People have got to eat.
To eat they either have to grow food or do something useful which they can exchange for food.
Squid is good food so some people go and catch squid and exchange it for the things they need to survive and prosper in this sorry world.
Some people think catching squid is bad because it impacts on the sealions or something and therefore the Government shouldn't let people catch squid.
The people who think other people shouldn't catch squid are very often people who are prospering, they are often employed in secure jobs and paid from taxes extracted from the people who do useful things, things like catching squid funnily enough. Squid that can be consumed in fancy eateries where University lecturers can dine upon dishes like calamari green salad and seafood chowder while lamenting with their colleagues how "greedy humans" are raping the planet. And killing the sea lions and polar bears in order to "line their pockets".
Really of course the people catch squid do it so they do not end up with swollen bellyed malnourished children - a common enough sight in parts of the world where people do not catch enough squid.
To eat they either have to grow food or do something useful which they can exchange for food.
Squid is good food so some people go and catch squid and exchange it for the things they need to survive and prosper in this sorry world.
Some people think catching squid is bad because it impacts on the sealions or something and therefore the Government shouldn't let people catch squid.
The people who think other people shouldn't catch squid are very often people who are prospering, they are often employed in secure jobs and paid from taxes extracted from the people who do useful things, things like catching squid funnily enough. Squid that can be consumed in fancy eateries where University lecturers can dine upon dishes like calamari green salad and seafood chowder while lamenting with their colleagues how "greedy humans" are raping the planet. And killing the sea lions and polar bears in order to "line their pockets".
Really of course the people catch squid do it so they do not end up with swollen bellyed malnourished children - a common enough sight in parts of the world where people do not catch enough squid.
I think I'm part of the intellectual decline :)
ReplyDeleteI've been looking into the fishing industry and some species are not controlled, and then over-fished.
I am against wanton destruction of fishing populations just because a commercial operation figures that it can switch to a different species when one runs out.
I take your point about the fact that the biggest hypocrites are often the academics or government workers who will be ordering squid whilst decrying their extinction.
as part of their job, they probably don't have the mandate to call for a boycott of squid products, but perhaps a personal statement about leading the way would help.
"Some people think catching squid is bad because it impacts on the sealions or something ..."
ReplyDeleteYeah, stupid commie intellectuals in their ivory towers witn no idea about the real world, eh Andrei!
Good bust on those awful tax-paying people in secure jobs - go for the jugular, Andrei, they're parasites ... or something!
Some points
ReplyDelete(1) It costs a lot of money to run a fishing boat - if you don't catch enough fish you loose money and if you loose money often enough you also loose your boat and livelihood - that's real life outside academia
So
if fish stocks become depleted by over fishing the fishing ceases and the fish stocks either recover or they don't.
If they don't that particular ecosystem was unstable to start with and was going to change anyway - the flip may have been bought forward. Ecosystems do change all by themselves all the time - which is why triceratops haven't roamed the great plains of North America for 57 million years
(2) Human beings are part of the ecosystem. We need to afford human beings and their welfare the highest priority this comes ahead of sea lions assuming of course that fishing for squid has a huge negative impact upon them.
Again the nature of the beast is such that the world is an uncertain and changing place - we have to do our best to manage and cope with that while providing for our immediate needs.
Such has been our success in taming nature and bending it to our will we can afford to have privileged people in ivory towers hand wringing about the consequences of what we do - blissfully unaware of what it is to go to bed hungry as some do even in this country.