[evilgenius]

I was watching something the other day, probably on Netflix, about robots. The show featured a robot fish. The developer said that fish can't talk, so how do they school up? He posed that question to himself as a result of the Deep Water Horizon disaster. He figured that he could develop a robotic fish that could mimic what fish do to get other fish to school up and go in a certain direction. He thought he could use that to get fish to move away from danger areas, like oil spills.

I started thinking about that, and realized you could do the same thing to get fish to go into a net. The thing is, fish farming does exist. What goes on with it, even when fish are raised in an ocean, is that they grow and live in some sort of enclosure. Fish aren't put out to pasture in the oceans, maybe with the exception of spawning fish, and then collected back up again like herding animals on land are. You could do that, however, with better robot fish. In fact, if they can be genetically engineered predisposed to follow a certain proprietary pattern rather than a generic female robotic fish, then they can be sent out to pasture in the ocean and herded back up. Fish farming could end the practice of containment. I wonder what kind of impact such a practice would have upon feeding the world's masses?

[Newfie]

Evil,

Well meaning but sadly not helpful. The last thing we need is more efficient fishing machines.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing

Overfishing has stripped many fisheries around the world of their stocks. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated in a 2018 report that 33.1% of world fish stocks are subject to overfishing.[3] Significant overfishing has been observed in pre-industrial times. In particular, the overfishing of the western Atlantic Ocean from the earliest days of European colonisation of the Americas has been well documented.[4]

According to a 2008 UN report, the world's fishing fleets are losing US$50 billion each year through depleted stocks and poor fisheries management. The report, produced jointly by the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), asserts that half the world's fishing fleet could be scrapped with no change in catch. In addition, the biomass of global fish stocks have been allowed to run down to the point where it is no longer possible to catch the amount of fish that could be caught.[1

[Plantagenet]

I just cruised the length of the Patagonian fjords. It was amazingly pristine, untouched, natural and beautiful.

Except where they were doing aquaculture. Near the few towns there were entire bays where they were farming salmon, oysters and mussels.

The mussels were damned good too.

There is immense potential to grow the aquaculture industry in Chile, especially as the climate warms and the inland waters of Tierra del Fuego become more and more temperate.

Cheers!

[Newfie]

More temperate waters tend to contain LESS marine life. Counterintuitive but true.

[Tanada]

More temperate waters tend to contain LESS marine life. Counterintuitive but true.

Newfie as you know I live in the great middle of the country far from any ocean so I know little about it in the practical day to day sense. I stumbled across something recently and you are the best person I know to ask about it, for whatever that is worth.

Do you filter sea water when far from shore and use it for cooking? I ask because apparently this is somewhat of a "thing" in the organic/eat local movement for people who live on the sea coast. I bumped into all sorts of claims about the benefits of using filtered sea water as the cooking liquid for everything from Pasta to Potatoes and any other root vegetables as well as claims that it is a better choice as the base for salty soups and stews than bullion or beef/chicken stock especially for the vegan crowd.

There are even claims of health benefits from getting the full spectrum of dissolved minerals in sea water that are absent in table salt along the lines of the claims about Himalayan Pink Salt that was all the rage a few years ago.

So do you cook with sea water and if so what differences do you note compared to cooking with freshwater that has table salt added?

[Newfie]

Tanada,

I do not although I know there are some who do, but mostly to conserve fresh water. So they will boil potatoes and pasta in sea water. At one time it was common for boat sinks to have two taps; one fresh and one salt. Our small boat is like that. Not very common now. You can use salt water for all kinds of other things like washing
dishes.

But then again there are those with water makers who use fresh water to flush, because the salt water and urine unite to make a thick nasty scale on your hose walls. But also there is a lot of living critters in the sea water and apparently that makes your holding tank stink more.

On the other hand many folks will not make fresh desalinated water in ports because the port water is so dirty it screws up the filters.