I watched David Attenborough's recent film 'Ocean' on a big screen. The footage of bottom trawling was really shocking. I don't understand how that has been allowed to continue in UK coastal waters, let alone to be subsidised in marine protected areas. Madness. It's like napalming a forest to get a few deer. Thankfully things may be changing:
Greenpeace used to drop boulders into the ocean to prevent bottom trawling circa 2021-2022. Unsure if they still do. Fairly straightforward to solve for if you’re willing to drop chunks of rock (granite, non reactive) or concrete in the ocean at the right spots.
Bans are nice, destructive force against adversaries works better though. Hard to take the selfish out of the human, so you have to engineer systems accordingly.
> Bans are nice, destructive force against adversaries works better though.
The ocean is large, and the effort required to cover significant areas in boulders is ridiculously high.
hermitcrab · 2h ago
Just the possibility of boulders that might destroy your very expensive dredge might be enough.
chatmasta · 2h ago
Won’t they be visible on sonar?
hermitcrab · 1h ago
Not sure. But even if they were, do you want to have to survey the path of your dredge before every trawl?
noisy_boy · 9h ago
I think it would be a great PR idea for a billionaire to buy a few old ships and use them to drop rocks over the most popular/vulnerable fishing grounds. What happened to rich people who were all not evil?
xingped · 9h ago
New money outcompeted old money in the economic ecosystem and new money doesn't have the same historical fear of the proletarian guillotine.
> What happened to rich people who were all not evil?
Public opinion drove them crazy and turned them evil anyways.
closewith · 4h ago
The truth is that only the evil remain ultra-rich as the rest use their money in ways that depletes there fortunes.
easyThrowaway · 4h ago
In a terminally capitalistic age (or whatever we should call the last 30 years, we are actually "capitalistic" the same way the URSS was "communist" in the '80s) being rich and being ethical are mutually exclusive.
There are some before and after scenes of the sea bed, which are pretty shocking as well.
I'm not sure how that got that footage. Surely fisherman would not want that to be seen?
hermitcrab · 13h ago
Found this:
"Technically, probably the hardest thing was trying to film bottom trawling because it's never been filmed before and we didn't know if it was possible. You have to film the wonder but you also have to film the destruction. Capturing that was absolutely essential and it took a lot of research to find some scientists planning bottom trawling experiments who decided that adding cameras would help their research and also help to share it with the world."
I watched this film last night, and it was stunning and horrifying all at once. It really brings home the impact of industrial-scale trawling on the marine environment. It's literally like bulldozing a garden to harvest the fruit.
hermitcrab · 2h ago
It is like bulldozing a garden full of lots of different fruits and then only taking the apples above a certain size.
abrookewood · 7h ago
That part of the film is horrifying. Like genuinely, sick-to-the-stomach horrifying. I can't believe that anyone would willingly cause that much destruction.
closewith · 4h ago
> I can't believe that anyone would willingly cause that much destruction.
I interact with fishermen as part of a marine SAR role and there's a significant subset who treat the sea with contempt. Not usual to see them dump rubbish overboard in littoral areas, flicking cigarettes butts into the sea, etc.
marcus_holmes · 6h ago
Stop eating fish. The fishing industry is destroying the oceans.
oporquinho94 · 6h ago
Individual actions won’t change the system, you need collective organised action
marcus_holmes · 6h ago
Be the change you want to see in the world.
You can only control your actions.
Also taking the action of starting to organise some collective action is a good thing. But don't continue eating fish until everyone else agrees not to, because that becomes self-defeating.
>For rainbow trout, an estimated 10 (1.9–21.7) minutes of moderate to extreme pain (Hurtful, Disabling and Excruciating pain combined) are endured by each trout due to air asphyxia (Fig. 1).
fcpk · 1h ago
and that's why things like ikejime are needed. It instantly kills the fish and destroys its nervous system in the same way we do for cattle. It's absolutely unbelievable that it is not a common practice. And it also extends the quality of the fish and the duration for conservation.
I am a freshwater fisherman myself, and I do it on any fish I intend to keep, and release them very quickly otherwise.
t0bia_s · 4h ago
I like fishes. Fishes are healthy and main source of Omega-3 fatty acid for many.
