From: spike66 (spike66@attbi.com)
Date: Fri May 02 2003 - 20:32:40 MDT
Charles Hixson wrote:
> ... my understanding is that commercial fishing vastly
> overfishes the areas that they fish in. This is a variant of the
> tragedy of the commons. Boats don't have their own herds of fish, so
> they don't have any direct penalty from avoiding overfishing one, and
> they do get a direct advantage, but if several different boats overfish
> several different schools of fish, they all suffer...
Calling overfishing a tragedy of the commons is one way
to look at it I suppose, but consider the impact on the
*total* life in the water. With our nets we remove only
those fish that are commercially profitable. But the
nets leave the overwhelming variety of life, the ones small
enough to pass thru the nets. We remove only the enormous
predators, enormous being defined as anything larger than a
few centimeters. The stunning variety of smaller lifeforms
all the way down to the submicroscopic, actually benefits
with the removal of these large predators. Overfishing has
its benefits.
spike
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