Seafood's New Normal

October 2016

http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/california-seafood-collapse/

What percentage of the supposed "new normal" in 2015 was due to domoic acid and the resulting lack of a dungeness crabs? Even the picture does nothing to support the dire narrative.

Scary - the graph looks dire, indeed.

Great Article, unfortunately depressing and scary.

What percentage of the supposed "new normal" in 2015 was due to domoic acid and the resulting lack of a dungeness crabs? Even the picture does nothing to support the dire narrative.

Cui Bono?

Depressing, but also not surprising.  That "ridiculously resilient ridge" produced not only the Warmwater Blob but also the worst drought in CA's recorded history.  A one-two punch that's devastated marine and freshwater ecosystems.

It very well could be a cyclical thing, something that CA's ecosystems and species have learned to cope with and endure over millennia.  After all, that's partly how we have four distinct runs of the same species (Chinook salmon) all in the same river system.  But our manipulation of the state's waterways dramatically decreases the resiliency of these runs, to the point where they might not bounce back.  Winter-run Chinook are on the cusp of extinction, and spring-run are in pretty dire straits as well.  The most robust run over the past several decades has been the fall run, but they're overwhelmingly of hatchery origin, and the issues caused by hatchery spawning practices are causing major complications for the resiliency of wild salmon stocks.

Anyway, would've been nice if they extended that "doom graph" to years before the the start of the drought.  But I guess it has more of an impact if you truncate the data like that.

Anyway, would've been nice if they extended that "doom graph" to years before the the start of the drought.  But I guess it has more of an impact if you truncate the data like that.

Exactly.  The graph is playing to a knee-jerk environmentalist narrative.  Whether or not the facts presented in the underlying article are true, and lets just assume that they are, they don't tell the whole story.  The whole story might be as bad as the article says, it might not, we can't tell and the history appears intentionally left out.  A quick look at the author's facebook page indicates strong leftist liberal politics, another red flag.  Then there is the bit about GGSA trucking salmon, which we have discussed here and have been duped by them before because they lie and dismiss their lies as politics.

There are big problems and plenty of real world examples of the dire straits that could be presented in a non political, unbiased manner.  This article does not pretend to do that, its fear mongering designed to get people used to the idea of cuts and more regulation.

Not cool.

Depressing, but also not surprising.  That "ridiculously resilient ridge" produced not only the Warmwater Blob but also the worst drought in CA's recorded history.  A one-two punch that's devastated marine and freshwater ecosystems.

It very well could be a cyclical thing, something that CA's ecosystems and species have learned to cope with and endure over millennia.  After all, that's partly how we have four distinct runs of the same species (Chinook salmon) all in the same river system.  But our manipulation of the state's waterways dramatically decreases the resiliency of these runs, to the point where they might not bounce back.  Winter-run Chinook are on the cusp of extinction, and spring-run are in pretty dire straits as well.  The most robust run over the past several decades has been the fall run, but they're overwhelmingly of hatchery origin, and the issues caused by hatchery spawning practices are causing major complications for the resiliency of wild salmon stocks.

Anyway, would've been nice if they extended that "doom graph" to years before the the start of the drought.  But I guess it has more of an impact if you truncate the data like that.

Yes, but disaster and doom sells and makes change, perhaps this article is aiming for both through the use of the dramatic.  I do the same in my work, but at least I show the whole picture once and focus on the "impact" after illustrating baseline and variability.  Thats harder to do in a mass market situation

Some more data for comparison.