Knowing the age compositions of marine stocks is crucial to sound management. Fish can be aged easily by examining their earbones or scales. Not so with crabs, because they molt. For years it’s been assumed that crab that don’t retain their hard parts throughout their lifetime due to growth by molting at which they lose their lose their exoskeleton and it was always assumed everything went with that. Read the rest here
NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?
While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here
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