website.net.nz

Here’s an interesting way of looking at the world.

Interesting to see that New Zealand is a right little fatty on fisheries exports which, given the mentality of one particular big fish, is a little scary.

Worldmapper allows you to see the world according to lots of different variables. Using ‘equal area cartograms’, otherwise known as density-equalising maps, the site allows you to view the world with each territory re-sized according to the variable being mapped.

There are a bunch of really good diverse variables to choose from. For instance; carbon emissions, greenhouse gasses, ecological footprint, net emigration and immigration and my favourite - international demonstrations.

NZ, with it’s tiny population is all but invisible at the best of times but, as you would expect, really does almost disappear on a lot of these maps. However we do punch above our weight on some things and that little sliver of a country bloats up like a big fat pig.

It would be good if I could upload my own dataset - hopefully that is in the pipeline for future development.

Peter Talley of NZ’s own Talley’s Fisheries showing us how the fishing industry do PR in these parts. Good one Pete - you’re a master. Homer Simpson couldn’t have done it better. The kids probably need counseling and the shareholders will be stoked with this.

Here’s a choice quote:

I don’t believe in animal rights. I want to kill and eat them.

Oh yes. Our fisheries are in good hands.

It reminds me of an exchange between Andrew Talley and Dr Steve O’shea on TV1 a while back in the heat of the bottom trawling campaign.

“I see the fishing industry as a cancer, exploiting fish stocks further afield because we have exhausted everything within the EEZ. And once we’ve exhausted those further afield… we are just going to go deeper,” says O’Shea.

But the fishing industry says that’s nonsense - Talley says its neither destructive, barbaric or destructive.

“This misrepresentation that bottom trawling is unsustainable, that its bringing to the brink of extinction many species, that we are clearfelling acres or hectares or thousands of square kilometres of coral is unsubstantiated claptrap,” says Talley.

Deep sea bottom-trawlers use a massive net, approximately four metres high and 40 metres wide. It is lowered a kilometre and a half to the sea floor where it scoops up everything in its path. Fish, sponges and coral.

O’Shea says its fundamentally wrong.

“In effect, it’s the same as trying to herd cows up with a net and dragging a net through a farm. You catch a few cows. You catch the farmers wife. You catch a cattle trough. All this other stuff is incidental bi-catch, filth, bottom filth they refer to it. We just don’t do that on land. Why are we doing it in the oceans?” asks O’Shea.

Talley has his own version of that analogy.

“Certainly fishermen wont be able to drop the net down the chimney. But he will be able to put it through the barn doors and pick the three or four biggest cows that he wants. And he will come out of the barn doors. If he likes the look of the farmer’s wife he might take her too. But every now and then, he might knock at the barn door. He might grab the pig and the goat in the corner - but it is far more selective than that analogy,” says Talley.