Actually, TMHeimer has a good point. I think his shell-collecting hobby is damned stupid, but if it is not adversely impacting any species or habitat, what business is it of mine and who am I to judge? Conversely, if everybody in the world started diving tomorrow to responsibly take their two-fish* limit and dutifully consume it with their families, it might be more satisfying to your sense of ethics but the fishery would still be depleted and ultimately collapse. Legal, ethical, and esthetic considerations might be interesting topics for debate, but the only logical, objective standard for harvesting seafood is sustainability.
*arbitrary number of fish that I think would collapse a fishery if 6 billion people took each day.
Here we can get back to Darwinian issues..
The "Global Law" would be freedive harvesting only, for personal consumption.
Perhaps 5 to 10% of the world "could" do this effectively, but this same 5 tto 10% does not necessarily live near the oceans or places where the targeted species to consume would be....
Also, the deep ocean would re-stock, as you would certainly not have significant numbers of freedivers out 50 miles from shore decimating the tuna populations, etc.
A small impact would occur in areas near large human population centers, where good reefs and concentrations of targeted species would exist....but again, not a big piece of the world in the year 2010 or 2011, is going to be able to effectively feed their family on a 60 foot reef by freediving. If we go through an apocalypse ( Global Depression and Commercial Infrastructure Meltdown) , a higher percentage could develop the skills after 5 to 10 years..., but there would also be a much smaller population to deal with.....and the fish stocks would also have time to recover during the human disaster.
The seafood industry of today really NEEDS to be completely destroyed..shut down by all Governments, permanently. If all the commercial trawling, longlining etc was to stop, the private sector would never come close to utilizing even a fraction of the ocean habitat being decimated daily by the global seafood industry.
Of course, none of this could happen...governments do not want food distributed at an individual level, as this reduces the power of governments. It is far more effective from a governmental perspective, to control a huge food resource itself, and to control the distribution of it.
Similarly, if individuals were to all grow their own sprouts and algae, and the world was to adopt a raw vegan alternative, this would effectively eliminate one of the most powerful controlling forces the governments of the world have...so don't expect the political forces to ever move toward an end to the commerical harvesting of large animals and seafood.
DanV
p.s.
Personally I am not about to give up on strip steaks and hamburgers....I want red meat 7 days per week, at least 2 meals per day ( breakfast I have eggs), and any vegan that trys to get in the way of this is my "Enemy"...and this is not necessarily metaphorical....I do NOT like the Vegan Nazis.... I do have plenty of close friends that are Vegan, but they don't try to impose their choices on me......act like religious fanatics trying to convert everyone to their belief and their own special miracles( every religion has it's miracles, some vegans are often playing this game as well)
