Hello; Did a quick read of the link. I have seen a film by Attleboro(sp) in which he talked about whales & krill. A fact is I have some krill packaged as fish food sitting on a shelf. Very possible some of the other commercial tropical fish foods have krill in them. The crux of the link is commercial "fishing" (harvesting) of krill at industrial levels.
The concern, at least in part, is species which feed on krill will not have enough to sustain populations at some desired level. To be sure a population level less than could exist without the human harvest. A thing I accepted long ago is life finds a way to utilize an available energy/food source. So, some organism will lose out in proportion to the amount of krill we harvest.
Before people came along, I figure the krill were taken by something and that predator -prey balances had established. I figure the krill evolved the species survival strategy of producing lots of offspring because such helped guarantee the potential for enough to survive predation and reproduce. The human industrial harvesting in effect being in competition for the available food source (krill) with the whales and many other such consumers. The simplest way to figure is the more people take = less for the whales. Not clear to me the situation is that simple but for now let me go with that.
I do not mind that there are whales. I do not want any whale population to fall to numbers below a level of sustainability. I do not know the details of how human krill harvest affects my life outside of fish food for my home tanks. I suspect the krill might be a food stock used to feed the farm raised catfish & salmon I cook for my dinner. Had some salmon last evening. Maybe in chicken feed??? If these suspicions are in fact correct, then I have a more direct involvement. I might have to reconsider how much I like whales.
Here is a thought. Pretty sure the krill will continue without the whales.
On a human species level much will depend on how important our krill harvest is to us in general. Would curtailing or reducing that harvest do real harm to some portion of the human population? I see an analogy to the dog & cat food thread i started a few days ago. Maybe an inverted analogy. One of the premises of that link is feeding dogs & cats meat is bad for the environment. Another is the meat fed to dogs & cats could go to starving people.
A side note- I noted a climate bit thrown in the link. I guess such is obligatory now days.
www.theguardian.com
