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A daily article on global humanities and geography
Earth Knowledge Bureau - Earth Misery Fish Life
NO.546 - Earth miserable fish life
Author: Ming Chun, Ocean Publishing House
Draft: Sun Lu / Proofreader: Cat Stu / Editor: Cotton
The news of fake fish in the past two years has been particularly intensive, and all kinds of common marine fish seem to have been plagued again. Those who love Japanese food found that the eel was fake, those who loved to eat Western food found that the cod was fake, and it was difficult to eat high-end sushi and found that the salmon was also fake, not to mention the shark fins that were faked by fans everywhere.
Profiteers make shoddy money on the one hand, but the more important reason is that it is becoming more and more difficult for profiteers to find real fish.
Real fish and fake fish are stupid and can't tell the difference
The earliest news that attracted attention to fake marine fish appeared in the Internet world in 2012. At that time, there was a screen-skimming news that after the woman ate an excessive amount of fake cod, she had gastrointestinal allergies, produced severe diarrhea, and even endangered her life. Probably many people still remember this news, and after reading it, they still touched their pants with affection.
As early as 2012, Ma Yili said it on Weibo
Babies may have diarrhea from "fake cod"
Fish posing as cod are commonly known as "oil fish" and scientifically known as snake mackerel, which has almost nothing to do with the familiar cod from the family to the habits of life. Their bones and muscles contain 20% of the fats that humans cannot digest, which acts as a moisturizer, which makes diners so injured.
But at that time, the international market price of these two types of snake mackerel was similar to that of real cod, and it was not a good choice to make a difference. The real reason why fish dealers use these counterfeits is actually that real cod is rare in the sea.
The pictures are from top to bottom, from left to right
Pacific cod, cod, cod, and "oil fish"
When the largest atlantic cod in cod was first discovered, fishermen could even "step on the cod school to the shore". But by the mid-19th century, due to large-scale fishing, by 2000, the WWF had released a report saying that Atlantic cod was already an endangered species.
Newfoundlanders used to cast nets to catch fish
Global warming has also played a disgraceful role in this. In the warming waters of the North Sea, smaller, warmer-loving plankton occupy more living space, and they cannot become food for cod fry, exacerbating the disappearance of cod.
In just 200 years, atlantic cod has suffered such bad luck that it can only be pretended to be a fake fish.
Japanese eels, which can be made into fat eel rice, have also encountered such a crisis in the past two years.
Eels
People with weight loss obsessive-compulsive disorder do not click on
The ingredient fish traditionally used to make authentic eel rice is Japanese eel. The survival habits of this fish are very interesting, they must hatch in the seawater, grow in fresh water, and then return to the ocean to spawn when they are sexually mature. Repeatedly shuttling through water of different salinities is inherently a problem for artificial breeding. What's worse is that the cubs of this eel are very delicate, they don't eat well or grow up well, the loss rate is extremely high, and it costs 50,000 yuan to raise one...
In Taiwan, there are even lice fish and meat rice
Obviously, he said that he was an eel rice
It's not a lie...
So people can only catch fry and adult fish, greatly reducing the ability of this wild fish to cope with natural stress.
In addition, due to the overexploitation of freshwater resources in East Asia, this fish often cannot find freshwater habitat in the second stage of fish life, and the number is getting smaller and smaller. Fisheries experts in Japan, Taiwan and elsewhere have warned that The Japanese eel is likely to become extinct in the wild within a few years. The eel rice we eat in the future is all fake.
Times are different, and it is not easy for fish to grow
The recent boiling false salmon incident is actually because wild marine salmon are becoming more and more difficult to complete the ideal of migratory spawning, and people can only meet market demand by breeding rainbow trout in freshwater. Of course, this farmed fish does not have the extremely high parasite threat claimed in the rumors.
It seems that there are really fewer fish in the sea.
Ordinary rainbow trout sashimi
It is still not recommended to eat it raw
Three large pits of scourge fish
These are the tragedies we've seen in the news lately, and more marine tragedies haven't been noticed, but they're really playing out in all corners of the world.
