Sunday, February 25, 2007
Colossal Squid Caught in Commercial Fishermen's Net
The Clarion was disappointed to read of the catching
of a colossal squid in Antartic waters by a New Zealand fishing boat.
Despite the triumphant posture of the fisherman and the scientific community, it is still a magnificent creature rendered dead by our devices. Specifically a humongous fishing net, weighing as much as 15 tons, trolling extra deep, approximately 5,000 feet down. These tremendous creatures are thought to form a goodly part of the sperm whale’s diet. They have both large eyes and large brains. The reason so few of have been seen is they live so far from mankinds environs. These fishermen were not looking for colossal squid, but rather Chilean Sea Bass, which itself is being over fished into relative scarcity by the globalized pallette, thus the need to go deeper and deeper with the massive nets. This process has been compared by biologists to cutting down the old growth forests of the ocean.
Who is celebrating the extending of humanity’s reach to include scooping colossal squid from their homes deep beneath the ocean’s surface and tossing them on the decks of boats to suffocate? Why celebrate? Because now humanity gets to see one, to know what it looks like? This extension of human dominion, even for the claim of scientific knowledge, has the look of specious benefit acheived at much cost. A cost of at least one life, much more likely many other wasted lives. These deep nets are notorious for how many unintentional kills they bring up. Remember these were commercial fishermen, not scientists on an expedition. This cloaking of an occurrence which so blatantly demonstrates the depths of humanity's exploitation of the planet in the shroud of joyous discovery is what most mortifies here at the offices of the Clarion.
of a colossal squid in Antartic waters by a New Zealand fishing boat.
Despite the triumphant posture of the fisherman and the scientific community, it is still a magnificent creature rendered dead by our devices. Specifically a humongous fishing net, weighing as much as 15 tons, trolling extra deep, approximately 5,000 feet down. These tremendous creatures are thought to form a goodly part of the sperm whale’s diet. They have both large eyes and large brains. The reason so few of have been seen is they live so far from mankinds environs. These fishermen were not looking for colossal squid, but rather Chilean Sea Bass, which itself is being over fished into relative scarcity by the globalized pallette, thus the need to go deeper and deeper with the massive nets. This process has been compared by biologists to cutting down the old growth forests of the ocean.
Who is celebrating the extending of humanity’s reach to include scooping colossal squid from their homes deep beneath the ocean’s surface and tossing them on the decks of boats to suffocate? Why celebrate? Because now humanity gets to see one, to know what it looks like? This extension of human dominion, even for the claim of scientific knowledge, has the look of specious benefit acheived at much cost. A cost of at least one life, much more likely many other wasted lives. These deep nets are notorious for how many unintentional kills they bring up. Remember these were commercial fishermen, not scientists on an expedition. This cloaking of an occurrence which so blatantly demonstrates the depths of humanity's exploitation of the planet in the shroud of joyous discovery is what most mortifies here at the offices of the Clarion.
Labels: ecology
Comments:
I can understand outrage over the waste involved by mass-net fishing. Plenty of marine species are killed uselessly by the process. But yo're actually suggesting that you're upset by an individual death of a squid? Because sperm whales feed on them? The Clarion needs to get ahold of itself, and reevaluate what to get riled up about.
Nah. Don’t expect outrage. Don't expect you or anyone to mourn, but rather to reflect.
I could tell you we have lost hundreds of species of frogs in just the last few decades. Or that we are fishing the Chilean Sea Bass into extinction. But the shock value of a creature as great (in size) and as mysterious as a fifty foot squid, well the Clarion, was hoping it might give one a pause.
Is E.O. Wilson correct that we are presently in the middle of a 7th mass extinction? Is the nature of human activity the primary cause?
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I could tell you we have lost hundreds of species of frogs in just the last few decades. Or that we are fishing the Chilean Sea Bass into extinction. But the shock value of a creature as great (in size) and as mysterious as a fifty foot squid, well the Clarion, was hoping it might give one a pause.
Is E.O. Wilson correct that we are presently in the middle of a 7th mass extinction? Is the nature of human activity the primary cause?
