Dude, you need to compare the size of a barracuda with a cod.
Increasing Fish Population
- Thread starter All Seeing Eye
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All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Like I said, it's obviously not going to keep all predators out.
Predator size varies as much as "food fish" sizes. All you'll do is limit the size of anything passing, predator or prey.
Smaller items to process mean more handling to get equivalent amount of food material, so this would cause cost to go up since there would be more labor involved.
Smaller items to process mean more handling to get equivalent amount of food material, so this would cause cost to go up since there would be more labor involved.
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
Of course they do, they also eat birds and plankton. It's not one or the other.
I've just got to see a whale shark feasting on a bird. You have footage of that happening somewhere, Taccy??
All Seeing Eye
Admiral
See! my cage would have protected those salmon!!! there's no way those jelly tots could have got in it with their big bulbous heads and long frilly tendrils.
My idea = victory.
Can't find any footage, no. But I have seen footage of whales and sharks eating birds. I've not necessarily seen a Whale shark eat one though.
Yep, this is the overriding flaw and a reason the cod stocks in the western Atlantic don't appear to be recovering. Because the large cod were overfished they were unable to check the smaller species that prey on their own fry, so it's just a downward spiral. If the cod do survive, it will be as a smaller species that reaches sexual maturity earlier.
There was BBC article on the subject -- the research is still in early stages -- but it looks like many large species are becoming smaller as a result of human predation. Farming of species like cod and tuna is so far extremely expensive, but it looks like a better solution than the current ocean trawlers.
The EU should also dump their bullshit size quotas and move to regulations prohibiting the dumping of bycatch and have quotas based upon weight, so that fisherman will have to sell whatever they catch and be more descriminate about what they catch without dumping dead fish overboard.
I'm in the camp that thinks would pretty much naff up the local ecology. Pyramids of biomass and all that - one whale eats a thousand fish, those fish eat a tonne of plankton, etc. I don't understand why reducing shark and whale populations is considered a good thing given that there are so many people out there trying to increase those populations to combat the result of hunting, water pollution and so on.
The main issue here is human intervention has had an impact on fish populations anyway what with trawlers and the like, and to get even more involved would probably result in more drastic knock-on effects.
If you take the humans out of the equation, nature's been running its course for thousands of years with no problem, and no cages.
I'll admit to not knowing a great deal about fish habits, but I wouldn't have thought it was in a lot of aquatic species' nature (or intelligence) to know to set up a home within the confines of a cage. And as has been mentioned at various points, predators could also be candidates for living in the cage, therefore making it easy pickings for them.
A different (possibly better?) solution, I think, would be to set up a barrier, rather than a cage. If fish are on the run, they'll dart through a mesh barrier, whereas larger predators would be stopped by it. But again, I don't see why this needs to be done.
My own personal opinion - no good ever comes from playing God with any species, and I don't think this will be an exception.
The main issue here is human intervention has had an impact on fish populations anyway what with trawlers and the like, and to get even more involved would probably result in more drastic knock-on effects.
If you take the humans out of the equation, nature's been running its course for thousands of years with no problem, and no cages.
I'll admit to not knowing a great deal about fish habits, but I wouldn't have thought it was in a lot of aquatic species' nature (or intelligence) to know to set up a home within the confines of a cage. And as has been mentioned at various points, predators could also be candidates for living in the cage, therefore making it easy pickings for them.
A different (possibly better?) solution, I think, would be to set up a barrier, rather than a cage. If fish are on the run, they'll dart through a mesh barrier, whereas larger predators would be stopped by it. But again, I don't see why this needs to be done.
My own personal opinion - no good ever comes from playing God with any species, and I don't think this will be an exception.