Be aware of pharma propaganda that for sure support any narrations that would make benefit for them, like making any kind of natural sources good for humans as threat, like sunshine or.. Fishes?
riffraff · 5h ago
what, how is it allowed in marine protected areas? I mean, what are they protected from if not BT?
I think the EU planned to ban bottom trawling completely by 2030 and that got nowhere, but it still upholds a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas[0][1], in addition to national ruling (e.g. Italy bans it near the coast and in shallow waters).
People did indeed used to set fire to forests to get a few deer - you’d use the flames to drive them to a cliff edge, or to a river, where you would either let gravity do the work, or just pick off the panicked mass with spears or rocks.
Le plus ca change…
hermitcrab · 1h ago
I guess you could get away with it when humans were nomadic and population density was low.
rex_lupi · 5h ago
Seaspiracy is another eye opening documentary.
riffraff · 5h ago
Seaspiracy (like Cowspiracy by the same author) is pretty full of factual errors on misrepresentations.
While the core ideas may be right, it's basically a propaganda piece.
hermitcrab · 1h ago
'Seaspiracy' is a polemic with little attempt at balance or objectivity IMO. But I think it is still worth watching.
dzhiurgis · 12h ago
> subsidised in marine protected areas
What do you mean?
hermitcrab · 2h ago
"Bottom trawling in seas globally emits as much carbon as aviation, and in Europe costs society up to €11 billion annually while governments subsidize it with €1·3 billion."
> A marine protected area (MPA) is a protected area of the world's seas, oceans, estuaries or in the US, the Great Lakes. These marine areas can come in many forms ranging from wildlife refuges to research facilities. MPAs restrict human activity for a conservation purpose, typically to protect natural or cultural resources. Such marine resources are protected by local, state, territorial, native, regional, national, or international authorities and differ substantially among and between nations. This variation includes different limitations on development, fishing practices, fishing seasons and catch limits, moorings and bans on removing or disrupting marine life. MPAs can provide economic benefits by supporting the fishing industry through the revival of fish stocks, as well as job creation and other market benefits via ecotourism. The value of MPA to mobile species is unknown.
bayarearefugee · 14h ago
I think that not seeing how the story ends will be a blessing in disguise.
(I do not share his optimism that we fix this, the forces of Line Must Go Up are going to win... at least until we all rapidly lose)
ethersteeds · 9h ago
I interpreted his "optimism that we will fix this" as the continuation of his lifelong practice of science communication in service of ecosystem preservation. I believe he grasps that people are far more motivated by having a positive vision to run towards than by a negative one to flee.
In that, I think he's being incredibly strategic with his voice in what he knows are his final years. He could leave us saying "everything is fucked, you absolute idiots", but what is there for us to do then besides lie down in the mud?
Instead he's signing off with "We have come so far, I wish I could witness the spectacular recovery you're all about to usher into being!"
Gentle parenting the apocalypse. What a legend.
01100011 · 5h ago
"Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet, nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine; the people are fucked! Difference! The planet is fine! Compared to the people, The planet is doing great: been here four and a half billion years! Do you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We’ve been here what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years. 200 years versus four and a half billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat?"
-George Carlin
Jyaif · 1h ago
If we wanted to, we could set back biodiversity 50 million years, in the sense that it would take 50 million years to get back animals as diverse as there are today.
Knowing that earth has 200 million good years left, yes we are pretty damn big threat.
tgsovlerkhgsel · 13h ago
My theory: The forces of Line Must Go Up are going to keep winning. Mitigating the impact of climate change will be part of Line Goes Up. Whether it will be cheaper or more expensive than avoiding it in the first place will remain to be seen (but won't really matter in the end), but we will be facing whatever impacts we will be facing, and we will face them, and we will deal with them.
If you have any doubt, look at how the Netherlands dealt with storm surge.
recursivecaveat · 12h ago
For the Netherlands, the entity that pays the cost is the same that benefits from preparedness. For climate change, the plastic doohickey plant in misc country who would have to pay the cost of losing their asset, is entirely divorced from the entities who will benefit from CO2 reduction: everyone in the world. It's a prisoner's dilemma played at every level from the individual to the corporation to the region, and country. I'm not optimistic about our ability to coordinate the entire species to all suddenly start spending a bunch of money on each other instead of our own groups. Especially when basically every existing business in the world will fight it tooth and nail. We got lucky with solar that its naturally cheaper than coal power, but there's no law that has to be the case with anything else.
ainiriand · 4h ago
Exactly, we cannot expect to bring individual responsibility to a global problem. There will always be individual entities not puling their weight.
