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fight_your_friends t1_j4wg106 wrote

Reply to comment by GWS2004 in 4-year-old whale of one of the world's rarest species is "likely to die" after becoming heavily entangled, NOAA says - CBS News by Simple_Opossum

Why not just farm them?

edit: Do we just downvote questions now?

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Megraptor t1_j4wlvdi wrote

Crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp and other crunchy aquatic "bug") don't take well to farming because they eat anything.

Including each other.

Even keeping a pet crayfish is a major pain in the butt. They dig up all the plants, eat all the fish that they can get their claws on, and then fight each other till death. They will munch on each other when they shed their shells and are soft (seriously, they get weirdly squishy.)

That, combined with slow growth rates just makes it not viable. They take so long to get to marketable size and they just eat each other before that.

And if we were to figure it out somehow, Maine would be very against it. Look at the PNW and salmon farming, they are EXTREMELY against it because they are worried it will impact their wild caught stocks and economy. There are some issues with salmon farming, like how they use Atlantic Salmon in the Pacific mostly while Coho Salmon are perfectly farmable. But you'd see this somehow with lobsters too I bet...

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fight_your_friends t1_j4wv71j wrote

Thanks! Never knew much about crustacean behavior beyond a couple of Disney characters.

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Megraptor t1_j4x0fbv wrote

They are vicious! Disney characters make them seem so dopey, but they basically are on omnivorous and aquatic gremlins with claws. from having crayfish as pets, I think they are smarter than a lot of people think too, and often will rove about their tank looking for trouble.

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GWS2004 t1_j4wjme2 wrote

I personally don't know if you can.

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mattmillze t1_j4wl7b4 wrote

They kill and eat each other in tanks pretty often and take a long time to grow to maturity. It's possible, but still not as profitable at scale as hoisting them from the depths where they aren't kept together for long.

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