Direct ecological management is unfortunately a bit of a game of using a bucket to fix a leaky ship. The equilibrium that established the ecosystem dynamics in the first place is disrupted. A new equilibrium might form over time, but we enforce the old one because that is what we documented when we first came to a place, even though it is no longer thermodynamically favorable.

Ironically, the ecology of an island itself came from events like a random animal swimming to it over the historical record and finding sufficient spare resources or an ecological niche they could satisfy sufficiently to reproduce. Distance from mainland and species diversity is very strongly correlated reflecting increasingly scarce odds of these "heroic journeys" at greater distances. Species themselves are capable of exhausting an islands resources and putting themselves into local extinction even with no human intervention (such as the case of the last of the mammoths on wrangel island).

A lot of work and money has gone in to preventing zebra mussels from spreading to new lakes in Minnesota. Think free sites for people to have their boats cleaned when they’re going from lake to lake, PR campaigns, etc.

My parent’s small pond, which has never seen a boat or any other real human activity, got them before the big lake it’s connected to did. Clearly there was some other way they could spread, presumably by bird.

Anyways, one by one every lake in the area no has zebra mussels. Even if they would only spread via human, it was clearly only a matter of time. As much as they suck (they’re sharp and attach themselves to basically anything in the lake) I’m not sure the expense has been worth simply delaying the inevitable.

> I’m not sure the expense has been worth simply delaying the inevitable.

Now that I'm jaded I ask myself how many government and private sector jobs were "created" (in sarcasm quotes because broken windows fallacy) washing all those boats for free over the years and whether they even expected to prevent the spread or if the spread is the justification for expansion.

Those are actually great jobs for the government to be creating. Having a workforce of people dedicated to maintaining the environment is invaluable. These people are so poorly paid and driven by passion for their work the government is getting a great deal on all the hard work they do.

Probably a swallow. They could carry them.

African or European?

Wonder how many will get that…

Yeah, famously obscure and underground comedy troupe Monty Python's Flying Circus, you've probably never heard of them, especially in hacker circles.

;-)

I'm constantly surprised at how many cultural conventions are mysteries to modern generations.

One of the more amusing episodes for me, was when my daughter discovered this great group: The Beatles.

There used to be an ad for a radio station back in the 80s where a girl says, “Mom, did you know Paul McCartney used to be in a band before Wings?”

I think I remember that.

> I'm constantly surprised at how many cultural conventions are mysteries to modern generations.

Some of my law students are only dimly aware of Jerry Seinfeld. And when I play a bit of the organ solo from Procul Harum's 1967 Whiter Shade of Pale (to illustrate a copyright-royalties point), I'm lucky if one person recognizes it.

It’s often surprising what we discover younger people have no idea about. I had a twenty-something co-worker in 2018 who was a self-professed aficionado of submarine movies who had never seen Yellow Submarine (I can’t remember now if he’d heard of it at least or if even that was beyond his ken). My profile picture on my gmail account is a picture of Harpo Marx because I occasionally use Harpo as a nickname thanks to my first name having become undesirable a decade ago and I had a recruiter that I was working with ask me who the picture was, apparently having never seen a Marx brothers movie or even heard of them.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

I still remember (years ago now) my coworker telling me her family stayed in a motel on a trip and her children asking her how the phone worked. They had never seen a dial phone before and when asked, tried putting their finders in and out the holes to see if that would dial.

There was a somewhat lame Kevin Kline/Tom Selleck movie, called In and Out (1997), where one of the characters is this vacuous model (Shalom Harlow), who tries using a dial phone in that manner.

It's really odd stuff, humans are obsessed with declaring one moment in time as the "right one" and then trying to keep it like that forever. Evolution? We need to document gods work! People driving their SUV to protests for "conservation", the irony is thick.

We can acknowledge historical change while still acting to prevent unnecessary modern destruction. To my set of values, these ecosystems are worth protection from the accelerated decay almost always caused by human development, and losing them to indifference is a permanent tragedy.

I too am flightless and freeze while threatened

My upvote didn’t feel enough for this comment. So here’s my kudos for a nice chuckle!

You are very kind! Thank you .

Alcatraz isn't really that far from land, about a mile away. They have events where you can swim to and from it. The currents make it dangerous, but the distance is unremarkable.

There are local clubs which swim from the island on a regular basis, year 'round. If not absolutely daily, several times a week.

