Fogg spears two hundred creatures, in two trips, before returning to his boat... (Fogg has posted his video on YouTube, and it has been watched more than a million times.)
It's very disappointing that they don't link directly to this video[1], unlike the New York Times which always links directly to their sources and references. It seems like the New York Times is the only mainstream news site that's not absolutely terrified of letting their readers go to another website.
That's incredible, and honestly looks quite fun. The fact that they're venomous might keep me from trying, though.
This got me thinking - as drone tech continues to improve and drop in price, I wonder if we could deploy a fleet of cheap autonomous fish-killing submersibles. The failure modes or evolutionary pressures might be problematic, but imagine the lionfish we could kill at volume.
> This got me thinking - as drone tech continues to improve and drop in price, I wonder if we could deploy a fleet of cheap autonomous fish-killing submersibles. The failure modes or evolutionary pressures might be problematic, but imagine the lionfish we could kill at volume.
You're not the only one with that idea, automated underwater robots [0] are developed to kill crown-of-thorns starfish that eat corals[1]. They can cause a lot of damage to coral reefs and don't have a lot of predators.
Spearfishing is one of the most exciting and engaging sports I can think of. I’m not much for scuba, but spearing on a breath is pretty incredible.
I’ve continued free diving but I don’t kill fish anymore for personal reasons. Regardless, I strongly encourage anyone interested to try it. Of all the ways to get a meal, getting in the water and selecting the ideal catch is the best I’ve ever known.
Just like the article describes, there are invasive species up for grabs all over the world. They’re usually fine to eat and worth targeting.
I got into spear fishing last summer. It's an amazing sport/pastime. And if you buy fish from a shop normally, then spearing them instead has no negative environmental consequences, and avoids any bycatch. Just swim out from the shore instead of diving from your diesel-chugging boat.
Totally. That was part of what drew me into the sport. I learned that the fishing industry kills close to a trillion animals per year, globally. I couldn’t wrap my head around that.
It seems like many marine animals are probably sentient. The idea of causing so much destruction on its own is concerning, but to do that to creatures who experience pain and suffering seems gratuitously and absurdly immoral.
Selective harvest is not only incredibly important for the health of the ocean, it seems like the morally correct solution as well.
Of course not all of us have the time, opportunity, or physical ability to selectively harvest. I think those of us that do should seriously consider it though... People would realize how polluted and depleted so many essential populations are, see the trash inside the ocean, hear the excessive boat traffic, etc. They would also see all of the incredible parts too, though. Nothing makes you realize how beautiful and important the oceans are better than getting inside and being a part of them.
I guess it’s similar to terrestrial hunting. It can give you and immense love and appreciation for the environment you’re depending on.
Just curious, where are you diving? I’m in BC, Canada. I’ve always been a little envious of people in warmer, clearer waters.
I'm on the Tutukaka coast in Northland NZ. It's an amazing coast for diving, I'm slowly snorkeling my way around the coast where we live, one bit at a time. Here's a typical scene from my GoPro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wkLZKiPewc.
That is just off shore so it's pretty quiet for fish, though there are usually a few Blue MaoMao which are good eating and have no limit as they are plentiful. On the Poor Knights marine reserve a few miles offshore, the fish are a lot thicker https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10155868863065128!
This makes me immediately think about the Cobra effect anecdote (or fable?). Basically, the Indian gov't tried to control the snake population by offering a bounty, and people started breeding snakes and killing them for bounty money.
This happened in New Zealand with possums. Originally intentionally introduced to begin a fur trade industry in the 1800s [0], by the 1960s the Government was undertaking eradication efforts. One of these was a bounty, which resulted in possums being intentionally introduced into Northland so that the bounty could be collected there as well. [1] Northland is "cut off" from the rest of the non-urban area of New Zealand by Auckland, being an urban area from coast to coast. Possums had previously not spread through the city to Northland. The bounty took care of that.
"A female lionfish lays an average of twenty-seven thousand eggs every two and a half days."
