Responding To Market Demand For Fish Oil, Fleets Respond By Fishing For Krill

Yeah, REALLY FUCKING INTELLIGENT - let's take out the bottom of the food chain as well as the top.

They only grow up to six centimetres yet are perhaps the most abundant creatures on the planet in terms of weight. Krill - small shrimp-like crustaceans known as "pink gold" - are in increasing demand. Modern technology allows krill to be used in fish feed, human dietary supplements, soya sauce flavouring, pharmaceuticals, or even to clean the paintings of Old Masters.

Krill are extremely rich in Omega-3 fatty acids, linked to health benefits for people. If fed to farmed salmon, they cut out the need for colorants to make the flesh pink. Occurring in all oceans but most abundant in the Southern Ocean, they are also the staple diet for seals, penguins and whales as well as for the snow petrels living on icy mountains inland, which fly more than 500 kilometres for each meal.

But rising human demand for fish oils, likely to bring more competition from trawlers for krill, is causing concern that this keystone species near the bottom of the food chain should not be overfished. "The krill catch is projected to go up with other countries getting involved," said Stephen Nicol, a krill expert at the Australian Antarctic Division.

He says current catches seem no threat to vast stocks. "But there's a lot of concern because this is a keystone species - whales, penguins and seals depend on it," he told said. "But part of that dependence is because there's a lot of krill."

EDIT

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/30/2149566.htm?section=world

Must keep profits from diminishing.

doing what they are doing. They aren't become farmers. We need governments to step in and end this madness.

:shrug:

Oh wait.....

Hint:So fuckin' small NOTHING escapes. 6 cm is just over 2 inches and would require a net weave of less than 1/2" to have even a chance to catch even the largest of the "mature" catch-1/4 inch weave would be more realistic...If tuna bothered you-how many dolphins are passing through THAT net???
...Lest you think I'm kidding you better think about how they'll be caught-I've worked the boats and you ain't gonna long-line or pot 'em.A krill catch will be a purse seine or dragging deal and can be only practiced in an area already fished to extinction or the bycatch (bykill) will be horrendous.
This is how the world ends-not with a bang, but a whimper-less boats going further and further down the food chain till the Captains and crews wind up sucking on the barnacles on their own hulls for sustenance and wondering where the fish went....while back at the corporate offices the executives laugh at the protests against producing soylent green.
Because once you've cannibalized the rest of a planet, people look tasty.

Once one of those babies has gone by there'd be nothing left but plankton.

Krill and jellyfish fisheries. Jesus. How close to the end are we really?

They actually remove more carbon from the environment than they expel:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060206230630.htm

Not any more, I guess.

that we continue terribly overpopulating our small world with state-encouraged geometric growth - killing our biosphere in the process.

which surprised me with the fact that there is more weight in krill on Earth than the weight of any other animal species.

I shouldn't be surprised to see that the most industrious species is setting out to change that fact.

We appear to have been mis-engineered - humans, that is. Could someone please get to work on a patch for our bugs, and pronto?

I mean, we are an incredibly STUPID race but this has to be one of
the dumbest moves so far.

:argh:

:rofl:

Does anyone here doubt we will one day do just that? Maybe not for centuries, maybe a whole lot sooner...

:rofl:

Sometimes, you have to just :rofl: