From an old XKCD What-If, which put it at 2.15 gigatons ships vs 2 gigatons fish. But that uses quite old numbers.
Looking at up to date data from the UN there’s 2.4 gigatons of ships. Note that this is dead-weight tonnage, so fully loaded. Empty is probably more like ~0.5 gigatons, so it’d depend on how fully loaded the ships are.
And a quick search turns up this paper which references several estimates for fish biomass form other papers, which would put fish biomass somewhere between 0.4 and 4.9 gigatons depending on estimate.
So I put it too strongly saying “more”, it’d be more accurate to say fish biomass and ship mass is within the same order of magnitude. Also note that it’s only fish, not like plankton, shrimp, etc.
There’s more ships in the ocean by weight than there’s fish.
[edit]
See my other comment below, probably more accurate to say the total weight of all ships is around the same as the total weight of all ocean fish.
And there’s far more biomass of farm animals than what we’d usually think of as “wildlife”.
Human chemical plants now do most of the nitrogen fixation in the nitrogen cycle, too.
Humans have taken over the biosphere.
There are more aeroplanes in the ocean than ships in the sky.
Biologist: “define what you mean by ‘fish’.”
ducksandruns sorrynotsorry
https://medium.com/illumination/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-fish-eca048dd6163
Not every category of animal has to be based on phylogeny, you freak!
JK, love you! /puts on Clint’s Reptiles.
By how much?
(And how do we know this?)
From an old XKCD What-If, which put it at 2.15 gigatons ships vs 2 gigatons fish. But that uses quite old numbers.
Looking at up to date data from the UN there’s 2.4 gigatons of ships. Note that this is dead-weight tonnage, so fully loaded. Empty is probably more like ~0.5 gigatons, so it’d depend on how fully loaded the ships are.
And a quick search turns up this paper which references several estimates for fish biomass form other papers, which would put fish biomass somewhere between 0.4 and 4.9 gigatons depending on estimate.
So I put it too strongly saying “more”, it’d be more accurate to say fish biomass and ship mass is within the same order of magnitude. Also note that it’s only fish, not like plankton, shrimp, etc.