Ocean Frontier Fertility: The Near Term Possibility of Bluefin Tuna Production

Posted by John Ray on March 29, 2006, 12:02 PM | #

James
I guess you know that fish farming is plagued by piracy of various sorts

And I think the iron seeding experiment in the Indian Ocean did not work very well—from memory

Posted by Søren Renner on March 29, 2006, 03:26 PM | #

We should welcome and not fear
Fish farms in a Dyson sphere
Or, since there’s no current use for Luna
Why not start with Moon-based tuna?

Posted by James Bowery on March 29, 2006, 03:49 PM | #

Piracy is mainly a problem for operations where the structures are immobile and left unguarded due to the low value.  Although the bluefin tuna platforms are slow moving they most certainly would not be low value and left unguarded—indeed the entire idea of frontier population growth is to find an economic use for whites.

While there are historic reasons to believe whites are incapable of solving the political problems associated with their replacement, there are just as many historic reasons to believe that when given a fighting chance, as in a real fight using weapons, whites will win.  This is particularly true of their operations on the high seas.  We are either going to learn to play to our strengths or we will perish.

As for the veracity of iron fertilization itself—this was previously covered.  The link given in the article to the prior article on global potential is where you can find the history of iron fertilization experiments.  They have been stongly supportive of the iron hypothesis.  Experimentation is growing.  From the Wikipedia article on iron fertilization:

...Ironex I, a proof of concept research voyage, which was successfully carried out near the Galapagos Islands in 1993 by his colleagues at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. Since then 9 other international ocean trials have confirmed the iron fertilization effect: Ironex (Iron Experiment) II, ‘95; SOIREE (Southern Ocean Iron RElease Experiment), ‘99; EisenEx (Eisen Experiment), ‘00; SEEDS (Subarctic Pacific Iron Experiment for Ecosystem Dynamics Study), ‘01; SOFeX (Southern Ocean Iron Experiments - North & South), ‘02; SERIES (Subarctic Ecosystem Response to Iron Enrichment Study), ‘02; SEEDS-II, ‘04; EIFEX (European Iron Fertilization Experiment); ‘04; and CROZEX (CROZet natural iron bloom and EXport experiment), ‘05.

CROEX was conducted in the extreme south western Indian Ocean and was an observation of natural blooms.  Even though the Indian Ocean in general is not a good candidate as its nitrogen content is too low (see the previously linked MR article and the map of high nitrogen low chlorophyll oceanic surface regions) CROZEX found that natural iron blooms supported th

Posted by James Bowery on March 29, 2006, 04:10 PM | #

(I’m not sure why the prior response got cut off but here is a continuation.)

CROZEX found that the natural iron blooms supported the iron hypothesis.

Indeed, the strongest support for the iron hypothesis comes from the highest latitudes where, for example, the SEEDS experiment found a 40-fold increase in chlorophyll.  This indicates that when the learning curve leads to making the higher latitudes more accessible the potential for white population explosion there is great.

PS: Soren, what I find risible is the idea that we are going to overcome our problems politically.  We have a track recod there and it is to lose, lose, lose.  Don’t be a loser while deriding those who think outside the box we’re trapped by.  At the very least come up with a plausible scenario of how we are going to start a global war so we can fight.

Posted by Søren Renner on March 29, 2006, 04:27 PM | #

James:
I was not deriding you. I like your ideas - both the fish farms and the Dyson sphere. And I don’t think “we” are going to overcome our problems politically—certainly not if the elite remain useless to each other.

Posted by Søren Renner on March 29, 2006, 04:32 PM | #

AND—the iron fertilization thing could be important, if plankton really fix that much CO2—we might be hearing a lot more about this soon. Thanks for the link.

Posted by Søren Renner on March 29, 2006, 04:38 PM | #

clarificatory note

Under the heading of useless to each other is included “Not responding to friendly mail.”

Posted by James Bowery on March 29, 2006, 06:07 PM | #

Soren, I apologize for misreading your poetic license.

Here’s my answer in seirousnes:

Starting with space colonization (not the lunar surface but cis-lunar space greenhouses) might have been viable if the momentum of the space race had not been diverted inward to the computer industry at the same time the barriers protecting the cultures that created that race were battered down by vectorist policies.