This reproduction looks to be so prolific that cheating isn't required.
The ultimate solution to all of these problems is going to be a gene drive.
Especially for the lionfish, edits that leave only male offspring will wipe out the problem in the Atlantic.
The United States may condemn and punish such action, but the rest of Central and South America justly want their fishing industry back, and the outbreak likely came from the U.S. in the first place.
When a gene drive is sufficiently cheap and accessible, one of them will release it.
First, introduced species tend to, by definition, not breed with the 'original habitat' population, simply because they're separated by sufficient distances.
Second, these types of gene terminator approaches tend to work relatively quickly - several generations, I think, but I've only read about these in insect populations where generations are months not years. Anyway, the fallback approach is to maintain a breeding stock of non-edited, isolated somewhere safe, and if the original habitat specimens do get wiped out accidentally you can re-introduce if appropriate.
This is a good solution for mosquitoes - where you basically do want to wipe out a handful of species for a year or more, as the actual intent is to wipe out malaria (Plasmodium). Once that's done, you have the option to safely reintroduce those original-gene mosquito species.
I'm happy to defer to hoseja's assertion they are ecologically significant - I've read varying claims around there, but the precautionary principle is sufficient to warrant maintaining a pristine breeding stock long term, just in case.
With malaria, I believe there's a tiny handful, 3 or 4 perhaps, of species of mosquito that carry it, and removing those species from environments where other species of mosquito exist is thought to be low-risk in terms of unintended consequences.
The fallback breeding stock is just another thing we can do to provide assurance that we're not about to accidentally trigger the end of the world.
I think the key here is keeping it at hobby levels of funding: a few thousand dollars worth of prizes at sporting events is a motivator for amateurs, a few hundred thousand would bring out professionals.
And if the d*mn things are sometimes "bag 200 in a single dive" common in the wild, the cost/benefit ratio for breeding them may not work out regardless.
Seattle once had a similar (though likely far less dangerous) program, I believe. They paid a bounty on rats, and, yep, kids soon started breeding rats in their back yards.
Mhhhh... probably not. Is "impossible" (for common people) to reproduce it in captivity and they are very expensive to keep and bread in aquariums. Pelagic larvae would not survive. No bounty would pay for their feeding and energy bills. This is why we can't breed lobsters in captivity.
But deliberate capture in nature and releasing in another ocean can be still a problem. And new groups lobbying against its total eradication would surely be created.
Killing invasive species for sport is in the origin of most invasions of alien species of fish in Europe. Probably the same in America also.
The article mentions eating lionfish, but it doesn't do this idea justice. They are seriously good eating. This unwelcome, invasive species is among the best fish I ever had simply grilled. You have to be careful to cut off the venomous spines, preferably before they get on the boat, which makes the handling costs high. But they are delicious.
We managed to threaten even the vast North Atlantic cod population because they are good food: an enormous native population that seemed near-infinite a hundred years ago. Technology drove the cod handling cost low. Commercial fishing is powerful force.
Scorpaenidae are a staple ingredient in Bouillabaisse. Most of they, if not all, are delicious if managed with care.
They are de-poisoned and mostly safe after boiling. You can still impale one finger into a spine or make a cut in your hand if manage the stuff without care, but the poison is inactivated by heat.
Can we do similar like we did wit regard to mosquitos where we capture a bunch, crisper the dna so offspring is infertile, and introduce a big batch back in to spread the gene?
But i've thought and talked about this at the level of a genie with 3 wish's, and you know genies love to do un predictable things with your wish.
Im still saying, if i could make a wish snap my fingers, i'd make it so lion fish and/or mosquitos passed a generational mutation that makes them not able reproduce.
I've always wondered how this is supposed to work. It seems like it would cause a drop in the population for the 2nd generation, but then the population would bounce back afterwards because the gene edited mosquitos would have died off. Is the plan to continuously release them into the wild to persist the number of offspring being born that can't produce offspring?
The question is: do all these sport "hunters" make any difference at all in the lionfish population? My guess is No.