The train of climate agreements and collective effort has left the station, the climate accords were aiming for under 1,5C and we are very much into 2,5-3C territory.
tgsovlerkhgsel · 10h ago
I'm not talking about CO2 reduction, I'm talking about living with the result that the emissions have caused. And for that, the entity that pays the cost and benefits will again be the same.
lotsofpulp · 10h ago
> I'm not optimistic about our ability to coordinate the entire species to all suddenly start spending a bunch of money on each other instead of our own groups
The opposite needs to happen. Less consumption needed, overall. Less spending. It kind of already is, via lower and lower total fertility rates. Might not be declining quickly enough to cause sufficient decline in consumption.
arp242 · 12h ago
Entire companies have been wrecked by "line must go up" thinking. I see no reason why it should preserve the planet when it can't even preserve its own livelihood.
Never underestimate the complete destructive nihilism some are willing to engage just to earn some status and/or dollars. The feedback mechanism from climate change is far too slow. This kind of "ah it'll be grand like" attitude is completely naïve.
ropable · 12h ago
Relying on market forces to mitigate/address the impact of climate change will require us to collectively impose actual market pressure (i.e. regulation, constraints) to do so. Not seeing much sign of that among the major contributors of emissions right at the moment.
GoatInGrey · 11h ago
That's because very few people are being meaningfully affected right now. For most, climate change exists as an abstract idea and not an immediate, physical problem. It doesn't help that claims like those made by Al Gore about the polar ice caps being gone by 2016 turned out to be untrue.
I wouldn't expect society to transform itself if told that an asteroid may impact Earth in eighty years, for similar reasons.
netsharc · 10h ago
Heck, faced with a rapidly spreading virus that can kill in 2 weeks (for the general public at a very low percentage, for our elderly neighbors a lot higher), a large majority of humans turned to angry denials and conspiracy theories to justify to themselves that "it's not that dangerous!".
We are so fucking dead.
vasco · 6h ago
Which virus turned "a large majority of humans to angry denials"?
oporquinho94 · 6h ago
COVID
somenameforme · 7h ago
When somebody says something isn't that dangerous it always comes with an unstated post-text of 'for an average person of average health.' Each year the flu kills hundreds of thousands of people. As the population ages, and thus has more individuals in senescence where your body is basically just breaking down, that will increase into the millions. But yet it's still not unreasonable to say that the flu isn't that dangerous.
And you might think I'm being disingenuous with these facts and perhaps e.g. all those deaths from the flu are just in Africa or wherever. Whereas in reality it's the exact opposite! Places like the US have a substantially higher than average mortality rate from the flu. Globally deaths are around 700k and in the US it's around 50k. We have 4% of the world's population, but 7% of the world's flu deaths. The reason is because it's not about healthcare, vaccines, or whatever else. It's about the amount of people in senescence.
At a certain age, and the subsequent state of health it entails, lots of things that indeed 'aren't that dangerous' turn into life-ending threats. For some contrast that most aren't aware of, the average age of mortality of the Spanish Flu was 28 - which made it a completely terrifying freak outlier in terms of viruses, which generally affect the very young and very old most severely. Nobody would be saying that the Spanish Flu is not that dangerous in modern times.
noirscape · 2h ago
The reality is that COVID caused lockdowns never had anything to do with the lethality rate. It had everything to do with hospital pressure - there's a limited number of ICU beds and COVID was the annoying combination of spreading easiliy and if it went bad, you'd occupy a bed in the ICU since you needed very active monitoring. If ICU capacity is exceeded, you get into the really ugly business of having to triage who can get necessary first aid. Governments and hospitals both would really do anything else than have to decide whether or not you leave the weak and elderly to die of diseases because you lack the space to handle them. (Not to mention the personnel shortage; a lot of other medical procedures got delayed because of ICU pressure. Even if they did have enough beds, that wouldn't necessarily translate to enough people to care for patients, and you'd end up having to triage non-COVID procedures too.)
