FISHERYNATION.COM

Nils E. Stolpe

FishNet USA/December 4, 2015

“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. The federal administrative entities which implement the mandates of the Magnuson-Stevens Act are designated in the Act as Regional Fishery Management Councils, and the bureaucrats and scientists who are involved in those mandated activities are referred to as fishery managers.

But all things considered, can what the Magnuson-Stevens Act mandates, what the Regional Councils are charged with and what the managers do be considered fishery management?

Let’s consider what management of either naturally occurring or cultured living organisms (other than fish and shellfish) actually entails. The most obvious requirement of managing them is the provision of something between an adequate and an optimum environment, including both the living and the non-living components of that environment, for the species/species complexes being managed. This is regardless of whether the management process is aimed at optimizing the production of one (or a few) species or at maintaining an area in a so-called “natural” state (though how close any area can be to natural, considering humankind’s pervasive impacts on virtually the entire biosphere, is open to argument).

Whether it’s a herd of dairy cattle, a field of poppies, a national park or an entire watershed, the involved individual or collective managers are charged with maintaining an appropriate environment for the organisms/systems being managed.

How does “fisheries” management fit in with this? Quite obviously and not so surprisingly, not all that well.

When we are considering maintaining (or ideally, increasing, though in the U.S., Canada and the EC in particular we’re far from ready for the “giant step” of increasing the harvest) capture fisheries in natural systems, there is a host of both natural and anthropogenic factors that play a significant role in determining the population levels of particular species. Among them are:

· Water quality · Entrainment/impingement  · Water temperature  · Disease/parasites  · Wind direction/duration  · Parasitism  · Upwelling

· Turbidity  · Food availability  · Competition · Predation  · Cannibalism  · Essential habitat availability  · Reproductive success  · Fishing

And there are undoubtedly others.

So what do the people in the ENGOs who, with a bunch of help from their foundation keepers, have become so adept at manipulating the press, the pols and the public do when there aren’t enough fish? They demand that the managers reduce (or eliminate) fishing. This is regardless of the effect of any other factor on the particular fish stock or the effectiveness of reducing or limiting fishing in rebuilding the stock in question (and “rebuilding” the stock almost always means returning it to maximum population levels).

And the managers for the most part go along because they have to do something to justify their positions, and thanks to federal legislation controlling (or eliminating) fishermen is a lot easier than controlling just about anything else. It’s easier politically, it’s easier scientifically, it’s easier economically and it’s easier technologically. So what if it isn’t effective? Thanks to the extensive efforts of anti-fishing activists over the last two decades (see Pew and the media Click here), cutting back or eliminating fishing is just about a guarantee of positive media coverage, and there are few politicians, reporters or members of the public who have enough of a grasp of the involved complexities to know the difference. Besides which there will be enough tilapia and swai and cultured shrimp produced overseas to keep the consumers fed – if not in culinary nirvana.

This has cost and is costing the domestic fish and seafood industry untold millions of dollars every year in uncaught fish that could be sustainably harvested. It is denying U.S. consumers the health benefits and the undeniable pleasures of dining on ocean-fresh, locally produced seafood and it is costing our coastal communities tens of thousands of jobs every year.

With what seems a monomaniacal fixation on the effects of fishing, a fixation which has been successfully – and tragically – spread virtually everywhere in this country, many other factors of equal or greater potential to temporarily or permanently interfere with vital ocean processes or the health of our fish stocks have been largely or completely ignored.

At the time it sounded good, at least to the un- or ill-informed

I started this FishNet with a quote from Jane Lubchenco from less than two weeks before the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe began to unwind in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time she was the newly appointed head of NOAA, the agency in the US Department of Commerce that is in charge of about everything non-military in the US Exclusive Economic Zone. Her academic background was as a tide pool biologist. She was a Pew Ocean Fellow and a member of the Pew Oceans Commission and in keeping with the Pew spin on the oceans and their misuse, appeared to believe that she and her ideas could save the world’s fisheries – from the fishermen.

As the quotation demonstrates, she was so concerned with the supposed evils of fishing that she assumed that everything was more than fine with our federal policies regarding the safety of our offshore energy systems. I won’t rehash it here but I’d strongly recommend that you go over the FishNet on this issue I did while the Deepwater Horizon well was still gushing an eventual 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Fish and Oil: NOAA’s Attitude Gap, Click here (and delayed Exxon Valdez impacts were still being revealed by researchers in the agency she now headed – see http://www.nwfsc.noaa.gov/news/features/delayed_effects_oilspill/index.cfm.) Perhaps if Dr. Lubchenco and the people she brought with her from the ENGO world weren’t so myopically focused on overfishing, offshore oil wells would have received some of the governmental scrutiny that was, and still is, so illogically directed at commercial fishermen. What are the chances that doing so would have saved the U.S. taxpayers a few bucks and spared the Gulf of Mexico – and the businesses that are dependent on its ecological integrity –the possibly irreversible damages caused by the huge oil spill?

The situation vis-a-vis on-board observers is the most dramatic indication of how skewed perceptions have become regarding ocean/fishery protections. In just about all federally regulated fisheries there are requirements for on-board federal observers, who are increasingly being paid for by the vessel owners/operators. These observed trips range in frequency from 100% coverage of all of the vessels in a fleet to vessels being assigned to carry an observer on a trip once a month or so, and with charges – often to the vessel – approaching a thousand dollars per day at sea. In fisheries in which landings are severely limited, observer costs can force vessels into bankruptcy.

These observers are there to track the catch and bycatch of the vessel to insure that quotas are not exceeded and that the take of protected species are accurately accounted for. There are also requirements for at-sea and at-the-dock reporting, so the catch of a vessel may be reported three separate times.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly considering the attitude of federal policy-level folks like Dr. Lubchenco, there are no requirement for any official observers on oil tankers, drilling rigs or other offshore vessels or structures that could have a negative environmental impact in our EEZ. As we have seen in a history of maritime accidents extending back for at least a half a century, these disasters can cause hundreds of millions of dollars or more in damages.

The following table is from The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Limited website (cached by The Wayback Machine at http://tinyurl.com/osw5slv). These were only spills from tankers, not drilling rigs or pipelines. Note that the Exxon Valdez spill, while included, ranked only number 35 in spill size. Note also that the authors assumed that offshore spills “caused little or no environmental damage.” The cached version of the website was from 2007/08.
The table below gives a brief summary of 20 major oil spills since 1967. A number of these incidents, despite their large size, caused little or no environmental damage as the oil did not impact coastlines, which is why some of the names will be unfamiliar to the general public. The Exxon Valdez is included because it is so well known although it is not the twentieth largest spill but rather the 35th.

Position     Shipname              Year                Location                               Size (in tonnes)

1        Atlantic Empress          1979      Off Tobago, West Indies                    287,000

2           ABT Summer             1991     700 nautical miles off Angola            260,000

3     Castillo de Bellever        1983   Off Saldanha Bay, South Africa           252,000

4         Amoco Cadiz               1978        Off Brittany, France                          223,000

5             Haven                       1991             Genoa, Italy                                    144,000

6           Odyssey                      1988  700 nautical miles off Nova Scotia      132,000

7        Torrey Canyon             1967             Scilly Isles, UK                               119,000

8           Sea Star                      1972             Gulf of Oman                                 115,000

9       Irenes Serenade            1980       Navarino Bay, Greece                      100,000

10         Urquiola                     1976          La Coruna, Spain                            100,000

11      Hawaiian Patriot          1977  300 nautical miles off Honolulu         95,000

12      Independenta               1979           Bosphorus, Turkey                        95,000

13     Jakob Maersk                1975          Oporto, Portugal                             88,000

14         Btaer                            1993         Shetland Islands, UK                     85,000

15       Khark 5                         1989 120 nautical miles off of Morocco       80,000

16     Aegean Sea                    1992             La Coruna, Spain                         74,000

17      Sea Empress                1996             Milford Haven, UK                      72,000

18        Katina P                     1992        Off Maputo, Mozambique               72,000

19          Nova                         1985    Off Kharg Island, Gulf of Iran            70,000

20        Prestige                     2002              Off Galicia, Spain                       63,000

35      Exxon Valdez             1989     Prince William Sound, Alaska           37,000

As we saw in the Deepwater Horizon episode, effective federal oversight was sorely lacking, and I’ve yet to see much progress there other than some bureaucratic rearranging and changing the name of the agency in charge. Human nature is human nature, whether the human is on an oil tanker, an offshore drilling rig or a commercial fishing vessel. But the potential for damages with the tanker or the drilling rig can range into the many billions of dollars while a fishing boat might kill a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of over-quota fish. And the income earned by a drilling rig or tanker every year is many orders of magnitude greater than the fishing vessel. Yet we don’t have a federal observer on the bridge of every tanker or on board every rig in the Gulf.

(It’s important to note here that the Pew Charitable Trusts, which has been directly responsible for much of the anti-fishing efforts over the last two decades, is largely controlled by heirs of Joseph Pew, the founder of Sun Oil/Sunoco.)

Gulf of Maine cod – again it’s not just fishing, and again it’s Jane Lubchenco

“We need a rapid transition to sectors and catch shares. Catch shares are a powerful tool to getting to sustainable fisheries and profitability. I challenge you to deliver on this in Amendment 16, to include measures to end overfishing. I will commit the resources to my staff to do their part to ensure Amendment 16 is passed in June. We are shining a light on your efforts and we will track your progress. There is too much at stake to allow delay and self-interest to prevent sectors and ultimately catch shares from being implemented. We are shining a light on your efforts and we will track your progress. There is too much at stake to allow delay and self-interest to prevent sectors and ultimately catch shares from being implemented.” (Ms. Lubchenco on April 8, 2010 while telling the New England Fisheries Management Council how her policies were going to fix the New England groundfish fishery – by Julie Wormser on the Environmental Defense blog EDFish/.)

What she said the day after her less than prophetic statement that fishing was the biggest threat to the world’s oceans was yet another demonstration of Ms. Lubchenco’s commitment to the naïve idea that just about any problem with the world’s oceans could be solved by adequately controlling fishing.

Six and a half years after her “catch shares revolution” that she kicked off by inflicting it on the New England groundfish fishery, the fishery is in a shambles and New England has lost much of it’s fishing infrastructure. This has all happened as fishing effort has been reduced so many times that far too many fishermen can no longer afford to fish for their own quota or to buy or lease quota from other fishermen in similar straits. So what was wrong with Ms. Lubcheco’s foresight this time?

The recent media mini-frenzy brought about by the release of a study relating the decline of codfish in New England to increasing ocean temperatures will give you some idea. The study was titled “Slow adaptation in the face of rapid warming leads to collapse of the Gulf of Maine (GOM) cod fishery.” Not incidentally, it was funded by the Lenfest Foundation, the fisheries-related grants of which are “managed” by the Pew Trusts.

For an idea of the misdirected zeal with which the people at Lenfest pursue their “scientific” objectives, in their report on Subsidies to U.S. Fisheries, Lenfest researchers R. Sharp and U.R. Sumaila (who was also a Pew Oceans Scholar) list “Fuel Subsidies” as the largest category. They describe these as “exemptions from federal and state fuel taxes and some state fuel sales taxes.” In reality they are refunds of federal and state highway use taxes available to fishermen or any other commercial/industrial users who are “exempt” from the tax. This is because they do not use the federal/state highway systems (http://tinyurl.com/RoadUseTax).

Sharp and Sumaila also include “sales tax exemptions,” which also aren’t fishing-specific subsidies but exemptions from sales taxes which are provided to any businesses for qualified purchases. The authors apparently believe that having fishermen pay taxes that the federal and state governments don’t intend them to pay would eliminate a “harmful subsidy” and “could improve the health of fisheries in the U.S.”

The following quotes were taken directly from the paper (my emphasis added):

· Recovery of this fishery (GOM cod) depends on sound management, but the size of the stock depends on future temperature conditions.

· Based on this analysis, the Gulf of Maine experienced decadal warming that few marine ecosystems have encountered.

· The Gulf of Maine cod stock has been chronically overfished, prompting progressively stronger management, including the implementation of a quota-based management system in 2010. Despite these efforts, including a 73% cut in quotas in 2013, spawning stock biomass (SSB) continued to decline.

· The Gulf of Maine is near the southern limit of cod, and previous studies have suggested that warming will lead to lower recruitment, suboptimal growth conditions, and reduced fishery productivity in the future.

· Gulf of Maine cod spawn in the winter and spring, so the link with summer temperatures suggests a decrease in the survival of late-stage larvae and settling juveniles. Although the relationship with temperature is statistically robust, the exact mechanism for this is uncertain but may include changes in prey availability and/or predator risk. For example, the abundance of some zooplankton taxa that are prey for larval cod has declined in the Gulf of Maine cod habitat. Warmer temperatures could cause juvenile cod to move away from their preferred shallow habitat into deeper water where risks of predation are higher.

· The average weight-at-age of cod in the Gulf of Maine region has been below the long-term mean since 2002, and these poorly conditioned fish will have a lower probability of survival.

· Temperature may directly influence mortality in younger fish through metabolic processes described above; however, we hypothesize that predation mortality may also be higher during warm years. Many important cod predators migrate into the Gulf of Maine or have feeding behaviors that are strongly seasonal. During a warm year, spring-like conditions occur earlier in the year, and fall-like conditions occur later. During the 2012 heat wave, the spring warming occurred 21 days ahead of schedule, and fall cooling was delayed by a comparable amount. This change in phenology could result in an increase in natural mortality of 44% on its own, without any increase in predator biomass.

An article in the Boston Globe about the study reported that “the authors… say the warmer water coursing into the Gulf of Maine has reduced the number of new cod and led to fewer fish surviving into adulthood. Cod prefer cold water, which is why they have thrived for centuries off New England. The precise causes for the reduced spawning are unclear, the researchers said, but they’re likely to include a decline in the availability of food for young cod, increased stress, and more hospitable conditions for predators. Cod larvae are eaten by many species, including dogfish and herring; larger cod are preyed upon by seals, whose numbers have increased markedly in the region.” (Climate change hurting N.E. cod population, study says, David Abel, October 29, 2015.)

While Mr. Abel neglected to mention it, post-larval cod up to maximum size are also consumed by adult spiny dogfish, as are the fish and shellfish that cod feed on. From Bigelow’s and Schroeder’s classic Fishes of the Gulf of Maine, “voracious almost beyond belief, the dogfish entirely deserves its bad reputation. Not only does it harry and drive off mackerel, herring, and even fish as large as cod and haddock, but it destroys vast numbers of them…. At one time or another they prey on practically all species of Gulf of Maine fish smaller than themselves….”

The authors of the report recognized a number of temperature-related factors which might have been contributing to the GOM cod decline and went so far as to state that the earlier warming in GOM surface waters in 2012 “could result in an increase in natural mortality of 44% on its own, without any increase in predator biomass.”

So a group of researchers published a paper in Science that showed that it wasn’t just fishing that was responsible for decreasing populations of cod in the GOM. That’s a good thing, right?

But then, according to an article in The Plate, National Geographic’s food blog, the study predicted that “if fishing mortality is completely eliminated (that is, a complete closure of the cod fishery, such as took place in Newfoundland), Gulf of Maine cod could rebound in 11 years. If some fishing is allowed, recovery would take longer: from 14 to 19 years, depending on how fast the water warms.”

Hard as it is to credit, in spite of all of the indications of the severity of the effects of warming on the GOM cod that the authors identified, the paper that they published in what is supposed to be one of the most important scientific journals in the world couldn’t get past the “it’s got to be fishing” creed as espoused by Ms. Lubchenco and others that has turned managing fishermen into the only “effective*” tool in the fishery managers’ toolbox. Not only has fishing, according to them, reduced this stock to its current depleted status, reducing fishing even further or eliminating it appears in their collective estimation to be the only way to fix it.

I have to get into some fisheries management basics here before proceeding farther. First off, the goal of fisheries management is to have enough fish in a stock after fishing to be able sustain itself (most simply, removals from the stock = additions to the stock). This amount of fish is represented as Bmsy, the biomass (B) that is required to produce the maximum sustainable yield (msy).

If we are dealing with a static environment Bmsy will remain constant. But when the environment changes – as when the temperature changes – with fish that are approaching either end of their comfort range Bmsy will change as well (the authors of the paper provided us with a number of factors related to water temperature which I reproduced in the bullet list above that would explain at least some of these changes). Thus, as the water temperature in the Gulf of Maine (GOM) increased, the cod Bmsy decreased. In plain English, the GOM is capable of producing fewer cod today than it was ten years ago.

For another fishery management basic, all of those factors that account for mortality in a fishery are considered either natural and indicated by M, or due to fishing, indicated by F. For convenience (meaning the scientists don’t have a clue and it’s too much trouble to figure it out what it really is) M is usually assumed to be constant.

“However, in most cases, a single value—usually 0.2—for natural mortality is assumed for stock assessments, despite evidence to the contrary (Pope 1979, Quinn and Deriso 1999, Jennings et al. 2001).” From A Review for Estimating Natural Mortality in Fish Populations, Kate. I. Siegfried & Bruno Sansó

“The traditional assumption of a constant M may be appropriate when only mature fish are of explicit interest in the assessment.” From Estimating Natural Mortality in Stock Assessment Applications, edited by Jon Brodziak, Jim Ianelli, Kai Lorenzen and Richard D. Methot Jr., NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-F/SPO-119, June 2011. (I have to point out that in a GOM that’s getting hotter a constant M isn’t even appropriate when “only mature fish are of explicit interest in the assessment.” – NES).

Because, according to management dogma or due to management convenience, natural mortality remains constant by definition regardless of what it actually is, when a stock decreases it must be due to fishing. Accordingly, in spite of the authors having provided at least seven reasons why natural mortality for GOM cod is increasing as GOM temperatures are increasing, and in the face of the inarguable fact that the amount of cod fishing and the cod fishing mortality have plummeted at the same time, the authors conclude that reducing fishing for cod even further than it has been or eliminating it will “fix” the cod stocks.

Predation has and will continue to increase as the water temperature rises. The condition of the cod has declined and will continue to decline as the water temperature rises. Spawning success ditto. Also the survival of late-stage larvae and settling juveniles. And prey availability. And predation on the cod will increase. An example that the authors note is that seals, which are apparently quite fond of a diet rich in cod “have increased markedly in the region.” (For the significance of seal predation on cod stocks, see Seals threaten Scottish cod stock recovery at http://tinyurl.com/SealPredation-Cod.) Yet cutting back on fishing effort again and again and again is still the modus operandi of choice for recovering the GOM cod stocks, regardless of its impact on New England’s fishermen, fishing communities and fishing traditions and regardless of its lack of impact on the recovery.

That’s about all that needs to be said about the efficacy of fisheries management as espoused by the anti-fishing claque and as embraced by our modern fisheries management regime.

This definitely doesn’t bode well for fishing in any waters that are or will be warming, and that supposedly is or is going to be all of them, but it’s fishing-centric management at the most painfully obvious.

In how many fisheries being “managed” is that the case today? More importantly, in how many of fisheries in which natural mortality has increased due to ocean temperature increase has the permitted fishing mortality been correspondingly adjusted downward? As ocean temperatures continue to increase, how long will it take the fisheries management establishment – at least that part of it that doesn’t depend on foundation funding for hundreds of millions of dollars of “lets keep on beating the overfishing drums” funding, many of them provided by Pew – to admit that the whole idea of “overfishing” and its actual causes needs to be reconsidered.

* “Effective” from the managers’ perspective because it’s all they are allowed to do to manage fisheries.

When the commercial fishing industry didn’t agree with NOAA/NMFS on the status of the monkfish stocks

(Part of the ongoing controversy with New England/Gulf of Maine cod is centered on the difference in opinion between members of the fishing industry and the management establishment about the health of the stocks. I thought it might be instructive to review how a similar disagreement, only this time dealing with monkfish, was resolved fifteen years ago.)

In Framework Adjustment #1 to the Goosefish (monkfish) Fishery Management Plan published in 2001 it was announced that the directed monkfish fishery off the Northeast states would be permanently closed in 2002 due to the low number of fish that were being captured in the annual Northeast Science Center’s bottom trawl surveys (http://www.nefmc.org/library/framework-1-2). The participants in the directed fishery disagreed with the survey results and objected strenuously to the proposed closure, reporting that there were plenty of fish available, and for whatever reason(s) the NOAA R/V Albatross was not capable of catching them. Participants in the fishery – primarily in the Mid-Atlantic – formed the Monkfish Defense Fund (MDF) which convinced NMFS leadership that the fish were there but were not being taken by the researchers. A collaborative industry/NMFS pilot survey validated the industry’s claims that the stock was more plentiful. As a result, Congress provided funding for a collaborative, comprehensive NOAA/NMFS/MDF monkfish survey, again using commercial vessels with a history of successful participation in the monkfish trawl fishery and using their experienced captains and crews and their own gear to conduct the survey. On board the commercial vessels would also be NMFS and state personnel and academic researchers.

The first large scale cooperative monkfish survey took place in early 2001 with two modern trawlers, F/V Drake (out of Portland, ME) and F/V Mary K (out of New Bedford, MA). The commercial vessels did catch the monkfish that the Albatross couldn’t and provided a more accurate biomass estimate. The difference in the monkfish catch between the commercial vessels and the NOAA/NMFS vessel was significant enough that the managers reversed their decision to permanently close the directed fishery. Subsequent cooperative monkfish surveys on commercial vessels were held in 2004 and 2009. The series stopped after the 2009 survey because NOAA/NMFS personnel decided that their new survey vessel, R/V Bigelow, would adequately sample the monkfish stock.

And for an update on spiny dogfish….

(If you missed it, in Dolphins and seals and dolphin, oh my! from this past January I wrote about the almost totally ignored impacts of predation on commercial and recreational fish stocks in New England and the Mid-Atlantic (http://www.fishnet-usa.com/Dogfish%20and%20seals%20and%20dolphin.pdf). Since then the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council has recommended that the spiny dogfish Total Allowable Catch be reduced significantly, based on the results of an assessment update which evidently couldn’t find a whole bunch of these highly efficient predators that were there until a few years back (for a discussion of how efficient they are follow the previous link). Last July Dr. James Sulikowski’s research group at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine published The Use of Satellite Tags to Redefine Movement Patterns of Spiny Dogfish (Squalus acanthias) along the U.S. East Coast: Implications for Fisheries Management which reported the results of their work to more accurately describe the spiny dogfish stock(s) of the Northeast U.S. (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0103384),

But before getting into their research I’m going to take a slight detour to discuss the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s two annual bottom trawl surveys, the primary data source for the assessments of commercially and recreationally important fish species from Cape Hatteras to Maine. These surveys are so influential in assessments because they collectively comprise a time series going back to the early 1960s. In that time NOAA vessels have made approximately the same number of tows of approximately the same nets of approximately the same duration over approximately the same pieces of bottom on approximately the same dates every year. The annual variations in the numbers/weights of the various species being sampled are assumed to be an (approximate) indication of the variations of the total populations of those species. The nets that are used fish on the bottom and don’t sample the entire water column.

The total area sampled is identical from year to year, and the area sampled does not necessarily represent the full range of the species (or stock) being sampled.

The assumption is that the catch of particular species each year is going to be proportional to the total population of that species. Hence, if the trawl survey took 5,000 pounds of scup, for example, in one year and 3,000 pounds of scup the following year, in year two the biomass of scup would be estimated to be 60% of what it was the previous year (the weight used is often the average of several recent years – as specified in the FMP).

This seems to be reasonable if the distribution of the species (or stock) doesn’t change significantly from year to year. But what if it does? What if, for example, the population shifts to the north and to the east, which would be one of the expected reactions to warming ocean temperatures? It seems obvious that the part of the population sampled by the trawl survey(s) will no longer by representative of the total population as it is today, only as it was. And considering that not all of the species sampled are restricted to living in close association with the bottom but at times might move up and down in the water column, it might well be that with a changing temperature regime some species will not be equally susceptible to capture by the bottom tending gear utilized in the trawl surveys.

Getting back to the University of New England spiny dogfish work, from the abstract of the report, “vertical utilization also suggests distinct diel patterns and that this species may not utilize the benthos as previously thought, potentially decreasing availability to benthic (bottom tending gear as used in the NMFS bottom trawl surveys) gear.” In Conclusions the authors write “the results suggest that the estimated spiny dogfish movement patterns calculated from satellite tag data are possibly spatiotemporally asynchronous with the NEFSC bottom-trawl surveys, thus a potentially large percentage (horizontal and vertical “availability”) of these sharks may be unaccounted for in this survey.”

What would be a consequence of underestimating the total biomass of spiny dogfish off the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states? Obviously one would be underestimating what they were eating, which includes both codfish and the species that codfish eat. But as fishing management is accomplished today, spiny dogfish predation is irrelevant, because even if it were known, nothing could be done about it. The spiny dogfish fishery must be managed like all of our other fisheries, with a harvest limited to what would yield MSY every year. This is in spite of the fact that spiny dogfish are worth pennies a pound to the fishermen while the other commercial species like cod whose populations spiny dogfish are significantly impacting are worth at least an order of magnitude more.

While the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the federal legislation that controls fishing in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, pays lip service to the Optimum Yield in a fishery, something which should allow fisheries to be fished to below the MSY level if that is economically or socially warranted, the Act actually precludes that. As I wrote in 2009:

“One of the requirements of the Magnuson Stevens Act, the federal legislation that controls fishing in the US Exclusive Economic Zone, or more accurately one of the implied requirements of the Act, is that all fisheries be at the level that will produce MSY.

The first of the 10 National Standards that are applied to Fishery Management Plans put in place through the provisions of the Act is “conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the OY (Optimal Yield) from each fishery for the U.S. fishing industry.”

From the Act (16 U.S.C. 1802, MSA § 3): 104-297

(33) The term “optimum”, with respect to the yield from a fishery, means the amount of fish which—

(A) will provide the greatest overall benefit to the Nation, particularly with respect to food production and recreational opportunities, and taking into account the protection of marine ecosystems;

(B) is prescribed as such on the basis of the maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as reduced by any relevant economic, social, or ecological factor; and

(C) in the case of an overfished fishery, provides for rebuilding to a level consistent with producing the maximum sustainable yield in such fishery.