We could pay a bounty for killing mosquitos, but it wouldn't be nearly as effective as draining all the standing water, or introducing birth control of some sort.
If I'm right that they're having no effect, then either a CRISPR solution, or introducing a natural predator is the answer (assuming that the predator doesn't introduce its own problems).
New Zealand here. We're in the process of eliminating all Possums, Rats (3 types) and Mustelids (Stoat, Weasel and Ferrets) with a goal of 2050! Come help!
Since at least 2000, the Northern Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Program has offered cash rewards for catching this invasive species in the Columbia River.
> The Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery Program ... pays anglers for each Northern Pikeminnow that they catch that is nine inches or larger. Rewards range from $6 to $10 per fish, and special tagged fish are worth $500.
In 2022 the top earner has earner over $50k, and the twentieth highest earner has over $12k. In 2015 and 2016 the top earner broke $100k (over 14,000 fish caught by a single angler appears to be the record).
These fish just sit there. What would be really effective is some sort of vacuum hose that cycles through a backpack. You could probably pick up hundreds in a hour.
you haven’t had fun on this planet until you've gone hunting for invasive hogs in florida or texas. stars, night observation devices, suppressed semiautomatic rifles. regardless of your stance on guns or killing things almost as smart as humans, you should give this fun and useful activity a try sometime. you’ll learn some skills and make solid friends along the way.
I've spent time in the past shooting feral rabbits, foxes and cats here in Australia, which do immeasurable harm to the native ecosystems. It can be a fairly engaging activity, but it does pay to keep in mind that it's not the animals fault that they're born into the environment they're in, and as such you do try to minimise the level of suffering around it (i.e. I'm not a fan of people bow hunting which isn't an instantaneous kill). I suppose it helps to keep a level of mindfulness around what you're doing and remember that causing unnecessary pain is something to avoid.
If you're in Australia the wild boar in Queensland, kangaroo & feral goats in South Australia, and the fallow deer in Tasmania should be added to the list.
I'd also argue for permanent open season on roaming cats.
I used to help friends manage destructive hog populations on TX farmland. It was really crazy. I remember a few years back people on twitter were ragging on some guy for saying he needed an AR to kill "30-50 feral hogs", acting as if that was some sort of insane fictional scenario, when in reality he was being perfectly veracious.
I haven't helped with hog control in 5+ years, but I'm interested to see how it's changed with the proliferation of NVDs and thermal optics. It would have made our jobs a lot easier, but the equipment was much more expensive back then - no one I knew at the time had better than gen2 technology.
I assume a lot of of it is people with the latest/greatest gear for "prepper" use doing live-fire testing against hogs, not so much people buying gear solely for addressing hogs. (I have pvs-31/gen3 and a separate thermal monocular, trying to get an eCoti or make a clone of one, and am super into the new digital stuff for sensor fusion, but while I'd love to go hog hunting, it's not primarily stuff I've bought for the purpose of shooting hogs. A good "tell" here is people who don't run full-time IR illuminator to be realistic training against adversaries who might themselves have NV)
Are they a different species than the wild hogs in Germany? They look the same. They're a pest, here, too. But hunters don't require night vision goggles and semi automatic guns to control them.
They're considered dangerous to pets (mostly dogs, which probably started the fight) and I wouldn't get too close to them. But deadly encounters are extremely rare; way less than 1/year in a population of 80m humans and 2m pigs.
That's just arrogance though - "Even if you disagree with me for any reason, including reasons I never thought of, but excluding the one possible reason I did think of, I'm still right so disregard your silly opinion and do it my way.".
It sounds like a great way to earn the company of fellow psychopaths.
The ecological need is easy to understand, but turning it into a "sport" tells you a lot about the caliber of people we're living with. The people engaging in this activity are worse than poachers; at least poachers kill to earn a living.
Worse how? Because they're enjoying something that needs to be done? These hogs would be more than happy to kill and eat you if they could. They regularly break into back yards and kill pets. If an animal is happy to pop slats off a fence and disembowel my cousin's dog I'm happy to put a bullet in it.
You're free do the research into what the Texas model is actually achieving. States with more amenable conditions for pigs don't have the problem that Texas has.
There is a responsible way to manage a population. Shooting pigs to get a kick ain't it.
It’s also deeply concerning how he didn’t make one mention of how dangerous wild boars can be. If you don’t take it down it is 100% going to try and kill you. And they don’t go down that easy.
I just watched this video where the brother of one of the French kings, died by falling from his horse after tripping over a pig: https://youtu.be/fjalQSOLZE4?t=76
Totally opposed to capital punishment, but as long as the person who enjoys the work isn't the person who decides that it needs done it seems fine, maybe even better if they enjoyed it. You probably want the person who isn't going to get PTSD from it carrying it out if minimizing human suffering is the goal.
I can't decide if doing the same thing with pedophiles and CP moderation is terrible or not. My gut reaction is terrible but after hearing about how traumatizing it is for the people who do it maybe it's some kind of fucked up win win. Because I could straight up not do that job, but that job being done prevents real life abuse.
If you think about this in consequentialist terms poachers are far worse in every respect. I'm a pacifist, a vegetarian, and an ecologist. I am glad the hogs are getting culled, that's a valuable outcome. I don't care if the people who cull the hogs enjoy it. I wouldn't, I'm glad someone does, they're doing something with a good outcome, even if you think their motivations are unsavory.
You too will soon realize it's all a part of doing what comes naturally. Nature, as it turns out, laughs in the face of anything unwilling to speak the language of death.
I'm afraid you're the one not getting it. The passion, and the deed go hand in hand. It is hard work to cultivate and maintain something against encroachment by Nature. Anyone that tells you there is no satisfaction gained from securing the safety of their environment from an intrusive force is either lying to you, or deluding themselves.
Death wish, and its management is all a weird part of being alive, and in fact, it's channeling into productive active activity instead of straight up warfare is crucial to peaceful coexistence. It's one of the few things Freud may have actually kind of gotten right, tbqh. Heidigger calls it angst, and it's central to the concept of care, and by extension, to the act of Being.
> If poisoning pigs were known to be more effective than shooting, would that change the calculus?
Depends on a lot of things. Relative cruelty of poisoning vs. shooting the pigs; utility of hunters enjoying pig meat; costs
& effectiveness of both strategies; etc.
I suspect you'd probably end up doing both.
On the other hand, it's a bit moot, because I don't think we know how to effectively poison pigs without greater harms. Texas was using specialty-warfarin in addition to the hunting efforts. It's arguably crueler than shooting them.
We definitely do trap wild pigs in many jurisdictions, but this is much less effective than shooting them, IMO.
I'd be fine with it, if it wasn't going to impact other species, wasn't absurdly more cruel, and they could still be used for meat (and I could probably give up on the meat; it's not that much of a factor).
From what I can recall, it's been tried, but had problems. The USDA has cyanide traps that are meant to kill boars (along with wolves and coyotes). In 2017, one of them killed a dog and injured a boy when the dog went after the trap. They're meant to shoot the cyanide into the animals mouth, but there's an area of effect apparently.
Laying out poisoned food tends to kill near everything in the forest.
The problem with most methods that don't involve humans is the inability to discriminate between problem species and normal species. It's hard to build a device that will kill boars but not deer or squirrels or whatever. Boars are big and hard to kill; most things in the forest are far more fragile.
I hear where you're coming from, but there's definitely some sort of weird carve-out in human psychology that allows people to simultaneously be compassionate towards animals while also being OK with killing them. Most hunters I know (who don't do it out of necessity or anything) are very morally upright people, and many of them are good friends to animals (conservationists, rehabbers, etc.).
> Yeah hunting is not in the same moral landscape as some of the Texas wild hog "hunts".
You're right, but in the wrong direction. TX hog hunts are strictly necessary for the protection of agriculture.
> A lot of people are drawn to it because it involves shooting semi automatics at fleeing pigs from a helicopter
A) almost no one does it this way - too expensive. B) this does sound incredibly fun.