That is what caused the lockdowns. It's also why after the first two vaccine waves, the pressure on hospitals was heavily relieved, leading to most countries lifting their lockdowns. Even just being vaccinated once gives you enough immunity against COVID to usually not need a hospital visit. The disadvantages of a lockdown even on just a healthcare level outweigh the benefits when you don't have a dangerous superspreader on your hands.
Mental problems were up massively during the lockdown period since humans are social creatures; physically there also were major spikes in seasonal diseases for the next year since they never stopped evolving, while we stopped getting them, meaning our bodies didn't have the time to adapt to them... So we got all the seasonal diseases thrown at us at once.
gf000 · 6h ago
Well, maybe search for the keyword "long COVID" and see how it has caused a lot of suffering even among young and otherwise healthy individuals.
Also, people seem to forget that exponentials go up very fast, so an "average person of average health" would be very selfish to not make the necessary precautions to limit the spread of the virus as much as feasible.
somenameforme · 4h ago
You vaccinate yourself to protect yourself. People who are vaccinated for a disease can and do spread said disease. It's this way for literally everything. The claims that you cannot spread COVID if you're vaccinated were simply false. Vaccination can have a mitigating effect of course, but we were never going to be able to eliminate COVID with something like herd immunity.
The only virus completely eliminated by vaccines is small pox, and that was largely because of a number of ideal factors. The top two are probably that that no animals carried smallpox, only humans. And the second is that infection or vaccination provided lifetime immunity of effectively 100%. This dramatically reduced its potential for mutation and meant that getting rid of it in humans would get rid of it - period.
Coronaviruses, by contrast, are transmissible between humans and animals. This means even if you fully eliminated it in humans, it could, and probably would, come back. This is why flus are basically impossible to get rid of. If you believe CDC numbers then US flu deaths in 2020 were essentially 0, yet now it's back like nothing ever happened. Even the Spanish Flu is still with us as a variant of the common flu. But fortunately most viruses trend towards less lethal mutations over time. Probably natural selection in play - killing your host is not a great path to survival and reproduction.
As for long COVID. I'd rather defer that conversation for a few years. Research on exactly what it is and exactly what causes it is ongoing, and so debating it at this point is just going to be speculation.
pyrale · 4h ago
> That's because very few people are being meaningfully affected right now.
Once we're all at the edge of extinction, the markets will provide?
If that's your point, your idea of capitalism is a cargo cult.
tgsovlerkhgsel · 10h ago
Market pressure is required to avoid climate change by keeping companies from externalizing climate impacts.
Market pressure is not required for a city to decide that having the city flooded is bad, and start a tender for building a sea wall. This makes the line go up for the sea wall companies.
gorbachev · 6h ago
This is not what's going to happen planetwide.
What's going to happen instead is that the rich will mitigate the effects only for themselves.
They will spend a small percentage of their wealth to protect themselves and their property from all the ill effects of climate change.
elktown · 13h ago
- “Yes, the patient might die, but we’re confident that given enough resources, we’ll bring him back to life.”
Well, to be fair, it’s basically what’s happening with LLMs atm. So, maybe feathering up Mammon and aiming for the sun will be the tech industry’s most lasting legacy.
JKCalhoun · 13h ago
I agree. I reflect on this from time to time when I consider that my mom, having died a few years back, would not be enjoying much of anything going on in the world right now. (Further, that she was born at the close of WWII in the U.S., she may have been lucky enough to have lived in the best part of recent history here.)
abbadadda · 13h ago
“No one cares about the bomb that didn’t go off.” - Tenet
Preventing “bombs” from going off is not rewarded. And indeed the Line Must Go Up Crowd is reliant upon someone else fixing the problem while they get theirs. But when the majority think that way we’re f**ed.
antithesizer · 13h ago
The bombs not dropped here today remain available to be dropped elsewhere tomorrow, so perhaps we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back just yet.
aspenmayer · 11h ago
It’s a good comparison especially in the context of mutually assured destruction, whether administered directly or indirectly, the same grim pragmatic political truth of wedge issues remains:
why solve today what can be put off til tomorrow?
cryptonector · 10h ago
The human population is set to crash quite hard in the next 100 years. It's backed into the cake.
slaw · 10h ago
Not all human population is going to crash. Africa population in 1950 was 228.7 million, in 2025 is 1549 million. Fertility rate in 2025 is 4.05.
most projections expect Africa's population to peak around 2070, which is less than the timeframe GP considered.
jcgrillo · 13h ago
If we keep at it like we have been maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel for Earth, ecologically. In say 100k or 1M years, after we're long gone and things have started to repair themselves.
marssaxman · 12h ago
This is where I find hope: ten million years from now we'll all be gone, and the earth will be a beautiful, thriving place once again.
