and then drive all the way back. The solution to that is ship-to-ship transfers of fish, which luckily, they already do now. So our fish solution is actually one of the better ones under certain circumstances. [But] it won’t work for everything. You still need some light.
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http://nautil.us/issue/101/in-our-nature/what-to-eat-after-the-apocalypse
Thanks for your interest—all of ALLFED’s published research is here. But what is not yet published is that it is looking like the ocean fertilization effect will not be as strong as we had originally estimated. However, there are ~10 billion tons of deeper water fish (200 to 1000 m down), though they would be expensive to harvest. We think producing seaweed would be low cost and feed many people.
Has this been published since then? Would love to read this :)
There was this paper (not by ALLFED) saying fish catch would generally be lower in nuclear winter. However, the model does not take into account the fact that as medium and large fish are removed, there would be more small fish that people could catch (what I call, “fishing lower on the food chain”). We want to model this and the feasibility of converting fishing boats to catch the smaller fish.
Interesting. I was particularly curious about why you think the ocean fertilization effect will not be as strong as you had originally estimated, if you have readings to recommend there too.
I was too optimistic in the book Feeding Everyone No Matter What assuming that the fish production globally could be similar to that of current coastal upwelling areas. However, we did find that seaweed grows better in nuclear winter than in normal times.