In 1989, the total human catch reached 95.2 million tons, a record high. But since then, despite the increasing development of fishery technology, the amount of fishing has never exceeded this figure. Over the past 50 years, humans have caught 90 percent of the world's adult fish, so much so that fishermen are setting their sights on fish that are getting younger, deeper and smaller.
It's hard to find such a big one
Find one less
Don't blame the greed of the fishermen, it is you and I who are driving them to do these things.
Without buying and selling, there is no killing
Worst of all, even farming doesn't solve the problem. Unlike the fish farming industry you might imagine, the feed fed to carnivorous fish (such as your most familiar tuna, sea bass, flounder) is actually small, wild fish. It's like feeding the lions in a zoo with wild gazelles we catch, which is economically cost-effective and not ecologically reasonable at all.
Such a net can be very deep and deep
And the number of these small wild fish is also decreasing, which directly affects the level of access to fish protein by coastal people in poor countries. People in the West African country of Mauritania have halved their access to fish products over the past 50 years. Unlike the food problem, when it comes to eating fish, it can be said that every bite of fish you eat is taken from the mouths of African children.
A dense pack of small fishing boats in a Mauritanian fishing port
Fishermen of this desert country
There is probably no other source of income other than catches
Overfishing seafood is just one angle of the problem. Other consequences of human actions are a more macroscopic, potential, but also deadly threat to marine life.
Looking at seawater pollution, people always remember the scene of the black oil trapping seabirds and turtles after the oil tanker leak. But this is not a big deal at all on the scale of the entire Earth, and the bigger crisis is actually the plastic waste that humans continue to produce. In the heart of the Pacific Ocean, plastic waste has formed a huge garbage vortex under the action of ocean currents, known as the "plastic continent" - this is the highest level of landmaking around the sea, what a sad reality.
Is this the Eighth Continent?
Decomposed plastic particles can enter the body of marine organisms, causing sensory confusion, immune deficiencies, hormonal secretion disorders, decreased fecundity and other hazards. The tragedy of species extinction is unfolding in the deep sea that humans can't see.
This is already a plastic bird
Ponder the horror
The melting of the ice sheet triggered by global warming has spawned a skin-and-bone polar bear, a hazard that humans can see with the naked eye.
It can be said to be very tragic
Out of sight, the marine crisis triggered by global warming is even more severe. Because the seawater on the surface of the ocean is heated, the hot water flow from the seabed cannot rise to the surface by convection, and the dissolved oxygen generated by the seabed cannot come to the surface, so the fish have to live in deeper water.
But not every fish can adapt to life in the deep sea, and even if they do, they will have to pay the price of muscle atrophy and decreased fecundity – of course, to face deeper and deeper fishing nets.
What a terrible word.
Floating translucent plastic bag
It is eaten in the stomach by turtles as a gourmet "jellyfish"
Love the ocean to have welfare
Attempts to change the global fisheries economy overnight are unrealistic, and attempts to persuade people to live a low-carbon life as quickly as possible often fail. The only thing people who are aware of the problem can do is to take advantage of the fact that these marine organisms have not yet become extinct, to faithfully record their lives as soon as possible, and to leave some impact data for future generations.
That's what French director Jacques Perrin did.
Jacques Behan's spirit head is good
A little knowledge of French films reveals the musical film Spring of the Cattle Herding Class, of which he was the producer. However, as a director, his greatest achievement is to shoot documentaries. "Microscopic World" about insects and "Migrating Birds" about birds are his works, and domestic audiences should be familiar with them.
Remember these little Shota?
In 2011, inspired by Migrating Birds, he and his old friend Jacques Cluzaud turned their gaze from the sky to the sea for the documentary Ocean. To make the documentary, the directors pulled up a crossover team of marine biologists and professional film crews to search for exotic marine life around the world, truly documenting the underwater world unfamiliar to humans.
"Ocean" was released in the mainland
As soon as the work came out, it was well received for its excellent production and won the 36th French César Award for Best Documentary. From this documentary, people see not a simple animal introduction, but a reflection on the ocean, on the earth, on ecological nature and on the fate of human beings themselves.
Seeing these strange creatures in front of us, are we really interested in continuing to destroy the ocean?
END