The short term doesn't look so good, but at least I will only have to watch a few more decades of it.
verisimi · 6h ago
This is a very macabre position! Your life and other people's lives are a joyous blessing.
bdcravens · 5h ago
As I am 48, I can't help but feel "old", especially given the spaces I find myself (ie, a continually changing industry, with the most active feeling like they're much younger). I really appreciate the perspective of someone who is still "active" and who spent more time living before I was born than I have since.
Kiyo-Lynn · 4h ago
It’s inspiring to see someone at 99 still speak with so much passion about the ocean. Hearing him say he won’t see how it ends feels heavy.
The part comparing bottom trawling to bulldozing underwater forests was powerful. But the recovery of sea otters and whales gives some hope.
kleiba · 11h ago
Amazing how many pop-ups I have to click away. It's almost like being back in the 90s.
bravebr123 · 11h ago
Firefox with Blocking turned on and I see no ads..
tim333 · 57m ago
Also chrome with ublock origin still hanging in there
anotherpaul · 6h ago
On mobile Firefox with blocking I still see
- cookie consent
- some self add for subscription
- an altert that I have to login
Can't read it
vivzkestrel · 7h ago
The sad part of our human existence is that none of us ever live to see how our story ends. We "spawn" at a random point in time and "vanish" at another. Ageing is being worked on vigorously and while we did change our lifespan from 40 years to 80 years of existence thanks to modern science, in order for us to truly comprehend changes on a universal scale, average human lifespan would need to be 50000 years long. That way you'll see species evolve, continents move, quasars explode, maybe even Betelguese explode?
verisimi · 6h ago
Yes we die, the body goes. But if there is a further element to the experience - and near death experiences, out of body experience suggest there is - we perhaps do see how the story ends. In fact, this experience might not be the real 'story', just an opportunity of some sort to learn, grow. The point is that although many assume material reality to be all there is, it might not actually be the case.
TheRealWatson · 13h ago
Started reading and immediately hearing it narrated in his voice.
malux85 · 14h ago
Nobody sees how the story ends
teruakohatu · 14h ago
I can understand there is an inherit sadness in not knowing the outcome of one's life's work, but as you say none of use ever see how it ends. In terms of our natural environment humankind has only ever observed in person, let alone recorded, what amounts to the blink of an eye.
tclancy · 14h ago
The Sundays beg to differ.
esseph · 13h ago
Are you alluding to some religious thing?
Fear of oblivion and/or the unknown is fucking scary.
Wow was not expecting to see a Sundays reference in this thread, let alone HN. One of my all-time favorite bands!
zakki · 13h ago
So is the Fridays ;)
rzzzt · 13h ago
Avril Lavigne as well.
antithesizer · 13h ago
Depends which story. Every death is the end of somebody's world.
idiotsecant · 12h ago
Someone might. I think we stand a reasonable chance of self-selecting for extinction in the next few centuries. It's not the end of the story, but it's the end of our story. Someone will be the one who shuts off the lights on the way out.
create-username · 13h ago
Our generations of the last 10,000 years are seeing how the story decays.
When the food supply was abundant, families would jog every day doing BBQ every night hunting down mammoths
We have become red in tooth and claw. At the summit of civilisation, we are alienated with our screens, licking frozen TV dinners in our shared flat while we work hard to support our landlords
colechristensen · 7h ago
As long as we have surviving records people have been saying the past was golden and the present is decay with a long list of the present ills which are the downfall of the glorious past. It's a boring take and has been incorrect for thousands of years and will continue to be. Arguments about how some list of things haven't been on a monotonic increase during the last generation do not refute this.
markus_zhang · 12h ago
David Attenborough narrated some of my favorite paleontology documentaries.
ChrisMarshallNY · 10h ago
You seen Prehistoric Planet[0]?