(34) The terms “overfishing” and “overfished” mean a rate or level of fishing mortality that jeopardizes the capacity of a fishery to produce the maximum sustainable yield on a continuing basis.

The definition of OY supposedly allows for departures from the MSY. However, as even the casual consideration of the above section of Magnuson indicates, that is not the case, or more accurately, that is only the case when a stock isn’t at the MSY level. In that case the stock is considered to be overfished, and if it is considered to be overfished, it must be “rebuilt” to the MSY level by having the

Watch Dr. Steve Cadrins presentation “Strengthening the Scientific Basis of the 2006 Management Requirements: Optimal Yield from Mixed-Stock Fisheries” Click here

harvest level reduced.

But will having every stock of fish in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone being managed at the MSY level be economically, socially or ecologically “optimum?” Will it automatically provide “the greatest overall benefit to the Nation, particularly with respect to food production and recreational opportunities?” Economically and socially, emphatically no. Is it even possible? Ecologically a not so emphatic “maybe.” Considering all of the good intentions, all of the effort, all of the pain and suffering and all of the money – both from the public and the private sectors – that is being expended in efforts to reach what are perhaps undesirable and unattainable goals, the results of being tied to the Magnuson concept of OY can be and in demonstrable instances are far from optimum. (from MSY and effective fisheries management, http://www.fishnet-usa.com/maximum_sustainable_yield.htm).

One of the demonstrable instances in which the results are far from optimum is having spiny dogfish at the MSY level in waters off the Mid-Atlantic and New England.

So why is it important to call it fishing management or fishermen management or something similar?

Because no one has much of a clue of the effects of water quality or water temperature or wind direction/duration or upwelling or food availability or of much of anything else on fish stocks. As a matter of fact they lump all forms of non-fishing mortality together, call it Natural Mortality – as opposed to Fishing Mortality – and assume that it is a constant. Natural Mortality plus Fishing Mortality is by definition equal to total mortality. So obviously the authors at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute can report that fishing mortality is what’s driving the Gulf of Maine cod population, because that’s what fisheries science and their models demand. It doesn’t matter how many codfish the burgeoning stocks of spiny dogfish eat nor does it matter how much of the prey species that codfish depend on is left after the dogfish get done with them, because codfish mortality that isn’t due to fishing doesn’t vary. All that varies is fishing, and the only way to have more fish is by reducing fishing. And if it can’t be reduced enough, then stop it.

The only way real fishery management has a chance of working will be by identifying and quantifying all of the major forms of mortality on each fish stock being managed, and by either controlling at beast or at least allowing for all of those other sources of mortality – which in no way in the natural world can add up to a constant year after year.

Once we’re at that point we’ll never have to look at a fishery that continues to decline, regardless of how much we cut back on fishing mortality, and force the fishermen to continue to pay the price for other factors that we either can’t or that we feel that it’s too inconvenient to control.

As I concluded in MSY and effective fisheries management six years ago (cited above):

“The so-called conservationists involved in fisheries would have us believe that there’s some sort of “natural balance” possible in our inshore and offshore waters and that, if fishing is reduced adequately across the board, this mythical balance can be reestablished. That is far from the case.

In their Rousseau-inspired misconception of what the oceans should be, they look at anthropogenic effects as categorically bad, with fishing in general and not harvesting every stock at the MSY level in particular among the worst. This is not necessarily the case. Fishing can be an effective management tool. In the case of species like herring, menhaden and dogfish, allowing – or encouraging – harvest levels above what would be considered “sustainable,” and then maintaining the populations at lower than maximum levels by carefully regulating harvest might be all that is necessary to return “overfished” stocks of much more valuable species back to their OY levels.

Take, for example, the current situation regarding the New England groundfish complex. Fishermen have been hit with a seemingly interminable series of harvesting reductions extending back well over a decade. These cutbacks have been so severe that, if the most recent “management” proposal by NMFS is instituted, boats will be allowed to fish only 20 days a year.

This is due to the fact that several of the groundfish stocks haven’t been recovering as they were expected to (at least by the managers) following previous drastic reductions in fishing effort. At the same time, as we’ve seen above, the stock of spiny dogfish, notoriously voracious predators on groundfish and their prey species, have been allowed to increase unrestrictedly. And the even larger Atlantic herring stock could be impeding the groundfish recovery as well.

Reduce the number of spiny dogfish? Of course not. The Magnuson Act won’t permit it. Reduce the number of herring? Ditto, but for political rather than biological reasons.

But what if we could? Using such an approach, the economy will benefit, the ecosystem will benefit (through increased biodiversity), and the fishing communities that are dependent on “balanced” fisheries will benefit as well.

And there are other fisheries that are facing ever more stringent harvesting restrictions each year because they aren’t performing as the fishing-centric computer models predict that they should. The summer flounder fishery in the mid-Atlantic is one. What’s the impact of spiny dogfish on the summer flounder stock?

An EEZ that is being managed to provide the optimal harvest from a complex of interacting species would seem to be preferable to what we have today. The way we’re doing it today, our most valuable fisheries are increasingly subject to the depredations of other, less valuable species that enjoy the protection of a management regime that is totally stacked against rational management. If fewer spiny dogfish, fewer Atlantic herring or fewer menhaden will mean an increase in more valuable, more desirable or more threatened species, then why shouldn’t the people responsible for fisheries management be provided with the administrative wherewithal to allow this? Legislation mandating that they can’t isn’t benefitting anyone beyond the few anti-fishing activists who have built careers on saving fish stocks that clearly don’t need saving, and it’s certainly not benefitting the ecosystem. So why do we have it?”

FishNet USA/October 22, 2015

Nils E. Stolpe

www.fishnet-usa.com

Alternating with original FishNet USA articles I will be going back to pieces I’ve written (for FishNet and other outlets) over the past 19 years – isn’t it amazing how fast time goes when you’re having fun? – to see how accurate I was in identifying industry trends and predicting what their impacts were going to be. Rather than redistributing the original articles I’ll link to them on the web and try to keep these updates to two pages or under. The original for this update from March, 2014 is at http://www.aifrb.org/fishosophy/

____________________

Most of you probably remember when newly appointed NOAA head Jane Lubchenco went to New England and announced that she was going to save our nation’s oldest fishery. But if it didn’t make a lasting impact on you, quoting from the Environmental Defense blog, EDFish by Tesia Love on April 8, 2009, “Sally McGee, Emilie Litsinger and I got to witness something pretty wonderful today.  Jane Lubchenco came to the New England Fishery Management Council meeting to announce the immediate release of $16 million to the groundfish fishery to help move the fishery to ‘sector” catch share management by providing funding for cooperative research to help fishermen get through a tough fishing year with very strict limits on fishing effort.”  She went on to quote Dr. Lubchenco “we need a rapid transition to sectors and catch shares. Catch shares are a powerful tool to getting to sustainable fisheries and profitability.  I challenge you to deliver on this in Amendment 16, to include measures to end overfishing.  I will commit the resources to my staff to do their part to ensure Amendment 16 is passed in June. We are shining a light on your efforts and we will track your progress.  There is too much at stake to allow delay and self-interest to prevent sectors and ultimately catch shares from being implemented.”

I’m sure that you were there with the rest of us, heaving a huge sigh of relief with visions of Dr. Lubchenco on her shiny white steed,  first riding to the rescue of the New England fishery, and then on to all of the rest of our struggling fisheries. “Hyo Silver! Away!”

So how did she do? A couple of years back NOAA/NMFS released the 2012 Final Report on the Performance of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery (May 2012 – April 2013). It’s available at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/crd/crd1401/. The report included a table – available at   http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/publications/crd/crd1401/tables.pdf –  The report included a table – available at included a table titled Summary of major trends (May through April, includes all vessels with a valid limited access multispecies permit) for the fishing years 2009 to 2012. The table only takes up a single page, is pretty easily understood and is well worth your consideration in its entirety but I’ll take the liberty of synopsizing what I think are the major points it illustrates. In each of the four years the groundfish revenues, landed weight, number of active vessels that took a groundfish trip, the total number of groundfish trips, and the total crew days on groundfish trips decreased. The non-groundfish revenues and landed weight increased. The days absent on a non-groundfish trip increased slightly then decreased.

And then we come to 2013 (it seems that according to NOAA/NMFS, 2014 hasn’t gotten here yet). Had the myriad benefits of Dr. Lubchenco’s and her ENGO/foundation cronies’ Catch Share Revolution finally arrived? Apparently, not quite yet. According to the 2013 Final Report on the Performance of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery (May 2013 – April 2014), just about everything that was falling in FY 2009 to 2012 continued to fall in FY 2014. I won’t go over any of the details, but the corresponding Table 1 for that year is available at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/read/socialsci/pdf/groundfish_report_fy2013.pdf.

Oh well, I guess she deserves a few points for trying – and we shouldn’t forget that before she could really focus on fixing groundfish she was distracted by having to dump a couple of millions of gallons of Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico.

Thirteen species are included in the New England Fishery Management Council’s multi-species fishery management plan, the “groundfish” FMP. Four of those species support no or minimal directed fisheries. The landings of those that support a significant commercial fishery are in the table below (from the NOAA/NMFS commercial landings database). Looking at these data, it’s impossible to suggest that after years of intensive management this management regime is anything that could be considered a success – unless your idea of success is putting a whole bunch of people out of work. In fact only the most charitable among us could term it anything other than disaster – and it’s a disaster that has been in the making since long before Dr. Lubchenco so fatuously announced that she was going to fix it.

(I’ll add here that catch share management is not a cure-all for all that’s wrong with fishery management nor is it the reason for management failures – though at the time Dr. Lubchenco and her “team” apparently believed it was. It is nothing more than an option for dividing the catch among users. As such it can have profound socioeconomic impacts on participants in the fishery and on fishing communities that depend on it, but not on the fishery resources themselves.)

How might it be fixed? In the original FishNet article I quoted a couple of paragraphs from a National Academy of Sciences study Evaluating the Effectiveness of Fish Stock Rebuilding Plans in the United States (available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/18488/evaluating-the-effectiveness-of-fish-stock-rebuilding-plans-in-the-united-states).

I can’t think of anything more valuable than repeating those words here. On page 178 of the report the authors concluded “the tradeoff between flexibility and prescriptiveness within the current legal framework and MFSCMA (Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act) guidelines for rebuilding underlies many of the issues discussed in this chapter. The present approach may not be flexible or adaptive enough in the face of complex ecosystem and fishery dynamics when data and knowledge are limiting. The high degree of prescriptiveness (and concomitant low flexibility) may create incompatibilities between single species rebuilding plans and EBFM (Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management). Fixed rules for rebuilding times can result in inefficiencies and discontinuities of harvest-control rules, put unrealistic demands on models and data for stock assessment and forecasting, cause reduction in yield, especially in mixed-stock situations, and de-emphasize socio-economic factors in the formulation of rebuilding plans. The current approach specifies success of individual rebuilding plans in biological terms. It does not address evaluation of the success in socio-economic terms and at broader regional and national scales, and also does not ensure effective flow of information (communication) across regions.”

In other words, the fishery managers need more informed flexibility to adequately manage our fisheries. It has been the goal of the fishing industry’s friends in Congress to provide this necessary flexibility (with adequate safeguards, of course). Conversely it has been the goal of a handful of foundations and the ENGOs they support and a smaller handful of so-called fishermen’s organizations to prevent this, and it seems that they have been willing to resort to just about any tactics to do it. As they have been successful in their efforts the fishing industry has continued to lose infrastructure that will never be replaced and markets that will be next to impossible to recover – and the percentage of imported seafood that we consume will continue to increase in spite of the fact that our fisheries are among the richest in the world.

Florida Fishermen Urge Congress to Protect America’s Fisheries, Consumer Access and Thousands of American Jobs

Washington, DC — Members of the Seafood Harvesters of America will be in our Nation’s capital next week as part of the organization’s “National Outreach Days,” urging Congress to uphold the landmark Magnuson Stevens Act (MSA) and protect fishing jobs from Massachusetts to Texas and from California to Alaska. Read the rest here

On April 28th the Seafood Harvesters of America will converge on our elected representatives to stay the course on a broken Magnuson Stevens Act. The Seafood Harvesters of America are aligned with the likes of the Pew Charitable Trust, EDF, and the Nature Conservancy.

So. As this group makes the rounds to derail the changes in MSA that are needed for many fisheries in many coastal community’s, the other side of the issue, and the need for change, begins below.

When Doc Hastings held hearings to discuss reauthorizing MSA, the environmental groups referred to it as the “Empty Oceans Act.” Doc Hastings and Don Young have done a good job of listening to some of the fishing communities that are being dismantled by incompetent and agenda-driven management.

Recently, Alaska Rep Don Young introduced House Resolution 1335, the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, in this article, My Turn: Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization moves forward.

In an effort to ensure a proper balance between the biological needs of our fish stocks and the economic needs of our fishermen and coastal communities, I have introduced legislation with a number of regional cosponsors to reauthorize and strengthen the MSA. House Resolution 1335, the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, provides a number of modest but necessary reforms, including efforts to: provide fisheries managers with increased flexibility and transparency; allow for improved data collection through the use of electronic monitoring; increase accountability for our federal agencies; and create predictability and certainty for coastal communities that depend on stable fishing. Read the article here

The Congressman’s article was rebutted by Stosh Anderson,  a fisherman from Kodiak and former North Pacific Fishery Management Council member, who thinks MSA is only applicable to Alaska fishery management! He wrote an opinion piece in the Alaska Dispatch titled Don Young seeks to unwind ‘Alaska Model’ for fisheries in Magnuson-Stevens Act  Read the article here  Don Young answered back. Don Young: Stosh Anderson misrepresents Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization Read the article here

Dick Grachek commented at Fisherynation.com on Andersons article, and lays out what HR 1335, “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act”, does for the nation’s fishing communities.

“Under Young’s bill, annual catch limits, set to keep fish stocks healthy for the long run, would no longer be necessary for managers. Reasonable timelines put in place to replenish depleted fisheries could also be loosened or open-ended, delaying economic and recreational opportunities that come from healthy stocks.” (Stosh Anderson)

“Reasonable timelines”? How about arbitrary and baseless?

Even Jane Lubchenco, NOAA Fisheries Director admitted in a congressional hearing that there was no scientific basis for the rigid rebuilding timelines in the 2006 Reauthorization of Magnuson Act. Jane Lubchenco was one of the authors of the infamous “Oceans of Abundance” http://www.edf.org/sites/defau… (this was an eco-political leaflet and primer sponsored by and filled with NGO lobbyist talking points aimed at the signers of the 2006 reauthorization)

And “flexibility” and “transparency” as stated in the House Proposals does not mean the elimination or undermining the necessity of “catch limits based on science”.

East Coast fishing communities have been devastated by the legislated rigidity in the timelines for rebuilding historically varying fish populations, coupled with the imposition of catch shares in 2010 (in violation of the existing MSA Reauthorization Act 2006, MSA 303A (D) NEW ENGLAND AND GULF REFERENDUM and National Standard 5). This House Bill remedies some of those inequities.

The proposals for flexibility, transparency, predictability, fishermen representation, and taking into account the environmental and socio-economic aspects of fishery management in this current reauthorization bill before Congress are long overdue. And actually most of these current reauthorization proposals are simply reinforcing and making more specific several existing—but mostly ignored by management—MSA Standards relating to “setting catch limits based on science” and insuring that it’s the “best available science” through utilizing cooperative surveys and assessments from “other sources” (National Standard 2). Current proposals also reinforce the National Standards 1, 4, and 8, which account for the survival of the fishing communities. http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/msa20…

The current House Bill proposals clearly do not reverse or “gut” any of the basic fish replenishing tenets of the Magnuson Stevens Act.

From the House Natural Resources Committee website: http://naturalresources.house….

“The draft proposal, while maintaining the key themes of the Act, would make the following improvements: – Provide flexibility for fishery managers when rebuilding depleted fisheries – Provide flexibility for fishery managers when setting annual catch levels – Provide more transparency for fishermen and others in both science and management – Provide more predictability and stability for fishermen and fishery-dependent communities – Allow fishery managers to take the economic impact of their decisions into account when setting harvest levels and developing rebuilding plans – Allow fishery managers to take environmental conditions into account when establishing harvest levels and developing rebuilding plans – Allow fishermen in regions where catch share programs have been controversial to have a say in whether a new catch share program will be implemented and to be provided better information when considering such a program – Provide a schedule for obtaining better fishery dependent and fishery independent data especially for data poor fisheries and provide greater protection for confidential information submitted to regulatory agencies – Authorize appropriations for an additional five fiscal years at current funding level”

Visit http://naturalresources.house…. to learn more. Or https://www.govtrack.us/congre…

Jessica Hathaway Editor in Chief of National Fisherman: A Five Year Failure.

Catch share programs have been heralded in all corners of the country, first by NGOs and second by some of the fleet owners, fishermen and processors to whom they have brought success.

The counterbalance to those claims of success are of course the thousands of voices of fishermen and many more thousands of supporting small businesses put out of work as a result of catch share programs. But even worse, at least one catch share program was implemented with such haste that it may actually be damaging the ecosystem it was prescribed to save.Enter: New England groundfish. In a press release yesterday, Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance Community Organizer Brett Tolley stated, “In the five years since the catch share policy was implemented in New England, fishing rights have dramatically consolidated, community based fishermen have less access to fishing quota, and pressure on inshore fishing areas has increased.” 

Flexibility in Magnuson is the only way to give some New England and Southern fisheries a whisper of hope. The fishermen in these regions need legislation to push their councils to take a holistic look at fishing communities and ecosystems. How can we refuse to offer a helping hand to fellow fishermen?  Read the rest here

MSA doesn’t only affect fishermen, it affects the supporting industry infrastructure, and consolidation of the nations fishing fleet means closures of those businesses.

Industry Infrastructure – Allied fishing businesses critical to seafood industry survival

When consumers enjoy a seafood dinner caught by local boats, it isn’t just the fisherman they need to thank for the pleasure.

Dozens of family-owned allied area businesses play a vital role in the local fishing industry, supplying a wide variety of goods and services that keep fishing afloat, ranging from gear and fuel to food, fresh water and ice.

Retired fisherman James Kendall, owner of New Bedford Seafood Consulting, underscores the importance of these allied businesses to all sectors of the commercial seafood industry. Often family-owned, these operations, he notes, have been forced to become “very adaptive” to meet the changing and frequently diminishing needs of the fishing industry brought about by the reduction in fishing trips allowed by the federal government.

“The fishing industry is not only the boats of the fishermen,” she (Angela Sanfilippo) said, noting that the infrastructure on land, which includes the wharves where fishing boats dock, ship chandleries that sell supplies, repair facilities, seafood auction houses, and the truck drivers who transport fresh fish to market all play a key role in maintaining the area’s commercial fishing industry. Read the rest here

If you read this article between 4/28/2015, and 4/30/2015, the Seafood Harvesters of America, (click here) a special interest group, will be lobbying our representatives that you may have voted for, in Washington D.C. to maintain the current, broken Magnuson Stevens Act.

They are not there to fix it.

http://www.undercurrentnews.com/2014/09/11/nfi-california-industry-cry-foul-over-oceana-backed-seafood-mislabeling-bill/

Further Thoughts on Oceana’s “fight seafood fraud” Campaign:

What is this “mislabeling” and “seafood fraud” scuffle all about these days? Why, you might ask, is Oceana suddenly so concerned about “truth in packaging” for fish? And what is behind their somewhat baffling concern for the fish-consuming public?

Actually, Pew, Oceana, EDF, NRDC, and CLF (and too long a list of their additional subsidiaries to cite here) have for many years been doing some of their own “mislabeling” and “seafood fraud”. They’ve been “mislabeling” fishermen as overfishing-greedy-habitat-destroyers. In addition, these public welfare-minded NGOs perpetrated “seafood fraud” and violated any “truth in packaging” ethic when they poured millions into campaigns of misinformation and outright lies promoting the privatization scam of ITQ’s or catch shares. In the years leading up to their imposition on the New England Fishery in May of 2010, Pew/Oceana/ EDF employed “untruth in packaging” when they wrapped their catch shares product in the fallacious claim that “catch shares were a fish conservation effort and were guaranteed to enhance fishermen’s profitability and safety”. They were also “mislabeling” this Individual Transferable Quota System as “catch shares sector management” which was a legalese semantic maneuver clearly designed to skirt statutes in the Magnuson Stevens Act which would have required a 2/3 referendum vote by permit holders, a vote which, in all likelihood, would have stopped this privatization scam in its tracks. But Pew, EDF, and Oceana got catch shares installed. They worked the media and “worked it from the inside” through the “you’re getting’ catch shares …like it or not” decrees from NOAA director Jane Lubchenco, a Pew Fellow and former EDF Board Member.

But Oceana is an Environmental Non-Profit, Right? You know, Protecting The World’s Oceans?

Non-profit indicates non-taxable, and a tax deductible status for donations. It’s an IRS designation. But, non-profit does not indicate non-revenue or non-fat salaries and compensation packets for the non-profit’s corporate-style executive officers. If the “executives” that run these “non-profit” NGOs were not donation-plowing in order to “increase the market value of their Fund” and lining their pockets with six and seven figure salaries under the guise of “free-market-environmentalism” or “doing good while doing well” or getting very wealthy while saving the ocean from the greedy fishermen; if they were not so hostile to domestic fishing and were not pouring their resources into dismantling the US domestic fishing industry, there wouldn’t be such a vacuum in the domestic market and there wouldn’t be such a gaping hole in domestic supply for the inferior imported fish to pour into.

If the so very concerned NGOs were not working overtime to do all they can to eliminate local fishermen along with the abundant supply of local fresh fish that they provide, the consumers they’re so worried about becoming victims of “seafood fraud” would have plenty of affordable fresh domestic and properly labeled fish at their local fish monger or supermarket fish case. If domestic product was not choked off, distributors wouldn’t be so desperate for fish to fill their orders. Imported, mislabeled, unhealthy contaminated product, in most cases, would not be any competition for fresh local quality fish. Mislabeling would not be an issue if U.S. domestic fishermen were respected and not seen as the eco-villains; and if they were not being prevented from supplying the public’s demand for healthy fish protein.

But how did this antagonistic attitude toward domestic fishing come about?

Clearly, NOAA’s posture of “too many greedy fishermen chasing too few endangered fish”, and the consequent impossible constrictive fishery management posture, originates with the NGO blitzes of the endangered-species-of-the-month-club media campaigns. One month the NY Times, The Boston Globe, PBS TV, and the internet blogosphere will be inundated with NGO warnings of impending doom for a particular fish species, or category of species, or a type of reef coral, all on the brink due to overfishing and destructive fishing techniques. Next an amendment to a regulation which would save from extinction and protect for perpetuity the chosen endangered fish (or coral or turtle or dolphin or sturgeon or essential forage fish or the forage fish’s predators— depending on the month) mysteriously appears “on the table” for discussion at a regional council meeting. Add the threat of a lawsuit from some vociferous Pew lawyers in the audience and several (not particularly impartial when it comes to commercial fishing) council members grumbling their limited understanding of the intent and spirit of Magnuson statutes, “Spawning Biomass” and “Maximum Sustainable Yield”… and there you have it, a new more restrictive and long overdue management measure and “conservation tool”. And the NGO headline… Ocean Creatures Saved from the clutches of the “greedy industrial fishers! Accomplished through your Ocean Donation! And by concerned scientists and conservationists and dedicated government fish managers working through regional councils just full of stakeholder representatives!  And…Eureka, Fisheries management is Working Great! See? So, more of the same, Please.

The ridiculous regulations are bad enough which along with the fallacious catch shares have certainly achieved their “consolidation goal” and have already put many fishermen out of business…and counting; but one of the most disheartening aspects of this corporatist NGO war on independent fishing businesses is that it has leached into the general public’s attitude toward U.S. fishermen. Fishermen are right up there with forest clear cutters as they “… drag enormous nets scraping the ocean bottom clean of all life, destroying the habitat as they go further and further offshore seeking new grounds and healthier fish stocks to exploit and destroy” made possible by their technologically advanced electronic fish-finders”.

So again, if the regional fish management councils and NOAA’s legal department was not so cowed by the intrusion of Pew’s anti-fishing litigation mercenaries, i.e. the Conservation Law Foundation and their looming threat of endless lawsuits. If the “Commerce” Department didn’t roll over for big biz and advocate reprehensible trade scams like the Trans Pacific Partnership which would supersede tariff, safety, and probably most FDA inspection regulations. If U.S. fishermen were not prevented from supplying fish, then cheap and unhealthy Pangasius, Tilapia, and farmed Shrimp would not be found on our menus and would never be significantly competing with domestic landings in our venerable fish market auctions.

As W.C. Fields says, “You can’t cheat an honest man…” or if the product being scammed wasn’t so inferior, if it was honest fresh domestic fish, it wouldn’t require any “seafood fraud” in order to sell it. It wouldn’t have to cheat and be “mislabeled” as quality fish.

It really wouldn’t make a great deal of sense to mislabel a domestic fresh product such as Atlantic Haddock and Cod or Pacific Flatfish and Pollock as Panga, or Yellowtail Flounder as Tilapia, or fresh Southeast Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Shrimp as a product of Viet Nam. It works in the other direction. The “seafood fraud”, the sleight of hand, the mislabeling of the imported product as local fresh quality fish, becomes a marketing ploy in order to move inferior fish by some unscrupulous dealers and big chain-store buyers when the market is blitzed with “dumped” imported uninspected and contaminated Tilapia, Pangasius, and pond-raised Shrimp.

Well then, what is behind this expensive Oceana media and legislative campaign to “fight seafood fraud”?

