Darwin's Nightmare

[Nerine]

http://www.coop99.at/darwins-nightmare/index.htm

This was on tv today...It's not new, but it's the first time I've heard of it. I recorded it to watch later...It is about Lake Victoria and the Nile Perch that was introduced in the 60's...the destruction of the native fish and how the perch multiplied so fast it's now exported as food.

Looked interesting from the preview!!

[darkdep]

Looks very cool.  The Lake Victoria story is a very good lesson for pretty much anyone who still believes we have the slightest ability to control nature with nature.

For everyone keeping Victorian Cichlids:  Hold onto em.  Pretty soon they'll all be extinct.

[Shouganai]

I saw this at the Bytowne a while ago.  It does bring up the issue of the nile perch and the fishery which relies on it, but just fyi, it is more about the social/economical aspect of this fishery and its European supporters than about the ecological effects of the fishery.

Still a very eye-opening movie though.  A lot of fisheries operating in developing countries tend to be expoitative like this one is, unfortunately.

[darkdep]

What sucks is it's easy for us to sit back and say bad things about the Lake Victorian ecological issues (among other similar issues from other lakes) but for those living there and surviving off the fishery, well, I'm sure they really don't care very much about some little fish species when the alternative is feeding their families.

[Shouganai]

Actually, the whole point of the movie is to show that the local people *don't* profit from the fishery, just the european companies that own the fish plants do.  They hire a few locales, but its a very very small percentage.  The locals don't even get to eat the fish, except for the dumptruck loads full of rotting carcasses and fish bones they processing plants dump in the local communities.

This is the kind of thing I mean when I talk about fisheries being exploitative.  Not to the local ecology, but to the local people who do not even get to profit from their own resources.