The CGI is so good, you can practically smell the beasties.
One of the things I like most about David Attenborough is it never seems like he's reading a script. It feels like he's talking about something he knows about (which he does).
When it comes to the acting or performing worlds, is there a phrase describing this?
gyomu · 6h ago
“Conversational delivery”
deadbabe · 11h ago
We’re not here to see how our story ends, we’re here to experience and live in the world that was someone else’s ending, that they never got to see.
_benton · 10h ago
that's...actually really beautiful
deadbabe · 9h ago
thank you
Silhouette · 13h ago
None of us see the end of the story but I do fear that the story could change when we inevitably lose a passionate advocate in Sir David whose credibility on this issue has been unchallengeable.
I take some comfort from the younger generations who are now growing up with a much greater awareness of the natural environment and the damage we humans can do to it and a much lower tolerance for political sophistry and capitalist all-about-the-money "ethics". With the selfishness of politics in much of the world today I think things will probably get worse before they get better. I still hope that we won't cross any points of no return as those younger people gain influence and those of older generations who are not always as enlightened and concerned as Sir David also leave us.
I think those younger generations will have better chances if there is a highly visible advocate for protecting the natural world for ordinary people to coalesce around. I don't know who the next David Attenborough could be. Perhaps one of his final gifts to humanity can be helping to find and establish the profile(s) of natural successor(s) who can carry on his work.
Attenborough will be incredibly difficult to follow though. The depth of his career has made him such an iconic and reassuring force for so many.
jfengel · 11h ago
Here's the good news: we've done basically nothing about climate change even with him, so losing such an esteemed spokesman won't actually make it worse.
Admittedly that's only "good" in the sense that things are maximally bad and cannot get worse. But we might as well fake a smile because that's all we're going to get. I'd say we won't act until it's too late, but it is already too late.
hammock · 13h ago
I’m confused. We are beyond the point of no return when it comes to global warming. Hasnt he already seen how the story ends?
mort96 · 13h ago
There is no single "point of no return". We have obviously passed the point where bad consequences can be avoided, but every extra ton of CO2 and methane makes things a bit worse.
I worry that the sentiment of "we have passed the point of no return" induces an impotent apathy in people, when the truth is that every step in the right direction makes our future a little bit less dire.
colechristensen · 7h ago
Folks are worried about phase change, the flip from one set of patterns to a different set of patters. That is much different than a linear "every ton makes things a bit worse".
There is going to be big fundamental change, but people need to stop thinking about it like "the sky is falling" and instead ask "how are we going to adapt?"
People are going to have to move to where water is available, to where heat is less of a problem, and large scale infrastructure is going to change. A lot of struggle is going to go along with that change but starting to plan now and predict where is going to be habitable and how to prepare for that is what people should be doing instead of the shame and doom.
placatedmayhem · 13h ago
The narrative climax to the human story around climate change has yet to happen. Assuming we continue on the current trajectory, expect riots and wars over food and clean water, possibly more.
DiggyJohnson · 13h ago
What do you think he means when he says “how the story ends”?
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-proposes-to-ex...
Don't know how much of that was due to the film.
Bans are nice, destructive force against adversaries works better though. Hard to take the selfish out of the human, so you have to engineer systems accordingly.
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/live-greenpeace-boulders-...
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-marin...
https://www.wired.com/story/underwater-sculptures-stopping-t...
The ocean is large, and the effort required to cover significant areas in boulders is ridiculously high.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Brian_Thompson
Public opinion drove them crazy and turned them evil anyways.
[0] https://youtu.be/IzG9AwlypaY?feature=shared
There are some before and after scenes of the sea bed, which are pretty shocking as well.
I'm not sure how that got that footage. Surely fisherman would not want that to be seen?
"Technically, probably the hardest thing was trying to film bottom trawling because it's never been filmed before and we didn't know if it was possible. You have to film the wonder but you also have to film the destruction. Capturing that was absolutely essential and it took a lot of research to find some scientists planning bottom trawling experiments who decided that adding cameras would help their research and also help to share it with the world."
At:
https://www.arksen.com/blogs/news/ocean-with-david-attenboro...
I interact with fishermen as part of a marine SAR role and there's a significant subset who treat the sea with contempt. Not usual to see them dump rubbish overboard in littoral areas, flicking cigarettes butts into the sea, etc.