> without even gathering the meat.
This is not true. In many cases the meat is inedible (e.g. if they've eaten some kinds of fertilizer the fat turns blueish), but when it is edible, local farmhands will typically cook it. I've been to several mexican style barbecues with this meat.
> gleefully shooting at them as a form of entertainment
It's because they're incredibly destructive to agriculture (plants and animals). Where are you getting this from?
>Yeah hunting is not in the same moral landscape as some of the Texas wild hog "hunts".
A hunt is a hunt.
>A lot of people are drawn to it because it involves shooting semi automatics at fleeing pigs from a helicopter, without even gathering the meat.
I don't know anyone loaded enough to dedicate a vehicle that can require up to 10 hours maintenance per flight hour to hog hunting on the regular, but I suppose with all the Cali money heading Texas' way that might be a thing. Fewer still who can even pull off a shot reliably/safely from that platform. That semi-automatics are used isn't even controversial. When you're dealing with a pest that isn't guaranteed to go down in one shot, you don't hanstring yourself with unnecessary handicaps. I also assure you, the maintenance and loading just for the firearm for the expedition is no small investment of time or resources.
Most land owners I know have a rifle and a truck, and even then, it's ususlly a dedicated field truck, because you do not want to get stuck out in bumf Texas. We still have areas you can effectively get lost in.
Stop romanticizing hunting (which is exactly what you're doing when kavetching about how people hunt). It's a fact of life, and an important part of ecological stewardship. If you don't handle hogs on your property when they become a problem, they just stick around and become someone else's.
If you'd like to share the address of your property, I'm fairly sure it would be no trouble at all to wrangle up a few specimens and ship em out to you so you can get hands on experience. Might want to warn your local gov and neighbors though. It can rapudly get out of hand...
I don't think we need to read this as misanthropy, necessarily.
> By any definition humans are an invasive species. Unfortunately killing our fellow humans has been a competitive sport from time immemorial.
Perhaps the point that we, to, are an invasive species is intended to inspire a bit of compassion within us for the hogs, toads, rabbits and whatever else.
I'm not sure how much I agree -- the invasive hogs really are damaging to the ecosystem. Though, manually going out to shoot them seems like a questionable means of controlling the population. And they should be killed as mercifully as other species -- they didn't ask to be invasive, after all.
>Misanthropy disguised as concern for the environment does not contribute to the discussion.
The importance of language and the dispassionate and accurate employment of accurate definitions is neither misanthropy or related to environmental concerns.
>Edit: Given your username, I’d expect more faith in humanity, not less.
Personally, that the largest and most productive societies on earth dedicate a large portion of their resources to building weapons of mass destruction isn't something that inspires much faith in humanity. Props to Petrov for acting with more sense then most of the rest of humanity.
Though I understand, and in a way agree with your point—that human changes to the environment are as natural as that of beavers—, I think one important difference is the scale of those changes.
Ours are not as natural in the sense that we no longer rely on our inborn capacities to produce those changes.
Yes, in a way we are like beavers in our engineering. But we are insanely overpowered beavers. The scope of our changes puts us in a class of our own.
So if we call changing the environment by one's own means only 'natural', and massively changing it by compounded means 'artificial', we are not natural, not as beavers. Ours is artificial.
So contrary to what you said, that distinction makes at least some sense.
Modern human civilization is the apex predator that still often feels and acts like it is prey on the African veldt. So you get insanely overpowered beavering while some of us still compare us on the same level as beavers.
Yes, I am definitely suggesting wolves (not "wolfs") did not build ships or airplanes and migrate around the world in an astonishingly short amount of time. They migrated slowly, on foot, as they were able to by following food sources, and using land bridges since wolves can't cross oceans.
Same goes for viruses (I'll give you a pass on that one, it's more accepted now than "virii"): they don't float across oceans in a week, unless they're carried by birds (which most aren't).