This is not a case of legislating 1,827 names for our fish that already have names. That is not the fix for this problem. This is not a problem of a lack of specificity in labeling as the mindless Oceana campaign advocates. This is the same old problem of corporation/government corruption and the big-biz-shill NGO’s’ self-serving exploitation of an unsuspecting public through the usual scapegoating of the domestic fishing industry.

If altruistic Oceana is so concerned and wants to “fight seafood fraud” they should look to their own Ocean Programs first. It’s fraudulent to spawn a full media blitz declaring Swordfish and Tuna as full of mercury and as an overfished and endangered species with nothing to back up such preposterous claims as Oceana and the Natural Resources Defense Council have done in the past—not to mention the “endangered” Sturgeon. It’s fraudulent to use their own propaganda articles as a reference (or even worse Worms’ and Pauly’s bought and paid for Pewian “science”) and declare saving the “forage fish” as the basis for a campaign to constrict fishing on prolific stocks such as Butterfish, Sardines, Menhaden, and Herring. It’s fraudulent to characterize small independent family-owned and family-funded fishing vessels as “industrial trawlers taking way too much and destroying the ocean habitat in the process”. It’s fraudulent to fund, with tens of $millions, a fraudulent campaign to impose a fraudulent privatization ITQ scheme fraudulently called catch shares and then fraudulently justify the resulting “fleet consolidation” or the elimination of the majority of the local fleet as a conservation measure helping the fish and making the fishermen “more profitable”. Now that is “seafood fraud”!

If Oceana or any other NGO is truly interested in protecting the fish-consuming public and wants to guarantee them a safe fresh healthy fish product, they might stop trying to kill U.S. fishing on some of the most productive fishing grounds in the world. They might work on getting the government to abandon sleazy trade agreements and instead demand the enforcement of existing tariffs that were designed to protect domestic fishing and enhance marketing for the domestic fresh product. This would then go a long way to prevent the inferior imported fish from entering the U.S and would make obsolete the need for any marketing scams of “seafood fraud” mislabeling.

Saving the consumer from mislabeled domestic fish is just another “easy-to-catch” media straw man created by NGOs like Oceana. This endeavor is nothing but more fund–raising public opinion manipulation along the way of their well-engineered and very well-funded mission to discredit and remove the local domestic fishing industry from the U. S. Continental Shelf.  Such a clearing-off might just be of some interest to the oil industry—just a thought.

http://www.offshore-mag.com/articles/2011/11/boem-announces-proposed.html and http://www.noia.org/offshore-energy/access/

http://www.undercurrentnews.com/2014/09/11/nfi-california-industry-cry-foul-over-oceana-backed-seafood-mislabeling-bill/

And how might anti-fishing Oceana be connected to big oil?

Oceana was established in 2001 by a group of leading foundations — The Pew Charitable Trusts, Oak Foundation, Marisla Foundation (formerly Homeland Foundation), and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. http://oceana.org/en/eu/about-us/history

Pew Foundation, as most people interested in ocean matters are aware, is the Joseph N. Pew Sunoco Oil fortune, with holdings in Exxon Mobil and other major oil corporations.
Oak Foundation was started by Alan M. Parker the current President of Government Group of ENERGYSOLUTIONS, INC a natural gas consulting firm.
Marisla Foundation is the Getty Oil fortune.
Rockefeller Bros. Fund: Rockefeller? Standard Oil and Exxon Mobil should ring a bell.

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By David Lincoln

INTRODUCTION

This is the story of how a handful of scientists set out from Oregon with an unshakable belief that they knew what was best for the rest of us. They ended up conquering the world (or at least the watery portions of it) and got rich along the way, while the fishermen and their families only worked harder and got poorer. When their scientific dogma connected with nearly unlimited resources, the earth quaked and the resulting tidal wave swept aside all the usual checks and balances. It carried along the media, the politicians, the government agencies and the non-governmental organizations with such force that seemingly no one could stand against the tide.

The purpose of this investigation is threefold:

To trace the evolution of Ocean Management principles.
To begin to track the interaction of these few experts who were responsible for shaping and popularizing these concepts.
To follow the spread of money, power and influence which made these Ocean Management strategies virtually inevitable.

Such an ambitious undertaking would not have been possible were it not for the fact that these few dynamic individuals served as magnets to attract attention to their cause and incredible wealth to whatever projects they controlled at a given time. They did this by ensuring that their theories were the only alternatives seriously considered as US policy was formulated and inexorably implemented.

The problem is that the Pew money machine provided a seemingly endless supply of cash and those who drank from this fountain of wealth became empowered to turn their every wish into reality. They became so adept at revving up the media engine that the science became secondary to their ability to spread their frantic message in ever widening circles.

Ultimately the Pew engine was positioned so far in front of the boat that all ocean science became tainted by Pew science and the best available science was constrained by the only available science. The mantra that “the oceans would soon be running out of fish” reverberated so often that Pew science only needed to fund those programs which were in search of the next great marine crisis to make their agenda the law of the land (and Sea).

With so much money being pumped through the Pew system, other sources of funding either dried up or were overwhelmed by the shear force of the Pew Ocean’s agenda. Over time, it no longer became necessary for anyone to read the policy papers that Pew directly or indirectly funded. Once you knew the title and saw the first paragraph, you would know which slice of the supposedly ever-shrinking pie you were being served on a silver platter.

The review that follows is only a partial overview of these experts’ activities and works with emphasis on those which had the most impact on fisheries management. It is hoped that by documenting the journey of these people, both conceptually and on the map, that some will rethink the pattern of influence which has brought us to this point. Then we can begin to seriously reconsider the alternative pathways both for past management decisions and future policy deliberations.

FISHERIES MANAGEMENT CONNECTIONS – Getting Their Feet Wet

By the late 1980’s to early 1990’s all three marine scientists had become active in fisheries management. The Pew Charitable Trusts under the new Executive Director, Rebecca Rimel, became the second largest private foundation in America based on total giving. This was the around the time that Joshua Reichert, a sociologist with no marine science background, joined the Pew Charitable Trusts to administer the new “Pew Scholars Program in Conservation and the Environment” and the National Environmental Trust was established.

In 1986, Dr Ellen Pikitch was an Associate Professor at Oregon State University where she was working on a project for NOAA to define Catch Quotas.

In 1988, Pikitch et al published “An evaluation of the effectiveness of trip limits as a management tool.” And the following year she served on the Pacific Fishery Management Council, Scientific and Statistical Committee. Lubchenco was elected Vice-President (later President) of the Ecological Society of America.

In 1990, Rosenberg returned to Massachusetts and accepted the position of Chief of Research Coordination, at the National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole. A few years later, he became Research Specialist in Population Dynamics, Office of the Senior Scientist for NMFS in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he served until 1994.

Meanwhile, Jane Lubchenco was beginning her career in Ecosystem Management. Between 1977 and 1990 she published eighteen papers (often together with her husband Bruce Menge) dealing broadly with intertidal community interaction in the US coastal zones. Then in 1991, she began focusing on the sustainable biosphere and an ecological research agenda.

Pikitch published “Technological interactions in the U.S. West Coast groundfish fishery and their implications for management”. This was the same year that Carl Safina was awarded a Pew Fellowship for $150,000 to research and write the book “Song for the Blue Ocean.” Rosenberg et al published “Stock rebuilding strategies over different time scales.”

A year later, Lubchenco was awarded a Pew Fellowship for $150,000, part of which she used to set up the Aldo Leopold Fellowship Program, initially known as SpringGreen. Her program evolved from annual Pew Fellows meetings and was designed by Lubchenco to provide training for academic environmental scientists who wished to be more effective in outreach to the media and policy makers.

Rosenberg et al published “Fisheries risk assessment: sources of uncertainty.”

At this time, Robert H. Campbell took over as CEO of Sunoco, a position he held until he retired in 2000 after 40 years of loyal company service. He moved immediately to the Board of the Pew Charitable Trusts and is currently their Chairman.

In 1993, Lubchenco won the prestigious MacArthur “genius” award for $500,000, part of which she used to set up the Aldo Leopold Foundation while she was Director of the World Resources Institute. She and others also published “Priorities for an Environmental Science Agenda in the Clinton- Gore Administration” and “Pacific Ocean Ecosystems and Global Climate Change.”

Meanwhile, Pikitch chaired the Groundfish Subcommittee for the Pacific Fishery Management Council

Rosenberg et al published “Achieving sustainable use of renewable resources,” “Choosing a management strategy for stock rebuilding when control is uncertain”. “Fisheries: opportunities and concerns,” “Marine fisheries at a critical juncture?” and single-handedly he wrote “Defining overfishing – defining stock rebuilding.”

In 1994, Andy Rosenberg took over as Division Chief, Northeast Region, National Marine Fisheries Service and the following year he was named Northeast Regional Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service NOAA in Gloucester Mass., a position he held until 1998. Here he served as the senior federal official for regional activities from Canada to Cape Hatteras. Part of his duties doing this period was to act as the Agency spokesperson to the public, Congress and internationally. He was the government’s chief negotiator for recovery plans for New England and Mid-Atlantic fishery resources and he was responsible for oversight of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

CANADIAN CONNECTIONS – Spreading the Wave

Ironically, this was a period of great cooperation with universities in Canada. In his first year on the job, Rosenberg co-authored with Ransom Myers and others at Dalhousie Univ. (his old college) “In search of thresholds for recruitment overfishing”. Rosenberg et al published “Uncertainty and risk evaluation in stock assessment advice for U. S. marine fisheries”

In 1994, Lubchenco put forward her principles of “The Scientific Basis of Ecosystem Management.” and the Pew Scholars program shifted to recognizing fellows “which expanded the scope of the program beyond the academic science sphere to include individuals from the non-profit, government and private sectors.” It was also the year that the Univ. of British Columbia (UBC) established their Fisheries Science Centre (FSC) whose staff included Dr. Daniel Pauly.

According to the FSC website, “Pauly is a French citizen who completed his high school and university studies in Germany; his doctorate (1979) and habilitation (1985) are in Fisheries Biology, from the University of Kiel.” Dr. Pauly has authored or co-authored over 500 [over 400 since 1994] scientific articles, book chapters and shorter contributions, and authored, or (co-)edited about 30 books and reports.” The Fisheries Science Centre annual reports indicate that, since it was established, The Pew Charitable Trusts have provided more than $15 million in external research funds to the Fisheries Science Centre at UBC.

In 1995, Pikitch served on the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Committee on Ecosystem Management and Sustainable Marine Fisheries for a three year term. Lubchenco was elected to be President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and later their Chairman of the Board. Meanwhile Rosenberg and Myers published “Population dynamics of exploited fish stocks at low population levels” in Science.

In 1996, Lubchenco was named by Bill Clinton to the National Science Board and that year she was also named a Pew Fellow nominator (she participated in the Pew Fellows advisory Committee and was a Pew Fellows nominator until 1998). This was the year that Pew created Seaweb through a $2 million grant to the NRDC for improved Public Relations and Communications.

In that year, Beth Babcock was a fisheries doctoral student working as a summer intern for the NMFS Northwest group. She was working on a bioeconomic model of the trawl fishery and how landing limits influence target species for fishermen. Dr. Ellen Pikitch was Babcock’s major professor at the University of Washington and she was working with Dan Erickson at Oregon State University. Later, Dr. Pikitch and her partner Dr. Babcock went on to write dozens of fisheries papers together as they moved from one Pew position to another.

It was at this time that J. Howard Pew II took over as Chairman of the Pew Charitable Trusts. He was an innovator who pushed for more advocacy and emphasized depth rather than breath in giving. Pew Conservation grants for general environmental issues were refocused on marine conservation and later named the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation.

NEW ENGLAND CONNECTIONS – Testing the Waters

Within a year, that Pew Fellows program was relocated to the New England Marine Aquarium (NEAQ) in Boston and the “total of $1.5 million presented annually made the fellowships the world’s largest award for marine conservationists.” Jerry Schubel, NEAQ Pres directed the $500,000 in annual administrative fees while Gregory Stone (NEAQ Conservation Director) was an early recipient of a $150,000 grant under the new program. Since that time, the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation has awarded over 130 grants totaling more than $20 million.

Pikitch chaired the NEAQ, Aquatic Forum Series, on “Establishing an agenda for responsible fishing,” and joined the Ocean Wildlife Campaign coalition as their lead stock assessment scientist for four years.  Rosenberg et al publish “Assessing uncertainty and risk in exploited marine populations,” and “Precautionary management reference points and management strategies.” Rosenberg, somewhat hypocritically, published “Shielding fisheries from politics.”

In 1997, Pikitch served on the New England Fishery Management Council, Overfishing definition review panel and by the following year she began a two year role as the Chairman of their Scientific and Statistical Committee. At the same time Pikitch et al published “An overview of trends in fisheries, fisheries science and management in Global Trends: Fisheries Management which she co-edited
Lubchenco began serving a three year stint on the National Marine Fisheries Service, Ecosystem Principles Advisory Panel and during the same timeframe was on the Scientific Advisory Board of the PBS Radio Show “Living on Earth.” She also published “Revelation and the Environment AD 95- 1995.”

In 1998, Lubchenco published “Entering the century of the environment: A new social contract for science” and with others published “Marine reserves are necessary but not sufficient for marine conservation.” She also initiated the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and it was eventually relocated to Stanford Univ.
According to the website, the program consists of two weeks of communications and media training.

The first weeklong session focuses on leadership development and broad communications and outreach skills. Media representatives and communication specialists conduct “hands on” training, including mock interviews, writing for different audiences, and development of specific messages. The second session, focusing primarily on interaction with policy makers, industry and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is held in Washington, D.C. The week includes modules on interacting with state and federal agencies, international environmental policy, and working with Congress. This week features a mock Congressional hearing where Fellows practice giving testimony concerning environmental legislation.”

Pikitch et al published “Individual transferable quotas, community based fisheries management systems and “virtual communities,” Meanwhile Rosenberg published “Controlling marine fisheries 50 years from now” and Lubchenco et al. published “No-take reserves: Protection for fishery populations and marine ecosystems.”

In 1999, Lubchenco began the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea (COMPASS) a consortium of academic scientists, SeaWeb, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium who work together to communicate marine conservation science to policy makers and the public. She also began a 10 year leadership role as Lead Principle Investigator of 13 Co-PIs for the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO). According to her resume:  “With $48 million in grants from the Packard and Moore Foundations, and an additional $30 million in leveraged and complementary funds, this consortium of four universities (OSU, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz) is revolutionizing our understanding of the nearshore marine ecosystems along the coasts of Oregon and California (1999-2009) with fundamental advances in science.”

Oceana was formed reportedly by contributions from five charitable trusts-the Oak Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Turner Foundation, the Surdna Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust, but Pew provided the largest share of funds.

That year, the Pew Charitable Trusts awarded $146 million in total grants to 448 organizations which was more than they had given out in the previous 25 yrs. Pew launched the Sea Around Us Project under the Fisheries Science Centre at the Univ. of British Columbia under the leadership of Daniel Pauly. External Research funding for the Fisheries Centre increased about 2 mill/yr from 1.5 mill/yr to roughly 3.5 mill yr at that time and it continued to rise until 2007. Pew also expanded the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation program to “include individuals working in the arts, communication, film, media and journalism in order to support public outreach and education about the oceans.”

At the New England Aquarium, Jerry Schubel along with consultants published a White paper entitled “Potential Environmental Consequences Of Petroleum Exploration And Development On Georges Bank” This paper was issued just as the Canadian government was considering an extension of a moratorium on Georges Bank. The Aquarium concluded that there was not enough information available to make a recommendation. This was followed by a paper by Schubel on Georges Bank Moratorium policy assessment and later on the “Role of Environmental Scientists in Public Policy – A Lesson from Georges Bank.”

The turn of the millennium was a particularly active period for Pew. The Pew Oceans Commission was created which included Jane Lubchenco as the most distinguished marine scientist. The commission initially also included Christine Whitman and Robert H. Campbell, the Chairman and CEO of Sun Oil Co, who became a board member of the Pew Charitable Trusts and is currently the Chairman of the Board for Pew, Hershey Company and a Director of Cigna Corp and Vical Inc.

In 2000, Dr. Ellen Pikitch became a Pew Fellow together with Dr. Amanda Vincent and others. Pikitch provided the SEFSC with a method of estimating the surplus production model from the Catch per Unit Effort. Babcock and Pikitch published “A dynamic programming model of fishing strategy choice in a multispecies trawl fishery with trip limits,” in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries an Aquatic Sciences.

Also in Canada, the Fisheries Economics Research Unit was funded at UBC (primarily by Pew) under the direction of economist Rashid Sumaila. In that year alone, Pew awarded $236 million in total grants worldwide.

Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy was formed championed by Andy Rosenberg. He along with others published “The precautionary approach  and risk management: can they increase the probability of successes in fishery management?” and “Ecosystem approaches to fishery management through essential fish habitat.” Lubchenco published “A New Social Contract for Science.”

Rosenberg joined the faculty of the University of New Hampshire where he remains as Professor of Natural Resources. He served as Dean of the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture for four years.

In 2001, the Ransom Myers Lab was opened at Dalhousie. Myers was joined by Boris Worm, a marine biologist and Assistant Professor in Marine Conservation Biology at Dalhousie University shortly after he completed his doctorate in Biological Oceanography from the University of Kiel, Germany. This coincidentally, is the same German university where Pauly completed his doctorate. Since that time, more than 100 articles have been published by Myers and also Worm at the Myers Lab.

Pew funded Oceana initially at more than $5 mill/yr and by the end of the year Pew had contributed $9.5 million. It is interesting to note when Pew was having such an impact on the development of U.S. Oceans policy the official history of the Pew Charitable Trusts “Sustaining the Legacy” published at this time doesn’t even mention the Oceans. The only reference to fishing is ironically the old adage about “teaching a hungry man to fish instead of merely giving him a fish”

At the same time Pikitch, Babcock et al published “Using Bayesian Methods And Decision Analysis As A Rational Basis To Dealing With Conflicting Stock Assessment Results While Providing Management Advice On Stock Rebuilding.” And later,”Using Bayesian Methods To Improve Stock Assessment and Management of Stock Rebuilding When There Is Uncertainty In Processes Affecting Future Recruitment” and finally “Evaluating The Relative Merits Of Alternative Methods To Weight Different Time Series Of Abundance Indices In Stock Assessment”

In 2002, Pikitch and Babcock released their “Critique of the NMFS report, “Relative Precision of discard rate estimates for the Northeast groundfish complex,” Additionally Pikitch testified in Federal Court in Boston on a lawsuit brought against NMFS and the Secretary of Commerce by the Conservation Law Foundation in an effort to toughen groundfish regulations. Dr. Pikitch declared that “No credible scientist could rule out the possibility that irreparable harm (in the sense of a severe and prolonged population collapse) might occur in a situation where populations are brought to, and kept at, extremely low levels.” This is a loaded statement because as NMFS pointed out “there is some finite risk that all populations will eventually go extinct. At issue, is the magnitude of the risk over a specified period of time.”

Pikitch meanwhile publishes a “Scientific Response to the CITES Justification for setting the 2002 Total Allowable Catch of Beluga Sturgeon (Huso huso) in the Caspian Sea,” for Caviar Emptor, her favorite crusade for saving sturgeon from the caviar addicted wealthy Eurasians. Project Seahorse, a biodiversity and marine trade study was brought to the UBC Fisheries Centre under the direction of Dr. Amanda Vincent, a Pew Fellow in 2000.

Rosenberg publishes “The precautionary approach from a manager’s perspective.”

Oceana débuted their new video “Empty Oceans, Empty Nets” with much fanfare at the United Nations. Pikitch introduced the showing and Lubchenco was prominently featured in the film. This video was broadcast on over 200 PBS television stations to well over 1.5 million households around Earth Day as part of a larger series on Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture and it is still regularly screened at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Calif.

FLORIDA CONNECTIONS – Up to Their Necks

In 2003, Marine Policy issues took a dramatic turn with the publication of the now famous letter by Myers and Worm titled “Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities” which appeared in the journal Nature and “Predator Diversity Hotspots In The Blue Ocean” in PNAS This was a carefully orchestrated media release of a highly controversial theory which claimed that 90 % of the large fish were gone since the advent of industrial fishing. This theory drew strong criticism including more than 30 critical responses from the marine scientific community most of which dealt with the fallacy of projecting biomass from catch per unit effort (CPUE) in a single fishery.

At the bottom of the page was the statement “This research was part of a larger project on pelagic longlining supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts.” Pew, of course, claimed that the work had been peer-reviewed, but in fact most of the reviewers had a conflict of interest due to their financial relationships with Pew. By this time, Pew was awarding grants totaling $180 million/yr from 3.8 billion in assets and more than 300 non-profit organizations were receiving funds from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

In May 2003 the New England Aquarium and Pew released the Ocean Fisheries Action Statement signed by 50 renowned marine scientists calling for the immediate end to overfishing. However, since most of the signatories were Pew fellows, the statement was not seen as unbiased.

This was the year that Andy Rosenberg published “Managing to the margins: the overexploitation of fisheries,” “Multiple uses of marine ecosystems” and he joined the UBC Fisheries Science Centre Intl Board of Advisors, a position which he has held to the current time. In June, Rosenberg went on tour to discuss the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy findings including an interview with NPR’s Living on Earth Radio Show. He, Ransom Myers and others all remarked on the similarities of the two commissions recommendations. Then, in July, the Pew Oceans Commission released its report “America’s Living Ocean: Charting a course for Sea Change”

Lubchenco presented testimony to the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, on the science of marine reserves. Lubchenco et al published “Ecological criteria for evaluating candidate sites for marine reserve” and “Application of ecological criteria in selecting marine reserves and developing reserve networks,” along with at least four other papers on marine reserves.

By the end of the year, The Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation abruptly leaves the New England Aquarium and becomes a program of The Pew Institute for Ocean Science (PIOS) in partnership with The Pew Charitable Trusts and the University of Miami Rosenstiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS). According to their website

The Rosenstiel School is one of the world’s foremost institutions for research on coral reefs, aquaculture techniques, and commercially important fisheries. It runs the Center on Sustainable Fisheries and works closely with two neighboring institutions: NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and the Southeast Fisheries Science Center.

It is also where NOAA houses their Center for Independent Experts and in fact all of these institutions are located within a few hundred yards of each other.

Dr. Ellen Pikitch, who by then was the Director of the Pew Fellows Program and Pew Institute of Ocean Science (PIOS) at RSMAS in Florida, together with Babcock, released a report with Oceana titled, “How Much Observer Coverage Is Enough to Adequately Estimate Bycatch?” In this report they argue that 20% coverage is enough for common species, but at least 50% is required for rare species. Pikitch also presented Environmental Sustainability, Ocean Issues, and the Millennium Development Goals.”

In February 2004, Rosenberg Lubchenco, Panetta and others held a joint press conference to announce the formation of the Joint Oceans Commission Initiative to carry out the recommendations of the two earlier commissions and to be directed jointly by none other than Rosenberg and Lubchenco.

In April 2004, the U.S Oceans Commission released their much anticipated report “An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century,” One of the recommendations was somewhat of a surprise.

“The commission report suggests an ocean trust fund much like the Highway Trust Fund administered by the Department of Transportation. The fund would come from money from leases for offshore activities, such as oil and gas exploration and recovery. Rosenberg says that future permitted activities, such as bioprospecting, wind farms and aquaculture, could join the list as they develop.”

This was a recommendation that the oil companies had long lobbied for because it ultimately ties coastal state revenues to offshore development activities and gives the states a vested interest in removing obstacles to leasing which could accelerate permit approvals.

The Pew Charitable Trust re-organized as a public charity. At the same time, they funded the Lenfest Oceans Program which was begun by Pew with $80 million in assets and $30 million in grants per year. Lenfest began awarding grants to the Canadian Science centers and nearly $400,000 of that money went to programs run by scientists at Dalhousie (including Myers & Worm)

Rosenberg became the Senior V.P. of Marine Resources Assessment Group (MRAG) which was given a contract from Lenfest to assess US fisheries recoveries plans initially supported at about $200,000. Rosenberg later became the President of MRAG Americas.

In 2005 Lightening struck twice for Myers and Worm, helped along by a little media magic from Seaweb. They published a paper in Science, called “Global Patterns of Predator Diversity in the Open Oceans.” Using data from long line fishing vessels again, they pointed to overfishing and climate change as the cause for up to a 50 per cent decline in biodiversity. According to a news interview of Worm:

“To get that message repeated throughout the world, Dr. Worm and Dr. Myers partnered with SeaWeb, a non-profit organization that uses strategic communications techniques to advance ocean conservation, located in Washington D.C. Upon learning of Worm and Myers´ newest paper, SeaWeb began working with them to promote the paper and its message in the media.

Dr. Worm says the key to working with media is preparation, to make it easy for journalists to get the story. “Most of the coverage we received, the reporters never actually talked to us, because the press release was sufficient. In two-and-a-half pages, all the information was there, and we provided interview clips.”

To produce this professional “on-air” interview, the researchers approached Findlay Muir, a videographer with the Centre for Teaching and Learning. They also scouted locations for a video shoot, selecting Chebucto Head as the appropriate backdrop. An interviewer with SeaWeb posed questions remotely from Washington, with both researchers responding and elaborating on their work while Muir did the camerawork. As soon the journal’s publication embargo had passed, SeaWeb distributed the interview material by satellite to its media contacts worldwide. The coverage benefited from having a visual aspect – the story was picked up internationally, by over 90 TV stations.”

In 2005, Rosenberg completed a report for Oceana called “Bycatch in U.S. fisheries, a National Analysis”. During that year Oceana listed annual revenue and support at more than $14 million

Lubchenco and others presented a “Scientific Consensus Statement on Marine Ecosystem-Based Management.” The Consensus was signed by 217 academic scientists with relevant expertise and published in COMPASS. In addition, Carl Safina, A Rosenberg, R Myers, and others published “U.S. Ocean Fish Recovery: Staying the Course” in Science and Rosenberg et al published “Implementing ecosystem-based approaches to management for the conservation of ecosystem services.” and “Combining control measures for more effective management of fisheries under uncertainty; quotas, effort limitation and protected areas.” Pikitch, Babcock et al Published “A perspective on the use of spatialized indicators for ecosystem-based fishery management through spatial zoning” and added “Marine Reserve Design and Evaluation Using Automated Acoustic Telemetry.”

