getbent
Well-Known Member
Did any one catch the National Geographic show last night called Dangerous Catch and Dirty Secrets? I found it to be quite informational, excellent in fact. At one point they were talking about fish stocks on the African coast...I believe Namibia. Anyways they were saying that this stretch of coastal waters was once one of the richest in the world (40 years ago) but as usual was overfished by foriegn interests. They were catching 1 million tons of fish a year and at one point there were 1 million tons of sardines...that is 1000 billion individual sardines...yes they are gone. Now what is happening is the phytoplankton is dying instead of being consumed by these fish and falls to the seafloor where it decays into methane gas and I believe sulpher dioxide. When there is a low pressure event (Rain) the pressure on the ocean floor is decreased and these gases explode from the bottom and head topside. This use to be a localized event but is now growing to hundreds if not thousands of square kilometers. When this happens the ocean turns yello brown and and emits a sulpher, rotten egg smell followed by thousands upon thousands of dead fish washing up on shore.
The government in the area has been attempting to rebiuld these fish stocks (sardines) but the larvae and juvinilles are now being killed off by these "explosions". Pretty interesting stuff...kinda scary actually. The scientists even go so far as to say that the amount of this gas being emitted which turns into CO2 in the water is contributing to Global Warming as well.
They also talked about aquaculture and its importance to sustaining wild stocks. On the East coast of Canada where they have fish farms, two guys, a biologist and an ecologist have convinced this huge fish farm company to grow along with their salmon stocks kelp and mussels (which the company originally did not want around for various reasons)as a biproduct. The kelp and the mussels are a natural biofilter that clean at least 40% of the waste naturally from the salmon farming. They then harvest both the kelp and the mussels and increase their profit (the botttom line) so at least they are trying to lessen the impact from the farms. I thought it was pretty cool since aquaculture is not going away anytime soon.
There are also fish farms using plant eaters such as Catfish and Tillapia being grown to help lessen the impact. They have these huge netpen geodesic shaped domes floating around under the surface containing different species of fish and some of these have very little impact and are doing quite well. They say some of these are alleviating the pressure on the wild stocks.
Just a little FYI I thought some might enjoy and like to ponder.
I am neither condoning nor condeming any of this...just found it interesting.
Getbent
The government in the area has been attempting to rebiuld these fish stocks (sardines) but the larvae and juvinilles are now being killed off by these "explosions". Pretty interesting stuff...kinda scary actually. The scientists even go so far as to say that the amount of this gas being emitted which turns into CO2 in the water is contributing to Global Warming as well.
They also talked about aquaculture and its importance to sustaining wild stocks. On the East coast of Canada where they have fish farms, two guys, a biologist and an ecologist have convinced this huge fish farm company to grow along with their salmon stocks kelp and mussels (which the company originally did not want around for various reasons)as a biproduct. The kelp and the mussels are a natural biofilter that clean at least 40% of the waste naturally from the salmon farming. They then harvest both the kelp and the mussels and increase their profit (the botttom line) so at least they are trying to lessen the impact from the farms. I thought it was pretty cool since aquaculture is not going away anytime soon.
There are also fish farms using plant eaters such as Catfish and Tillapia being grown to help lessen the impact. They have these huge netpen geodesic shaped domes floating around under the surface containing different species of fish and some of these have very little impact and are doing quite well. They say some of these are alleviating the pressure on the wild stocks.
Just a little FYI I thought some might enjoy and like to ponder.
I am neither condoning nor condeming any of this...just found it interesting.
Getbent
