This is an interesting thing. Fish are over fished, stocks decline, the price goes up, fishing companies go out of business. The response has been sustainably farmed fish, that market is up hugely of course (its worth investing in if you are a futurist) There are also indications that changes in the ocean temperature and acidity are moving fish populations around such that a 'fishery collapse' might also be 'they went somewhere else'.
The last few years the salmon season was halted in California. Between low water for spawning and lots of fishing the catches were going down and few fish were returning to spawn. Now they have recovered somewhat and California is getting a better idea of what the population can support. Meanwhile it gets very expensive to eat fish.
Its for this reason I doubt that fish stocks will go completely extinct. Unlike land stocks where it 'cost' zero to wait for game to go by, fish require that you be in a boat to go get them. That costs money. If the return becomes so uncertain that you don't know if you will make or lose money on the outing, rational actors will stop playing.
Most of the mass extinction / exhaustion theories I've read are based on predicting a systemic collapse rather than the last fish of a particular type is removed manually. What is not clear is whether or not these systemic collapses actually occur. Localized food chains have some great examples (like coral reefs dying due to trawling and then losing the entire ecosystem sort of like the rain forest becoming farmland) but the deep sea stocks are much more difficult to kill off in that way.
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This is an interesting thing. Fish are over fished, stocks decline, the price goes up, fishing companies go out of business. The response has been sustainably farmed fish, that market is up hugely of course (its worth investing in if you are a futurist) There are also indications that changes in the ocean temperature and acidity are moving fish populations around such that a 'fishery collapse' might also be 'they went somewhere else'.
The last few years the salmon season was halted in California. Between low water for spawning and lots of fishing the catches were going down and few fish were returning to spawn. Now they have recovered somewhat and California is getting a better idea of what the population can support. Meanwhile it gets very expensive to eat fish.
Its for this reason I doubt that fish stocks will go completely extinct. Unlike land stocks where it 'cost' zero to wait for game to go by, fish require that you be in a boat to go get them. That costs money. If the return becomes so uncertain that you don't know if you will make or lose money on the outing, rational actors will stop playing.
Most of the mass extinction / exhaustion theories I've read are based on predicting a systemic collapse rather than the last fish of a particular type is removed manually. What is not clear is whether or not these systemic collapses actually occur. Localized food chains have some great examples (like coral reefs dying due to trawling and then losing the entire ecosystem sort of like the rain forest becoming farmland) but the deep sea stocks are much more difficult to kill off in that way.