In 2006, the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative Task force (including Rosenberg and Lubchenco) released its report, “From Sea to Shining Sea: Priorities for Ocean Policy Reform,” presented as a national ocean policy action plan for Congress. Included in the recommendations were plans to strengthen NOAA and “Establish an Ocean Trust Fund in the U.S. Treasury as a dedicated source of funds for improved management and understanding of ocean and coastal resources by the federal and state governments.” Also, “securing additional funding to support management, science, and education programs that are the foundation of robust national ocean policy.” Reportedly, the Joint Initiative has identified $750 million in funding priorities that would be used for research, management and education programs. They have been issuing report cards annually grading progress on achieving their goals.

MRAG also released its report “Rebuilding U.S. Fisheries: A Summary of New Scientific Analysis:” by Rosenberg AA, Swasey JH, (both of MRAG) and co-authored by Bowman M., Director of the Lenfest Oceans Program who funded the study. According to the report, “The Program was established in July 2004 by the Lenfest Foundation and is managed by the Pew Charitable Trusts.”

An MRAG second phase report “A Review Of Rebuilding Plans For Overfished Stocks In The United States.” by John Wiedenmann, MRAG Americas, and Dr. Marc Mangel, of the University of California, Santa Cruz which went even further in recommending an end to overfishing and it too was “initiated and supported by the Lenfest Oceans Program.”
Rosenberg et al published “Resolving mismatches in U.S. ocean governance.”

“Designing marine protected areas for migrating fish stocks”, “Regional Governance and Ecosystem-Based Management of Ocean and Coastal Resources: can we get there from here?” and “Rebuilding US fisheries: progress and problems.” While at the same time he was co-PI for “The development of a public private partnership for advancing ocean policy in Massachusetts,” funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and was simultaneously working on a grant for “Comparative Analysis of Ecosystem-based Management Initiatives Around the World” funded by the Packard Foundation.

Worm et al published the highly controversial “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services,” in which they claimed that “This [loss of biodiversity]trend is of serious concern because it projects the global collapse of all taxa currently fished by the mid-21st century (based on the extrapolation of regression in Fig. 3A to 100% in the year 2048). This outrageous claim has been repeated literally thousands of times and a Google search of “fish 2048” now yields over 1 million retrievals.

This was also the year that Congress reauthorized the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act under heavy pressure from NGO’s to set catch limits and end overfishing at all costs. Lubchenco published “Can marine reserves or other forms of no-fishing zones help us solve problems facing the oceans today?” Pikitch et al contributed a letter in Ecology Letters called “Global estimates of shark catches using trade records from commercial markets”-
Pikitch also presented the report on Environmental Sustainability of the Ocean recommendations to the United Nations (after serving on the Task Force for two years.). Although the presentation was part of the Millennium Project commissioned by the UN Secretary General and supported by the UNDP, the Pew Logo and maps by Pauly and others from the Sea Around US Project at UBC were prominently displayed.

Task Force Recommendations
• Implement ecosystem-based fishery management
• Eliminate destructive fishing practices
• Establish network of marine protected areas
• Restore depleted fish populations

They demanded that “Global fisheries authorities must agree to eliminate bottom trawling on the high seas by 2006 to protect seamounts and other ecologically sensitive habitats”
This was the year that Robert H Campbell (Pew Chairman of the Board) received over a half million in annual compensation and stock options as a Director of Cigna Corp.

In 2007, The Worm lab transitioned from the Myers Lab. Upon the death of Ransom Myers, Worm became head of the Worm Lab at Dalhousie.

Robert H Campbell (Pew Chairman of the Board) received nearly $700,000 in annual compensation and stock options as a Director of Cigna Corp.

Over at UBC, Pew support for the Fisheries Science Centre exceeded $15 mill with most of those funds coming after the Sea Around Us Project was initiated.

This was the last year that Andy Rosenberg served on the FSC International Advisory Council having completed a 6 year term begun in 2001. Lenfest funded “Setting Annual Catch Limits for U.S. Fisheries” a largely MRAG study in which Rosenberg et al codified how the Regional Fisheries Councils would comply with the re-authorized Magnusun Act. Rosenberg et al also published “Four ways to take the policy plunge: How should researchers best interact with policy-makers for maximum benefit to society?”  Babcock and Pikitch et al published “Comparison of harvest control policies for rebuilding overfished populations within a fixed rebuilding time frame.”

NEW YORK CONNECTIONS – Riding the Wave

In 2008, The Pew Institute of Ocean Science abruptly terminated its contracts with RSMAS in Florida and relocated to SUNY in Stony Brook, New York. Pikitch followed them to SUNY and published the report “Forage Fish: From Ecosystems to Markets” She conveniently chairs the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force. She and Babcock et al published “New frameworks for reconciling conservation with fisheries: incorporating uncertainty and ecosystem processes into fisheries management.”

Lubchenco et al. published “Resilience, robustness and marine ecosystem-based management.”

This was the year that Pauly resigned from UBC and Rashid Sumaila of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, was named acting Director of Fisheries.

R. Anderson Pew was forced to retire from the Board of Directors SUNOCO due to his age, but he received more than $1million in deferred compensation. He was a Director since 1978 (30 years).

In 2009, The Joint Oceans Commission Initiative (including Lubchenco and Rosenberg) released a report “Changing Oceans, Changing World Ocean Priorities for The Obama Administration and Congress”

Ted Danson (the founder of Oceana) narrated and promoted the film “End of the Line'” which was selected for the Sundance Festival and then released to hundreds of theaters in the US and the UK. The trailer says that it is “the world’s first major documentary about the devastating effect of overfishing and “Scientists predict that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048.” The press packet states that it is “supported by numerous groups, including Greenpeace and Oceana.”

Lubchenco was appointed to be Undersecretary of Commerce and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, the head of NOAA, perhaps the most powerful position impacting ocean policy in the world. She will lead a $4 billion agency with nearly 13,000 employees stationed all over the U.S. and around the world. Rosenberg campaigned for her appointment and was her most vocal supporter when President Obama nominated her.

Worm, Rosenberg, et al published “Rebuilding Global Fisheries” in which Worm stated that he never meant for his 2048 doomsday date for the oceans to be taken literally. They got there 1 million hits on Google literally by accident?

Sumaila and others at Environmental Working Group (EWG) published “US Fisheries Subsidies,” in which they claimed that direct subsidies and financial support of U.S fisheries exceeded $700 million/yr. Shortly thereafter, Sumaila was named the Director of Fisheries Science Centre at UBC.

According to Pikitch’s resume  “During the past several years I have appeared on TV programs including CNN, CNBC, NBC News, Discovery News, EXTRA, and Wild about Animals, given numerous radio interviews and have been quoted in thousands of newspaper articles. My outreach activities have included Op-Ed’s and articles in newspapers, magazines, scientific journals, books, and technical reports.”

Rosenberg is positioned in MRAG to take advantage of NOAA’s requirement for observer coverage paid for by the fishing fleets under the system of Catch Shares which he helped to formulate. According to Rosenberg’s resume he has several works with others in press including “Two views: marine ecosystem-based management” and “Managing for cumulative impacts in ecosystem-based management through ocean zoning.” He lists Lubchenco as a professional reference

In 2009, the Pew Board consists of Robert H. Campbell, and 9 Pew heirs out of 14 Board members including R. Anderson Pew. The Pews have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence ocean management policies. Recently Pew announced that they were consolidating their operations in Washington D.C. in a single building with at least 300 people. Still, they plan to keep most of the operations and personnel they have in Philadelphia. Shouldn’t we be asking what is next on their agenda?

INTRODUCTION

This is the story of how a handful of scientists set out from Oregon with an unshakable belief that they knew what was best for the rest of us. They ended up conquering the world (or at least the watery portions of it) and got rich along the way, while the fishermen and their families only worked harder and got poorer. When their scientific dogma connected with nearly unlimited resources, the earth quaked and the resulting tidal wave swept aside all the usual checks and balances. It carried along the media, the politicians, the government agencies and the non-governmental organizations with such force that seemingly no one could stand against the tide. By David Lincoln

The purpose of this investigation is threefold:

To trace the evolution of Ocean Management principles.

To begin to track the interaction of these few experts who were responsible for shaping and popularizing these concepts.

To follow the spread of money, power and influence which made these Ocean Management strategies virtually inevitable.

Such an ambitious undertaking would not have been possible were it not for the fact that these few dynamic individuals served as magnets to attract attention to their cause and incredible wealth to whatever projects they controlled at a given time. They did this by ensuring that their theories were the only alternatives seriously considered as US policy was formulated and inexorably implemented.

The problem is that the Pew money machine provided a seemingly endless supply of cash and those who drank from this fountain of wealth became empowered to turn their every wish into reality. They became so adept at revving up the media engine that the science became secondary to their ability to spread their frantic message in ever widening circles.

Ultimately the Pew engine was positioned so far in front of the boat that all ocean science became tainted by Pew science and the best available science was constrained by the only available science. The mantra that “the oceans would soon be running out of fish” reverberated so often that Pew science only needed to fund those programs which were in search of the next great marine crisis to make their agenda the law of the land (and Sea).

With so much money being pumped through the Pew system, other sources of funding either dried up or were overwhelmed by the shear force of the Pew Ocean’s agenda. Over time, it no longer became necessary for anyone to read the policy papers that Pew directly or indirectly funded. Once you knew the title and saw the first paragraph, you would know which slice of the supposedly ever-shrinking pie you were being served on a silver platter.

The review that follows is only a partial overview of these experts’ activities and works with emphasis on those which had the most impact on fisheries management. It is hoped that by documenting the journey of these people, both conceptually and on the map, that some will rethink the pattern of influence which has brought us to this point. Then we can begin to seriously reconsider the alternative pathways both for past management decisions and future policy deliberations.

OREGON CONNECTIONS – Source of the Wave

The origin of the Pew takeover of U.S. Ocean Policy may have begun as early as the 1970’s. J. Howard Pew (the son of the founder of Sun Oil Co) died in 1971 after putting in 70 yrs with his father’s company, leaving vacant the positions of Chairman and CEO of Sunoco. The positions were soon filled by the Sun President, Robert G. Dunlop who also became the Chairman of the Pew Memorial Trusts. These changes set in motion a re-evaluation of the role of the Pew Trusts and a search for a new mission to extend the Pew legacy.

In 1975, Jane Lubchenco, a young zoology student from Washington State Univ., received her PhD from Harvard in Ecology where she was an Asst Professor for 2 years. She and her husband, marine ecologist Bruce Menge, searched for a college that would allow them both to teach together. According to her story, they finally were accepted to share the workload as part-time professors at Oregon State University (OSU) from 1977 to 1989. Later Lubchenco worked there full-time as Professor of Marine Biology and Distinguished Professor of Zoology until 2009 (when she was appointed to head NOAA.)

Coincidentally, during that period (1983-1987), Dr. Ellen Pikitch also worked as an Asst Professor, Dept of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State Univ. after receiving her BS and MA degree in Mathematics from CUNY in 1977 and her MS and Doctorate in Zoology from Indiana Univ. in 1982 and 1983, respectively.

This was also the period when R. Anderson Pew (the great Grandson of the Sun oil Founder) led the Board of the Pew Charitable Trusts (PCT) with a results-oriented, business perspective. He held the position until 1995, but he remains on the PCT Board to the present time.

In 1978, Andy Rosenberg (who had just received his B.S. in Fisheries Biology, from U Mass Amherst) began his graduate program in oceanography at, coincidentally, Oregon State University. He received his MS in Oceanography in 1980 from OSU at the same time that Lubchenco was teaching there. Later he received his Ph.D. in Biology in 1984 from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Shortly thereafter, he moved to London and began working as a Postdoctoral Researcher, at the Centre for Environmental Technology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, later becoming an Asst Professor and Lecturer there. During this period, he worked at the Renewable Resources Assessment Group and he published several papers on the age and growth of fish. In 1987, he submitted two papers on the topic which appeared in the Conf. Proc. 13 of the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management in Manila, Philippines (ICLARM). The papers were on Length- based methods in fisheries research edited by Dr. Daniel Pauly, and G.R. Morgan. He also served as a member of the Working Group on Fish Stock Assessment Methods for the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) while he consulted for many government agencies in the U.K. Norway, Denmark, New Zealand and South Africa.

FISHERIES MANAGEMENT CONNECTIONS – Getting Their Feet Wet

By the late 1980’s to early 1990’s all three marine scientists had become active in fisheries management. The Pew Charitable Trusts under the new Executive Director, Rebecca Rimel, became the second largest private foundation in America based on total giving. This was the around the time that Joshua Reichert, a sociologist with no marine science background, joined the Pew Charitable Trusts to administer the new “Pew Scholars Program in Conservation and the Environment” and the National Environmental Trust was established.

In 1986, Dr Ellen Pikitch was an Associate Professor at Oregon State University where she was working on a project for NOAA to define Catch Quotas.

In 1988, Pikitch et al published “An evaluation of the effectiveness of trip limits as a management tool.” And the following year she served on the Pacific Fishery Management Council, Scientific and Statistical Committee. Lubchenco was elected Vice-President (later President) of the Ecological Society of America.

In 1990, Rosenberg returned to Massachusetts and accepted the position of Chief of Research Coordination, at the National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole. A few years later, he became Research Specialist in Population Dynamics, Office of the Senior Scientist for NMFS in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he served until 1994.

Meanwhile, Jane Lubchenco was beginning her career in Ecosystem Management. Between 1977 and 1990 she published eighteen papers (often together with her husband Bruce Menge) dealing broadly with intertidal community interaction in the US coastal zones. Then in 1991, she began focusing on the sustainable biosphere and an ecological research agenda.

Pikitch published “Technological interactions in the U.S. West Coast groundfish fishery and their implications for management”. This was the same year that Carl Safina was awarded a Pew Fellowship for $150,000 to research and write the book “Song for the Blue Ocean.” Rosenberg et al published “Stock rebuilding strategies over different time scales.”

A year later, Lubchenco was awarded a Pew Fellowship for $150,000, part of which she used to set up the Aldo Leopold Fellowship Program, initially known as SpringGreen. Her program evolved from annual Pew Fellows meetings and was designed by Lubchenco to provide training for academic environmental scientists who wished to be more effective in outreach to the media and policy makers.

Rosenberg et al published “Fisheries risk assessment: sources of uncertainty.”

At this time, Robert H. Campbell took over as CEO of Sunoco, a position he held until he retired in 2000 after 40 years of loyal company service. He moved immediately to the Board of the Pew Charitable Trusts and is currently their Chairman.

In 1993, Lubchenco won the prestigious MacArthur “genius” award for $500,000, part of which she used to set up the Aldo Leopold Foundation while she was Director of the World Resources Institute. She and others also published “Priorities for an Environmental Science Agenda in the Clinton- Gore Administration” and “Pacific Ocean Ecosystems and Global Climate Change.”

Meanwhile, Pikitch chaired the Groundfish Subcommittee for the Pacific Fishery Management Council

Rosenberg et al published “Achieving sustainable use of renewable resources,” “Choosing a management strategy for stock rebuilding when control is uncertain”. “Fisheries: opportunities and concerns,” “Marine fisheries at a critical juncture?” and single-handedly he wrote “Defining overfishing – defining stock rebuilding.”

In 1994, Andy Rosenberg took over as Division Chief, Northeast Region, National Marine Fisheries Service and the following year he was named Northeast Regional Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service NOAA in Gloucester Mass., a position he held until 1998. Here he served as the senior federal official for regional activities from Canada to Cape Hatteras. Part of his duties doing this period was to act as the Agency spokesperson to the public, Congress and internationally. He was the government’s chief negotiator for recovery plans for New England and Mid-Atlantic fishery resources and he was responsible for oversight of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

CANADIAN CONNECTIONS – Spreading the Wave

Ironically, this was a period of great cooperation with universities in Canada. In his first year on the job, Rosenberg co-authored with Ransom Myers and others at Dalhousie Univ. (his old college) “In search of thresholds for recruitment overfishing”. Rosenberg et al published “Uncertainty and risk evaluation in stock assessment advice for U. S. marine fisheries”

In 1994, Lubchenco put forward her principles of “The Scientific Basis of Ecosystem Management.” and the Pew Scholars program shifted to recognizing fellows “which expanded the scope of the program beyond the academic science sphere to include individuals from the non-profit, government and private sectors.” It was also the year that the Univ. of British Columbia (UBC) established their Fisheries Science Centre (FSC) whose staff included Dr. Daniel Pauly.

According to the FSC website, “Pauly is a French citizen who completed his high school and university studies in Germany; his doctorate (1979) and habilitation (1985) are in Fisheries Biology, from the University of Kiel.” Dr. Pauly has authored or co-authored over 500 [over 400 since 1994] scientific articles, book chapters and shorter contributions, and authored, or (co-)edited about 30 books and reports.” The Fisheries Science Centre annual reports indicate that, since it was established, The Pew Charitable Trusts have provided more than $15 million in external research funds to the Fisheries Science Centre at UBC.

In 1995, Pikitch served on the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, Committee on Ecosystem Management and Sustainable Marine Fisheries for a three year term. Lubchenco was elected to be President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and later their Chairman of the Board. Meanwhile Rosenberg and Myers published “Population dynamics of exploited fish stocks at low population levels” in Science.

In 1996, Lubchenco was named by Bill Clinton to the National Science Board and that year she was also named a Pew Fellow nominator (she participated in the Pew Fellows advisory Committee and was a Pew Fellows nominator until 1998). This was the year that Pew created Seaweb through a $2 million grant to the NRDC for improved Public Relations and Communications.

In that year, Beth Babcock was a fisheries doctoral student working as a summer intern for the NMFS Northwest group. She was working on a bioeconomic model of the trawl fishery and how landing limits influence target species for fishermen. Dr. Ellen Pikitch was Babcock’s major professor at the University of Washington and she was working with Dan Erickson at Oregon State University. Later, Dr. Pikitch and her partner Dr. Babcock went on to write dozens of fisheries papers together as they moved from one Pew position to another.

It was at this time that J. Howard Pew II took over as Chairman of the Pew Charitable Trusts. He was an innovator who pushed for more advocacy and emphasized depth rather than breath in giving. Pew Conservation grants for general environmental issues were refocused on marine conservation and later named the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation.

NEW ENGLAND CONNECTIONS – Testing the Waters

Within a year, that Pew Fellows program was relocated to the New England Marine Aquarium (NEAQ) in Boston and the “total of $1.5 million presented annually made the fellowships the world’s largest award for marine conservationists.” Jerry Schubel, NEAQ Pres directed the $500,000 in annual administrative fees while Gregory Stone (NEAQ Conservation Director) was an early recipient of a $150,000 grant under the new program. Since that time, the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation has awarded over 130 grants totaling more than $20 million.

Pikitch chaired the NEAQ, Aquatic Forum Series, on “Establishing an agenda for responsible fishing,” and joined the Ocean Wildlife Campaign coalition as their lead stock assessment scientist for four years.

Rosenberg et al publish “Assessing uncertainty and risk in exploited marine populations,” and “Precautionary management reference points and management strategies.” Rosenberg, somewhat hypocritically, published “Shielding fisheries from politics.”

In 1997, Pikitch served on the New England Fishery Management Council, Overfishing definition review panel and by the following year she began a two year role as the Chairman of their Scientific and Statistical Committee. At the same time Pikitch et al published “An overview of trends in fisheries, fisheries science and management in Global Trends: Fisheries Management which she co-edited

Lubchenco began serving a three year stint on the National Marine Fisheries Service, Ecosystem Principles Advisory Panel and during the same timeframe was on the Scientific Advisory Board of the PBS Radio Show “Living on Earth.” She also published “Revelation and the Environment AD 95- 1995.”

In 1998, Lubchenco published “Entering the century of the environment: A new social contract for science” and with others published “Marine reserves are necessary but not sufficient for marine conservation.” She also initiated the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and it was eventually relocated to Stanford Univ.

According to the website, the program consists of two weeks of communications and media training.

“The first weeklong session focuses on leadership development and broad communications and outreach skills. Media representatives and communication specialists conduct “hands on” training, including mock interviews, writing for different audiences, and development of specific messages. The second session, focusing primarily on interaction with policy makers, industry and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is held in Washington, D.C. The week includes modules on interacting with state and federal agencies, international environmental policy, and working with Congress. This week features a mock Congressional hearing where Fellows practice giving testimony concerning environmental legislation.”

Pikitch et al published “Individual transferable quotas, community based fisheries management systems and “virtual communities,” Meanwhile Rosenberg published “Controlling marine fisheries 50 years from now” and Lubchenco et al. published “No-take reserves: Protection for fishery populations and marine ecosystems.”

In 1999, Lubchenco began the Communication Partnership for Science and the Sea (COMPASS) a consortium of academic scientists, SeaWeb, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium who work together to communicate marine conservation science to policy makers and the public. She also began a 10 year leadership role as Lead Principle Investigator of 13 Co-PIs for the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO). According to her resume:

“With $48 million in grants from the Packard and Moore Foundations, and an additional $30 million in leveraged and complementary funds, this consortium of four universities (OSU, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara and UC Santa Cruz) is revolutionizing our understanding of the nearshore marine ecosystems along the coasts of Oregon and California (1999-2009) with fundamental advances in science.”

Oceana was formed reportedly by contributions from five charitable trusts-the Oak Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Turner Foundation, the Surdna Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust, but Pew provided the largest share of funds.

That year, the Pew Charitable Trusts awarded $146 million in total grants to 448 organizations which was more than they had given out in the previous 25 yrs. Pew launched the Sea Around Us Project under the Fisheries Science Centre at the Univ. of British Columbia under the leadership of Daniel Pauly. External Research funding for the Fisheries Centre increased about 2 mill/yr from 1.5 mill/yr to roughly 3.5 mill yr at that time and it continued to rise until 2007. Pew also expanded the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation program to “include individuals working in the arts, communication, film, media and journalism in order to support public outreach and education about the oceans.”

At the New England Aquarium, Jerry Schubel along with consultants published a White paper entitled “Potential Environmental Consequences Of Petroleum Exploration And Development On Georges Bank” This paper was issued just as the Canadian government was considering an extension of a moratorium on Georges Bank. The Aquarium concluded that there was not enough information available to make a recommendation. This was followed by a paper by Schubel on Georges Bank Moratorium policy assessment and later on the “Role of Environmental Scientists in Public Policy – A Lesson from Georges Bank.”

The turn of the millennium was a particularly active period for Pew. The Pew Oceans Commission was created which included Jane Lubchenco as the most distinguished marine scientist. The commission initially also included Christine Whitman and Robert H. Campbell, the Chairman and CEO of Sun Oil Co, who became a board member of the Pew Charitable Trusts and is currently the Chairman of the Board for Pew, Hershey Company and a Director of Cigna Corp and Vical Inc.

In 2000, Dr. Ellen Pikitch became a Pew Fellow together with Dr. Amanda Vincent and others. Pikitch provided the SEFSC with a method of estimating the surplus production model from the Catch per Unit Effort. Babcock and Pikitch published “A dynamic programming model of fishing strategy choice in a multispecies trawl fishery with trip limits,” in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries an Aquatic Sciences

Also in Canada, the Fisheries Economics Research Unit was funded at UBC (primarily by Pew) under the direction of economist Rashid Sumaila. In that year alone, Pew awarded $236 million in total grants worldwide.

Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy was formed championed by Andy Rosenberg. He along with others published “The precautionary approach

and risk management: can they increase the probability of successes in fishery management?” and “Ecosystem approaches to fishery management through essential fish habitat.” Lubchenco published “A New Social Contract for Science.”

Rosenberg joined the faculty of the University of New Hampshire where he remains as Professor of Natural Resources. He served as Dean of the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture for four years.

In 2001, the Ransom Myers Lab was opened at Dalhousie. Myers was joined by Boris Worm, a marine biologist and Assistant Professor in Marine Conservation Biology at Dalhousie University shortly after he completed his doctorate in Biological Oceanography from the University of Kiel, Germany. This coincidentally, is the same German university where Pauly completed his doctorate. Since that time, more than 100 articles have been published by Myers and also Worm at the Myers Lab.

Pew funded Oceana initially at more than $5 mill/yr and by the end of the year Pew had contributed $9.5 million. It is interesting to note when Pew was having such an impact on the development of U.S. Oceans policy the official history of the Pew Charitable Trusts “Sustaining the Legacy” published at this time doesn’t even mention the Oceans. The only reference to fishing is ironically the old adage about “teaching a hungry man to fish instead of merely giving him a fish”

At the same time Pikitch, Babcock et al published “Using Bayesian Methods And Decision Analysis As A Rational Basis To Dealing With Conflicting Stock Assessment Results While Providing Management Advice On Stock Rebuilding.” And later,”Using Bayesian Methods To Improve Stock Assessment and Management of Stock Rebuilding When There Is Uncertainty In Processes Affecting Future Recruitment” and finally “Evaluating The Relative Merits Of Alternative Methods To Weight Different Time Series Of Abundance Indices In Stock Assessment”

In 2002, Pikitch and Babcock released their “Critique of the NMFS report, “Relative Precision of discard rate estimates for the Northeast groundfish complex,” Additionally Pikitch testified in Federal Court in Boston on a lawsuit brought against NMFS and the Secretary of Commerce by the Conservation Law Foundation in an effort to toughen groundfish regulations. Dr. Pikitch declared that “No credible scientist could rule out the possibility that irreparable harm (in the sense of a severe and prolonged population collapse) might occur in a situation where populations are brought to, and kept at, extremely low levels.” This is a loaded statement because as NMFS pointed out “there is some finite risk that all populations will eventually go extinct. At issue, is the magnitude of the risk over a specified period of time.”