As for the far future of a heliocentric collection surface (ie: Dyson sphere)—I suspect it will initially appear as an extension of cis-lunar orbital green houses.  There will be a large population of green “cells” in various heliocentric orbits that favor the availability of materials from current heliocentric mass (the asteroids and planets).  Beyond that, I have heard some proposals for stellar husbandry that involve extracting mass from the sun through very far-out macroengineering projcts but the big gains in carrying capacity will have been achieved before then I suspect.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on March 29, 2006, 08:52 PM | #

James what if we don’t want to move to a heliocentric biosphere?  I’d rather make the race-replacers move to one of those, and our side take back the land we’ve always had and keep it.

Posted by James Bowery on March 29, 2006, 09:09 PM | #

Fred, there is certainly a lot to be said for returning lands to their rightful owners but the real problem is sustainability.

A rational view of the potential here places the carrying capacity of the Earth at a disappearingly small percentage of the future population.  I don’t want our folk to be left out of that potential.  The Earth really should be viewed more as a museum piece or nature preserve and activities thereupon should be kept at a level of technology consistent with long-range biological evolution rather than technological civilization.

Yes, I certainly want to see Europe returned to our people but I think that is more likely if we have some base of operation for ourselves.  Right now the European homelands are so infected by a pathological form of “civilization” that it is necessary to tear the whole thing down.

I also think restrictions against the use of nonrenewable resources need to be placed upon the entire planet.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on March 29, 2006, 09:16 PM | #

OK but for my part I’ll concentrate on speaking out in favor of keeping the land we’ve always had, and if anyone’s to be launched into orbit let it be the other side.  In fact, I can’t wait to push the launch button—I hereby volunteer.

Posted by Guessedworker on March 29, 2006, 09:37 PM | #

The question of man, Nature and technology is very fascinating, and not, of course, without deep political implications.  These certainly extend to environmental and, therefore, civilisational sustainability.

Clearly, the character of that civilisation - what it is for - determines its standing with regard to sustainability and also its potential for change.  Thus, the strength of our free enterprise model lies in its efficiency at translating individual desires into reality.  Its weakness, however, lies in it inefficiency at incorporating constraints on individual desires in a wider interest.

These characteristics are extraordinarily hard to change.  To repeat my favourite scary mental image, which I’ve applied to liberalism in the past, we are flying down a railway track at breakneck speed, and it seems to be increasing.  The horror of our situation, as we are only just discovering, is that there is no driver on the platform of the engine.  Even worse, as we peer into the countryside ahead of us it is clear that there is no track, nothing but virgin earth.  The insane machine is hammering down the sleepers and rails before itself as it goes.

We do not know what it is we are really doing, for the sum total of self-interested free enterprise is selfishness.  Issues of sustainability do not figure because individualism cannot count higher than 1.  In an ethnocentric society civilisational aims would necessarily include sustainability, since our ethnic genetic interests lie with our children.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on March 29, 2006, 11:22 PM | #

The future is not in violation of Malthus—it potentially postpones the day of reckoning with Malthus

Yup.

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on March 29, 2006, 11:38 PM | #

The Earth really should be viewed more as a museum piece or nature preserve and activities thereupon should be kept at a level of technology consistent with long-range biological evolution rather than technological civilization.

I agree.  I’ve thought for a long time that Earth will end up as you say, a museum/zoo, if humans colonize space rather than destroy themselves.  There will be those radically traditionalist groups that stay, but I think the overwhelming majority will head for space, because Earth’s political/historical baggage will probably always remain in one form or another.

Posted by Mark Richardson on March 30, 2006, 12:45 AM | #

You might be taking fembots with you.

My wife thinks she made the ultimate sacrifice by agreeing to move just 20 minutes away from the inner suburbs (to a comfortable, well-established, affordable, leafy, middle-class, Anglo suburb with a nice shopping centre).

Just on Sunday my grandmother came to visit for the first time and burst into tears at the sight of a gum tree. “How could you have found this place?” she asked accusingly.

I sometimes tease my wife when we pass through small country towns and see a For Sale sign. I’ll stop the car and pretend to be interested. It’s guaranteed to spark a panic.

So, if I decide to go and live on an oil rig or in some lunar biosphere the one certainty is that I’d be going alone.

(BTW, GW, nice comment.)

Posted by James Bowery on March 30, 2006, 01:07 AM | #

So, if I decide to go and live on an oil rig or in some lunar biosphere the one certainty is that I’d be going alone.

And the male to female ratio of the frontiersmen was similarly large—so large that the primary form of reproduction with via de facto polyandry brothels.

The real fertility expansion occurred with pioneer families.

You have to ask yourself, which is more artificial:  A city or a family farm?

You then have to ask yourself:  If it is possible to have so much control over the environment that life will be suppored where there previously was no life, why wouldn’t the men so controlling the environment do so such that it would be attractive to fertile females?