Hello @LewisBollard and @MichaelStJules thank you for your replies. Some answers to your considerations:
If replacement to aquiculture is a logic, you can state the same to fight against land animal production, as this will all concentrate consumption on aquatic animals as people do not even know which fish is caught or farmed. Certainly this will mean more lives killed/ in suffering, the same way? Shall we stop talking about transitioning away from land animals? Certainly not.
You mention the unlikeliness of promoting a ban on fishing. Although there will always be traditional communities depending on fishing to thrive, from these we should never impose a ban, it is certainly true by facts that: a. aquiculture is not replacing fishing, just increasing fish consumption, as you can see in popular stats from Our world in Data; b. for fishing, you need to consider deaths of fish and crustaceans which are significantly smaller than the fish farmed, a few examples are: krill x farmed shrimp, salmon x anchovies, etc. No wonder fished animals increase number of lives killed in the order of magnitude of 10x (but represents only 1⁄2 of the current tonnage yearly). Are we ok to ignore this huge elephant in the room?
The thinking that fishing is increasing fish populations is certain on short term, but not true long term. A high spike on prey fish means less of their prey, subsequently, therefore diminishing their populations over time. There are a few studies on the effect of removing a predator from their ecosystem resulting not on increase of fish populations or biodiversity, but in fact, the opposite happening: less biodiversity, lower populations, ecosystem collapse. This can be easily noticed in scenarios before and after implementing a Marine Protected Area—I can share a few studies if this helps, let me know.
This ask is also not impossible or far fetched: we had already moved great heaps when it coms to our culture of hunting land animals. In Brazil for example 100% of native land animals are protected towards hunting. However at see, all animals can be legally caught and die as ‘bycatch’. Why not move also towards aquatic wild lives? It is massively possible to end industrial fishing: we have gone great lenghts with the international ban to the hunting of marine mammals and the hunting of sea turtles. We are starting to do the same for sharks and rays. It is only a matter of time that our dissonance between hunting wildlife on land and at sea will be fixed and we can notice how this significantly affects their welfare overall (certainly the welfare which is not ambiguous at all, of shortening their lives and killing large quantities of animals in an extreme cruel way (btw all industrial fishing techniques are extremely negative towards welfare—so if you agree on lowering the impact on fishing welfare, surely a ban on industrial fishing must be on the cards).
Also, going beyond animal welfare and animal rights: when we talk about removing wildlife in this great quantity as I mentioned before, we are also talking about ecossystemic service of the ocean for the balance of the planet and all living beings on Earth. We are already seeing a global catastrophe happening on front of our very own eyes, and if we consider that the ocean provides at least 50% of the oxygen on Earth, and it is responsible for the historical of 85% in the atmosphere today, also considering the ocean absorbs 90% of the excess heat from CO2 emissions and is responsible for 25% of the cabon sink, it is our largest ally on the fight against climate change. However it needs a balanced ecosystem for it to keep performing its role. Fishing alone, especially illegal and industrial, already had depleted more than 70% of species (which are being overfished or are on the verge of collapse), it destroys 50x more land annually than deforestation.
For me it raises an important reflection: doing all we are doing for farmed land and aquatic animals, many people will also consider going to fished animals for their animal protein intake. Is this incentive a wise one to stimulate?
Aquaculture also uses fished animals to feed their animals: therefore bans that lower fishing efforts can also make aquiculture less interesting to be pursued?
Finally, considering all of the above, shouldn’t we refrain from stimulating consumption of wild animals completely? For their welfare, but also for our planet? Ignoring this issue for me certainly shows a huge area of neglect and efficiency gap, IMO.
Not clear Michael what you mean y saying ’making fishing more sustainable = more fishing, can you elaborate? (Remembering I mention here to ban industrial fishing, not increasing its welfare, which for me is an oxymoron).
Happy to evolve this conversation further with you both. Thanks!
Hello Vasco, thank you a lot for your reply. Some food for thought (as I did not extend a full analysis of all being mentioned and shared):
First, I’ll respond to your second comment. As you can see in the numbers, fishing is responsible for more seabird deaths, but less death of mammals. But what I wanted to point out is that this is a more comparable number (and shows a group of animal can indeed suffer more by plastic than fishing or vice-versa) and it only reveals a part of the numbers, as I stated too in my response. As I said from the start: fishing is the single most cause of death in the ocean, if you include all fish, crustacea (if krills are included the numbers, the numbers of lives can be estimated to the quatrillions, as we fish 2.7 million tons of krill per year, and a krill’s weight is 1 gram per average), though we shan’t ignore the huge impact of plastic in the ocean, as the numbers shown can give higher impact to some of the groups of animals versus others.
Secondly, I read your reply from Michael St Jules, though affirming that ‘microplastic ingestion rarely causes mortality in any organism’ can’t be farther from the truth. As an example from what we already debated, this is what led to the seabird numbers (as there are dozens of studies proving that plastic debris is their cause of death, as you had also pointed out). An example of study here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-36585-9 .
For fish, the influence of plastic and microplastic causing deaths can be seen in some rare studies, some here:
An interesting study with Rainbow Trouts, is that when fish is exposed to MP and a virus, the chances of dying from the virus goes from 20% than up to 80%! Study here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004896972208295X?via%3Dihub
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/631/1/012006/pdf#:~:text=The%20microplastics%20can%20have%20a,oxidative%20damage%20and%20abnormal%20behavior. - This brings an analysis of the plankton Daphinia magna you also shared a study from, showing the death effects of a 0,001 millimetre of plastic (microplastics are debris of 0,5mm or less, so this fits the size with a lot to spare) on their death rate (page 5).
Important to note that these types of research pose a difficulty, as death because of microplastic ingestion takes a while to study and is not realistic to be done in labs/ aquaria. There are more studies on marine mammals, turtles and seabirds in their natural habitat as these are examined more commonly by WW environmental agencies when reaching the surface/ ashore (and thus the numbers can be better extrapolated) than fish, frankly revealing the massive speciesism in the marine biology/ environmental studies arena. Also, important to note that these studies we both brought above focus on microplastic, and not cover the ingestion of larger plastic litter by fish, which we know can be the cause of deaths by entanglement, filled stomach (starvation) and choking. In short, there is a clear lack of study on fish deaths by consumption of plastic debris in general.
Another fact to point out on the fishing x plastics debate is that if we immediately stop fishing, the alleviation of the impact on marine life will be immediate, and complete. If we stop using plastics today, we would still have to manage the millions of tons of plastic we had already produced, and that are still in the environment. A study shows that if we stop using virgin plastic right now, in 2050 the amount of microplastics in the ocean will more than double by 2050, coming from the existing plastic pollution: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358446217_Impacts_of_plastic_pollution_in_the_oceans_on_marine_species_biodiversity_and_ecosystems
I am roughly aware of Brian Tomasik’s numbers on fishing as I work to fight against it myself.
Just to be dead clear, I still am in complete alignment with you regarding the impact of fishing x plastics for the ocean’s ecosystem, as a fighter for the end of fishing myself. I just wanted to shed a light on why not to de-prioritise the efforts on fighting plastic pollution for the protection of the ocean.
Thanks for sharing and for the debate.