Date: Sat, 14 Feb 98 14:41:30 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Rev Thomas Malthus returns







		C. Proyect,



	Fish are not non-renewable.  Neither are cuttlefish or crabs. 
They are at the top of their food chains and as long as there is a bottom
to their food chains, they will come back. If people ate plankton
directly, there might be cause for concern.  Long-term degradation of
their environments with heavy metals, slow-degrading organics, concrete
and asphalt are the only things that structurally change fish stocks over
the long term. Reef fishing with dynamite and cyanide (mostly performed by
the same kind of down-and-out operators with no jobs who suck piddling
amounts of gold from Amazon rivers and spread mercury all around) is also
worrisome because coral reefs are hothouses for species diversification. 
Pelagic fish species like swordfish are impossible to fish out entirely,
and it is impossible, obviously, to destroy their environment. Ditto
midwater and deep water species.  Cod habitat has been degraded, but they
essentially have just been fished into uneconomic sizes and numbers.  It
will take decades for fish stocks to return to their previous levels. 
Meanwhile all those boatmen in Gloucester will deservedly go broke and
their boats will rust out.  Fuck 'em, it's not like they didn't get
warned.  Finally, the Japanese will be spending so much money on fish that
they might realize that aquaculture is the way to go.  Some African
country will probably have to sink a Japanese drift-netter with a missile
before that happens, however. 



	Do what I do: eat farm-raised catfish.




	peace




p.s. - Freshwater fish are far more imperiled, so much so that I fear
people have simply given up on them.  



     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---