tzor wrote:Back to the gulf. The question you raise is the economic potential for species that the spill might make extinct. That's a pretty broad accusation here, but in the case of fishing the answer is stranger than you might think. The answer is contained in the saying "one man's garbage is another man's treasure." I know the fishing industry enough to see that in practice again and again; fish that were generally thought to be trash, for one reason or another "discovered" and having been discovererd as "treasure" almost fished to extinction. The "fad" factor in the fish industry is far greater than you might otherwise think. Likewise, there are other causes (man made and natural) that often cause one or another species to go to near extinction conditions.
Look, Tzor, I studied the Gulf, was part of Gulf stock assessment teams for several years. And my field happens to be fish habitat restoration. So, telling me the story of fishing is "stranger than [I] might think", would be funny if the situation were not so sad. Truth is, I can write books on it. I have written published accounts.
As for the multiple cause bit... certainly, species went extinct long before humans came onto the scene, but when you look at modern extinctions, even if the "final" cause was not man-made, humans are almost always involved in one way or another and usually in multiple ways. Usually they fish the stock to depletion and pollute and destroy nursery grounds, etc all together.
tzor wrote:There is no doubt that this is a DISASTER of the worst possible magnitude and expressing it in "economic" impact alone does not do it justice. But the ecomonic ripples do impact others in strange locations. This is very similiar to the collapse of the big three auto makers in the United States, so powerful is BP in the makeup of the UK economy.
NO, tzor, I am sorry, but you are just flat out wrong on this and time will prove me , sadly correct.
The REAL truth is that Exxon has been quite profitable for some time, but the fishermen are still in court seeking compensation, after 20 years. And that was a relatively small, innocuous spill.
The waters of the Gulf are far more productive, support far more people in a wider variety of ways and have far, far greater diversity than the Valdeze ever saw. Plus, there are hydrologic and temperature/chemical differences that just don't even come close to comparisons.
You probably don't even know how many corals are found in the Gulf. They are one of the most susceptable to damage, and it seems the disbursant is actually worse than the oil for them (though both are extremely bad). Teh species facing eradication here are not some isolated "oddballs", we are talking about mainstays -- shrimp, herring, other pelagics.
Truth is, I can barely even talk about this, becuase I am one of the people who really DOES happen to know what it is we face now.