Pikitch meanwhile publishes a “Scientific Response to the CITES Justification for setting the 2002 Total Allowable Catch of Beluga Sturgeon (Huso huso) in the Caspian Sea,” for Caviar Emptor, her favorite crusade for saving sturgeon from the caviar addicted wealthy Eurasians. Project Seahorse, a biodiversity and marine trade study was brought to the UBC Fisheries Centre under the direction of Dr. Amanda Vincent, a Pew Fellow in 2000.

Rosenberg publishes “The precautionary approach from a manager’s perspective.”

Oceana débuted their new video “Empty Oceans, Empty Nets” with much fanfare at the United Nations. Pikitch introduced the showing and Lubchenco was prominently featured in the film. This video was broadcast on over 200 PBS television stations to well over 1.5 million households around Earth Day as part of a larger series on Marine Fisheries and Aquaculture and it is still regularly screened at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Calif.

FLORIDA CONNECTIONS – Up to Their Necks

In 2003, Marine Policy issues took a dramatic turn with the publication of the now famous letter by Myers and Worm titled “Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities” which appeared in the journal Nature and “Predator Diversity Hotspots In The Blue Ocean” in PNAS This was a carefully orchestrated media release of a highly controversial theory which claimed that 90 % of the large fish were gone since the advent of industrial fishing. This theory drew strong criticism including more than 30 critical responses from the marine scientific community most of which dealt with the fallacy of projecting biomass from catch per unit effort (CPUE) in a single fishery.

At the bottom of the page was the statement “This research was part of a larger project on pelagic longlining supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts.” Pew, of course, claimed that the work had been peer-reviewed, but in fact most of the reviewers had a conflict of interest due to their financial relationships with Pew. By this time, Pew was awarding grants totaling $180 million/yr from 3.8 billion in assets and more than 300 non-profit organizations were receiving funds from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

In May 2003 the New England Aquarium and Pew released the Ocean Fisheries Action Statement signed by 50 renowned marine scientists calling for the immediate end to overfishing. However, since most of the signatories were Pew fellows, the statement was not seen as unbiased.

This was the year that Andy Rosenberg published “Managing to the margins: the overexploitation of fisheries,” “Multiple uses of marine ecosystems” and he joined the UBC Fisheries Science Centre Intl Board of Advisors, a position which he has held to the current time. In June, Rosenberg went on tour to discuss the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy findings including an interview with NPR’s Living on Earth Radio Show. He, Ransom Myers and others all remarked on the similarities of the two commissions recommendations. Then, in July, the Pew Oceans Commission released its report “America’s Living Ocean: Charting a course for Sea Change”

Lubchenco presented testimony to the Pacific Fisheries Management Council, on the science of marine reserves. Lubchenco et al published “Ecological criteria for evaluating candidate sites for marine reserve” and “Application of ecological criteria in selecting marine reserves and developing reserve networks,” along with at least four other papers on marine reserves.

By the end of the year, The Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation abruptly leaves the New England Aquarium and becomes a program of The Pew Institute for Ocean Science (PIOS) in partnership with The Pew Charitable Trusts and the University of Miami Rosenstiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS). According to their website

The Rosenstiel School is one of the world’s foremost institutions for research on coral reefs, aquaculture techniques, and commercially important fisheries. It runs the Center on Sustainable Fisheries and works closely with two neighboring institutions: NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and the Southeast Fisheries Science Center.

It is also where NOAA houses their Center for Independent Experts and in fact all of these institutions are located within a few hundred yards of each other.

Dr. Ellen Pikitch, who by then was the Director of the Pew Fellows Program and Pew Institute of Ocean Science (PIOS) at RSMAS in Florida, together with Babcock, released a report with Oceana titled, “How Much Observer Coverage Is Enough to Adequately Estimate Bycatch?” In this report they argue that 20% coverage is enough for common species, but at least 50% is required for rare species. Pikitch also presented Environmental Sustainability, Ocean Issues, and the Millennium Development Goals.”

In February 2004, Rosenberg Lubchenco, Panetta and others held a joint press conference to announce the formation of the Joint Oceans Commission Initiative to carry out the recommendations of the two earlier commissions and to be directed jointly by none other than Rosenberg and Lubchenco.

In April 2004, the U.S Oceans Commission released their much anticipated report “An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century,” One of the recommendations was somewhat of a surprise.

“The commission report suggests an ocean trust fund much like the Highway Trust Fund administered by the Department of Transportation. The fund would come from money from leases for offshore activities, such as oil and gas exploration and recovery. Rosenberg says that future permitted activities, such as bioprospecting, wind farms and aquaculture, could join the list as they develop.”

This was a recommendation that the oil companies had long lobbied for because it ultimately ties coastal state revenues to offshore development activities and gives the states a vested interest in removing obstacles to leasing which could accelerate permit approvals.

The Pew Charitable Trust re-organized as a public charity. At the same time, they funded the Lenfest Oceans Program which was begun by Pew with $80 million in assets and $30 million in grants per year. Lenfest began awarding grants to the Canadian Science centers and nearly $400,000 of that money went to programs run by scientists at Dalhousie (including Myers & Worm)

Rosenberg became the Senior V.P. of Marine Resources Assessment Group (MRAG) which was given a contract from Lenfest to assess US fisheries recoveries plans initially supported at about $200,000. Rosenberg later became the President of MRAG Americas.

In 2005 Lightening struck twice for Myers and Worm, helped along by a little media magic from Seaweb. They published a paper in Science, called “Global Patterns of Predator Diversity in the Open Oceans.” Using data from long line fishing vessels again, they pointed to overfishing and climate change as the cause for up to a 50 per cent decline in biodiversity. According to a news interview of Worm:

“To get that message repeated throughout the world, Dr. Worm and Dr. Myers partnered with SeaWeb, a non-profit organization that uses strategic communications techniques to advance ocean conservation, located in Washington D.C. Upon learning of Worm and Myers´ newest paper, SeaWeb began working with them to promote the paper and its message in the media.

Dr. Worm says the key to working with media is preparation, to make it easy for journalists to get the story. “Most of the coverage we received, the reporters never actually talked to us, because the press release was sufficient. In two-and-a-half pages, all the information was there, and we provided interview clips.”

To produce this professional “on-air” interview, the researchers approached Findlay Muir, a videographer with the Centre for Teaching and Learning. They also scouted locations for a video shoot, selecting Chebucto Head as the appropriate backdrop. An interviewer with SeaWeb posed questions remotely from Washington, with both researchers responding and elaborating on their work while Muir did the camerawork. As soon the journal’s publication embargo had passed, SeaWeb distributed the interview material by satellite to its media contacts worldwide. The coverage benefited from having a visual aspect – the story was picked up internationally, by over 90 TV stations.”

In 2005, Rosenberg completed a report for Oceana called “Bycatch in U.S. fisheries, a National Analysis”. During that year Oceana listed annual revenue and support at more than $14 million

Lubchenco and others presented a “Scientific Consensus Statement on Marine Ecosystem-Based Management.” The Consensus was signed by 217 academic scientists with relevant expertise and published in COMPASS. In addition, Carl Safina, A Rosenberg, R Myers, and others published “U.S. Ocean Fish Recovery: Staying the Course” in Science and Rosenberg et al published “Implementing ecosystem-based approaches to management for the conservation of ecosystem services.” and “Combining control measures for more effective management of fisheries under uncertainty; quotas, effort limitation and protected areas.” Pikitch, Babcock et al Published “A perspective on the use of spatialized indicators for ecosystem-based fishery management through spatial zoning” and added “Marine Reserve Design and Evaluation Using Automated Acoustic Telemetry.”

In 2006, the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative Task force (including Rosenberg and Lubchenco) released its report, “From Sea to Shining Sea: Priorities for Ocean Policy Reform,” presented as a national ocean policy action plan for Congress. Included in the recommendations were plans to strengthen NOAA and “Establish an Ocean Trust Fund in the U.S. Treasury as a dedicated source of funds for improved management and understanding of ocean and coastal resources by the federal and state governments.” Also, “securing additional funding to support management, science, and education programs that are the foundation of robust national ocean policy.” Reportedly, the Joint Initiative has identified $750 million in funding priorities that would be used for research, management and education programs. They have been issuing report cards annually grading progress on achieving their goals.

MRAG also released its report “Rebuilding U.S. Fisheries: A Summary of New Scientific Analysis:” by Rosenberg AA, Swasey JH, (both of MRAG) and co-authored by Bowman M., Director of the Lenfest Oceans Program who funded the study. According to the report, “The Program was established in July 2004 by the Lenfest Foundation and is managed by the Pew Charitable Trusts.”

An MRAG second phase report “A Review Of Rebuilding Plans For Overfished Stocks In The United States.” by John Wiedenmann, MRAG Americas, and Dr. Marc Mangel, of the University of California, Santa Cruz which went even further in recommending an end to overfishing and it too was “initiated and supported by the Lenfest Oceans Program.”

Rosenberg et al published “Resolving mismatches in U.S. ocean governance.”

“Designing marine protected areas for migrating fish stocks”, “Regional Governance and Ecosystem-Based Management of Ocean and Coastal Resources: can we get there from here?” and “Rebuilding US fisheries: progress and problems.” While at the same time he was co-PI for “The development of a public private partnership for advancing ocean policy in Massachusetts,” funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and was simultaneously working on a grant for “Comparative Analysis of Ecosystem-based Management Initiatives Around the World” funded by the Packard Foundation.

Worm et al published the highly controversial “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services,” in which they claimed that “This [loss of biodiversity]trend is of serious concern because it projects the global collapse of all taxa currently fished by the

mid-21st century (based on the extrapolation of regression in Fig. 3A to 100% in the year 2048). This outrageous claim has been repeated literally thousands of times and a Google search of “fish 2048” now yields over 1 million retrievals.

This was also the year that Congress reauthorized the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act under heavy pressure from NGO’s to set catch limits and end overfishing at all costs. Lubchenco published “Can marine reserves or other forms of no-fishing zones help us solve problems facing the oceans today?” Pikitch et al contributed a letter in Ecology Letters called “Global estimates of shark catches using trade records from commercial markets”-

Pikitch also presented the report on Environmental Sustainability of the Ocean recommendations to the United Nations (after serving on the Task Force for two years.). Although the presentation was part of the Millennium Project commissioned by the UN Secretary General and supported by the UNDP, the Pew Logo and maps by Pauly and others from the Sea Around US Project at UBC were prominently displayed.

Task Force Recommendations

• Implement ecosystem-based fishery management
• Eliminate destructive fishing practices
• Establish network of marine protected areas
• Restore depleted fish populations

They demanded that “Global fisheries authorities must agree to eliminate bottom trawling on the high seas by 2006 to protect seamounts and other ecologically sensitive habitats”

This was the year that Robert H Campbell (Pew Chairman of the Board) received over a half million in annual compensation and stock options as a Director of Cigna Corp.

In 2007, The Worm lab transitioned from the Myers Lab. Upon the death of Ransom Myers, Worm became head of the Worm Lab at Dalhousie.

Robert H Campbell (Pew Chairman of the Board) received nearly $700,000 in annual compensation and stock options as a Director of Cigna Corp.

Over at UBC, Pew support for the Fisheries Science Centre exceeded $15 mill with most of those funds coming after the Sea Around Us Project was initiated.

This was the last year that Andy Rosenberg served on the FSC International Advisory Council having completed a 6 year term begun in 2001. Lenfest funded “Setting Annual Catch Limits for U.S. Fisheries” a largely MRAG study in which Rosenberg et al codified how the Regional Fisheries Councils would comply with the re-authorized Magnusun Act. Rosenberg et al also published “Four ways to take the policy plunge: How should researchers best interact with policy-makers for maximum benefit to society?”

Babcock and Pikitch et al published “Comparison of harvest control policies for rebuilding overfished populations within a fixed rebuilding time frame.”

NEW YORK CONNECTIONS – Riding the Wave

In 2008, The Pew Institute of Ocean Science abruptly terminated its contracts with RSMAS in Florida and relocated to SUNY in Stony Brook, New York. Pikitch followed them to SUNY and published the report “Forage Fish: From Ecosystems to Markets” She conveniently chairs the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force. She and Babcock et al published “New frameworks for reconciling conservation with fisheries: incorporating uncertainty and ecosystem processes into fisheries management.”

Lubchenco et al. published “Resilience, robustness and marine ecosystem-based management.”

This was the year that Pauly resigned from UBC and Rashid Sumaila of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, was named acting Director of Fisheries.

R. Anderson Pew was forced to retire from the Board of Directors SUNOCO due to his age, but he received more than $1million in deferred compensation. He was a Director since 1978 (30 years).

In 2009, The Joint Oceans Commission Initiative (including Lubchenco and Rosenberg) released a report “Changing Oceans, Changing World Ocean Priorities for The Obama Administration and Congress”

Ted Danson (the founder of Oceana) narrated and promoted the film “End of the Line'” which was selected for the Sundance Festival and then released to hundreds of theaters in the US and the UK. The trailer says that it is “the world’s first major documentary about the devastating effect of overfishing and “Scientists predict that if we continue fishing as we are now, we will see the end of most seafood by 2048.” The press packet states that it is “supported by numerous groups, including Greenpeace and Oceana.”

Lubchenco was appointed to be Undersecretary of Commerce and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, the head of NOAA, perhaps the most powerful position impacting ocean policy in the world. She will lead a $4 billion agency with nearly 13,000 employees stationed all over the U.S. and around the world. Rosenberg campaigned for her appointment and was her most vocal supporter when President Obama nominated her.

Worm, Rosenberg, et al published “Rebuilding Global Fisheries” in which Worm stated that he never meant for his 2048 doomsday date for the oceans to be taken literally. They got there 1 million hits on Google literally by accident?

Sumaila and others at Environmental Working Group (EWG) published “US Fisheries Subsidies,” in which they claimed that direct subsidies and financial support of U.S fisheries exceeded $700 million/yr. Shortly thereafter, Sumaila was named the Director of Fisheries Science Centre at UBC.

According to Pikitch’s resume

“During the past several years I have appeared on TV programs including CNN, CNBC, NBC News, Discovery News, EXTRA, and Wild about Animals, given numerous radio interviews and have been quoted in thousands of newspaper articles. My outreach activities have included Op-Ed’s and articles in newspapers, magazines, scientific journals, books, and technical reports.”

Rosenberg is positioned in MRAG to take advantage of NOAA’s requirement for observer coverage paid for by the fishing fleets under the system of Catch Shares which he helped to formulate. According to Rosenberg’s resume he has several works with others in press including “Two views: marine ecosystem-based management” and “Managing for cumulative impacts in ecosystem-based management through ocean zoning.” He lists Lubchenco as a professional reference

In 2009, the Pew Board consists of Robert H. Campbell, and 9 Pew heirs out of 14 Board members including R. Anderson Pew. The Pews have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence ocean management policies. Recently Pew announced that they were consolidating their operations in Washington D.C. in a single building with at least 300 people. Still, they plan to keep most of the operations and personnel they have in Philadelphia. Shouldn’t we be asking what is next on their agenda?

FishNet USA

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Bearing in mind that each edition of The Economist has a print circulation of about 1.5 million, its website attracts about 8 million visitors each month, and that the people who read it are among the world’s most influential, consider the “take home” message that anyone with little or no knowledge of fisheries – maybe 99% of the readers – is being given; that stability of production in a fishery is an indication  of overfishing, and even more importantly, that overfishing is unacceptable because it limits  production.
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Now we all know that sustainability is the managers’ goal in our fisheries. In fact, this goal is part of the legal underpinnings of each of the fisheries management plans in effect in – and sometimes beyond – the US Exclusive Economic Zone.
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According to the legislation controlling fisheries management in US federal waters, the first National Standard for Fishery Conservation and Management is that “conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.”  This is fine up to a point. The optimum yield from a fishery is defined in the Act as “(A) the amount of fish which will provide the greatest overall benefit to the Nation, particularly with respect to food production and recreational opportunities, and taking into account the protection of marine ecosystems; (B) is prescribed as such on the basis of the maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as reduced by any relevant economic, social, or ecological factor.” No problems so far, the law recognizes that the optimum harvest from a fishery is not necessarily the maximum sustainable harvest.But then we have “(C) in the case of an overfished fishery, provides for rebuilding to a level consistent with producing the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) in such fishery.”
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Adding their interpretation to this, the people at NOAA/NMFS, with the enthusiastic support of the various and sundry anti-fishing activists who pull way too many of the strings in Washington, have added as an administrative guideline that “the most important limitation on the specification of OY (optimum yield) is that the choice of OY and the conservation and  management measures proposed to achieve it must  prevent overfishing.”

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So while OY from each fishery, determined with consideration given to relevant economic, social, or ecological factors, seems to be the goal of federal fisheries management, that is just window dressing. The real requirement is for each and every fishery to be at MSY.

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From an administrative perspective, a perspective that has far more to do with the influence that the aforementioned activists had and continue to have than on the real-world needs of commercial and recreational fishermen and the communities and businesses that they support, this probably makes a certain amount of sense. After all, who could possibly argue about every fishery faithfully producing at maximum levels year after year? As the people at The Economist, at the ENGOs whose bank accounts are bloated with mega-foundation cash, and in the offices of Members of Congress who don’t have – or who don’t value – working fishermen as constituents want to convince us all, overfishing is something akin to the eighth deadly sin.

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But is it?

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From a real world perspective, a perspective that is shared by an increasing number of people who are knowledgeable about the oceans and their fisheries and who value the traditions and the communities that have grown up around them as well as the economic activity that fisheries are capable of producing, this proscription against “overfishing” is an ongoing train wreck.

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And at this point, because it’s The Law, nothing can be done about it.

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A hypothetical situation:

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Suppose there was an important fishery that was the basis of a large part of the coastal economy as well as the cultural cement that held coastal communities together. Then suppose that fishery started to decline. If you were a fishery manager and you were in charge, what would you do? Though not in what should be the real world, that’s a simple question with an even more simple answer in today’s world of federal fisheries management. Regardless of any other factors you would cut back on fishing effort.

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Suppose that didn’t work, suppose that the fishery continued to decline. What would you do then? Because you have no other realistic options you’d cut back on fishing effort even more.

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And suppose even that didn’t work. If there were still any fishermen fishing, you’d cut back their fishing effort yet again. And again and again and again until you had gotten rid of them all, in spite of whether the cutbacks had any noticeable effects of the fish or not.

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As we saw above, this would all be based on a so-called fishery management “plan” that was created under the strict requirements of a surprisingly short and what has become an even more surprisingly short sighted bit of federal legislation and the administrative interpretation of that legislation. The Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA) – which was written initially with good intentions towards US fishermen and signed into law in 1976 – has been purposefully distorted by outside groups and individuals with no legitimate ties to or empathy with the businesses and people dependent on fishing but with huge budgets provided by mega-foundations which themselves are provided with a convenient government-supplied coordinating mechanism (See http://www.fishnet-usa.com/All%20Stolpe%20Columns.htm#CGBD).

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Why is it a “so-called” management plan? Back a few more years than I’d like to acknowledge I spent some time in the graduate planning department at Rutgers University, concentrating on environmental planning. Not too surprisingly, one of the topics that came up repeatedly was rational planning; what it is and how to do it. Putting together a bunch of definitions and some foggy recollections, in creating a rational plan you 1) define a problem or a goal, 2) design                  alternative actions to solve the problem/achieve the goal, 3) evaluate each alternative action, 4) chose and implement the “best” alternative action, and 5) monitor/evaluate the outcome and adjust if necessary.

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This seems pretty simple and straightforward. How does it apply to fisheries management plans? If the problem with the New England groundfish fishery is that there are people making a living based on harvesting groundfish and if the goal is to stop them from doing that, then the managers and the management plan are right on target. But I suspect that most involved individuals/organizations aren’t purposely planning to solve that problem/achieve that goal.

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So why, after a seemingly endless series of less groundfish can only be fixed by less groundfish fishing iterations, are the groundfish fishermen – those who are still working – and the communities that depend on them just barely hanging on with fewer fish to catch following each cutback in fishing effort?

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While this idea is going to be ridiculed by all of  those anti-fishing activists whose careers are predicated on blaming just about every ocean ill on overfishing, perhaps it’s because overfishing isn’t the problem that they’ve built multimillion dollar empires on by convincing the world – and the U.S. Congress – that it is.

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But for the moment let’s pretend that we don’t have a fisheries management system that has been torqued into something worse than ineffectuality by their lobbying clout. Let’s pretend that the people responsible for creating fisheries management plans in general and the groundfish plan – actually the multispecies plan – in particular were trying to do some rational planning. Where would they go from here?

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What about competition between species?

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Obviously, having lived with the effectiveness – or  the lack thereof – of continuously cutting back on groundfish fishing, they’d look for an alternative or two (and no, opening parts of several previously closed areas of the EEZ while demanding full-time, industry paid observer on every vessel that fishes in them isn’t anything approaching a reasonable alternative). It’s hard to imagine that early on they wouldn’t consider the idea that other, competing species might be in part responsible for declining stocks. That’s the way the natural world has worked,  is working and will continue to work.

1953 – Spiny dogfish biomass unknown – “Voracious almost beyond belief, the dogfish entirely deserves its bad reputation. Not only does it harry and drive off mackerel, herring, and even fish as large as cod and haddock, but it destroys vast numbers of them. Again and again fishermen have described packs of dogs dashing among schools of mackerel, and even attacking them within the seines, biting through the net, and releasing such of the catch as escapes them. At one time or another they prey on practically all species of Gulf of Maine fish smaller than themselves, and squid are also a regular article of diet whenever they are found.” (Fishes of the                      Gulf of Maine, Bigelow, H.B. and W.C. Schroeder)

About ten years ago fishermen started complaining about the impact that the huge numbers of spiny dogfish off our coast were having on other much more valuable fisheries. As a result I organized a workshop on spiny dogfish/fisheries interactions in September of 2008 (see A Plague of Dogfish at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/dogforum1.htm) and have attempted to keep informed of spiny dogfish biology since then. One of the ways that I do this is by keeping an eye on things like landings and survey data, which NOAA/NMFS makes readily available via various web pages.

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Among the most interesting data sets I have found are the reports of the bottom trawl surveys which have been carried out by Northeast Fisheries Science Center vessels every year for over half a century (to access the recent reports go to http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/femad/ecosurvey/mainpage/  and click on “Cruise Results” in the menu on the left). The assumed reliability and reproducibility of these surveys is such that they are one of the primary data sources in the stock assessments for many of our important fisheries. In recent years spiny dogfish at times have comprised upwards of 50% by weight of all of the fish taken in these surveys.

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Looking for another way of addressing the spiny dogfish situation, I put together a spreadsheet of the percentage (by weight) of spiny dogfish and Atlantic cod caught in the Spring and Autumn bottom trawl surveys for the last ten years and graphed the results (because the annual Winter survey was discontinued half way through this time period, I omitted it).

I was surprised to see how well the high abundance levels of spiny dogfish coincided with the low abundance levels of Atlantic cod – the primary groundfish species – and vice versa. (Note that this relationship wasn’t apparent in prior years.)
It seems in-your-face obvious that in recent years there been something going on between spiny dogfish and Atlantic cod abundance (I looked at the trawl survey results for a number of other species relative to spiny dogfish and none of them exhibited such a dramatic apparent relationship).

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Of course this could be an example of post hoc ergo propter hoc (basically correlation doesn’t equal causation). But then again, it could not as well.

1992 – Spiny dogfish biomass estimated at 735 thousand metric tons: “given the current high abundance of skates and dogfish, it may not be possible to increase gadoid (cod and haddock) and flounder abundance without `extracting’ some of the current standing stock.” (Murawski and Idoine, Multi species size composition: A conservative property of exploited fishery systems in Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fishery Science, Volume 14: 79-85)

James Sulikowski at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine has been intensively involved in shark and ray research for twenty years. He is currently focusing on spiny dogfish and along with population and distribution work has begun to look at prey and predation. According to Dr. Sulikowski “preliminary analysis of stomach content data suggest  a high degree of dietary overlap between dogfish and Atlantic cod as Atlantic herring, Cluepea harengus, was found to be the primary prey item of both species. In addition, preliminary stable isotope data suggests evidence of niche overlap between cod and dogfish, although the extent of overlap may change seasonally. Collectively, the stomach content and stable isotope data suggests dogfish and cod are in competition for resources within this ecosystem.”

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How does this apply to the current Northeast Multispecies (groundfish) Fisheries Management Plan?

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In fact, it doesn’t apply at all. The multispecies plan is based on the assumption that fishing is the only thing influencing the groundfish stocks – including Atlantic cod. Considering that fishing is the only thing that federal legislation permits the New England Fishery Management Council to manage, its members have become quite adept at managing it. The fact that an extensive and still ongoing series of fishing cutbacks hasn’t stopped the decline of the primary groundfish species – led by Atlantic cod – seems to be irrelevant to them doing that.

1994 – Spiny dogfish biomass estimated as 514 thousand metric tons: “…preliminary calculations indicated that the biomass of commercially important species consumed by spiny dogfish was comparable to the amount harvested by man. Accordingly, the impact of spiny dogfish consumption on other species should be considered in establishing harvesting policies for this species.” (18th Stock Assessment Workshop, Northeast Fisheries Science Center).

The graph below shows the spiny dogfish total biomass estimates from the Northeastern Fisheries Science Center’s spring bottom trawl surveys. The highest estimated biomass, 1.131 million metric tons (or about 2.5 billion pounds), was in 2012 (from data in in Table 7 of Update on the Status of Spiny Dogfish in  2012 and Initial Evaluation of Harvest at the Fmsy  Proxy by Rago and Southesby and MAFMC staff and identified as not representing “any final agency                  determination or policy”). For reference, the total allowed catch (TAC) of spiny dogfish will be under 20,000 metric tons (the solid red line) a year for the next three years.

