Otec aff/neg otec aff
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- Storms
- Aquaculture Advantage
- No fish collapse
- No overfishing – declines are natural variability
- Self-correction – diminishing returns means no fish extinction
High CostOTEC costs too much and tech infeasibleFriedman 14 (Becca, Harvard Law Review, “Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion”, http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/examining-future-ocean-thermal-energy-conversion/, Accessed 6-27-14, LKM) Huge Capital, Huge Risks ¶ Despite the sound science, a fully functioning OTEC prototype has yet to be developed. The high costs of building even a model pose the main barrier. Although piecemeal experiments have proven the effectiveness of the individual components, a large-scale plant has never been built. Luis Vega of the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research estimated in an OTEC summary presentation that a commercial-size five-megawatt OTEC plant could cost from 80 to 100 million dollars over five years. According to Terry Penney, the Technology Manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the combination of cost and risk is OTEC’s main liability. “We’ve talked to inventors and other constituents over the years, and it’s still a matter of huge capital investment and a huge risk, and there are many [alternate forms of energy] that are less risky that could produce power with the same certainty,” Penney told the HPR. StormsNo solvency- OTEC vulnerable to hurricanes and salt water corrosionFriedman 14 (Becca, Harvard Law Review, “Examining the future of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion”, http://www.oceanenergycouncil.com/examining-future-ocean-thermal-energy-conversion/, Accessed 6-27-14, LKM) Moreover, OTEC is highly vulnerable to the elements in the marine environment. Big storms or a hurricane like Katrina could completely disrupt energy production by mangling the OTEC plants. Were a country completely dependent on oceanic energy, severe weather could be debilitating. In addition, there is a risk that the salt water surrounding an OTEC plant would cause the machinery to “rust or corrode” or “fill up with seaweed or mud,” according to a National Renewable Energy Laboratory spokesman. Aquaculture AdvantageNo Fish CollapseFish stocks recoveringEconomist 9 [“Grabbing It All”, 1-3, Lexis] A variety of remedies have been tried, usually in combination. Thus regulations have been issued about the size and type of fish to be caught, the mesh of nets to be used, the number of days a month that boats may go to sea, the permissible weight of their catch and so on. In some countries fishermen are offered inducements to give up fishing altogether. Those that continue are, at least in theory, subject to monitoring both at sea and in port. Large areas are sometimes closed to fishing, to allow stocks to recover. Others have been designated as marine reserves akin to national parks. And some of the technology that fishermen use to find their prey is now used by inspectors to monitor the whereabouts of the hunters themselves. Most of these measures have helped, as the recovery of stocks in various places has shown. Striped bass and North Atlantic swordfish have returned along America's East Coast, for instance. Halibut have made a comeback in Alaska. Haddock, if not cod, have begun to recover in Georges Bank off Maine. And herring come and go off the coasts of Scotland. Those who doubt the value of government intervention have only to look at the waters off Somalia, a country that has been devoid of any government worth the name since 1991. The ensuing free-for-all has devastated the coastal stocks, ruining the livelihoods of local fishermen and encouraging them, it seems, to take up piracy instead. No fish collapseEconomist 9 [“Plenty More Fish in the Sea?”, 1-3, Lexis] An even gloomier assessment came in an article by 14 academics in Science in 2006. The accelerating erosion of biodiversity, often associated with overfishing, presaged a "global collapse" to the point, in 2048, where all species currently fished would be gone, they said. Even many scientists who are alarmed by the evidence of overfishing find such conclusions controversial. Most non-scientists are unmoved. For a start, fish appears to be in plentiful supply. Even cod is available; over 7m tonnes of cod-family (Gadidae) fish are caught each year. Sushi bars have spread across the world. To cater for the aversion to red meat, and a new-found need for omega-3 fatty acids, fish dishes are on every menu, even in steak houses. Supermarkets and restaurants boast of "sustainable" supplies, and sandwiches are reassuringly labelled "dolphin-friendly", however threatened the tuna within them