Endangered Species Slaughterhouse, and Man as an Extinction Event

[Vegan Shark]

Today I made a couple of decent sales. Going to spend some of the profit on supporting Sea Shepard and will continue to email the Japanese Embassy, the Danish Embassy, and the scumbags at SeaWorld. So yeah, diving has had a serious effect on my outlook and awareness of conservation as well as just plain injustice in the world when it comes to the planet we have to live on.

Great post, Jim. Have you seen the documentary Sharkwater? Fantastic film about the shark finning crisis, and the filmmaker, Rob Stewart, is a diver himself. Sea Shepherd is also heavily in the film, since he was on their ship as a cameraman when the incident with Costa Rica went down (for those that don't know: even though Costa Rica illegalized shark finning, it thrives behind the scenes due to corrupt judges and politicians. Sea Shepherd caught a boat finning, and was given approval to bring them back to land, but when they got there the Costa Rican police tried to imprison Sea Shepherd instead since the shark mafia pulled political strings).

He came out with a sequel documentary, Revolution, about the upcoming generation of activists and their attempts to right social wrongs, but I haven't seen it yet.

Mod Post
This thread has been moved since this location is more appropriate than Basic Scuba. A redirect has been left

 

[scubafanatic]

"Future generations" are just a tiny tick on the geological timeline. I believe our species will eventually go extinct, and that it's arrogant to think we are different from the animals that preceded us. I just don't think our enlarged craniums are going to be able to solve all of the problems that will face us. It might be an apocalyptic event, or it might happen more slowly. Could be a few centuries, or it could be thousands of years. If something occurs that reduces the human population, like some sort of pandemic or asteroid impact or ice age or whatever, then it might even prevent humans from depleting the Earth's resources. But eventually SOMETHING will kill us off.

I don't disagree that it's useful to do what we can to slow the depletion of Earth's resources. I try to. I even support some degree of activism. I enjoy my life on Earth, and it's nice to think that future generations might enjoy it for a while. But I do not think humankind will last forever, no matter what we do.

---------- Post added January 29th, 2014 at 06:43 PM ----------

And to bring it back on topic, no, my opinions haven't changed since I started diving.

Human DNA studies show that about 75,000 yrs ago, humans were THIS CLOSE to extinction ! (due to the volcanic eruption of Toba ) For the biological health of this planet, it's almost a shame humanity didn't go extinct.
Genetic bottleneck theory

The Toba eruption has been linked to a genetic bottleneck in human evolution about 50,000 years ago,^[28][29] which may have resulted from a severe reduction in the size of the total human population due to the effects of the eruption on the global climate.^[30]
According to the genetic bottleneck theory, between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, human populations sharply decreased to 3,000–10,000 surviving individuals.^[31][32] It is supported by genetic evidence suggesting that today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago.^[33]
Proponents of the genetic bottleneck theory suggest that the Toba eruption resulted in a global ecological disaster, including destruction of vegetation along with severe drought in the tropical rainforest belt and in monsoonal regions. For example, a 10-year volcanic winter triggered by the eruption could have largely destroyed the food sources of humans and caused a severe reduction in population sizes.^[22] Τhese environmental changes may have generated population bottlenecks in many species, including hominids;^[34] this in turn may have accelerated differentiation from within the smaller human population. Therefore, the genetic differences among modern humans may reflect changes within the last 70,000 years, rather than gradual differentiation over millions of years.^[35]

....as the Sun continues to age, it becomes 10% brighter every 1 billion yrs, so within the next 500 million - 1 billion years, earth will experience a Venus-like runaway greenhouse effect, blowing off the atmosphere, vaporizing the oceans, sterilizing the planet....and as the Sun mutates to the 'red giant' phase, Earth will melt, be swallowed by the Sun, and vaporize like an ice cube tossed into the mouth of a volcano!....PUFF Earth's gone for eternity!

What's spooky is Life on Earth is almost as old as the planet itself, so if you do the math, Earth has already used up 80 - 90 % of the time frame during which it's a habitable place...geogically speaking we're in the 'end times' now.

---------- Post added January 30th, 2014 at 01:45 AM ----------

When one species goes... Another comes along to fill the niche.... Man has a very small time frame to work from... when you tell someone that it's 65,000 light years to the center of the milky way from earth, they look dumb struck... How can you " THINK " you know what we are doing to the planet ? What is normal for the earth ? It's gone from a hell hole of heat and sulfur in the air that would kill all carbon based life to a giant ice ball covered 1000's of feet deep.... Every were we look we find life.... From hot springs to deep sea vents and even under/ in the arctic ice ...

We just happen to be the major player right now.... Our time will come to give up that spot.... And we have " NOTHING " to say about it...