Cats and honeybees should be on the list if we are being technical. If we killed all the honey bees, many of the invasive plants they pollinate would disappear as well. As for the cats? You first... No man in Ulthar may harm a cat.
Feral cats are a huge menace, at least in Australia. They go through endangered native wildlife like a hot knife through butter. It can be confronting to people because cats are pets, but they're carnivorous little killing machines, and shooting a breeding pair might save thousands of birds and small mammals.
I've heard bobcat and mountain lion taste amazing, any info on domestic? I have a deal with my pets, they eat rats, and I don't eat them. They have been doing there part so... Also, they keep my feet warm.
there is a youtube channel (or several) dedicated to killing iguanas in south florida...it's basically a sporting channel, justified by the fact that these lizards are invasive in florida...here is one such channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheIguanaHunter/videos
The whole concept of "invasive species" makes me a bit uncomfortable.
For one thing, preserving the purity of a local ecosystem is not the same thing as preserving the purity of your local human race, but it's not entirely different either.
Also, an the world becomes more and more connected, it's a battle doomed to be lost. And those battles, as much as we might wish otherwise, should not be fought.
Also, the idea that new species "destroy" ecosystems is really flawed. What they do is change ecosystems. With a new species, an area finds a new balance after a while, and life goes on.
> the idea that new species "destroy" ecosystems is really flawed.
it's not. If a species were to naturally migrate, it takes decades, or even centuries, to cross continents. This gives the destination ecosystem time to adjust.
But because humans travel so fast, and so far, migration of species piggybacking reach previously unreachable ecosystems without letting the natural balance to actually happen - therefore, destroying an ecosystem in the process (or, in your words, the ecosystem is changed so much as to be unrecognizable, since existing species cannot compete at all).
> preserving the purity of a local ecosystem is not the same thing as preserving the purity of your local human race, but it's not entirely different either.
it's definitely different. Purity of human race is social - the genetic differences are barely noticeable. "purity" of an ecosystem is not about race, nor purity, but about biodiversity, and keeping balance. An invasive species that naturally reach a destination would not be considered an invasive species.
> This gives the destination ecosystem time to adjust
You're right that it takes some time for an ecosystem to adapt. But whether a new species is introduced slowly or quickly, the end result will be the same.
I think it's mostly human society that needs the time to adjust. If a cute species disappears in their lifetime, many people will be upset. The next generation won't know what they missed.
> For one thing, preserving the purity of a local ecosystem is not the same thing as preserving the purity of your local human race, but it's not entirely different either.
It is entirely different. We are all the same species. Race is a social construct, and unlike foreign species introduction, the introduction of a wider genetic or cultural pool does not cause an ecosystem collapse.
> Also, the idea that new species "destroy" ecosystems is really flawed. What they do is change ecosystems. With a new species, an area finds a new balance after a while, and life goes on
This is just optics. You could say nuking a city just “changes” it into a desert wasteland instead of destroying it.
To me it's as simple as to preserve the diversity of the species. Even without scientific reason, I just like the fact we have more species on the Earth. If I want see carp, I can go to their origin, they have plenty.
Like, life goes on in Africa with or without giraffes. But it would be a tragedy if my grandchild couldn't see one with their own eyes.
Humans are a pretty apex species. Any ecosystem we move into, we have the tools and ability to dominate it with little effort.
Humans also, somewhat recently in our timeline, began to really understand and appreciate the effects we have on ecosystems. Additionally, there is some collective desire to try to preserve the state of these areas, so future generations can also admire + study them.
When we inadvertently (or deliberately) manipulate an ecosystem, and observe the damage it causes, we try to fix it. Maybe it's hubris to think that we can do so w/o damaging it another way, but we like to try. Especially when it could damage something else that directly impacts something we value, like a local economy:
I agree with your arguments when it comes to "preserving the purity of your local human race" or culture - it's essentially impossible to stop those shifts. However I don't think it applies the same way to invasive species - people and their ideas are very hard to filter for in terms of immigration but stopping people from bringing in animals or plants is much easier and we have systems for that already in place.