may be. Best of all, for the ethical consumer, fish are now farmed (see box below). Salmon has become so plentiful that people weary of its delicate taste. Moreover, fishermen themselves seem sceptical of any long-term scarcity. They clamour for bigger quotas and fewer restrictions (except on foreign competitors), and complain that the scientists are either ignorant or one step behind the new reality. Those with long memories can cite previous collapses that have been followed by recoveries. And, in truth, not all collapses are due solely to overfishing: the sudden crash of California's sardine industry 60 years ago is now thought to have been partly caused by a natural change in the sea temperature. Plenty of figures seem to support the optimists. Despite the exploitation round its coasts, Britain, for instance, still landed 750,000 tonnes of Atlantic fish in 2006, two-thirds of what it caught in 1951; even cod is still being hauled from the north-east Atlantic, mostly by Norwegians and Russians. Some British fishing communities—Fraserburgh, for example—are in a sorry state, but others still prosper: the value of wet fish landed in Shetland, for example, rose from £21m in 1996 to £54m ($33m-99m) in 2006. Earnings from fishing in Alaska, in whose waters about half of America's catch is taken, rose from less than $800m in 2002 to nearly $1.5 billion in 2007. And for the world as a whole, the catch in 2006 was over 93m tonnes, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, compared with just 19m in 1950 (see chart on next page). Its value was almost $90 billion. No overfishing – declines are natural variabilityBluemink 8 [Elizabeth, Staff Writer – ADN, “Greenpeace Puts Pollock Fishery in its Cross Hairs”, Anchorage Daily News, 12-3, http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/609562.html] Federal scientists say there are fewer fish but the accusation of overfishing is false. The pollock industry agrees with the federal scientists. "This (population decline) was not unexpected, and the sky is not falling," said David Benton, executive director of the Marine Conservation Alliance, which represents western Alaska fishing fleets, processors and ports. Federal scientists have called for a dramatic reduction in the pollock industry's harvest next year -- the lowest catch in the fishery's history -- in response to the decline. Greenpeace and other conservation groups say even deeper cuts in the catch are needed to ensure that pollock remain healthy in the long run. The federal scientists have recommended limiting the pollock harvest to 815,000 tons -- the smallest in more than 30 years. Greenpeace is pushing for a much smaller harvest: 458,000 tons. "Pollock is one of the most important food sources for every animal in the Bering Sea food web," said George Pletnikoff, a Greenpeace campaigner based in Alaska. Next week, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in Anchorage to consider next year's catch limit, among other tasks. The meetings begin Monday and are expected to spill over into the following week. "People can go to the Anchorage Hilton hotel next week and give their opinions and thoughts about the fishery. They should be involved in it," Pletnikoff said. National Marine Fisheries Service scientists say the decline in Bering Sea pollock is due to natural variability in the fish population that has been documented for decades, not too much harvesting. Self-correction – diminishing returns means no fish extinctionLeal 2k [Donald, Senior Associate – Political Economy Research Center, “Homesteading the Oceans: The Case for Property Rights in U.S. Fisheries”, August, http://www.perc.org/pdf/ps19.pdf] In a commons situation, entering the fishing grounds first and capturing the fish fastest is a compelling strategy. This is the time when search and capture costs are the lowest. Thus, each fisher is motivated to invest in equipment (e.g., faster boats and better detection devices) that improve the chances of winning the race for the fish—equipment that would not be necessary if the fishery were not under the strain of such competition. Not only do the stocks decline, but fishing becomes wastefully expensive as too many fishers invest in too much capital to catch too few fish. Because costs tend to rise rapidly as fish become scarcer, fisheries have historically reached commercial extinction before they are totally depleted. The additional costs of capturing the few remaining fish exceeded the returns, so that it became unprofitable to continue.4 Thus, while extinction may be avoided, the fishery frequently results in a lower-than-optimal (and perhaps severely depleted) fish population and an overinvestment in fishing effort. 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