Jim...

...the 'life' found in extreme environments is usually 'tough pond scum'...nothing terribly exciting, all single celled organisms. For something like 80 - 90 % of the history of life on Earth, nothing more advanced or interesting than 'pond scum' has existed. Given Earth's initial conditions, it's probable single celled life was inevitable and could be taken for granted as almost guaranteed to develop. However, it took BILLIONS of years of evolution to 'break out' to even the simplist multicellular life forms, and had our sun been just a little more massive, it would have evolved into it's Red Giant phase already, meaning the odds are good life on many life-bearing planets is exterminated before it progresses beyond the 'pond scum' stage, ..........mute witnesses to Armageddon ! ....so I'd really like to NOT take glorious creations like Whale Sharks for granted !!!

 

[drbill]

As a marine ecologist, I think I am even more depressed about this situation after reading through this thread. Personally, I feel it is our responsibility to live in a way that sustains the ecosystems upon which we ultimately depend (whether we realize it or not).

Of course as an amateur astronomer and former astronomy teacher, I also realize that ultimately any effort is in vain since the Sun will nova and burn all living things to a carbon crisp in a few billion years. However, that doesn't stop me from doing what I can to educate people about the marine environment and the threats we pose to it.

I'm not a religious person and don't believe in Heaven or Hell. However, I try to live the best life I can with respect to others (following the Golden Rule) without expectation of reward in the afterlife.

 

[DaleC]

I do what I can to educate myself, change my behavior and try and lead by example to others.

Nobody likes, or responds to, a zealot. They react to them - usually by pushing away. Diving tends to sensitize us to certain environmental issues but we should try to remember our mindset before that familiarization. What would we respond best to? What led to our change of behavior? Going off on people may make us feel righteous in the moment but it rarely effects change. To do that we need to see and recognize the good in other people and encourage them to see our issue from that perspective.

Some cultures do terrible things. Usually not because they are "bad" but because they have conflicting or competing values at play. What is a few decades of oceanographic conservation awareness compared to 1000's of years of cultural bias. In wildly changing, unpredictable modern societies, some try to cling to past heritage or beliefs.

Is shark finning and whaling wrong? To me, yes; but to others it is a part of a deeply entrenched way of life. How are we in North America doing with our deeply entrenched values? Why should any other society take what we say seriously. Change promoted by the unchanging.

I am currently rereading Thoreau's "Walden" and find it amazing.. again. His ideas were revolutionary, and in a different time he may have been burned at the stake, yet what he described was the changing of his own behavior. Refreshing, and 150 years later, still speaks to me directly and makes me want to change mine.

As to the world ending:
Two thousand years ago man looked at the world through a polytheistic/animistic lens. The gods and nature controlled everything, we were at their mercy and we were all probably gonna die.
One thousand years ago man looked at the world through a religious lens. One god controlled everything, we were at his mercy, and were probably all going to die.
Today we look at the world through a scientific lens. Scientific laws control everything, we are at their mercy and are probably all going to die.

I still don't think we have it right and I think what makes us really uncomfortable is that in all those POV's we don't have control. But I don't think we are meant to have control over the whole, only ourselves. We are always looking outward instead of inward.

 

[oldschoolto]

Until you are ready to make the decision that the earth can not support the numbers of humans that we have and ready to remove large numbers to bring back a balance that would have come about naturally.... Cold and heartless ? Maybe.... But with large numbers of humans, The planets ability to feed them is not sustainable.... We need to remove 50 to 60 % of humans....

Jim....

 

[100days-a-year]

FWIW,I worry more about mans inhumanity to man.When I get that problem solved I'll work on our poor record with animals.I wonder how many poor or hungry or war ravaged people die because we are distracted by any cause de jure and don't maintain focus.

 

[DaleC]

Until you are ready to make the decision that the earth can not support the numbers of humans that we have and ready to remove large numbers to bring back a balance that would have come about naturally.... Cold and heartless ? Maybe.... But with large numbers of humans, The planets ability to feed them is not sustainable.... We need to remove 50 to 60 % of humans....

Jim....

Somehow I suspect you do not include yourself or your loved ones in that 50-60%

 

[Vegan Shark]

FWIW,I worry more about mans inhumanity to man.When I get that problem solved I'll work on our poor record with animals.I wonder how many poor or hungry or war ravaged people die because we are distracted by any cause de jure and don't maintain focus.

There will likely always be cruelty, injustice, and in-humaneness perpetrated by man against his fellow man, so if we ignored wrongs against other species in the meantime then there would never be any progress on that front. Just like how in our judicial system we combat murder, theft, abuse, rape, and other crimes simultaneously, rather than saying, "Murder is the worst, so we'll put all our resources into preventing murder, and once murder no longer exists we'll take a look into the other problems."

