Tag Archives: Nils E. Stolpe
Nils E. Stolpe/FishnetUSA – NOAA Fisheries Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update
Well, first we have this reassuring (at least if you’re not that familiar with the capacity of NOAA Fisheries to get it really, really wrong!) statement that “NOAA Fisheries is actively monitoring and adjusting to the COVID-19 national health crisis”. Nothing to worry about, right? Well, not quite nothing. While I’ve seen nothing official, word on (at least some of the New Jersey) docks is that, in spite of the ongoing and very possibly worsening national Covid-19 health crisis, the mandatory on-board observers are back in force and demanding rides.,, It seems like just about anything that might involve NOAA/NMFS employee exposure to Covid-19 has either been cancelled or public participation has been severely restricted or eliminated. >Click to read<17:12
Fake News, Incomplete/Inaccurate Reporting, Intentional Misdirection and Fishing
Fake news is in the News these days, so what is it? The term is most often used to describe completely fabricated stories, but can also be applied to a broader continuum of news. Many news outlets will exhibit some form of explicit or implicit bias while not falling into the fake news category. Assessing the quality of the content is crucial to understanding whether what you are viewing is true or not. It is up to you to do the legwork to make sure your information is good. To continue, >click to read<Nils E. Stolpe, click to visit >FishNet USA,<19:16
EMF (Electromagnetic Field) Effects and the Precautionary Principle – Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet USA
The following is taken from an OSPAR Commission (https://www.ospar.org/) report from 2008. It clearly shows that at the time when interest in offshore wind turbines was really starting to grow there was very little knowledge of, nor had much significant research been done on, the effects of electromagnetic fields on marine or estuarine species, and what little had been done was on mature organisms, with little or no attention given to immature stages. Background Document on potential problems associated with power cables other than those for oil and gas activities: Conclusions in regard to electromagnetic fields Our current knowledge about effects of electromagnetic fields on the marine environment, in particular fauna, is not sufficient. Only a few preliminary conclusions can be reached. click here to read the article 17:07
“Fish Wars” or a Regime Shift in Ocean Governance? Nils E. Stolpe
The reasons for Big Oil’s (now more accurately Big Energy’s) focus on fisheries – and on demonizing fishing and fishermen – has been fairly obvious since a coalition of fishermen and environmentalists successfully stopped energy exploration on Georges Bank in the early 80s. Using a handful of ocean oriented ENGOs as their agents, the Pew Charitable Trusts and other “charitable” trusts funded a hugely expensive campaign that the domestic fishing industry is still suffering from, but that campaign has paid off handsomely to the entities that participated in or funded it.,, If anyone wonders why one of the founders of Microsoft might be interested in supporting research by Daniel Pauly, from an article in the NY Times last week,,, and retired admiral and Chairman of the Board of the U.S. Naval Institute James G. Stavridis had a column in the September 14 Washington Post titled The Fishing Wars Are Coming. click here to read the article 14:48
Magnuson Reauthorization, let’s get it right this time – Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet USA
When the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) became law 0n April 13, 1976, one of its primary selling points, along with reserving the fish and shellfish in our coastal waters out to two hundred miles for U.S. fishermen, was that the eight regional Fishery Management Councils that it established had as voting members both government employees who were involved in fisheries management and private citizens who were knowledgeable about fisheries. Ideally this made for balanced decision making, allowing for both the official view of what’s going on in particular fisheries and the on-the-water observations of people with an actual working knowledge of the fisheries, and with the Secretary of Commerce required to sign off on any fishery management actions. (It’s important to note that this was well before supposed environmental crises were supporting a multi-billion dollar industry.) click here to read this article. 12:21
Trawl Surveys, what are they good for? – Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet USA
