[dijit]

> The shellfish do not get their own private ship. It's cheap because the UK is already importing so much that when the ships return to China empty, they might as well pick up some shellfish on their way home

Is the implication then that the space would be completely vacant?

How can you be certain that there's never been a ship commissioned because the demand became too great and thus more ships needed?

Even if it wasn't just shellfish, there's a million different things that ship back and forth and it shouldn't be necessary, it's enabled by cheap freight and cheap labour: but those things are an equivalent burden to the planet and our sum-total of ecological resources. So it's very wasteful when you think in those terms and not in our faux-scarcity monetary terms.