2008 – Spiny dogfish biomass estimated at 657 thousand metric tons: “All told, 87% of the stomach contentsfrom these particular Gulf of Maine caught dogfish (401 adult dogfish collected by University of New England researcher James Sulikowski and his students)  consisted of bony fish – with cod, herring, and sand lance being the top three species.” (J. Plante, Dogfish in the Gulf of Maine eat cod, herring, Commercial Fisheries News, May 2008).

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The two graphs below – from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s web page Status of Fishery Resource off the Northeastern US – Atlantic cod (http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/sos/spsyn/pg/cod/) show the decline of cod abundance calculated from both the Spring and Autumn bottom trawl surveys in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank. Note that as the calculated spiny dogfish biomass (above) is increasing the biomass indices for Atlantic cod in both the Gulf  of Maine and on Georges Bank are decreasing correspondingly.

It has been reported that spiny dogfish consume 1.5% of their weight per day. That translates to them eating about 17000 metric tons of anything slower/smaller/less voracious than they are every day.

2009 – Spiny dogfish biomass estimated at 557 thousand metric tons: “our reason for ontacting you is to draw your attention to a severe and growing problem that we are all facing because of the supposed constraints imposed on the federal fisheries management system by the most recent amendments to the Magnuson Act. Because of the supposed necessity of having all stocks being managed at OY/MSY, all of our fisheries are and have been suffering from a plague of spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias).” (Fishermen Organized for Rational Dogfish Management letter to NOAA head Jane Lubchenco).

Since 1950 the annual Atlantic cod landings in all US ports exceeded 50,000 metric tons only in 1980, ‘82 and ‘83. In 2011 they were 7,900 mt.

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If there was one rational step that could be taken to try to return the Atlantic cod stocks off our Northeastern coast to former levels, it’s hard to imagine anything with more of a likelihood of success than significantly cutting back the population of spiny dogfish. But this isn’t possible because if the spiny dogfish stock is not at a level that could produce the maximum sustainable yield it would be overfished – and thanks to the successful lobbying of the anti-fishing claque managed fish stocks can’t be overfished.

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In the face of all of this it’s kind of hard to think that the federal fisheries management system has as a goal anything but the elimination of New England’s codfish fishermen. Otherwise, how could an alternative to further futile decreases in fishing for cod not be an increase in fishing for spiny dogfish? That would seem to be a rational action, wouldn’t it (and rest assured that spiny dogfish impact many more species than Atlantic cod).
But it’s not, and with the MSFCMA written and interpreted the way it is it can’t be.

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But the spiny dogfish plague isn’t the only fly in the “blame it all on overfishing” ointment. There’s an explosion in the population of seals in New England coastal waters as well. With the ability – or more  accurately, with the need – to consume 6% of their body weight per day, the almost 16,000 gray seals off Cape Cod are consuming far more fish than Cape Cod’s recreational and commercial fishermen could ever hope to catch. If they aren’t competing directly with the fishermen for cod and striped bass and flounder they are competing indirectly by eating the prey species that the fishermen’s targeted species eat. For a succinct and fairly balanced examination of the developing Cape Cod seal crisis see Thriving in Cape Cod’s Waters, Gray Seals Draw Fans and Foes by Bess Bidgood in the NY Times on August 17th. And there are burgeoning populations of other marine mammals as well as cormorants, birds that are protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. They are all highly efficient predators on smaller fish.

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The Act will be reauthorized this year. In the reauthorization, unless the managers are once again given the ability to use their judgment we won’t be able to most effectively manage our federal fisheries  to maximize the benefit we can derive from them. The Magnuson management process was designed to benefit from the knowledge that people in the fishing industry and marine scientists have gained through uncounted years of on-the-water experience in dealing with an environment that is as strange to the rest of us as outer space and a lot more complex. The benefits of  that knowledge have been lost to the process because of legislated changes by people who and organizations  that are sorely lacking in that hands-on experience and think that there is one answer to every fishery-related problem – to cut back on fishing. Without that changing, without discretion being returned to the managers, our fisheries will increasingly follow the trajectory that the New England groundfish fishery is on. None of us – except perhaps for the ENGOs and the foundations that support them – either want or can afford that. Magnuson must be amended. Flexibility, with adequate safeguards, to deal with situations like the current dogfish plague must be restored to the management process. Rationality demands it.

Comment Here

February 24, 2013

This is an expanded response to John B.’s posted comment on a Standard-Times, New Bedford, article by Steve Urbon titled:  “Petition seeks closing of NOAA fisheries regional office”,  a comment in which John B. states that the New England fishermen’s troubles are due to “over harvesting” and that “NOAA is not the cause of the fishermen’s troubles.”, NOAA’s role he contends, “…is only the bearer of bad tidings” and so NOAA then, quite innocently, didn’t “cause” any of this mess; instead, he warns fishermen that “…unless the [fishing] industry takes an unflinching look at the realities that it is facing” or, “Ignore the realities, and the New England fishing industry may well go the way of Newfoundland’s, which fished itself out of existence some years ago.” http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130221/NEWS/302210353

John, there’s that old familiar refrain again, “…too many fishermen chasing too few fish”, overfishing, over harvesting?  No, sorry, that’s not “…an unflinching look at the realities” that’s an ENGO talking point.  This fishery is a disaster due to inadequate surveys and ambivalent assessments, plus the fact that many fishermen were put out of business by cock-eyed catch share allocations and the consequent fleet consolidation imposed by NOAA’s EDF Jane Lubchenco and sustained by lawsuit threats from such enviro-luminaries as Conservation Law Foundation, Pew, Oceana, Center for Biological Diversity, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, to name a few. 

Fishermen’s troubles are a direct result of mismanagement: inadequate science, unreasonable Maximum Sustainable Yield-crisis centric regulations, NOAA’s single species approach to a complex multi-species fishery, and then, of course, our beloved “returning profitability to fishermen” catch shares, a disastrous campaign to privatize and turn the fish resource into a Wall Street commodity at the expense and demise of working fishermen.  Additionally, NOAA has traditionally ignored environmental factors, such as climate change, predation, and natural cycles, focusing solely on managing the fishermen, not the fish in their environment. If this cod stock is indeed “collapsing”, it is certainly not due to “over harvesting”—the groundfish managers’ Total Allowable Catch has been under-harvested for years, sometimes by 75%, but consistently underfished by at least 50%.

NOAA’s responsibility goes way beyond simply being the “bearer of tidings”.  NOAA has now micro-managed the fishermen almost completely out of existence.  These “troubles” are not caused by coastal small boat fishing operations following a business plan of “over harvesting”. 

NOAA, steered by the ENGO’s, has mis-managed this groundfishery for decades.  Simplistic Maximum Sustainable Yield management of a complex multi-species groundfishery has contributed greatly to the undermining of stock stability.  MSY jeopardizes a stock’s reproductive ability by encouraging the take of large prolific egg bearing fish, and then estimating stock population health by counting the recruitment of juveniles.  It is the large mature fish in the stock population that influences stock stability and health. Managing from the MSY perspective does nothing but remove large fish from the stock, replacing them with a large class of young fish which assures stock population volatility. 

As for Newfoundland’s cod fishery, it was shut down in 1992.  Arguably the collapse was a result of the previous decades’ freezer/trawler excesses.  National Sea Products, Ltd. a large Canadian integrated fish company, for example, operated several large capacity trawlers in the post 200mi. limit bonanza of the late 70’s and 80’s. In 1987 National Sea Products, Ltd. generated more than $450 million in annual sales, employed 8,000 workers, and executed fishing operations in all four Atlantic Provinces and three U.S. states in addition to its growing overseas units.  As a result of this increased industrial style fishing pressure the average size of the fish decreased and they became harder and harder to find until the Canadian government closed the fishery in 1992.  The smaller private fishing operations were penalized for the industrial offshore factory freezer/trawler fleet’s activities. 

The Newfoundland cod collapse is in no way analogous to what’s going on in the dismantling of our fishery here in New England.  The only parallel is perhaps between the Canadian Department of Fisheries’ faulty management posture, (i.e., inviting in Canadian and foreign industrial exploitation) and the similar posture of NOAA’s promulgation of catch shares quota management.  NOAA’s push for catch share ITQ consolidation is similar Canada’s opening the door for exploitation by companies like Canada’s National Sea Products, Ltd., and NOAA’s push could have an even worse result of collapsing more species than just cod.  NOAA it seems is in the process of privatizing all of our fisheries, and is currently working on catch shares for Monkfish. 

When any fish becomes a tradable commodity on the “open market” a global moneyed-monster such as the Pacific Andes’ China Fishery, with limitless “market capitalized” resources, can buy up limitless amounts of quota and with input restrictions and daily limits removed, they can bring in their factory trawlers and proceed to collapse the fish stocks. These huge integrated fishing companies also have a limitless appetite.  They can always use more cod, more anything, to increase profit and bolster stock prices.

Industrialization is what caused the Canadian cod collapse and it will be the fate of all our local fisheries if NOAA’s privatization plans are allowed to continue. Far from the independent fishermen “fishing themselves out of existence”, it’s the choking regulations and fleet consolidation which is clearing the way for the financialization/industrialization of the fish and the ocean environment.  This is what is destroying the vital New England fishing industry.

Faulty MSY management, quota give-away consolidation, and only-profit-matters exploitation by market-capitalized companies, causes collapse, not the efforts of independent family owned coastal fishing boats.

NOAA should stick to weather forecasting and navigational charting and give fisheries management over to a Department of Fisheries employing some personnel that know and care something about fishing.

From the petition to close NOAA’s office in Gloucester, MA: “On January 26, 2013, the Associated Press reported that John Bullard, the Northeast Regional Administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), stated, ‘failures by fishery managers are ultimately to blame for weak stocks that haven’t rebounded.’ The AP went on to quote Mr. Bullard as saying, ‘we set the rules and clearly the rules have failed. There’s no other conclusion.’”

How refreshing! The above statement by Bullard, aside from the discovery by the Inspector General of the corruption in the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement and the consequent reparations by Secretary Gary Locke, is the first time anyone at NOAA Fisheries has even approached admitting the “realities” of NOAA’s management failures.  Usually NOAA gives off self-congratulatory statements like those from departed Under Secretary Lubchenco declaring on her way out how she saved the fish and returned the fishing industry to prosperity.

However, when this petition attempts to take the NOAA director’s admission of regulatory failure into actions which might actually fix some of the faulty management and get some relief to the fishermen who have been most harmed, Bullard responded to Steve Urbon in the Standard-Times article with: “this is very serious business that we’re dealing with, and that petition is not serious. So I don’t want to waste any time on it.”  (Pat Kurkul could very well have said these things—we didn’t need a new regional director for this kind of disrespect!)

From the Petition:

“By closing the Northeast Regional Office in Gloucester and redirecting these funds to relief and programs benefitting the Northeast groundfish fleet, the Committee [Senate Committee on Appropriations] stands to support and advance important scientific research, particularly cooperative research and surveys conducted by non-NMFS scientists – such as those where fishermen are working together with the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), as well as much-needed more frequent assessments of the condition of managed species.
We further urge the Committee to reduce and redistribute current Regional Office operations to minimally staffed offices located in port communities such as New Bedford, Gloucester, and Portland so that necessary permits may still be issued as needed.”

http://fishermen.wufoo.com/forms/close-the-nmfs-northeast-regional-office/

When the people who have been most harmed petition to mitigate the devastating effects of inept, “arbitrary and capricious”, and the ENGO-agenda-driven “failures by fishery managers” by closing the office of origin from where, as Bullard admits, “…we set the rules and clearly the rules have failed”; and when they suggest in the petition that the rescued funds, resulting from such a closure, can be used for some long awaited Disaster Relief and also for supporting the trust-restoring remedy of stock assessments which are based on cooperative research and co-governance—that petition is not a “waste of time”.  In fact, it is quite serious. 

End of article, comment here

Would this area of Guppies Science (GS) perhaps qualify as a worthwhile Fisheries Research Project (FRP) for EDF-CLF-Pew-NOAA to invest in for some Best Available Science (BAS)? Along with money for Aquaculture Start-Ups (AQS-U) and Deep Sea Minerals Exploration (DSME) they might be tempted to throw a few $mil towards this Post-Doctoral Guppy Research (P-DGR).

Also along the lines of the Guppy Science article, I’ve included below some more Aquarium Fisheries Research Science (AFRS)(allright I’ll stop!) on the Yellow Tang “Fishery” from Oregon State University and a brilliant piece by Jane Lubchenco concerning turtle deaths in the Gulf of Mexico, as well.

Jane’s article and the OSU work from a few years ago certainly seems to be representative of the ridiculous level that these NOAA academics operate on.  The tragedy is that their “science”—with push from EDF, CLF, and Pew—is turned into policy, then law, then fishery regulations that have devastated a vital domestic industry.

Associated Press / February 12, 2010

By RAPHAEL SATTER

LONDON (AP) — When it comes to mating, guppies treasure their ugly friends — because they look so good by comparison.

An article published Wednesday by Britain’s Royal Society says that male guppies prefer to associate with their drab-colored counterparts when females were around.

‘‘Males actively choose the social context that maximizes their relative attractiveness,’’ the article said. Or, as lead author Clelia Gasparini put it, ‘‘If you are surrounded by ugly friends, you look better.’’

Gasparini and her colleagues at Italy’s University of Padua built their theory on a kind of guppy dating game. An aquarium was set up with one female in partition on either end. Guppy bachelorette No. 1 had two attractive, brightly-colored males placed on either side of her. Guppy bachelorette No. 2 was stuck with uglier, drab-colored fish.

When a male guppy was put in the middle of the tank, and given the choice of which female to sidle up to, Bachelorette No. 2 was the more popular pick, with male guppies spending about 62 percent of their time hanging around her side of the aquarium.

What’s more, the researchers found that the time guppies spent with bachelorette No. 2 correlated with their unattractiveness. The uglier the guppy, the less likely it was that he would hang around the brightly colored fish placed next to bachelorette No. 1.

Because it could be argued that that guppies avoided their brightly colored pals because attractive fish were more aggressive, or because predators were more likely to spot them, the experiment was repeated. Researchers ran it without any females, and again with the lights in the male enclosures turned down so that the test guppies couldn’t see them.

Gasparini, who’s now a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Western Australia, said the extra experiments helped confirm her theory. But she was cagey when asked whether the results from the aquarium could be applied to a night out at the bar.

‘‘Usually in my research we don’t really compare humans and animals,’’ she said, chuckling.

Oh, come on. If this works for guppies — small fish popular for use in home aquariums — shouldn’t it work for guys?

She admitted that she had seen this same tactic work ‘‘pretty well’’ for humans.

If you hang out ‘‘with someone better looking than you, sure, you have less chance to be picked up,’’ she said. ‘‘If you want to impress someone, do you think you will look more attractive in comparison with Mr. Bean or George Clooney?’’

In a more serious moment, Gasparini said the comparison between guppies and humans was hard to resist. But human dating tricks were far harder to measure.

A subject for further study, then.

From an email I sent around a few years ago after being astounded by the “research” that was coming out of Oregon State University and Jane Lubchenco’s post-Deepwater Horizon catastrophe article on the real causes of turtle deaths in the Gulf.

Posted on Wed, Dec. 29, 2010

Oil spill clarifies road map for sea turtle recovery

By JANE LUBCHENCO

Sea turtles have roamed the oceans for millennia. But in the course of just a few decades, hunting, coastal development, fishing and pollution have driven their populations to dangerously low levels. Some, such as Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, were beginning to make a comeback, thanks to efforts in Mexico and the United States to protect their nesting beaches and reduce accidental entrapment in shrimp nets.

And then along came the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill.

Marine biologists feared the spill would be catastrophic for sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico.

And for good reasons. Five of the world’s seven species of sea turtles live in the Gulf, and the spill coincided with nesting season for two of those species, the loggerhead and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles. For the Kemp’s ridley, the Gulf is the only known nesting ground.

For many living in the Gulf and around the country, these charismatic animals became the public face of the impact of the oil spill on wildlife. An extraordinary effort was needed to save as many sea turtles as possible.

It will take many years if not decades to fully understand the long-term impact of the spill on sea turtles. And there is no question many died, especially younger sea turtles. But thanks to an aggressive effort to capture and rehabilitate oiled sea turtles, and the final capping of the well, there is now hope for these magnificent creatures.

NOAA, the Gulf states, and many nonprofit partners teamed up to rescue more than 400 sea turtles from oiled waters and take them to aquariums and other facilities for de-oiling and rehabilitation. Charter fishermen from the Gulf coast assisted biologists and veterinarians in capturing turtles by locating Sargassum algae habitat where turtles might be found in oil.

NOAA and the Gulf states also helped the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and other partners to move more than 25,000 sea turtle eggs from the northern Gulf shoreline to the Atlantic coast of Florida, to prevent hatchlings from entering oiled waters. NOAA, state wildlife agencies, and other partners also collected dead stranded sea turtles to determine, when possible, their cause of death.

In August, more than a month after the well was finally capped, I had the pleasure of helping release the first rehabilitated sea turtles into Gulf waters where habitat was healthy. Of the more than 400 sea turtles brought into rehabilitation, more than 96 percent have survived.

Over 300 of these turtles have now been released back into healthy surface habitat in waters off Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida. Some turtles with more severe injuries require longer rehabilitation. We expect that all the turtles will be returned to the wild.

While nearly all the rescued sea turtles were visibly oiled, to our surprise, most of the dead stranded sea turtles had no observable oil on their bodies and were in good health prior to their death. Necropsies (autopsies on animals) on more than half of 600 carcasses point to the possibility that a majority may have drowned in fishing gear. The evidence is that natural causes of death were ruled out, and that shrimp and fish – not a natural part of turtle diets – were found in their digestive tracts. (Underlines and emphases are mine)

When NOAA became aware that a large number of stranded turtles may have drowned in fishing operations, we alerted state marine resource officials. In response, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources issued a rule in June to further restrict the time shrimp skimmer trawls could be towed to help prevent sea turtles from being caught and drowning.

The high level of turtle strandings also prompted NOAA to consider a rule to require turtle excluder devices, or TEDs, in skimmer trawls. These devices consist of a grid built into the trawl and an escape hatch that allows turtles to swim away. TEDs are required in most shrimp fisheries and have proven effective in reducing sea turtle drownings when properly installed and maintained. Shrimp skimmer trawls are allowed to operate without TEDs, and are regulated with tow time limits.

The heightened scrutiny of the Gulf of Mexico during the oil spill brought to light the need for stronger cooperation between NOAA, the Gulf states, and the fishing industry to address the significant ongoing problem of sea turtles drowning in fishing operations. More enforcement is needed for TED requirements and tow time limits.

As NOAA and the states continue to assess the natural resources damaged by the spill, we are gaining a much clearer map of the important pathways to recovery for sea turtles. The fishing community has played a prominent role in the past in developing gear and techniques to prevent sea turtles from being unintentionally caught. These animals, which are already endangered, require our strong collective efforts for their long-term recovery. The recovery of sea turtle populations is essential to the Gulf’s overall restoration.

—ABOUT THE WRITER

Jane Lubchenco is under secretary for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA Administrator. Readers may write to her at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW, Room 5128, Washington, D.C. 20230.

This essay is available to McClatchy-Tribune News Service subscribers. McClatchy-Tribune did not subsidize the writing of this column; the opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of McClatchy-Tribune or its editors.

© 2010 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved. http://www.miamiherald.com

Only a great scientific mind like Jane’s can conclude that pretty much any negative impact on the marine environment can be traced back to overfishing and destructive fishing methods.  The article below in the Miami Herald posits that the Gulf turtles died from drowning in fishing gear—the 2 million gallons (that they’ll admit to) of oxygen robbing Corexit had absolutely nothing to do with it —not even worth a mention?

Here’s the numbers game she’s playing in the above farce of an article.  400 “oiled” turtles were able to be saved by “NOAA and nonprofit partners”; but the majority of 600 carcasses had no oil on them and that fact points to the “possibility that they drowned in fishing gear”?  Score: NOAA and Nonprofits a plus 400; Fishing Industry a minus 600.

And add yet another example of pornographic “science” to Jane’s Joke, in the “scientific” breakthrough by the great marine ecologist minds at Oregon State University (Alma Mater and employer of Jane’s— Andy Rosenberg, Stephen Gaines, David Festa, as well).  They are showcasing the recovery of the Yellow Tang “Fishery” (yup, the salt water aquarium Yellow Tang “Fishery”), claiming it’s a result of the implementation in 1999 of 9 Marine Protected Areas off of the west coast of the Island of Hawaii.  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-12/osu-ssd122210.php

Public release date: 22-Dec-2010 Contact: Mark Hixon [email protected] 541-737-5364 Oregon State University

Study shows drifting fish larvae allow marine reserves to rebuild fisheries

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Marine ecologists at Oregon State University have shown for the first time that tiny fish larvae can drift with ocean currents and “re-seed” fish stocks significant distances away – more than 100 miles in a new study from Hawaii.

The findings add credibility to what scientists have believed for some time, but until now been unable to directly document. The study also provides a significant demonstration of the ability of marine reserves to rebuild fishery stocks in areas outside the reserves.

The research was published this week in PLoS One, a scientific journal.

“We already know that marine reserves will grow larger fish and some of them will leave that specific area, what we call spillover,” said Mark Hixon, a professor of marine biology at OSU. “Now we’ve clearly shown that fish larvae that were spawned inside marine reserves can drift with currents and replenish fished areas long distances away.

“This is a direct observation, not just a model, that successful marine reserves can sustain fisheries beyond their borders,” he said. “That’s an important result that should help resolve some skepticism about reserves. And the life cycle of our study fish is very similar to many species of marine fish, including rockfishes and other species off Oregon. The results are highly relevant to other regions.”

The findings were based on the creation in 1999 of nine marine protected areas on the west coast of the “big island” of Hawaii. They were set up in the face of serious declines of a beautiful tropical fish called yellow tang, which formed the basis for an important trade in the aquarium industry.

“This fishery was facing collapse about 10 years ago,” Hixon said. “Now, after the creation of marine reserves, the fishery is doing well.”

The yellow tang was an ideal fish to help answer the question of larval dispersal because once its larvae settle onto a reef and begin to grow, they are not migratory, and live in a home range about half a mile in diameter. If the fish are going to move any significant distance from where they are born, it would have to be as a larva – a young life form about the size of a grain of rice – drifting with the currents for up to two months before settling back to adult habitats.

Mark Christie, an OSU postdoctoral research associate and lead author of the study, developed some new approaches to the use of DNA fingerprinting and sophisticated statistical analysis that were able to match juvenile fish with their parents, wherever they may have been from. In field research from 2006, the scientists performed genetic and statistical analyses on 1,073 juvenile and adult fish, and found evidence that many healthy juvenile fish had spawned from parents long distances away, up to 114 miles, including some from marine protected areas.

“This is similar to the type of forensic technology you might see on television, but more advanced,” Christie said. “We’re optimistic it will help us learn a great deal more about fish movements, fishery stocks, and the genetic effects of fishing, including work with steelhead, salmon, rockfish and other species here in the Pacific Northwest.”

This study should help answer some of the questions about the ability of marine reserves to help rebuild fisheries, the scientists said. It should also add scientific precision to the siting of reserves for that purpose, which is just one of many roles that a marine reserve can play. Many states are establishing marine reserves off their coasts, and Oregon is in the process of developing a limited network of marine reserves to test their effectiveness. The methods used in this study could also become a powerful new tool to improve fisheries management, Hixon said.

“Tracking the movement of fish larvae in the open ocean isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do,” Hixon said. “It’s not like putting a radio collar on a deer. This approach will provide valuable information to help optimize the placement of reserves, identify the boundaries of fishery stocks, and other applications.”

The issue of larval dispersal is also important, the researchers say, because past studies at OSU have shown that large, fat female fish produce massive amounts of eggs and sometimes healthier larvae than smaller fish. For example, a single two-foot vermillion rockfish produces more eggs than 17 females that are 14 inches long.

But these same large fish, which have now been shown to play key roles in larval production and fish population replenishment, are also among those most commonly sought in fisheries.

The study was done in collaboration with the University of Hawaii, Washington State University, National Marine Fisheries Services and the Hawaii Department of Natural Resources. It was funded by Conservation International.

“The identification of connectivity between distant reef fish populations on the island of Hawaii demonstrates that human coastal communities are also linked,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion. “Management in one part of the ocean affects people who use another part of the ocean.”

Editor’s Note: Digital images are available to illustrate this story:

Yellow tang: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oregonstateuniversity/5278933342/

Fish analysis: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oregonstateuniversity/5278338677/

School of fish: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oregonstateuniversity/5278952604/

The Yellow Tang scientists developed a way to show that fish larvae will drift with ocean currents and can wind up over one hundred miles away from their place of origin.  This earth shaking discovery through studying the resurgence of the Yellow Tang population is presented as evidence that Marine Protected Areas are successful in replenishing endangered stocks.  Where would we be as a culture without this kind of devotion to innovative thinking and just sheer brilliance from our institutes of “higher” learning? OSU is clearly a leader in this arena.  Naturally if you stop the aquarium suppliers from depleting the reefs, the population of Yellow Tang will recover. Presenting that as a blessing of MPA’s however, is just a bit of an agenda-driven stretch.

“This [referring to his own research method] is similar to the type of forensic technology you might see on television, but more advanced,” Christie said.  [maybe as seen on the cartoon network]. Mark Christie is an OSU postdoctoral research associate and lead author of the study.  He should be well proud of his Piled Higherand Deeper with this one.

I also wonder why they’re studying “Yellow Tangs” in Hawaii and ultimately generalizing their findings to Marine Protected Areas off of the California, Washington, Oregon, Alaskan, and New England coasts. Why aren’t they carrying out their research on the Columbia River Bar, or Georges Bank, or the Bering Sea —it’s nice out there this time of year too?  Why go all the way to Hawaii?

Aside from the scientific breakthroughs that fish swim and “drift”, the article is just filled with great discoveries: they also found that large females lay more eggs than smaller ones.  Like I said…where would we be?