You can only control your actions.
Also taking the action of starting to organise some collective action is a good thing. But don't continue eating fish until everyone else agrees not to, because that becomes self-defeating.
>For rainbow trout, an estimated 10 (1.9–21.7) minutes of moderate to extreme pain (Hurtful, Disabling and Excruciating pain combined) are endured by each trout due to air asphyxia (Fig. 1).
I am a freshwater fisherman myself, and I do it on any fish I intend to keep, and release them very quickly otherwise.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid
Be aware of pharma propaganda that for sure support any narrations that would make benefit for them, like making any kind of natural sources good for humans as threat, like sunshine or.. Fishes?
I think the EU planned to ban bottom trawling completely by 2030 and that got nowhere, but it still upholds a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas[0][1], in addition to national ruling (e.g. Italy bans it near the coast and in shallow waters).
[0] https://www.bluemarinefoundation.com/2025/05/22/eu-court-uph...
[1] https://www.bairdmaritime.com/fishing/regulation-enforcement...
Le plus ca change…
While the core ideas may be right, it's basically a propaganda piece.
What do you mean?
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
"A wealth of studies also show that bottom trawling generates significant amounts of CO2 emissions and is fuelled by government subsidies."
https://www.bluemarinefoundation.com/2025/05/07/thebottomlin...
> A marine protected area (MPA) is a protected area of the world's seas, oceans, estuaries or in the US, the Great Lakes. These marine areas can come in many forms ranging from wildlife refuges to research facilities. MPAs restrict human activity for a conservation purpose, typically to protect natural or cultural resources. Such marine resources are protected by local, state, territorial, native, regional, national, or international authorities and differ substantially among and between nations. This variation includes different limitations on development, fishing practices, fishing seasons and catch limits, moorings and bans on removing or disrupting marine life. MPAs can provide economic benefits by supporting the fishing industry through the revival of fish stocks, as well as job creation and other market benefits via ecotourism. The value of MPA to mobile species is unknown.
(I do not share his optimism that we fix this, the forces of Line Must Go Up are going to win... at least until we all rapidly lose)
In that, I think he's being incredibly strategic with his voice in what he knows are his final years. He could leave us saying "everything is fucked, you absolute idiots", but what is there for us to do then besides lie down in the mud?
Instead he's signing off with "We have come so far, I wish I could witness the spectacular recovery you're all about to usher into being!"
Gentle parenting the apocalypse. What a legend.
-George Carlin
If you have any doubt, look at how the Netherlands dealt with storm surge.
The opposite needs to happen. Less consumption needed, overall. Less spending. It kind of already is, via lower and lower total fertility rates. Might not be declining quickly enough to cause sufficient decline in consumption.
I wouldn't expect society to transform itself if told that an asteroid may impact Earth in eighty years, for similar reasons.
We are so fucking dead.
And you might think I'm being disingenuous with these facts and perhaps e.g. all those deaths from the flu are just in Africa or wherever. Whereas in reality it's the exact opposite! Places like the US have a substantially higher than average mortality rate from the flu. Globally deaths are around 700k and in the US it's around 50k. We have 4% of the world's population, but 7% of the world's flu deaths. The reason is because it's not about healthcare, vaccines, or whatever else. It's about the amount of people in senescence.
At a certain age, and the subsequent state of health it entails, lots of things that indeed 'aren't that dangerous' turn into life-ending threats. For some contrast that most aren't aware of, the average age of mortality of the Spanish Flu was 28 - which made it a completely terrifying freak outlier in terms of viruses, which generally affect the very young and very old most severely. Nobody would be saying that the Spanish Flu is not that dangerous in modern times.
That is what caused the lockdowns. It's also why after the first two vaccine waves, the pressure on hospitals was heavily relieved, leading to most countries lifting their lockdowns. Even just being vaccinated once gives you enough immunity against COVID to usually not need a hospital visit. The disadvantages of a lockdown even on just a healthcare level outweigh the benefits when you don't have a dangerous superspreader on your hands.
Mental problems were up massively during the lockdown period since humans are social creatures; physically there also were major spikes in seasonal diseases for the next year since they never stopped evolving, while we stopped getting them, meaning our bodies didn't have the time to adapt to them... So we got all the seasonal diseases thrown at us at once.
