Chesapeake blue crab population drops 50%. The question is: Why?
Posted by lavapig_love@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 45 comments
Posted by lavapig_love@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 45 comments
lavapig_love@reddit (OP)
Submission Statement:
The total population of Chesapeake Blue Crab, one of Chesapeake Bay's famous and delicious animals that are a staple in seafood boils, buffets and fine dining plate dinners, has been erased by at least 50%. And despite running five different studies on the decline, the current answer scientists have is "we don't know why". But we can certainly hazard a guess.
This is related to collapse not just for the collapse of a seafood chain that millions of people defend on, but the collapse of understanding of humanity's place inside it.
NihiloZero@reddit
I hear this in the voice of Morbo, the news anchor on Futurama. "One of the areas most famous and delicious animals..."
But seriously, puny humans needs to stop destroying their environment.
ofthedestroyer@reddit
all humans are vermin in the eyes of Morbo
Ree_For_Thee@reddit
Fun fact, the Futurama climate change episode, where they drop a giant ice cube in the ocean every now and then, aired in 2002. :) Also several years before Al Gore's documentary.
Small_Basket5158@reddit
My guess is they were eaten. Probably all you can eat crab or some bs like that.
PrestigiousQuack474@reddit
Probably the same answer as to why the Alaskan Snow Crabs disappeared. They most likely starved to death due to warmer water from climate change.
nickiter@reddit
The article addresses warm water concerns - it sounds like that may be contributing, but it's not the big thing.
uberclont@reddit
And pollution and over fishing. It’s death from 1000 cuts all thanks to humans.
pagerussell@reddit
We are the great filter.
SapphosLemonBarEnvoy@reddit
I regularly tell people this and they just go no no no, it's because of climate change! Who the fuck do you think is causing the climate change bruh?
filmguy36@reddit
That and probably over fishing and their own ecosystem in general is in simultaneous collapse
We are all off the cliff but the morons in power refuse to say the magic words for fear of pissing off the orange pedo
unknownpoltroon@reddit
And his psycho followers.
Jovan_Knight005@reddit
Not to mention fishing, it's probably one of many causes for their decrease in numbers.
autumn_rains@reddit
Commercial fishing.
autumn_rains@reddit
And ocean acidification resulting in loss of plantkton and up we go through the food chain
Lostregard@reddit
Heard that one of their natural predators moved into their home, crabs like colder waters, the fish that would eat crabs like warmer waters. So since it warmed up, the fish moved into their environments and ate them. Also everything else
redditmodsRrussians@reddit
Welp, time to genetically engineer Homarids....nothing could possibly go wrong with that idea.
ishitar@reddit
Polycrisis. Underwater grasslands, their habitat, are dying, choked of by dark plastic particulates from vehicle tires as well as algal blooms from farm runoff. The nanoplastics in that particulate runoff also end up in high concentrations in tidal traps that crab larvae depend on to migrate - ingested in high enough quantity it causes so much metabolic dysfunction / inefficiency that the larvae fail to thrive / end up more easily eaten. Meanwhile, climate change makes waters warmer, ramps up their metabolic requirements, making it harder to survive metabolically while prompting overconsumption of benthic food sources (also coming under stress via climate change and pollution). Meanwhile the farm runoff creates a water deoxygenating machine that deoxygenates water which sinks to deeper ocean, killing off most benthic food sources, forcing crabs to shallower waters where invasive predatory species like blue catfish when at once time blue crabs were a top predator. Honestly, surprised it's only 50%.
Bratsummer24@reddit
I'm surprised this is not the top comment. This is better than all the others combined.
NyriasNeo@reddit
Why? We eat too many of them. That is why.
mooky1977@reddit
I have the answer, I'm a genius. Climate change.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
midgaze@reddit
Human overpopulation and capitalist regulatory capture. We are like a colony of bacteria that will grow uncontrolled and then die way back when resources fail.