Plenty of societal ills in the world, and all deserve attention and fixing, don't you agree? They aren't mutually exclusive: We can strive to treat our fellow men better, while also striving to treat other species, and the planet as a whole, with more care.

William Wilberforce is a great example. He lead the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, and was also renowned for other causes, including animal welfare activism; he founded the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which exists to this day. His efforts in other causes did not at all take away from his campaign to abolish slavery, because in the end these aren't so separate of issues. Compassion is compassion, be it for other races, other genders, other cultures, or other species.

 

[Mike]

For those that have seen species disappear from dive sites, and feel passionately about preserving the ocean/planet, how has diving changed your consumer trends or actions on a practical level? Has it turned you into an outspoken activist? Has it affected what foods you put on your plate, or products you buy? Made you strive to use less resources?

Absolutely not.

First off conservation and using less resources isn't the long-term answer. Only when resources are used up are we forced to find a solution to them. Living in dim 50 square foot apartments in stacked cube high density homes housing with 100,000 people stacked on an acre, while we all huddle around the last light bulb on earth and are bundled up in 10 layers of clothing as we feel the heat disappear when we use the last lump of coal on the planet and then we all die is not the solution. Turning down your thermostat to 64 degrees is not the solution, driving eco friendly cars is not the solution.

Thriving, living, enjoying, living the theory of abundance is the solution. As a resource becomes scarce, the solution is to use our skills through technology and science to move to the next solution. Just as we progressed from using wood to heat our homes and power our cars and vessels and trains, we progressed to coal, then oil, now natural gas and later.... that's the solution. Man's ability to better himself, while increasing the quality of living is the goal. The solution isn't to force feed everyone a life of monkish simplicity and freakish frugality and conservation.

All conservation does is prolong and delay the inevitable path to the next solution along the evolving path of exploitation of natural resources. Progress and efficiency are the answer not conservation.

As for protection of species, I think most people buy into saving species as long as they are cuddly and cute or have some sort of appeal to us. The far left, the eco terorrists, the PETAs and such do their cause more harm than good as their message becomes ignored because it gets lost in their delivery to 'normal' folks. Normal folks tend to just ignore their messages because of their extremism.

When the extremists take it to the extreme 30,000 species a year disappearing, ice is melting and the seas are rising and coastal cities will disappear... and then a decade later nothing... well that sort of thing just creates doubt and reinforces the notion that they are just kooks. Calm, rational, non-political agenda information is more valuable than anything and will go further. American ecology was awakened in the 70s and progressed beautifully, however for some there is never enough of a good thing and it's now become a pendulum that in some circumstances has swung way too far and needs to swing back to a logical middle ground. The ecologically radical have deadened the normal population to their cries. Average people now when faced with the cries of ecological armagedon just put their fingers in their ears and go "La-La-La, I can't hear you..." as a defensive reaction to decades of being pummeled by the far left of cries of the sky is falling over and over again.

 

[Wingy]

Trying to answer only the OPs questions here not go into deep waters - I lecture and research and ponder issues such as this myself.

Yes, diving has altered my consumer habits. I will not buy non certified sustainable MSSF seafood nor will I buy any other seafood than Australian caught. I lament the fact that the leopard sharks are mostly gone in thailand at shark point and dive further and further afield using more and more fossil fuels. Im human, I am part of the machine and have a resource high cost of living that im selfish enough to not want to give up while I can still do it. I participate in no fish consumption day on April 8. I will be at the anti shark cull rally tommorow.

So I dive further afield and try to find that mass of biodiversity I used to see, the big fish I used to see, Have I become a rampant greenie - no, there's a few things i feel very strongly about at the moment such as the shark cull so I am speaking out and spreading the news. I object on every level. Im exercising my political right to oppose a policy. Am I chaining myself to the wharf? no, that's not going to achieve anything. As ive gotten older the fire still burns I just know how to control it. I want and seek facts, not opinions before I make a decision.

Do I think human activity can be altered to save the planet..well, that's a subjective thing. My idea of saving the planet is freeing up resources by removing 2/3rds of the worlds population. The old chestnut here is - not my family.

I have to remember when im lecturing students that while I personally believe we are seeing nothing more than the beginning of the end of a superchron where the human ruled for a day in the sun, its not all bad news. We often find a species new to science..sometimes we even get to discover them, name them and declare them endangered on the same day..perhaps im getting a bit jaded. Its nothing we weren't warned about - Malthusian dilemma was written in the 1930s..as was the carbon tax by Pigou, guess we should have listened.


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