The Pacific’s Salmon Are Back — Thank Human Ingenuity

National Review Online ^ | April 22, 2014 | Robert Zubrin

[Sequoyah101]

PING!

[G Larry]

Don’t you understand that increased food supplies could lead to more people?!?!?

Do you not understand that every U.N. initiative for the last 50 years has been aimed at limiting the number “PEOPLE” on this planet?!?!?!?

There’s TWO kinds of “PEOPLE” this world doesn’t need:
1) The productive class who use and harvest the resources of this earth in disproportionate numbers,
and
2) The third world types who insist on reproducing at fantastic rates, and making the rest of us feel bad, because they need those resources much more urgently than we wasters!

[FatherofFive]

the predators like whales that will eventually learn to come there to feed on the baby salmon

Whales do eat fish. The largest - the Blue whale - eats krill.

[B4Ranch]

First you have to confiscate all of our firearms. You cannot get started until you accomplish that first.

[Robert357]

A very wise man once pointed out to me that of all of the food that people eat (almost without exception) the only major food source that is still obtained in a “hunter/gatherer” approach is fishing/seafoods. Just about everything else has surrendered to modern agriculture.

So the question for the environmentalists who object to farmed salmon (as it isn't natural) or other aquaculture project, how long can you prevent this major source of protein for humans from being brought into management by modern agricultural methods?

Either there will be “fish farms” or the sea will be fertilized and manipulated to produce more food for a growing world population. It is inevitable.

[Carry_Okie]

How do they count fish?

It depends upon who is doing the counting. The USF&WS counts adult fish in fish ladders. Others stun electrically juvenile fish in streams to get a sense of successful spawning. Yet others measure the catch. There are hordes of interested parties each with an agenda compiling it all.

[fireforeffect]

Yes, but the increased population of whales will cause an increase in harvesting of whales by the native peoples of Alaska and the Japanese. When the whales die off, the Alaskans will go back on government welfare and the Japanese will try to establish a eastern co-prosperity collective with other nations in the region. What could go wrong?

[ken5050]

Thanks for the info....and thanks for not telling me “one at a time..” (g)

[Carry_Okie]

Thanks for the info....and thanks for not telling me “one at a time..” (g)

With Russian, Japanese, and Korean trawlers out there creaming as much as they can take, that's not in the cards.

[RKBA Democrat]

Fascinating article. And in response to the question of “what happens when they stop” ...ferrous sulfate powder is roughly $180 per ton.

I reckon the fishermen in Alaska and Canada will find a way to remedy the problem.

[neverdem]

You’re right about doing this geoengineering with iron sulfate willy nilly. It could be too soon to see any bad results from it.

[okie01]

I’ve been talking about this kind of technology for thirty years. It’s nice to see it finally happen.

I'm moved to suspect that mariculture could have the same kind of impact on civilization as Norman Borlaug's Green Revolution.

What strikes me as key to the result is the simple concept of the ocean as a pasture. The implications become obvious immediately.

Where would this country be, for example, if we had viewed the Great Plains as we have viewed the oceans -- unsuitable for improvement and capable of producing only that which grew there naturally?

It seems only proper, then, to treat the oceans as a pasture -- an open range pasture.

[Hot Tabasco]

“long-barren oceans”.... What did I miss?

All the major fishing is along coastal regions where there is natural habitat for feeder fish. The ocean is virtually a water desert, you go out several hundred miles and beyond, where the depths are in the thousands of feet, there are no massive schools of fish because there are no massive sources of food to sustain them.........

Kinda like why nobody bass fishes in the middle of a deep lake...the thriving habitat and the food sources are along the shallow shorelines..........

[dynachrome]

I love it when the eco-stalinists get their panties in a wad. Would be nice if the price of salmon came down a bit

[Carry_Okie]

What strikes me as key to the result is the simple concept of the ocean as a pasture.

The problem is managing property rights over a mobile resource. I own the patent on a business method dedicated to exactly that idea.

[NormsRevenge]

I saw streaks of crap in the air today,, they been spraying at low altitudes, bastards.. The streaks of visual ‘material’ is so obvious, the message so bizarre, .. Geoengineering my arse.

If I was the fish, I’d sue.. The rest of us are subject to whatever evolves of a ‘modified’ atmosphere and no one seems to care what is being dumped on them in the name of slowing global varming.

GEoengineering and its advocates ought be viewed with much skepticism.. Your lives may well depend on it.

[Jet Jaguar]

Alaska ping.

[Billthedrill]

If it is accepted that we are simply agents of destruction, consuming or ruining resources that existed before we came, then it follows that human activities, numbers, and liberties must be severely constrained and that someone must be empowered to do the constraining.

And paid handsomely to remind us of our own inherently destructive nature. Nice work if you can get it.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

I like the idea and results, but wonder if it is wise to train all of the predators to come there to eat... and then if we stop... they die in mass I guess?

My guess would be that the removal of the iron sulfate supplement will simply result in the phytoplankton density gradually returning to it's pre-supplement level, not disappearing altogether. Populations along the food chain based on the phytoplankton would also gradually return to their pre-supplement levels as some of the animals head elsewhere and others reproduce less, but why should be a mass die-off anywhere in the food chain?

[PIF]

The rising temperatures on the Frazer are due to Canadian aluminum smelters not any globul warming crap. The smelters return their waste heated water to the river, killing returning and downward migrating sockeye salmon by the 100Ks. This has been going on since the late 80s. And became apparent in the 90s to everyone concerned.

Historically, the Frazer runs were virtually killed off when a railroad slide blocked the river. For the following 60 years, both American and Canadian commercial salmon fishermen scarified their catches to allow more then needed fish to return and paid a hefty tax per pound on caught fish to support and expand the Frazer river hatcheries run by a non-political organization, which regulated the number and timing of harvest for both parties.

As a result of the “Boldt Decision” and the subsequent 1979 SCOTUS “Washington Passenger Vessel vs US” decision, the Treaty Tribes won the right to take Frazer salmon according to the amount they decided in unprecedented numbers, thus destroying the 60 year compact and the viability of the fishery.

Thus began the rise of Treaty Tribes and Special Masters over all seafood resources, the relegation of non-Treaty individuals (all other US citizens) to second class citizenship, and with the flow of special rights and Indonesian capital came the beginning of the now ever-present nationwide Indian casinos ...

Some years later, the Canadian government withdrew from the compact after the US government refused to pay its agreed share. The non-political organization. IPSFC in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, was disbanded. The Canadian Department of Fisheries, based in Montreal, Canada, took over management on its usual political basis and the runs began a major decline.

The upshot was:
US Pacific North West commercial salmon fishermen had their mainstay fishery virtually eliminated;
US PNW commercial salmon fishermen were themselves mostly eliminated;
The better, more tribally politically connected Indian fishermen in the Treaty Tribes became briefly wealthy, but whose fortunes sharply declined as Montreal’s political management and resource cutbacks increased;
Consumer sockeye salmon prices began a steep rise;
Montreal began a campaign to place blame for their Frazer River failures on everyone and anything ... and the now fashionable globul warming;
The dream of retuning Frazer River sockeye from the few 100k, after the slide, to its historic numbers of 60-80 million annually returning sockeye to a dream remembered by only a few.

This was a major victory for the Left and for the Statists, a major defeat for individual liberty and the US Constitution.