23 thoughts on “Tragedy Of The Commons”

1. Just to play language police here, fish is a *healthful* source of Omega 3.

   It is only healthy when it is alive and swimming.

2. What do you hope to get out of the laboratory that isn’t already available from trout farms?

   1. Tuna, among other things.

      1. Not going to happen. Tuna are big, fast-swimming fish.

         Even if you could raise them in the laboratory, the result would be very different from the wild fish. Environment makes as much difference as species. Compare rainbow trout with steelhead salmon (which are actually the same species, raised in different environments).

         1. I wasn’t proposing growing fish. Just manufacturing tuna meat.

            1. Right, but the quality of the meat (muscle) is affected by environment as much as genetics.

               A wild tuna is like an Olympic athlete, not a scientist who spends his life in the laboratory. A muscle created in the lab wouldn’t get the same type of exercise as a wild tuna, unless you created a water tunnel for it to swim through — which would be ridiculously more expensive than just pulling one out of the sea.

            2. Not to mention the *internal* environment of the tuna’s body, which you’re removing it from.

            3. There is no intrinsic reason that we couldn’t manufacture whatever quality of meat we want with molecular manufacturing and/or 3D-printing. No exercise required.

            4. 3D printing only creates the geometry (arrangement of cells), not the complex flavor chemistry. You would end up with something like filet mignon — soft as butter but devoid of taste.

               (Yes, I’m insulting the restaurant industry’s favorite cut of overpriced meat.)

            5. I’m not talking about current technology.

            6. Unless you added some heart cells or external electric stimulation like a pacemaker, such as we already do externally to maintain muscle tone in people with paralysis. A few transistors and the exercise issue goes away.

3. Edward Wright – Well, one thing might be fish that actually has the omega-3 it’s supposed to (farmed fish doesn’t, because the feed is wrong) and doesn’t have the pesticide residues.

   One way to conserve fish that isn’t going to work is minimum size limits. All that does is ensure dead fish being thrown back into the sea.

4. False. Farmed trout are one of five species at the top of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “Super Green List” because of their Omega 3 content.

   The “wrong feed” you refer to is actually fish oil — just like the Omega-3 supplements you’ll find in drug stores.

   Stick to your breadfruit, Mr. Christian. 🙂

5. Our host had the problem, and the solution in the header. The seas are commons, and so ruined. Property rights will fix the problem.

   1. Thank you, exactly what I was thinking.

   2. Property rights are tricky with wild wide-ranging migratory animals unless you can figure out how to tag or mark them. If you do that, then there would be money in feeding them (just like making food for cows) because there would be some sort of traceable record about who contributed to the fish that are caught. With some sort of sophisticated ROV’s, it might even be possible to “herd” schools throughout the year, protecting them from predators or guiding them to better feeding grounds. The tracking from ROV’s might even be the only tags or marks required, at least until poacher ROV’s come into play. Then we’ll have a whole new genre of robot Westerns set in the ocean.

      The alternative is to fence the ocean into little ranches, and whales would never stop singing ballads about that.

      1. whales would never stop singing ballads about that.

         There’s a mullet joke here somewhere.

6. To replenish the fish stocks, raise fish then release them into the wild. Not sure why the multibillion eco-industry hasn’t started doing this yet. Al Gore alone could raise and release hundreds of millions of fish a year for the change he finds in his couches.

   1. They’d rather spend the money on themselves than animals.

      1. It’d be nice to spend the money on something that might actually fix the problem, but Gore’s record on doing that isn’t particularly inspiring.

7. I suspect that the first step in solving the problem is getting it away from the UN. That’s pretty much the second step in this Sidney Harris cartoon.

8. Fish only have the high w-3 content because they eat wilder diets than conventionally-farmed animals. As I understand it, farm-raised catfish and salmon aren’t much better for w-3 than conventional beef. The key is eating animals raised and finished on forage: grass-fed beef and milk from the same, eggs from pastured hens, etc. From a dietary standpoint, reducing high w-6 intake from “vegetable” oils is probably more important.

9. Like all animals, mortality rates are highest at the beginning. Farming the beginning, then releasing into the wild should take care of that. Being a multi-planet species wouldn’t hurt either.

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