Also, people seem to forget that exponentials go up very fast, so an "average person of average health" would be very selfish to not make the necessary precautions to limit the spread of the virus as much as feasible.
The only virus completely eliminated by vaccines is small pox, and that was largely because of a number of ideal factors. The top two are probably that that no animals carried smallpox, only humans. And the second is that infection or vaccination provided lifetime immunity of effectively 100%. This dramatically reduced its potential for mutation and meant that getting rid of it in humans would get rid of it - period.
Coronaviruses, by contrast, are transmissible between humans and animals. This means even if you fully eliminated it in humans, it could, and probably would, come back. This is why flus are basically impossible to get rid of. If you believe CDC numbers then US flu deaths in 2020 were essentially 0, yet now it's back like nothing ever happened. Even the Spanish Flu is still with us as a variant of the common flu. But fortunately most viruses trend towards less lethal mutations over time. Probably natural selection in play - killing your host is not a great path to survival and reproduction.
As for long COVID. I'd rather defer that conversation for a few years. Research on exactly what it is and exactly what causes it is ongoing, and so debating it at this point is just going to be speculation.
Once we're all at the edge of extinction, the markets will provide?
If that's your point, your idea of capitalism is a cargo cult.
Market pressure is not required for a city to decide that having the city flooded is bad, and start a tender for building a sea wall. This makes the line go up for the sea wall companies.
What's going to happen instead is that the rich will mitigate the effects only for themselves.
They will spend a small percentage of their wealth to protect themselves and their property from all the ill effects of climate change.
Well, to be fair, it’s basically what’s happening with LLMs atm. So, maybe feathering up Mammon and aiming for the sun will be the tech industry’s most lasting legacy.
Preventing “bombs” from going off is not rewarded. And indeed the Line Must Go Up Crowd is reliant upon someone else fixing the problem while they get theirs. But when the majority think that way we’re f**ed.
why solve today what can be put off til tomorrow?
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/afr...
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/afr/afr...
most projections expect Africa's population to peak around 2070, which is less than the timeframe GP considered.
The short term doesn't look so good, but at least I will only have to watch a few more decades of it.
The part comparing bottom trawling to bulldozing underwater forests was powerful. But the recovery of sea otters and whales gives some hope.
Can't read it
Fear of oblivion and/or the unknown is fucking scary.
When the food supply was abundant, families would jog every day doing BBQ every night hunting down mammoths
We have become red in tooth and claw. At the summit of civilisation, we are alienated with our screens, licking frozen TV dinners in our shared flat while we work hard to support our landlords
The CGI is so good, you can practically smell the beasties.
[0] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Planet
When it comes to the acting or performing worlds, is there a phrase describing this?
I take some comfort from the younger generations who are now growing up with a much greater awareness of the natural environment and the damage we humans can do to it and a much lower tolerance for political sophistry and capitalist all-about-the-money "ethics". With the selfishness of politics in much of the world today I think things will probably get worse before they get better. I still hope that we won't cross any points of no return as those younger people gain influence and those of older generations who are not always as enlightened and concerned as Sir David also leave us.
I think those younger generations will have better chances if there is a highly visible advocate for protecting the natural world for ordinary people to coalesce around. I don't know who the next David Attenborough could be. Perhaps one of his final gifts to humanity can be helping to find and establish the profile(s) of natural successor(s) who can carry on his work.
Attenborough will be incredibly difficult to follow though. The depth of his career has made him such an iconic and reassuring force for so many.
Admittedly that's only "good" in the sense that things are maximally bad and cannot get worse. But we might as well fake a smile because that's all we're going to get. I'd say we won't act until it's too late, but it is already too late.
I worry that the sentiment of "we have passed the point of no return" induces an impotent apathy in people, when the truth is that every step in the right direction makes our future a little bit less dire.
There is going to be big fundamental change, but people need to stop thinking about it like "the sky is falling" and instead ask "how are we going to adapt?"
People are going to have to move to where water is available, to where heat is less of a problem, and large scale infrastructure is going to change. A lot of struggle is going to go along with that change but starting to plan now and predict where is going to be habitable and how to prepare for that is what people should be doing instead of the shame and doom.