Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/29/foraging-on-a-beach-in-wales.html
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You can do this pretty successfully at Coney Island too! I mean, if you don’t mind a little sand and broken glass in your half-eaten chili dog,
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There’s lovely.
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I like how the dog got her share at the end. 
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That’s just great. Let’s expand the area humans literally devour to the lowest low tide line. That way there will be nothing to populate the new intertidal zone as sea levels rise.
It’s tragic, but the time when humans can behave like this has passed. It was a mixed blessing to live to see it.
Is that what’s happening? Is foraging the low tide land something new?
Really? Do you suppose scavenging by hand is not sustainable?
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We already have done years ago.
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I take your point, but also… yes and no. At our present population levels, if everyone returned to a foraging survival style, I wonder if we’d continue to do significant damage? Imagine the population of New York City foraging the coastline on a daily basis.
I think your hypothetical is unrealistic and hyperbolic. You might as well ask what would happen if everyone went to the Beaver Kill river to do fly fishing.
But I will say this, if the worlds population suddenly stopped farming and fishing on industrial scales with modern pesticides and fertilizers and instead began foraging for all of our food, the impact to the environment would certainly be a positive one.
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Those squidgy things that live on the soup of plastic-micro-balls and raw sewage washing up on coast are safe from me and my depredations.
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Or the odd whitefish
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I came for the foraging, but stayed for the accent.
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Oh, I know it’s unrealistic. And I understand the benefits to the earth of discontinuing the processes we use now to produce food on a massive scale. But I think the hypothetical question is still interesting, even as a thought experiment: if all the billions of humans on the planet went completely to a foraging lifestyle at once, could the current state of the biosphere support it? If we moved like nomadic herds across the countryside, over the course of seasons, would we fall into a symbiotic cycle with the natural world, or still strip it bare to where it couldn’t replenish quickly enough to meet our needs? I’m not sure it’s a model we’ve ever (as Homo sapiens) completely embraced, and when we have, it has been in smaller social units, often in a pre-industrialized natural world.
I was going to make a “foraging for whales on a beach!” image-joke, but all the image search results made me want to cry…
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I think it might be positive for the environment in that much of the human population would simply die of starvation.
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Daffyd?
“I am the only forager on this beach!”
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Mainly because a lot of people would starve to death, and there would be fewer people to pollute the land.
Didn’t anyone notice that he was putting back the smaller crabs to grow up, and carefully NOT taking all the periwinkles and whelks? Even the nice little lobster got a bye. He also returned the smaller fish (could anyone hear what he called it?) when he found a bigger one, and didn’t pull off the whole dulse plant, but only broke off some parts. None of that sounds like irresponsible stewardship.
Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop
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I can smell the briny while watching this. I don’t eat any of these critters, but it makes me want to sit there sipping an Islay, if that wouldn’t insult a Welshman.
