How many fish would flood the earth?
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Representing_Tromba
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I think I understand the answer to my late night thought. I should have looked into the science of marine biology first.
D
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You hypotetical proposal is imposible.
First: Like many have signaled the relation predator/pray would reach a balance sooner or later.
second: even if you take out all the predators, and the fish population increase dramatically, the enviroment wouldnt sufice to feed that many living creatures. (this has already been seen in secluded islands were there is only herbivores with no predators like that japanese rabbit island).
third: Eventually they all die before reaching what you propose, the bigger species just die giving way to smaller living things to come around untill they also evolve and die perpetuating the cicle of bullshit.
fourth: This kind of ideas are ingeneered by the actual culture that has made humanity (and industrial and tecnological progress) as a monster that is destroying the planet, is a culture of self hate. The fact is: industry as we know it, has less than 200 years, 90% of species roaming the earth disapeared on their own wayyy before industrial age. The idea that we are cousing so much "damage" is quite unrealistic (we are doing it but it doesnt mean what people think it means). The extintion of a species involve the rise of another, for example: Yeah, cities eliminate the habitat of deer, and boars, and some birds (All we like to eath, ironic isnt it?), frogs, bees, etc. but: Cockroaches are thriving, you will never find as many roaches in a forest like you find in the normal drain of a regular house... How about pidgeons? there is a lot of them, and rats? nothing like a good old fat 1kg new york sewer rat. The problem is not "we are killing the animals and insects" is that the ones that are thriving in the enviroment we created, we dont like them.
The sea will be fine, even if there is no fishes on it, some algae, bacteria, and non edible (probably toxic) stuff will take the fishes place and they will thrive on the toxic contaminated waters, there is already a bacteria that feeds on plastic...
Sorry I got all weird, happens every now and then, and I wont check this word diarreah, so sorry for the mistakes.
First: Like many have signaled the relation predator/pray would reach a balance sooner or later.
second: even if you take out all the predators, and the fish population increase dramatically, the enviroment wouldnt sufice to feed that many living creatures. (this has already been seen in secluded islands were there is only herbivores with no predators like that japanese rabbit island).
third: Eventually they all die before reaching what you propose, the bigger species just die giving way to smaller living things to come around untill they also evolve and die perpetuating the cicle of bullshit.
fourth: This kind of ideas are ingeneered by the actual culture that has made humanity (and industrial and tecnological progress) as a monster that is destroying the planet, is a culture of self hate. The fact is: industry as we know it, has less than 200 years, 90% of species roaming the earth disapeared on their own wayyy before industrial age. The idea that we are cousing so much "damage" is quite unrealistic (we are doing it but it doesnt mean what people think it means). The extintion of a species involve the rise of another, for example: Yeah, cities eliminate the habitat of deer, and boars, and some birds (All we like to eath, ironic isnt it?), frogs, bees, etc. but: Cockroaches are thriving, you will never find as many roaches in a forest like you find in the normal drain of a regular house... How about pidgeons? there is a lot of them, and rats? nothing like a good old fat 1kg new york sewer rat. The problem is not "we are killing the animals and insects" is that the ones that are thriving in the enviroment we created, we dont like them.
The sea will be fine, even if there is no fishes on it, some algae, bacteria, and non edible (probably toxic) stuff will take the fishes place and they will thrive on the toxic contaminated waters, there is already a bacteria that feeds on plastic...
Sorry I got all weird, happens every now and then, and I wont check this word diarreah, so sorry for the mistakes.
SternenklarenRitter
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For the sake of thought experiments, we can make a lot of assumptions that remove many population limits. First, marine life can only die by being eaten or starving. Second, all light reaching the Earth is absorbed by photosynthetic marine organisms, and used to convert CO2 into organic compounds with perfect efficiency (a tremendously extreme assertion, but figuring out the actual rate of inorganic->organic carbon would be a PHD thesis). Third, marine life has carbon density of exactly 1g/cm3 and contains no water (which allows a volume of biomass to displace an equal volume of ocean). Fourth, the food chain is a single infinite chain where every species is eaten by exactly one predator specie. Fifth, predator species must eat their population mass every day; and the autotrophic specie has a biomass equal to its daily carbon conversion. Sixth, 50% of each specie's food intake (including the photosynthesite) is lost to starvation, and the rest feeds the next predator. From this we see that each predator species has a population mass 1/2 that of their prey, making the total ecosystem mass (1+1/2+1/4+...) = 2x the mass of organic carbon that is photosynthesized in a day.
The Earth recieves solar flux of 1361 W/m2, and casts a shadow of 127516117977447m2 for an power input of 1.735E+17W or and energy input of 1.499E+22 J daily. The standard enthalpy of formation for CO2 is -393.5 kJ/mol, which we can take as (the negative of) the amount of energy needed to convert CO2 to organic carbon as a simplification. Our photosynthetic autotroph thus produces 3.811E+16 mol organic carbon or 4.573E+17 g of organic carbon. We said that the total ecosystem mass would be twice that so all fish possible has a mass of 9.145E+17, which displaces an equal mass of water. The displaced volume becomes 9.145E+17 cm3 or 914541579837m3. Approximating the surface of the ocean as the total surface of Earth (510064471909788m2), all possible fish elevate sea level by
1.793mm.
The Earth recieves solar flux of 1361 W/m2, and casts a shadow of 127516117977447m2 for an power input of 1.735E+17W or and energy input of 1.499E+22 J daily. The standard enthalpy of formation for CO2 is -393.5 kJ/mol, which we can take as (the negative of) the amount of energy needed to convert CO2 to organic carbon as a simplification. Our photosynthetic autotroph thus produces 3.811E+16 mol organic carbon or 4.573E+17 g of organic carbon. We said that the total ecosystem mass would be twice that so all fish possible has a mass of 9.145E+17, which displaces an equal mass of water. The displaced volume becomes 9.145E+17 cm3 or 914541579837m3. Approximating the surface of the ocean as the total surface of Earth (510064471909788m2), all possible fish elevate sea level by
1.793mm.
Worthy39
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Another way to look at it, other than sheer numbers, is how it affects the climate. The ecosystem would change as fish populations grew and changed, plus mutations and evolutions of fish could lead interesting theoretical arguments, but let's not dig into that particular aspect. If the ecosystem changes, the ice caps could melt, though it would require significant changes, and is highly unlikely. But that would flood the planet, so it's another angle to dig into things from other than sheer numbers.