This mentality is so ridiculous and obvious it’s embarrassing to even respond; yet this legacy of agenda-driven science devolved to statistical mathematics, a template set by Jane Lubchenco and her predecessors years ago, persists today and is currently being used as a basis for fisheries regulations. It seems almost as if they were hell-bent on exacting our demise.

The very first step in the scientific method is unbiased, open-minded observation, i.e., without pre-disposition or prejudice.  Essentially this condition must be met even before a relevant question can be asked or a problem discerned that’s worthy of hypothesis and further study.  What’s being thrown at us and called “science” fails miserably in this most preliminary requirement of any worthwhile intelligent inquiry.  It’s political JUNK we’re getting, not science.

You can comment on this article here

February 2, 2013

Read the full story on the NOAA website   Since NOAA pretty much finished off most New England fishing based on disgracefully shoddy science at the Portsmouth council meeting last week, it appears that people are waking up and wondering what’s behind all of this obvious hostility towards the fishing industry.  How could our own government be so hell-bent on eliminating traditional coastal family fishing operations that have supplied millions of pounds of the cleanest food on the planet for over 400 years?

Why do we seem to be up against not only the Commerce Dept. (which is really about international trade), but apparently the Dept. of Interior (Minerals Management Service: Wind, Oil/Gas and Metals) and the Energy Dept., as well (you didn’t think the Way-Too-Bigelow was really built for fish surveys did you? Try deep ocean exploration for rare-earth metals and other minerals like oil and gas).

Why is this happening?  Who are the Enviro-Capitalists? How did they come to power? (And if you don’t think they’re in power, listen to the directives from Conservation Law Foundation and Environmental Defense Fund representatives at the Portsmouth meeting’s public comments regarding Habitat Closed Areas.)

THE WHY

Let’s face it, there are trillions of dollars right off of our shores.  Some of it is swimming around, feeding and spawning; but most of the potential profit is either in energy buried way beneath the sea floor; or some of the money is “Blowin’ in The Wind”; and some might be from harnessing the motion of the ocean from the “Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (wave energy capture).

Regardless of our poetic connections to the sea, big business wants our oceans. They want the oil, gas, and other minerals, the wind and wave energy; some might even want the fish…but only on an industrial scale, please.

Such a business strategy is laid out nicely in the below linked presentation by the World Bank Fisheries Team Leader at a 2009 conference.  It makes the case for an economic justification of fisheries governance reform.

Microsoft PowerPoint – Kelleher Sunken Billions for WWF1.pps

Economic justification (or Profit Motive) is exactly the moving force behind the catch shares scheme and the fishing eliminating posture of the regulators.  (You didn’t think CLF’s and Pew’s lawyers were really worried about the health of our fish did you?)

But here’s their challenge: how does big business and their “partner” government agencies such as NOAA and their ENGO corporate fronts, such as Environmental Defense Fund and Conservation Law Foundation, Pew, Oceana, etc., get rid of a centuries old small boat fishing tradition and secure the right to take over the continental shelf without looking like all-consuming BLOBS?

They need a strategy to deal with all these pesky “little people” who are littering the beach and fishing from their scows along the coast—squatters and itinerants, part timers, addicts and alcoholics all, according to EDF’s David Festa, Vice Pres. of Finance (in his pitch selling catch shares to Milken Institute investors).

THE HOW: BY SAVING THE OCEANS

If you want to own something first declare it a disaster, then save it, and then drastically alter it—make it your own creation.   Name a villain.  Strike a pose.  Save the day.  Claim the spoils.  Get rich quick.

The first step was an ecological disaster had to be created or at least simulated in order to open the door for “sweeping management regime change” and the imposition of drastic measures to save the fish resource—a “day of reckoning”, so to speak.

NOAA and her partner Ecological Non-Government Organizations claimed the fish and the ocean habitat were in dire straits (after twenty years of austerity “rebuilding”).

“Well, at the global scale, probably the one thing currently having the most impact is overfishing and destructive fishing gear,” said Jane Lubchenco, former vice chair of EDF and now former head of NOAA, as she compressed into a sound bite her stance on facing the ocean’s problems.

     Lubchenco’s statement listing fishing as the primary ocean stressor, while omitting any mention of oil drilling, took place only months before the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.  Through the expansive and very well funded (remember the oil profits are over $40 billion per year) ENGO public relations campaigns during the last few decades, small boat fishermen have been made out to be the villains; while certain oil and financial industry driven environmental organizations, are set up as the heroes …“saving our seas”.  They have accomplished a complete role reversal.

Corporate backed NGO’s have, at this point, successfully diverted public attention from the all too real and crucial ecological threats to our oceans, namely, increasing ocean water temperature and acidity, polluted estuaries, disappearing wetlands, and oil and gas drilling and transportation catastrophes.

They’ve commandeered the public’s well-intentioned concern (and donations) and their sincere alarm for the environment and have managed to turn it against local fishermen, effectively painting the coastal small boat fishing industry as a cause célèbre, the perpetrators of the degradation of the oceans.

But who then will save our oceans?

Enter: THE ENVIRO-CAPITALISTS

With a hefty public relations spin, corporate money and influence will operate under the cover of free-market environmentalism saving the oceans (while they rob you blind), or Enviro-Capitalists: Doing Good While Doing Well the title of the “path-breaking” book (just ask him) by Senior Associate Donald Leal and co-author Terry Anderson president of PERC “The Center for Free-Market Environmentalism” www.perc.org.  This site is worth looking into as an indication of the level of “thinking” that goes on in this kind of enviro-“Think-Tank”.  It’s nothing new; it’s only NOAA/EDF/Wall Street, et al, on their commoditize everything campaign.  It’s the “free market environmentalism movement” or the Enviro Capitalists: Doing Good While Doing Well.

That title itself tells the story.  The mechanism behind this econo-scam is the private ownership of the shares of a natural resource.  Catch shares fisheries management, for example, is an extension of this faulty de-regulated free-market theory of economists such as those in the Milton Friedman school of privatization-is-the-answer, which in this case goes by the name of Free Market Environmentalism.  This is the approach of ownership equals responsibility, or render a commodity profitable enough and somehow the good nature of the owners and the “intelligence” of market capitalization will automatically stabilize and sustain that resource or industry.  The economic incentive will be a force that improves the resource and the environment.  For a natural resource such as a fishery this thinking is based on the following principles:

       – Private property rights encourage stewardship of resources

       – Market incentives spur individuals to improve environmental quality

       – Government controls and subsidies often degrade the environment

       – Polluters should be liable for the harm they cause to others

This idea is a farce.  If you believe this con, I’ve got a gorgeous Gulf of Mexico I’d like to sell ya’ (in as is condition).  Market capital dynamics are based on very short term profit, very very short term these days, with computer generated trading, millions of trades can be made instantaneously, and some $3.2 Trillion of world market capital changes hands every trading day.  This is not exactly the environment where the long term stability of a resource would be considered.  One only has to look at our esteemed multi-national corporations’ environmental record so far in order to understand why the phrase “Free Market Environmentalism” is a contradiction of terms.

The PERC “institute” was started years ago, a front for usurping publicly held natural resources for private capital fun and profit. Information can be found at www.perc.org , Property and Environment Research Center, a “think tank” located in Bozeman, Montana, which proclaims itself as having …“championed the successful approach [ITQ’s] to eliminating overfishing (see www.ifqsforfisheries.org).”

On the bio page of Terry L. Anderson www.perc.org, Exec Dir of PERC, an economist, see his publications including one of my favorites: Saving wild tigers could mean eating them (move over Monty Python). In this piece of ecological brilliance he proposes that we should farm and eat tigers in order to assure their existence since they are one of the more endangered species (I wonder how much you’d have to pay the wranglers on such a ranch).  He also thinks everyone should have an oil well and natural gas fracking in their back yard …literally.  It’s only patriotic …the least we can do, and “…the only way to get off foreign oil”.  And don’t miss his Should Water be Privatized? Yes —a must read.  This is the kind of “thinking” that is influencing our national policy on resources, including our fish?

Read Donald R. Leal’s, PERC’s Dir of Research (an MS in Statistics which more than qualifies him to write treatises on the fisheries) Fencing the Fishery: A Primer on Ending the Race for Fish, this is a cute little PERC booklet (from 2002) and a glossary of almost all the bogus ITQ talking points.  Donald works “…in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Foundation and Reason Foundation” —surprise, surprise.
These are your environmental capitalists.

SAME OL’ SAME OL’

Therefore, I am not encouraged when I read from NOAA’s announcement flyer that the new Senior Research Economist, “Dr. Lipton, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland”, and “…he has been instrumental in developing innovative policies that use economic incentives to drive environmental improvements”.
Read the full story on the NOAA website

From Dr. Lipton’s statement, “I am excited and honored to be appointed NOAA’s first Senior Research Economist” and reading further from the NOAA announcement “…who also noted that economics and social science research are fundamental to maintaining a vital economy and a healthy ecosystem.” (Underlines are mine)

“Supporting the well-being of our coastal communities is one of this agency’s priority missions”,
Dr. Richard Merrick said, NOAA Fisheries Chief Science Advisor, when introducing his new research economist.  Really?  Supporting the well-being of our coastal communities?

“More generally, I will build on our already outstanding economic and social science research program, and to ensure that research results are used to inform our policies”, said Lipton.  “…our already outstanding economic and social research program”?
This after NOAA just put hundreds of New England fishing families out of business and out of their homes?

We have an Enviro-Capitalist at the helm of NOAA Fisheries Socio-Economic Research?  Looks like more of the same Catch Shares and Aquaculture Plan—“to end overfishing”.

Unlike Doctor Lipton, I do not feel so “excited and honored” about his appointment.

Leave a comment here

Nils Stolpe is our Honored Guest. Click on the fishnetUSA icon to open the window to his website.

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Towards rationalit​y in fisheries management​/FishNet USA

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Bearing in mind that each edition of The Economist has a print circulation of about 1.5 million, its website attracts about 8 million visitors each month, and that the people who read it are among the world’s most influential, consider the “take home” message that anyone with little or no knowledge of fisheries – maybe 99% of the readers – is being given; that stability of production in a fishery is an indication  of overfishing, and even more importantly, that overfishing is unacceptable because it limits  production.
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Now we all know that sustainability is the managers’ goal in our fisheries. In fact, this goal is part of the legal underpinnings of each of the fisheries management plans in effect in – and sometimes beyond – the US Exclusive Economic Zone.
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According to the legislation controlling fisheries management in US federal waters, the first National Standard for Fishery Conservation and Management is that “conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.”  This is fine up to a point. The optimum yield from a fishery is defined in the Act as “(A) the amount of fish which will provide the greatest overall benefit to the Nation, particularly with respect to food production and recreational opportunities, and taking into account the protection of marine ecosystems; (B) is prescribed as such on the basis of the maximum sustainable yield from the fishery, as reduced by any relevant economic, social, or ecological factor.” No problems so far, the law recognizes that the optimum harvest from a fishery is not necessarily the maximum sustainable harvest.But then we have “(C) in the case of an overfished fishery, provides for rebuilding to a level consistent with producing the maximum sustainable yield (MSY) in such fishery.”
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Adding their interpretation to this, the people at NOAA/NMFS, with the enthusiastic support of the various and sundry anti-fishing activists who pull way too many of the strings in Washington, have added as an administrative guideline that “the most important limitation on the specification of OY (optimum yield) is that the choice of OY and the conservation and  management measures proposed to achieve it must  prevent overfishing.”

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So while OY from each fishery, determined with consideration given to relevant economic, social, or ecological factors, seems to be the goal of federal fisheries management, that is just window dressing. The real requirement is for each and every fishery to be at MSY.

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From an administrative perspective, a perspective that has far more to do with the influence that the aforementioned activists had and continue to have than on the real-world needs of commercial and recreational fishermen and the communities and businesses that they support, this probably makes a certain amount of sense. After all, who could possibly argue about every fishery faithfully producing at maximum levels year after year? As the people at The Economist, at the ENGOs whose bank accounts are bloated with mega-foundation cash, and in the offices of Members of Congress who don’t have – or who don’t value – working fishermen as constituents want to convince us all, overfishing is something akin to the eighth deadly sin.

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But is it?

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From a real world perspective, a perspective that is shared by an increasing number of people who are knowledgeable about the oceans and their fisheries and who value the traditions and the communities that have grown up around them as well as the economic activity that fisheries are capable of producing, this proscription against “overfishing” is an ongoing train wreck.

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And at this point, because it’s The Law, nothing can be done about it.

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A hypothetical situation:

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Suppose there was an important fishery that was the basis of a large part of the coastal economy as well as the cultural cement that held coastal communities together. Then suppose that fishery started to decline. If you were a fishery manager and you were in charge, what would you do? Though not in what should be the real world, that’s a simple question with an even more simple answer in today’s world of federal fisheries management. Regardless of any other factors you would cut back on fishing effort.

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Suppose that didn’t work, suppose that the fishery continued to decline. What would you do then? Because you have no other realistic options you’d cut back on fishing effort even more.

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And suppose even that didn’t work. If there were still any fishermen fishing, you’d cut back their fishing effort yet again. And again and again and again until you had gotten rid of them all, in spite of whether the cutbacks had any noticeable effects of the fish or not.

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As we saw above, this would all be based on a so-called fishery management “plan” that was created under the strict requirements of a surprisingly short and what has become an even more surprisingly short sighted bit of federal legislation and the administrative interpretation of that legislation. The Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA) – which was written initially with good intentions towards US fishermen and signed into law in 1976 – has been purposefully distorted by outside groups and individuals with no legitimate ties to or empathy with the businesses and people dependent on fishing but with huge budgets provided by mega-foundations which themselves are provided with a convenient government-supplied coordinating mechanism (See http://www.fishnet-usa.com/All%20Stolpe%20Columns.htm#CGBD).

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Why is it a “so-called” management plan? Back a few more years than I’d like to acknowledge I spent some time in the graduate planning department at Rutgers University, concentrating on environmental planning. Not too surprisingly, one of the topics that came up repeatedly was rational planning; what it is and how to do it. Putting together a bunch of definitions and some foggy recollections, in creating a rational plan you 1) define a problem or a goal, 2) design                  alternative actions to solve the problem/achieve the goal, 3) evaluate each alternative action, 4) chose and implement the “best” alternative action, and 5) monitor/evaluate the outcome and adjust if necessary.

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This seems pretty simple and straightforward. How does it apply to fisheries management plans? If the problem with the New England groundfish fishery is that there are people making a living based on harvesting groundfish and if the goal is to stop them from doing that, then the managers and the management plan are right on target. But I suspect that most involved individuals/organizations aren’t purposely planning to solve that problem/achieve that goal.

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So why, after a seemingly endless series of less groundfish can only be fixed by less groundfish fishing iterations, are the groundfish fishermen – those who are still working – and the communities that depend on them just barely hanging on with fewer fish to catch following each cutback in fishing effort?

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While this idea is going to be ridiculed by all of  those anti-fishing activists whose careers are predicated on blaming just about every ocean ill on overfishing, perhaps it’s because overfishing isn’t the problem that they’ve built multimillion dollar empires on by convincing the world – and the U.S. Congress – that it is.

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But for the moment let’s pretend that we don’t have a fisheries management system that has been torqued into something worse than ineffectuality by their lobbying clout. Let’s pretend that the people responsible for creating fisheries management plans in general and the groundfish plan – actually the multispecies plan – in particular were trying to do some rational planning. Where would they go from here?

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What about competition between species?

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Obviously, having lived with the effectiveness – or  the lack thereof – of continuously cutting back on groundfish fishing, they’d look for an alternative or two (and no, opening parts of several previously closed areas of the EEZ while demanding full-time, industry paid observer on every vessel that fishes in them isn’t anything approaching a reasonable alternative). It’s hard to imagine that early on they wouldn’t consider the idea that other, competing species might be in part responsible for declining stocks. That’s the way the natural world has worked,  is working and will continue to work.

1953 – Spiny dogfish biomass unknown – “Voracious almost beyond belief, the dogfish entirely deserves its bad reputation. Not only does it harry and drive off mackerel, herring, and even fish as large as cod and haddock, but it destroys vast numbers of them. Again and again fishermen have described packs of dogs dashing among schools of mackerel, and even attacking them within the seines, biting through the net, and releasing such of the catch as escapes them. At one time or another they prey on practically all species of Gulf of Maine fish smaller than themselves, and squid are also a regular article of diet whenever they are found.” (Fishes of the                      Gulf of Maine, Bigelow, H.B. and W.C. Schroeder)

About ten years ago fishermen started complaining about the impact that the huge numbers of spiny dogfish off our coast were having on other much more valuable fisheries. As a result I organized a workshop on spiny dogfish/fisheries interactions in September of 2008 (see A Plague of Dogfish at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/dogforum1.htm) and have attempted to keep informed of spiny dogfish biology since then. One of the ways that I do this is by keeping an eye on things like landings and survey data, which NOAA/NMFS makes readily available via various web pages.

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Among the most interesting data sets I have found are the reports of the bottom trawl surveys which have been carried out by Northeast Fisheries Science Center vessels every year for over half a century (to access the recent reports go to http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/femad/ecosurvey/mainpage/  and click on “Cruise Results” in the menu on the left). The assumed reliability and reproducibility of these surveys is such that they are one of the primary data sources in the stock assessments for many of our important fisheries. In recent years spiny dogfish at times have comprised upwards of 50% by weight of all of the fish taken in these surveys.

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Looking for another way of addressing the spiny dogfish situation, I put together a spreadsheet of the percentage (by weight) of spiny dogfish and Atlantic cod caught in the Spring and Autumn bottom trawl surveys for the last ten years and graphed the results (because the annual Winter survey was discontinued half way through this time period, I omitted it).

I was surprised to see how well the high abundance levels of spiny dogfish coincided with the low abundance levels of Atlantic cod – the primary groundfish species – and vice versa. (Note that this relationship wasn’t apparent in prior years.)
It seems in-your-face obvious that in recent years there been something going on between spiny dogfish and Atlantic cod abundance (I looked at the trawl survey results for a number of other species relative to spiny dogfish and none of them exhibited such a dramatic apparent relationship).

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Of course this could be an example of post hoc ergo propter hoc (basically correlation doesn’t equal causation). But then again, it could not as well.

1992 – Spiny dogfish biomass estimated at 735 thousand metric tons: “given the current high abundance of skates and dogfish, it may not be possible to increase gadoid (cod and haddock) and flounder abundance without `extracting’ some of the current standing stock.” (Murawski and Idoine, Multi species size composition: A conservative property of exploited fishery systems in Journal of Northwest Atlantic Fishery Science, Volume 14: 79-85)

James Sulikowski at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine has been intensively involved in shark and ray research for twenty years. He is currently focusing on spiny dogfish and along with population and distribution work has begun to look at prey and predation. According to Dr. Sulikowski “preliminary analysis of stomach content data suggest  a high degree of dietary overlap between dogfish and Atlantic cod as Atlantic herring, Cluepea harengus, was found to be the primary prey item of both species. In addition, preliminary stable isotope data suggests evidence of niche overlap between cod and dogfish, although the extent of overlap may change seasonally. Collectively, the stomach content and stable isotope data suggests dogfish and cod are in competition for resources within this ecosystem.”

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How does this apply to the current Northeast Multispecies (groundfish) Fisheries Management Plan?

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In fact, it doesn’t apply at all. The multispecies plan is based on the assumption that fishing is the only thing influencing the groundfish stocks – including Atlantic cod. Considering that fishing is the only thing that federal legislation permits the New England Fishery Management Council to manage, its members have become quite adept at managing it. The fact that an extensive and still ongoing series of fishing cutbacks hasn’t stopped the decline of the primary groundfish species – led by Atlantic cod – seems to be irrelevant to them doing that.

1994 – Spiny dogfish biomass estimated as 514 thousand metric tons: “…preliminary calculations indicated that the biomass of commercially important species consumed by spiny dogfish was comparable to the amount harvested by man. Accordingly, the impact of spiny dogfish consumption on other species should be considered in establishing harvesting policies for this species.” (18th Stock Assessment Workshop, Northeast Fisheries Science Center).

The graph below shows the spiny dogfish total biomass estimates from the Northeastern Fisheries Science Center’s spring bottom trawl surveys. The highest estimated biomass, 1.131 million metric tons (or about 2.5 billion pounds), was in 2012 (from data in in Table 7 of Update on the Status of Spiny Dogfish in  2012 and Initial Evaluation of Harvest at the Fmsy  Proxy by Rago and Southesby and MAFMC staff and identified as not representing “any final agency                  determination or policy”). For reference, the total allowed catch (TAC) of spiny dogfish will be under 20,000 metric tons (the solid red line) a year for the next three years.

2008 – Spiny dogfish biomass estimated at 657 thousand metric tons: “All told, 87% of the stomach contentsfrom these particular Gulf of Maine caught dogfish (401 adult dogfish collected by University of New England researcher James Sulikowski and his students)  consisted of bony fish – with cod, herring, and sand lance being the top three species.” (J. Plante, Dogfish in the Gulf of Maine eat cod, herring, Commercial Fisheries News, May 2008).

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The two graphs below – from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s web page Status of Fishery Resource off the Northeastern US – Atlantic cod (http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/sos/spsyn/pg/cod/) show the decline of cod abundance calculated from both the Spring and Autumn bottom trawl surveys in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank. Note that as the calculated spiny dogfish biomass (above) is increasing the biomass indices for Atlantic cod in both the Gulf  of Maine and on Georges Bank are decreasing correspondingly.

It has been reported that spiny dogfish consume 1.5% of their weight per day. That translates to them eating about 17000 metric tons of anything slower/smaller/less voracious than they are every day.

2009 – Spiny dogfish biomass estimated at 557 thousand metric tons: “our reason for ontacting you is to draw your attention to a severe and growing problem that we are all facing because of the supposed constraints imposed on the federal fisheries management system by the most recent amendments to the Magnuson Act. Because of the supposed necessity of having all stocks being managed at OY/MSY, all of our fisheries are and have been suffering from a plague of spiny dogfish (Squalus acanthias).” (Fishermen Organized for Rational Dogfish Management letter to NOAA head Jane Lubchenco).

Since 1950 the annual Atlantic cod landings in all US ports exceeded 50,000 metric tons only in 1980, ‘82 and ‘83. In 2011 they were 7,900 mt.

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If there was one rational step that could be taken to try to return the Atlantic cod stocks off our Northeastern coast to former levels, it’s hard to imagine anything with more of a likelihood of success than significantly cutting back the population of spiny dogfish. But this isn’t possible because if the spiny dogfish stock is not at a level that could produce the maximum sustainable yield it would be overfished – and thanks to the successful lobbying of the anti-fishing claque managed fish stocks can’t be overfished.

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In the face of all of this it’s kind of hard to think that the federal fisheries management system has as a goal anything but the elimination of New England’s codfish fishermen. Otherwise, how could an alternative to further futile decreases in fishing for cod not be an increase in fishing for spiny dogfish? That would seem to be a rational action, wouldn’t it (and rest assured that spiny dogfish impact many more species than Atlantic cod).
But it’s not, and with the MSFCMA written and interpreted the way it is it can’t be.

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But the spiny dogfish plague isn’t the only fly in the “blame it all on overfishing” ointment. There’s an explosion in the population of seals in New England coastal waters as well. With the ability – or more  accurately, with the need – to consume 6% of their body weight per day, the almost 16,000 gray seals off Cape Cod are consuming far more fish than Cape Cod’s recreational and commercial fishermen could ever hope to catch. If they aren’t competing directly with the fishermen for cod and striped bass and flounder they are competing indirectly by eating the prey species that the fishermen’s targeted species eat. For a succinct and fairly balanced examination of the developing Cape Cod seal crisis see Thriving in Cape Cod’s Waters, Gray Seals Draw Fans and Foes by Bess Bidgood in the NY Times on August 17th. And there are burgeoning populations of other marine mammals as well as cormorants, birds that are protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. They are all highly efficient predators on smaller fish.

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The Act will be reauthorized this year. In the reauthorization, unless the managers are once again given the ability to use their judgment we won’t be able to most effectively manage our federal fisheries  to maximize the benefit we can derive from them. The Magnuson management process was designed to benefit from the knowledge that people in the fishing industry and marine scientists have gained through uncounted years of on-the-water experience in dealing with an environment that is as strange to the rest of us as outer space and a lot more complex. The benefits of  that knowledge have been lost to the process because of legislated changes by people who and organizations  that are sorely lacking in that hands-on experience and think that there is one answer to every fishery-related problem – to cut back on fishing. Without that changing, without discretion being returned to the managers, our fisheries will increasingly follow the trajectory that the New England groundfish fishery is on. None of us – except perhaps for the ENGOs and the foundations that support them – either want or can afford that. Magnuson must be amended. Flexibility, with adequate safeguards, to deal with situations like the current dogfish plague must be restored to the management process. Rationality demands it.

Comment Here

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Seafood certificat​ion – who’s really on first?

“Sustainability certification” has become a watchword of people in the so-called marine conservation community in recent years. However, their interest seems to transcend the determination of the actual sustainability of the methods employed to harvest particular species of finfish and shellfish and to use the certification process and the certifiers to advance either their own particular agendas or perhaps the agendas of those foundations that support them financially.
It doesn’t take an awful lot of sophisticated insight to recognize that a “sustainable” fishery is one that has been in operation in the past, is in operation presently, and will be in operation in the future. That’s what sustainability is all about – for lobsters, for fluke, for surfclams, for guavas, for hemp, for alpacas, in fact for anything that can be grown and/or harvested.

(Of course “marine conservationists” would have us believe that  a fishery that has a noticeable impact on the marine environment isn’t really sustainable. Imagine, if you can, a farm that has no environmental impact; in essence producing crops without interfering with the natural flora and fauna that “belong” there. That would get beef, cotton, soybeans, corn, mohair and what have you off the tables or out of the closets of perhaps 6 billion of the people who we share the world with, but if you are a committed marine conservationist, so what? The marine conservation community, and the foundations that support it, has been frighteningly successful in convincing people that  “sustainable fishing” is actually “no impact fishing,” but as we learned quite a few years ago, even hook and line fishermen catching one fish at a time can have a far from negligible environmental impact.)