Water temps vary by time of year, but are particularly mild from late summer through late fall. Even winter-time temps aren't particularly challenging. A dog could easily make the swim.

Currents are a challenge, but mostly if you're planning on landing at a specific point along the shore. If your goal is simply to make it to shore, they're far less an issue. Just swim cross-channel and you'll make it.

The physiological and psychological challenges are greatly overblown.

Most people cannot swim a mile.

Is it really only a mile? There are coyotes on islands in Washington that would’ve swam further than that through some strong tidal currents.

Half a mile

It's definitely a mile from the closest pier as the crow flies, a mile and a quarter from land.

Depending on the current, actual swim distance will be closer to 1.4-2 miles since it'll drag you out of a straight line.

Humans also aren't good swimmers, and we assume all land mammals are as bad as us.

Don’t make assumptions about my assumptions. :)

All the same every year > 2,000 people attempt the 12 mile swim to see a cute Quokka on Rottnest Island.

* https://rottnestchannelswim.com.au/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rottnest_Channel_Swim

  The 36th annual Rottnest Channel Swim will be held on Saturday, 21 February 2026.

Mind you, that's largely Australians who grow up swimming more than many US Navy SEALs do.

Come on down, the waters fine, the sharks rarely nip.

I'm suprised to see a HN comment along the lines of "most people don't ...", after all, most people don't program computers, start million and billion dollar companies, build out datacentres, fly planes, ... etc. The site is littered with people confidently doing things most people do not.

Worth noting that the water in San Francisco can be up to ~20 degrees colder than the water off the coast of Australia. Which adds to the difficulty some.

Sure, there are also a number of cold water long distance swims - the English channel is famous, the Tasmanian ones less so .. but they're cold, long, and have some wicked currents depending which one you take.

* https://www.iswimhappy.com/tas

* https://www.derwentriverbigswim.com/

The Rottnest swim is just a long warm bath for those that like to dip a toe in and start easy.

To the best of my knowledge few ever attempt the horizontal falls even at slack tide - the waters are warm but the salties and the sharks can be off putting .. come tide change the stoppers will eat people.

> than the water off the coast of Australia.

I should note that Australia is a large continent with an area equal to that of mainland contiguous USofA .. it's not all Gold Coast Qld, just as the US is not all Florida.

Eg: the current water tempreture in San Francisco ( 12.5°C / 54.5°F ) is on par with the September water tempreture when surfing offshore breaks in southern Western Australia (not Perth, the south coast where all the fun is).

I am way, waaaay more afraid of box jellyfish than I am about sharks in Australia's waters, though I'm sure that's an equally rare occurrence?

If you're a regular to the Australian beaches and headlines I visit you'll see a shark every week .. sometimes daily - and after five decades of swimming once a week if not daily you might get brushed up against once or twice - but it's unlikely you'll be bitten.

You will, however, almost certainly know or meet someone that can flash the scars of a bite.

Shark bites - rarer than the headlines make out.

_However_ shark behaviour may well be changing due to increased human waste changing ocean patterns: https://theconversation.com/4-shark-bites-in-48-hours-how-wh...

Jellyfish - seasonal and locational. There are areas where you just shouldn't go in the water for a couple of weeks. Nasty.

Melbourne's currently got a bloom of lion's mane jellyfish that'll leave a welt (tingly red strip on the skin) for a couple of days.

* https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-19/lions-mane-jellyfish-...

As far as sea misadventures go, easily the funniest thing I've seen (sorry, we're like that, laughing at danger) was a young kid surfing with a pod of dolphins getting fully pancaked by a breaching dolphin that cleared a wave top, made serious air, and landed smack centre on the kid and his board.

He (the kid) got winded pretty hard, did get his (damaged) board back, and was laughing about it afterwards.

The dolphin was not available for comment.

( Addendum: Dolphins being cheeky is more common than reported in W.Australia - here's one that did get captured on video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa7dSv3NBB0 )

Those are not normal average people but literally top 1%

I love the visual of humans desperately trying to preserve what they consider the natural world, and when they turn their backs evolution does it's thing.

Nit: If predators periodically make their way to the islands without human assistance, don't the islands have native predators, by virtue of how we've woven ourselves into the definitions?

No, because the predators themselves aren't native.

No because the predators would not survive doing so from their distant original lands. New Zealand is far enough away for this not to be a problem - otherwise it would have happened in the historical past. At least until continental drift brought New Zealand close enough to other land mass. Whether the species then alive would have evolved enough to survive is unknown.