(Note that I am only addressing the NOAA/NMFS reliance on bottom trawl survey data in finfish stock assessments. I am not questioning the value of the wealth of biological and physical data that this long – running series of surveys generate.) From the article: According to NOAA/NMFS these surveys have provided and continue to provide “the primary scientific data” for fisheries assessments from North Carolina to Maine (fisheries assessments are the periodic – generally held every 3 to 5 years – scientific/bureaucratic exercises. In NOAA’s words “NOAA Fisheries’ scientific stock assessments are critical to modern fisheries management. Using data gathered from commercial and recreational fishermen and our own on-the-water scientific observations, a stock assessment describes the past and current status of a fish population or stock, answers questions about the size of the stock, and makes predictions about how a fishery will respond to current and future management measures.”) click here to read the article 12:35
When it comes to fish and fishing Huffington Post is all wet – Nils E. Stolpe/FishNet USA
Last week Dana Ellis Hunnes, a Huffington Post blogger, managed to package in just 700 words more false, misleading, distorted and just plain wrong information about fish and seafood production than I’ve ever seen in works with far more words by professional anti-fishing activists. Addressing her inaccuracies on a point by point basis: Sustainable Fish Do Not Exist – Starting out with her title, the Merriam-Webster definition of sustainable is “able to be used without being completely used up or destroyed, involving methods that do not completely use up or destroy natural resources, able to last or continue for a long time.” The concept of renewable resources revolves around the sustainable utilization of those resources. Click here to read the full article 13:27
FishNet USA/NOAA Enforcement, media bias, and what’s fact checking?
Much attention has been directed towards a recent IRS/NOAA investigation of alleged criminal activity of New Bedford (MA) fleet owner/seafood wholesaler and retailer Carlos Rafael. Particularly considering the fact that NOAA is trying to force New England fishermen to shoulder the onerous burden of paying for on-board observers to make sure that they aren’t “cheating” on federal fishing regulations, some industry observers have called into question the timing of the actions surrounding Mr. Rafael’s business dealings, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that the anti-fishing activists are going to leap on this opportunity to clamor for even more – and even more expensive policing of fishermen (it’s been estimated that the costs of the existing level of observer coverage, if passed on to fishermen, will force on the order of 25% of New England’s groundfish fleet out of business).Read the rest of this intro, and, Who really “destroyed a decade of law enforcement?” FishNet USA/December 28, 2011 Nils E. Stolpe Click here16:12
After 39 years of NOAA/NMFS fisheries management, how are they doing? How are we doing because of their efforts?
Nils Stolpe: While it’s called fishery management, it’s not even close – Managing fishing, not fish
“At the global scale, probably the one thing currently having the most impact (on the oceans) is overfishing and destructive fishing gear.” (former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Jane Lubchenco in an interview on the website Takepart.com on April 7, 2010.) The Deepwater Horizon oil spill catastrophe began on April 20, less than two weeks later. Each year in the U.S. hundreds of millions of tax dollars are spent on what is called fishery management. It’s called fisheries management in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. Read the article here 19:14
Nils E. Stolpe: Flotsam and Jetsam FishNet-USA/December 8, 2013
More astroturf “activism” in herring management – And on the subject of who’s doing and who’s not doing real research to better determine the status of our managed stocks – Sustainability certification – Sleeping with the enemy? – Fishosophy Read about these issues here 12:24
Bluefin tuna and Pew, here we go again! – Nils E. Stolpe, FishNet USA/June 24, 2013
On August 13, 1997 Josh Reichert, then Director of the Pew Trusts Environment Program and now Executive Vice President of the Trusts, in an op-ed column in the Philadelphia Inquirer titled, Swordfish technique depletes the
swordfish population wrote “the root problem is not only the ,,,,,,,,,,In what has become typical Pew style, Mr. Reichert’s article was just a small piece of a frightfully well-funded campaign to “save the swordfish” from the depredations of the U.S. pelagic longline fleet. Involving scientists who had been willing riders on the Pew funding gravy train, enlisting restaurateurs into the campaign who hadn’t the foggiest idea what swordfishing or pelagic longlining was all about, and using the formidable Pew media machine,, continued here