Sta41BC@reddit
In the book Homo Ecophagus by Warren M. Hern He compares us to how a cancer spreads in the body.
mooky1977@reddit
I like to think agent Smith was right. We are a virus, a disease, a cancer of this planet, a plague.
phaedrus910@reddit
Water too hot
K1llrzzZ@reddit
Must have been the Chesapeake Ripper
mikemaca@reddit
"Crab population drops 50% but why?" says reporter with photos of hundreds of enormous vats full of tens of thousands of crabs people have caught and killed.
Jukka_Sarasti@reddit
There are so many people who refuse to accept that humans are also animals and part of the food web. They cannot imagine a world where there isn't enough food, because they never give a second thought to the logistics and complex, interdependent mechanisms that result in them being able to go down to the closest all-you-can-eat buffet and work on perfecting their Type-2 speed-run while stuffing their prodigious faces with seafood.
And then there are the "Well AKSCHUALLLLLLLY.... We have the technology to feed and support 30 billion humans!!1!!11!" types who, rather conveniently, fail to grasp that we don't live in a colony-building Sim.
CorvidCorbeau@reddit
The whole system is built on that idea. We fence off our crops, spray them with poison without a care in the world and shoot anything that bypasses the other two methods.
We take nutrients from the biosphere and even artificially increase the total amount of nutrients in circulation through making fertilizer out of fossil fuels.
daviddjg0033@reddit
otherwise we would a. never got to 8B b. will cannibalize. people thimk that we are different than the rabbits on an island that bred themselves to death. holodimor is just one of thousands of truly horrific times in human history where natural or human -caused (and the scale on that has tipped over) where humans go and kill all the ecosystems around them, like rabbits eating the roots of the plants, before the rabbits eat each other reread soylent green
Tight-Air-6767@reddit
who needs 8 billion? like who cares?
Jovan_Knight005@reddit
Collapse is unavoidable, but they'll continue to deny that it is the case.
ElephantContent8835@reddit
Um. I’d say the culprit is most likely either one of a million chemicals humans dump, or the excess heat humans have created. What say you humans?
Effective-Ebb-2805@reddit
Perhaps because Chesapeake Bay is a shithole? The hills of chicken shit washing into it from the peninsula? Creosote? Warming of ocean temperature? Copper in old ship paint?
But, I'm not an expert... maybe all that is just fine...
Uhh_JustADude@reddit
The old ship paint had tin in it, copper it the replacement.
Effective-Ebb-2805@reddit
Well, then... "copper in NEW boat paint"... then and now, it's toxic.
djseanstyles@reddit
Is it this? https://youtu.be/AJbzy3axrWg?si=D7aJkibBh3dIuVRQ
Distinguishedflyer@reddit
der qwesshun id....WHYYYY!
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
glimmerthirsty@reddit
I thought Chesapeake Bay was also reintroducing oysters. Wouldn’t they help with oxygen-poor water?
GagOnMacaque@reddit
There's no plankton for one.
Painful_Colonoscopy@reddit
I just want my Filet o Fish put together like Mr Potato Head after eating bath salts.
Level_32_Mage@reddit
I can't tell if one of us had a stroke, or I'm just out of the loop on some stuff.
stromm@reddit
Chinese backed illegal fishing boats trawling OUTSIDE of the bay. Those crabs don’t live their entire life in the bay. They live most of it out in the Atlantic.
freedomoverfear_19@reddit
You don't have to ask why because you know your guess is as good as mine. The bigger question is how we can stop ourselves from destroying the planet because at this rate, our next generation is doomed.
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/lavapig_love:
Submission Statement:
The total population of Chesapeake Blue Crab, one of Chesapeake Bay's famous and delicious animals that are a staple in seafood boils, buffets and fine dining plate dinners, has been erased by at least 50%. And despite running five different studies on the decline, the current answer scientists have is "we don't know why". But we can certainly hazard a guess.
This is related to collapse not just for the collapse of a seafood chain that millions of people depend on, but the collapse of understanding and defense of humanity's place inside it.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1tevs81/chesapeake_blue_crab_population_drops_50_the/om53u2l/