The intriguing yet undeniably repugnant blobfish may be disappearing from out oceans no thanks to deepwater trawling. It’s yet another deep sea fish we know virtually nothing about, and yet another species that may very well, according to fisheries scientists, fall off the face of the planet very soon. But what do you think when you look at the picture of a fish you might have only first heard about two sentences ago, and imagine it plummeting toward extinction? You probably think it looks an awful lot like a melting fat man with a funny nose, rather than imagining a world without its existence.
The unfortunate blobfish (c) CATERS
A creature’s existence value is a commodity, albeit a rather confusing one. To clarify, an existence value reflects the benefits we gain from knowing a particular ’something’ still exists. Each of us generates our own existence value for whichever species we care about, which is likely dependent on things like have we ever seen it, will we ever see it, or does it mean something to us in some other way. Needless to say, a species’ existence value probably diminishes over time too, depending on how much you liked it in the first place. The long and short of it is that different species have different existence values, and for the blobfish, or other similar deep sea enigmas, I wouldn’t put money on this being enormously high. Such species tend to be inaccessible, largely unheard of, and rather ugly. Cute and cuddly mammals represent the other end of the spectrum, and some would give their right arm to save them.
So do we care enough about the blobfish to want to do something about saving it, or should we just concede that its a unfortunate looking fish and we wont really miss it when its gone? Well, to be fair, this ‘existence value’ line of economic reasoning is perhaps a bit narrow. Blobfish have plenty of other ‘values’ which have probably been excluded from our individual outlooks, not least intrinsic value (meaning they have a self-worth just by being a blobfish), and instrumental value (meaning they might be a key player within the ecosystem). When it comes to deep sea creatures, public ambivalence is almost matched by scientific ignorance. For all we know the sky might fall on our heads if we obliterate our deep sea fauna. Given the fact that plenty of us wont have thought about this, or if we did then it didn’t do much to changing our opinion, should we be trusted to pass judgment on the blobfish’s fate?
