Greenpeace attacks University of Washington fishery scientist Ray Hilborn
Ray Hilborn, a prominent University of Washington fishery scientist, is under attack from Greenpeace for sometimes leaving out mention of industry funding he receives in articles published in academic journals and elsewhere.In a letter sent Wednesday to university President Ana Mari Cauce, Greenpeace filed a complaint against Hilborn’s research practices, and asked for an investigation. Hilborn, over the years, has been a critic of Greenpeace as well as other environmental groups and researchers he accuses of overstating the impacts of fishing on marine resources. In the letter to Cauce, Greenpeace unleashed a broadside against the scientist. Greenpeace is attempting to label Hilborn an “overfishing denier,” comparing the professor to so-called climate-change deniers who are a minority in a scientific community that overwhelmingly accepts that fossil-fuel combustion contributes to global warming. Read the rest here 07:45
Where was Greenpeace when the Alaskan Crab Rationalization (Catch Share) privatization occurred, and foreign-owned and -controlled processors got buying right linkages, in perpetuity, to most of the major crab species? That is, why were they not joining in with Groundswell over a complaint filed with provost George Hedges of Washington State University, regarding the false economic papers of professor Scott Matulich, who had been bought off by a major Japanese TransNationalCorporation, NISSUI – or Nippon Suisan, owner of UniSea? The US president of UniSea, J. Richard Pace (now deceased) and his Dutch Harbor Seafoods’ boat partner Richard White, both contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to WSU’s alumni fund in support of Matulich.
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I personally met over lunch in Pullman with Scott in the spring of 1995, when I was managing a WorldCom call center an hour and a half away. I made him aware – before his publication of the first of many IFQ and IPQ supporting papers – that his work failed to include a key economic component, TAXES, specifically the Abusive Transfer Pricing through the illicit accounting practices of NISSUI-UniSea across US borders. I explained that I was working with (a complainant to) the IRS CI division and Audit and LMSB divisions on a massive ATP case that involved UniSea Dutch Harbor’s Pollock — fish soon to be the subject of the American (sic) Fisheries Act.
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Alaska US Senator Ted Stevens was rigging the game in DC, using Reg-Neg tactics, to create the IFQs and IPQs of Crab Ratz. That program put an estimated 1,350 captains and deckhands out of work — it stole the labor surplus$ of crabbers to reward the remaining boats and their leeches, bankers. Ted was famous for ignoring the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Management Act (MSA) and using must-pass Appropriations bills to insert new statutory support for these massive embezzlements of fisheries commons. Senator John McCain tried to stop Stevens’ illegal (Ted violated several Senate rules, etc,) shenanigans. How many of you are aware that McCain put out a lot of pro-fishermen efforts and communications? Hillborn, I believe, was one of the witnesses at a Senate subcommittee on the Hill, at the time.
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I wrote McCain, (whom I later also asked to have the GAO-06-289 report done), and pointed out the “economic mascara” that Matulich’s deliberately erroneous economic papers represented.
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Yes, when Matulich got out of my ’67 Chevelle that day, after lunch, he gave me several reasons why he was NOT going to change (correct!) his work to account for global tax evasion(s). He boldly stated just as he left the vehicle that “I’ve already been paid for 3 or 4 more years of work! And I’m not going to change my work.” Imagine that, an economist leaving out the implications of billions of dollars siphoned off in artificially low transfer prices to foreign parent firms, and the resulting tax avoidance.
“Washington State University Professor Scott Matulich’s deficient three-pie modeling work is being used as the economic mascara for the tax evading multinationals behind this consolidation scheme, who operate in Alaska as “hollow corporations” ‑ including many “cloaked U.S. subsidiaries” of Japanese fishing giants. The latter were the primary beneficiaries of the American Fisheries Act, as well.” – Taufen to Sen. McCain
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Later, WSU put out a summary saying:
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“Matulich’s Research Impacts Federal Fisheries Policy:
When President Bush signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act in January, he enacted into law a unique federal fisheries policy that is anchored in the research of Scott Matulich, Professor of
Agricultural and Resource Economics. This policy will rationalize the most dangerous fisheries in the world — the North Pacific crab fisheries.”
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Where was Greenpeace for all of that? They were in the RFMC meeting rooms when I put on the NPFMC record that incident, even years later (after Matulich wrote a trade article supporting crab IPQs). Oh yes, his good friend – wives also went to Europe together with the boys – was a member of the NPFMC for some of those years.
This is but a small peak into the scrum of fish politics. WSU, failed miserably, causing over a thousand real fishermen their incomes.
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And today, USCG failure to enforce Lay Share laws on those remaining Crabbers, for their captains and crew, has cost the “labor segment” approximately $650 million, if not more, since enactment of Crab Ratz. Add in the 70% off-the-top quota rents/leases, and you’ve got a pretty damned big resource larceny ongoing.
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Stephen Taufen, founder Groundswell Fisheries Movement
Its almost laughable that the extremists at Greenpeace, the ones that are responsible for defacing the sacred Nazca Lines etched into the Peruvian desert for a climate protest, has now set their sites on probably the most credible marine scientist in all of academia! Daniel Pauly is mentioned in this article, and I have to ask the Greenpeace goons of destruction, why no attacks on his funding?Its obvious Pauly, another extremist of quackery, gets a free pass, even though he is funded by the oiligarch of the Pew Charitable Trust, pumping out dogmatic idea’s and notions referred to as “study’s”, peer reviewed, of course! With a network of other “like minded scientists”.One would believe oil money would raise some red flags like it appears to with when the climate people assassinate climate deniers, but in this case, eh. No big deal, right? Unless you understand Pews agenda.The fact of the matter is,[U.S. fisheries continue to rebuild; number of overfished stocks remains near all-time low]. Copy and paste that into your browser and read the NOAA report that will show you, Hilborns science is correct. Look into it further as far as other fish stocks in other area’s of the globe that he has reported on. His reputation is impeccable.Look into other industry funded science like the various research set aside projects. The US Scallop industry, the top money producing fishery in the nation utilizes this method of funding.For those of you that have commented, not knowing anything about Hilborn, I urge you to get to know him. It will take you about twenty minutes watching this You Tube video.
Ray Hilborn Plenary, Seafood Summit 2011