Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Wish this would work for bluefin tuna and whales

According to reports (see below), Greenpeace is dropping big chunks of concrete in the Kattegat, the body of water leading to the Baltic Sea past Denmark, to seriously impair the ability of bottom trawlers to catch cod the old-fashioned way, by ripping the seafloor to shreds and catching every cod that swims until the fishery collapses. (This is how it worked in Canada.) According to what Greenpeace says, it works. After watching the ineffectiveness of the Sea Shepherds against the ruthless Japanese whaling fleet this year (somebody needs to donate a BUNCH of prop foulers to them), and figuring that there's hardly anything that can be done to stop the exploitation of bluefin tuna, it's actually nice to see an environmental activist tactic that works.

This BBC article has an accompanying video (and the narrator is cute to boot)

I kinda wish fish wasn't so good for humans to eat; if someone could engineer a widely-publicized study that would indicate consuming all kinds of fish (but especially really big fish) contributes to penile withering in human males and huge breast warts*** in human females, that would probably cut global consumption considerably.

But that wouldn't be ethical, would it? So tell me how tobacco companies were able to pay scientists to make up studies obscuring the link between smoking and lung cancer for so many years? All that's needed is a couple of unethical (but well-regarded) scientists on the side of the environmentalists.

*** Actually, if you're German, brustwarzen are very nice things, but something gets lost in the translation.

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