Several recent events have increased the focus on sustainability and its use – or misuse – in attempts at influencing the buying  habits of the seafood consumers.

In the first of these, Walmart (the world’s largest retailer) now requires its fresh and frozen fish/seafood suppliers to “become third-party certified as sustainable using Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) or equivalent standards. By June 2012, all uncertified fisheries and aquaculture suppliers must be actively working toward certification.”

In the second, the National Park Service in the US Department of the Interior announced that all of its culinary operations “where seafood options are offered, provide only those that are ‘Best Choices’ or ‘Good Alternatives’ on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch list, certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council, or identified by an equivalent program that has been approved by the NPS.” Senator Lisa Murkowski questioned Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis about this “recommendation” (the term he used) at an Energy and Natural Resources Committee. She asked whether NOAA (the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) was involved in formulating this recommendation. He responded that he didn’t know. Senator Murkowski responded “NOAA is the agency that makes the determination in terms of what’s sustainable (as far as fisheries are concerned) within this country”

When considered in a vacuum these are both interesting comments on the importance that is being put on “sustainability” by fish/seafood providers, and is indicative of a positive trend by consumers who are increasingly demanding that the products they  buy are produced in an environmentally acceptable manner.

And the fact that a federal agency, the National Park Service, would demand – or as Director Jarvis waffled – would recommend  that its vendors provide only seafood certified sustainable by two non-governmental organizations while ignoring the de facto certification that is implicit in federally managed fisheries is not likely to surprise anyone with any familiarity with the morass that the federal bureaucracy has become. However, neither Walmart nor the US Department of the Interior exists or operates in a vacuum, and it seems as if there is a bit more at work here than is obvious.

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is the largest international organization – headquartered in London – providing fish and seafood sustainability certification. It was started in 1996 as a joint effort of the World Wildlife Fund, a transnational ENGO, and Unilever a transnational provider of consumer goods.

The chart below lists recent grants to the MSC by the Walton Family Foundation and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation in recent years.

Grants to MSC from Walton Family Foundation
2007    $1,640,000
2007    $820,000
2008    $1,675,000
2009    $1,700,000
2009    $1,700,000
2010    $4,622,500
2011    $3,122,500
2012    $1,250,000
Total    $16,530,000
http://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/about/2009-grants            

Grants to MSC from David and Lucille Packard Foundation
2005    $1,750,000
2006    $1,500,000
2006    $100,000
2006    $87,900
2007    $1,500,000
2008    $1,506,000
2008    $250,000
2009    $4,050,000
2010    $125,000
2011    $1,900,000
2012    $250,000
2012    $550,000
2013    $250,000
Total    $13,818,900
http://www.packard.org/grants/grants-database/            

The Monterey Bay Aquarium was established with an initial grant of $55 million from David and Lucille Packard. Their daughter Julie is Vice Chairman of the Packard Foundation. She is also Executive Director and Vice Chair of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Board of Trustees.

The MSC also lists the Resources Legacy Foundation as one of its supporters. The Resources Legacy Foundation has received $99 million from the Packard Foundation. One of its programs is the Sustainable Fisheries Fund, which along with its other activities provides funding ”reducing the financial hurdles confronting fishing interests that wish to adopt sustainable practices and potentially benefit from certification under MSC standards.”
According to CampaignMoney.com Ms. Packard donated $75,000 to the 2012 Obama Victory Fund.

In both of these initiatives NOAA/NMFS, the organization that provides virtually all of the data and other information that sustainability determinations are based on, that is required by  federal law to stop unsustainable fishing in federal waters, and that performs its own sustainability analyses on those fisheries, has been completely left out of the picture.

All things being equal, this could just be passed off as business – and government ineptitude – as usual. However, when tens of millions of dollars in donations by mega-foundations with “marine conservation” agendas that are looked at skeptically by so many in the fishing industry are thrown into the mix, should this be considered as just more business as usual or does it warrant a much closer look?

Comment here

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Fisheries Management​–More Than Meets The Eye

Last year I wrote After 35 years of NOAA/NMFS fisheries management, how are they doing? How are we doing because of their efforts? (http://www.fishnet-usa.com/After        35 years of NOAA.pdf) I concluded with:

Our collective fisheries were never as badly off as grandstanding ENGOs convinced the public and our lawmakers that they were. Regardless of that, they are unquestionably in great shape now. Are the fishermen – the only people who have paid a price for that recovery – going to profit from it? At this point there aren’t a lot of indications that they are going to. Ill-conceived amendments to the Magnuson Act, the ongoing foundation-funded campaign to marginalize fishermen and to hold them victims of inadequate science, and a management regime that is focused solely on the health of the fish stocks and is indifferent to the plight of the fishermen effectively prevent that.

That having been a year ago, and statistics measuring the performance of our commercial fisheries for 2011 being available (http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/commercial/landings/annual_landings.html), I thought I’d check back to see what, if anything, had changed.

Nationally, the total adjusted (to 2010 dollars) value of landings continued a gradual upswing that’s gone on intermittently since 2002/03. The post Magnuson (1976) low point in 2002 was under $4 billion, and by 2011 it had risen to over $5 billion, an increase of 35%. The adjusted value of the 2011 catch, $5.176 billion, was 76% of the highest total catch (in 1979) of $6.83 billion and 22%  above the average landings (from 1950 to 2011) of $4.25 billion.

All in all, the big picture is mostly positive. Unfortunately, the big picture is made up of a lot of smaller pictures, and some of them aren’t so good.

In the following chart I separated the value of the total landings in Alaska and the separate values of landings in American lobster, sea scallops and Southern shrimp (all species combined) from all other species.

For total value of landings in 2011 Alaska is at about 70% of where it was at its post Magnuson high ($1.84 billion vs $2.58 billion). Atlantic sea scallops were at their all-time record value ($485 million) and American lobster were at 89% of their all-time high ($405 million vs $456 million in 2005). Unfortunately the 2011 (Southern) shrimp landings were valued at only 34% of what they were at their highest ($472 million vs $1.333 billion in 1979).

In 1950 the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries reported landings of 223 distinct species or species groups (i.e. Shrimp, Dendrobranchiata  ). In 2011 the National Marine Fisheries Service reported landings of 460 species or species groups.
The 20 most valuable fisheries in 1950 and in 2011 and the percentage of their value to the total value of landings for that year are listed below:

In the Mid-Atlantic in 2011 the total value of landings, $220 million, were 79% of the highest landings value reported ($279 million in 1979). However, sea scallops made up more than half of the total landings value (56%, $143 million v. $114 million). While the overall picture looks positive, the value of the landings in the Mid-Atlantic minus the sea scallop production have been in a steady decline since the late 90s and are at the lowest point ever.

In New England the situation is comparable, but both American lobster and sea scallop production are responsible for the overall “healthy” appearance. There was a slight upswing in the value of the other fisheries in recent years but it appears that with the planned – and in part implemented – reductions in the groundfish TAC, it seems as if this slight upswing won’t carry over.

 

Conservation and management measures shall, consistent with the conservation requirements of this Act (including the prevention of overfishing and rebuilding of overfished stocks), take into account the importance of fishery resources to fishing communities in order to (A) provide for the sustained participation of such communities, and (B) to the extent practicable, minimize adverse economic impacts on such communities. National Standard #8, Magnuson-Steven Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (As amended through October 11, 1996).

A looming problem in both the Mid-Atlantic and New England is a pending cutback in the sea scallop quota for the next fishing year that at this point is expected to approach 40%. While the effects of a cut of this magnitude will obviously be significant to the scallop fleet, there will be not so obvious but potentially devastating effects on the other fisheries and on fishing communities as well.

A complex of ancillary businesses is required to operate a commercial fishing dock. These include vessel/equipment maintenance and repair facilities, ice plants, chandleries and shippers/truckers. Obviously it requires a certain level of business – a minimum amount of revenue coming “across the dock” –  for them to stay open. In the Mid-Atlantic a 40% cut in scallop revenues will be more than a 20% cut in commercial fishing revenues in a single year. In New England it will be somewhat less than that, but it will be combined with whatever additional cuts result from the proposed groundfish cuts.

I’m not that familiar with all of the fishing ports in the Mid-Atlantic and New England but have a fairly good understanding of those in New Jersey, and in New Jersey there isn’t one commercial port that lands fish from the ocean-going fleet that is mostly – or even largely – focused on scallops. They all handle a mix of fish and shellfish. A large part of their longevity is due to the fact that they have maintained a reasonable amount of flexibility thanks to their diverse fleets. But a drastic cutback in scallop revenues, particularly if it is coupled with the continuing decline in the revenues from other fisheries, will threaten that longevity.

The proposed scallop cutback has been presented as a temporary  measure, and the Fisheries Survival Fund – representing the majority of limited access scallop fishermen in New England and the Mid-Atlantic and other industry groups are working to ameliorate the proposed cuts, but when it comes to businesses that are waterfront dependent a two year temporary reduction could easily become permanent before the cutbacks are restored. Except for the lull over the past several years there have been intense development pressures at the Jersey Shore and on most of the waterfront areas from Cape Hatteras North. It’s just about assured that they will be back to their customary levels very shortly.

Originally the Magnuson Act placed much more emphasis on business- and community-supportive aspects of federal fisheries management. Those aspects have been eroded by the lobbying activities of the handful of ENGOs that have come to dominate the world of fisheries/oceans activism. They, and for the most part NOAA/NMFS  as well, address fish issues on a case by case, species by species basis. More importantly, the people at NOAA/NMFS tend to shy away from cumulative economic impacts when they have analyses done, and cumulative impacts are what most of the commercial fishermen, the people who depend on them and the businesses they support have to deal with – and in New England and the Mid-Atlantic (at least, and this isn’t to slight the industry elsewhere, because I doubt that it’s different in many other ports) in spite of increasing total landings value, it could be getting a lot worse really soon.

Comment here

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A staggering loss to U.S. fishermen and U.S. seafood consumers.

Nils E.Stolpe  FishNet USA/June 26, 2013

 It was back in June of 2008 that I first became aware of Richard Gaines’ work in the Gloucester Times in a three part series exploring the interplay between fishermen, feds, ENGOs and the mega-foundations that funded them in a controversial move to close Stellwagen Bank to fishing (see http://tinyurl.com/n8m3voh for the first installment). A letter about the series I wrote to Times Editor Ray Lamont started “kudos to Richard Gaines for reporting what is going on behind the smoke and mirrors obscuring the struggle to maintain the historical fisheries that have thrived on Stellwagan Bank for generations. He couldn’t be more on-target when writing ‘Pew is associated with public information campaigns against fishing and fish consumption.’”

This started a friendship between Richard and me that, I was amazed to discover, had lasted for less than five years. I know it enriched my life. I can only hope it enriched my writing as well.

Returning from a business trip on Sunday, June 9, Nancy Gaines found her husband Richard dead of an apparent heart attack at their home just outside of Gloucester.

Richard was a journalist’s journalist. Unlike the average “reporter” covering fisheries/ocean issues today, he gave press releases – and the contacts they provide – the minimal initial credence that they generally deserve. He was always looking for the story behind the press release and with a combination of integrity, skill and tenacity he usually found it. In five years he developed a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of what has become a cumbersomely complex federal fisheries management process – and of the political machinations behind it. Whether it was about the multi-billion dollar foundations behind the environmental activist organizations that have become so adept at making life miserable for fishermen, or a federal fisheries enforcement establishment that was allowed to enrich itself with tens of millions of dollars coerced from the fishing industry, Richard was covering it, covering it thoroughly and covering it well.

It’s going to be harder on all of us because he’s no longer there to do it.

Richard was memorialized fittingly by Ray Lamont in Community, industry mourn loss of a champion at http://preview.tinyurl.com/mmjbuae, North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones honored him with a statement to the U.S. House of Representatives available in the Congressional Record (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r113:E12JN3-0009:/ and I can’t add much to what they and dozens of other folks have written in the last week other than offering his wife Nancy, his family and coworkers my deepest sympathy. And I’d suggest that after reading this you spend a few minutes watching an interview of Richard done by Good Morning Gloucester at http://preview.tinyurl.com/lg8ohll. If you weren’t lucky enough to know him this will tell you much of what you should know about him and his work.

And while on the subject of press releases….

“The Attorney General is wrong on the law and she is wrong on the facts,” said Peter Shelley, senior counsel with CLF, who has been actively engaged in fisheries management for more than 20 years. “Political interference like this action by Attorney General Coakley has been a leading cause of the destruction of these fisheries over the past twenty years, harassing fishery managers to ignore the best science available….We need responsible management which includes habitat protection and a suspension of directed commercial and recreational fishing for cod. We also need some serious leadership from our elected officials. Going to court or getting up on a political soapbox will not magically create more fish.” (from a Conservation Law Foundation press release on May 31.”

It’s kind of hard to believe that just about immediately after this press release went out the  Conservation Law Foundation – along with the Pew spawned Earthjustice (recipient of some $20 million from the Pew Charitable Trusts) – filed suit in federal court to prevent NOAA from cutting the groundfish fishermen the tiniest bit of slack, perhaps allowing more of them to survive a largely management manufactured slump. It seems that in the release Mr. Shelley must have meant “other people going to court or getting up on a political soapbox will not magically create more fish. However if  it’s me or my foundation funded buds going to court, watch out ‘cause those fish will shortly be on the way.”

I usually stay away from New England issues because my colleagues up there are more than capable – in spite of the gross inequities resulting from the mega-foundation mega-buck funding of organizations like the Conservation Law Foundation and Earthjustice – of representing their own interests. However I couldn’t sit back and not comment on the CLF position voiced by Peter Shelley in an article, Conservation group sues NOAA to block openings, byRichard Gaines on June 6.

Explaining how the CLF/Earthjustice position wasn’t hypocritical, Mr. Shelley explained “the distinction for me is that I have seen time and time again when politicians — in this case the attorney general — hasn’t participated in the (fisheries management) process, and then comes in to try to influence the process in litigation. They’re not taking a legal position, there’s not much there except politics.”(http://preview.tinyurl.com/mnzgsnu).

To suggest that this is a more than slightly puzzling statement for an attorney to make would be an understatement. Mr. Shelley must believe – or must want other people to believe – that Attorney General Coakley was acting on her own when filing the suit. Apparently he believes – or wants us to believe – that because she has never personally participated in the fishery management process her suit has no merit. He is and has been, it would seem, in attendance at many meetings in New England at which fish are discussed and it appears as if in his view this makes his suit de facto righteous and hers nothing more than political posturing.

Massachusetts  Attorney General hasn’t participated in fisheries management?

Let’s examine his contention that the Massachusetts Attorney General hasn’t participated in the (fisheries management) process in a little more depth. First off, I doubt very much that Attorney General Coakley  brought the suit on her own behalf. In fact, I’d bet dollars to donuts that she brought it on behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Even Mr. Shelley must know that the Commonwealth, via a succession of capable and effective representatives, has for at least the last forty or so years participated heavily in federal fisheries management via the Magnuson Fisheries Conservation and Management Act. Either Paul Diodati, Director of the Commonwealth’s Division of Marine Fisheries, or David Pierce, the Deputy Director, are at every meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council and Dr. Pierce is a member of that Council’s Groundfish Committee (as well as its Herring, Sea Scallop and ad hoc Sturgeon Committees and the Mid-Atlantic council’s Dogfish and Herring Committees). Mr. Diodati is also the Chairman of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the Co-Director of the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute. They aren’t on these bodies on their own behalf either. They are there representing the Commonwealth as well. And before they were there, their predecessors were, and they were just as deeply involved.

This commitment to and participation in the fisheries management process by the various representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts began long before Mr. Shelley, the CLF and the Pew Trusts discovered each other. The Commonwealth, as represented in the current suit by the Attorney General whose participation Mr. Shelley seems so intent in marginalizing, established its bona fides in fisheries management at least a century ago (and will hopefully remain involved far beyond the point when Mr. Shelley, the CLF and Pew move on to “greener” pastures).

In fact the groundfish management measures that Mr.Shelley’s justifiable (in his estimation) suit is aimed at were a work product of the New England Fisheries Management Council, an institution which was established by the Magnuson Act in 1976 that has been in continuous operation – with overlapping changes in membership and administration –  since then. And in spite of Mr. Shelley’s so apparent disagreement with this fact, the Council is mandated by the Act to manage for the benefit of the fish, the fishermen and the fishing communities. The Council members voted by an over 75% majority (13 to 3) to support the measures that Mr. Shelley et al are now going to court – of course in a non-political fashion – to prevent. As opposed to Mr. Shelley’s “more than twenty years” trumpeted in the CLF press release,how many hundreds of years of collective fisheries science and management experience do the Council members and staff possess? How many collective years of management experience do the Council members whose votes Mr. Shelley and his pals are going to court to nullify have.

Evidently it isn’t fisheries management experience that Mr. Shelley finds so valuable. It’s whose management experience that matters.

These are the people, the agencies, the institutions, the experience and the actions behind the Commonwealth’s lawsuit – the one that Mr. Shelley wants us to believe is based on nothing more than “political posturing.”

And what of the constituencies being represented? Attorney General Coakley’s constituency is made up in large part of Massachusetts fishermen, all of those people, families and businesses that depend on them, all of the Commonwealth’s consumers who, apparently unlike Mr. Shelley et al, realize that a seafood dinner should involve something more satisfying and wholesome than a several-times-frozen lump of imported shrimp, tilapia or swai, and all of them, and us, who seriously appreciate fishing traditions going back to colonial times.

On the other hand, from what I’ve been able to discover (see http://www.fishtruth.net), Mr. Shelley’s, CLF’s and Earthjustice’s “constituents” are a handful of mega-foundations and well-to-do-donors, and I’d imagine a lot of internet “click here if you don’t like fishermen or fishing” residents of anywhere (but I’ll again bet those same dollars to those same donuts that very few of them are in coastal Massachusetts).

So few groundfish?

Then Mr.Shelley brings up what he wants us to consider the “fact” that there are so few groundfish available to the fishermen that they are no longer filling their annual quotas. To the uninformed (those “click here” constituents, for example) this probably seems a compelling argument for shutting down the fisheries, Mr. Shelley’s often stated goal. It must make sense to many people who are unfamiliar with our modern fisheries “management” regime as it has been distorted by lobbying by environmental activist organizations like CLF. In fact, however, there are other and much more believable causes of uncaught quota than not enough fish.

The first of these would be the existence of so-called “choke” species. Much more valuable fisheries can be shut down because of unavoidable bycatch of other species with much lower quotas. Take the situation in which two species – the targeted species and the “choke” species – are inextricably mixed during part of the fishing year. Fishermen, tending to be rational even when dealing with an irrational system such as the one that Mr. Shelley and his cronies have built, will avoid the target species in spite of its abundance because they know full well that when the catch limit for the “choke” species is reached both  fisheries will be shut down. In essence they are leaving the uncaught quota “in the bank” for later harvest. Needless to say, that later harvest isn’t guaranteed and it’s easy to imagine that in many instances it remains uncaught.

Then there are the meager trip limits for some stocks. Catch shares or not, in instances it just isn’t worth it for some fishermen to run their boats offshore for a few hundreds of pounds – or less – of fish. They’ll remain tied to the dock or will target other species with quotas that will allow them more income.

And we can’t forget low prices at the dock. Fish markets have adjusted to the recent vast swings in supply of some of the traditional species (a testament to the lack of effectiveness of our fisheries management system) by switching to alternative products. With the most productive fishing grounds in the world in our EEZ it’s hard to imagine that tilapia is the most heavily consumed finfish in the U.S., but it is. Compensating for these often low prices is a large part of the reason for the development of alternative markets for our domestic fisheries, but it’s somewhere between extremely difficult and impossible to move large quantities of fish in small lots.

Then there’s the impact of changing environmental conditions on the traditional availability of species, Said most simply, fish aren’t necessarily where they have been found by fishermen for generations. Though Mr. Shelley apparently want you to think that means they’re not there at all, that’s not necessarily so. Fish stocks are dependent on water temperatures, as are the critters they feed on, and water temperatures have been changing significantly in recent years. Some areas that used to reliably produce a particular species of fish at a particular time of the year no longer do so. With the meager quotas and the continually increasing costs of running a boat a fisherman isn’t as likely to search for where the water temperature changes have driven the fish. Economics won’t allow it.

Additionally, fish surveys are operated as if our U.S. coastal waters exist in a steady state; that conditions today  are as they were when the survey was started. The same spots are sampled at the same time every year, and when a particular species is no longer  taken in the sample or is taken in reduced numbers, the automatic assumption is that fishing is the cause of “the problem” and that reducing or curtailing (ala Mr. Shelley) fishing is the solution. Compounding the real problem, the reduced availability of research funds, the probability of extending the scope of the surveys is pretty low.

In a follow-up article on June 10, Shelley elaborated that the suit filed by Attorney General Coakley was “political ‘soapbox’ posturing” while“our suits are not political… they’re strictly based on the facts, and we do it as a last resort”(http://preview.tinyurl.com/mysrlbz).

Attorney General Coakley, Governor Patrick et al, please keep on keeping on. Effective fisheries management should involve much more than happy fish and happy ENGOs. When Congress passed the Magnuson Act in 1976 the Members realized this and it’s about time that the pendulum gets pushed back in the direction that it was intended to swing in. Fish count, but so do fishermen, fishing communities and seafood consumers. If the U.S. fishing industry is to survive, the initial balance that was amended out of the Act by intensive lobbying by foundation funded activists claiming to represent the public must be restored.

For more information on Shelley’s/the Conservation Law Foundation/Earthjustice lawsuit see Conservation Law Foundation & Earthjustice Make Unfounded Claims in Lawsuit Filing   at http://preview.tinyurl.com/pwaaabu.

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For those of you who were interested in the FishNet piece (available at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/Bluefin tuna and Pew.pdf ) on the ongoing attempts by the Pew Trusts, one of Mr. Shelley’s benefactors, to steer the Bluefin tuna management meeting this week in Montreal, the critique of the claims of the Pew people attempting the steering are available on the Saving Seafood website at http://preview.tinyurl.com/nc59z3q. I’d suggest that you take the time to read it and the Saving Seafood special report on Bluefin tuna at http://preview.tinyurl.com/ojo5jne.

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FishNet – USA/June 24, 2013         Nils E. Stolpe

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 size of the (swordfish) quota, the length of the season, or the  number of vessels involved. It is how the fish are caught…. Use of longlines must be barred…. the fishery should be open to all – provided that swordfish are caught with hand gear, including harpoons and rod and reel. No swordfish should be taken until it has a chance to breed at least once, meaning that the minimum allowable catch size should be no less than 100 pounds. Such measures…. would put the  Atlantic swordfish population back on the road to recovery.

” http://articles.philly.com/1997-08-13/news/25567968_1_swordfish-big-fish-commercial-long-liners

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 which had earned its legitimacy with tens of millions of dollars in grants to journalism schools and broadcast outlets, Mr. Reichert and his minions set out to destroy an entire fishery and the lives of the thousands of hard working Americans who depended on it.

This could have dealt a devastating blow to the U.S. longline fleet. Exacerbating a bad situation, it would have also resulted in the transfer of the uncaught quota from the strictly regulated U.S. boats to other vessels whose regulation was much less rigorous. Without question removal of the U.S. longline fleet would have had a negative impact on swordfish conservation.

Fortunately a swordfish management program to reduce fishing effort to where it was in balance with the resource had been put in place by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) years before Mr. Reichert and Pew “discovered” swordfish. By the time the Pew people and the Pew dollars entered the fray this program was already paying obvious conservation dividends. Then a closure of swordfish nursery areas off Florida, a closure which was supported by the U.S. longline fleet, was also put in place. This assured the recovery of the swordfish stock in the Western North Atlantic.

This was a testament to fisheries management based on sound science, not on media hype only affordable by multi-billion dollar corporations and foundations.  In spite of self-serving claims to the contrary, the Pew peoples’ prodigious yet misguided efforts to scuttle the pelagic longline fleet – and their obvious lack of understanding of swordfish management – changed virtually nothing about the fishery or about how it was being managed.

But what has changed in the intervening years is the way in which the rest of the (non-Pew) world looks at pelagic longlining in general and the U.S. pelagic longline fleet in particular. Thanks to significant efforts by the U.S. participants  in this fishery, they have become the undisputed world leaders in developing and implementing fishing gear and fishing techniques to drastically reduce or eliminate the incidence of bycatch in their fishery. And despite Mr. Reichert’s dire predictions and those of Pew’s stable of scientists, the doom and gloom predicted for swordfish if longlining was allowed to continue never developed. Today, as the pelagic longline fishery continues, the swordfish stock is fully rebuilt. In fact, the fishery is in such good shape that it was recently certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council.

So now Bluefin tuna     

To quote the inimitable Yogi Berra, “it’s déjà vu all over again.” Fifteen years later the same cast of characters and the same organizations are using the same tired and ineffective strategy funded by the same sources to derail the management of another highly migratory fish species, the Atlantic bluefin tuna (ABT).

The International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the same body that is responsible  for swordfish management in the Atlantic, is holding a meeting of fisheries scientists and managers in Montreal at the end of this month to review the ABT stock assessment. The outcome of this review will have much to do with determining what the total allowable catch (TAC) of these valuable fish will be in the coming years. The TAC is divided between rereational fishermen, rod and reel commercial fishermen, harpooners, purse seiners (currently none are in the U.S. fishery) and pelagic longliners (who don’t target ABT but do take some incidentally).

While the public’s view of the value of these fish has been purposely distorted – each year one fish, supposedly the first and the best of the year, is sold at a Japanese auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars as a marketing ploy – they      are valuable, with a prime fish bringing thousands of dollars (the National Geographic Channel offers a largely accurate portrayal of the rod and reel ABT fishery in its series Wicked Tuna).

In what is no surprise to anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with fisheries management issues, the folks at Pew have mounted yet another well-funded campaign to influence the outcome of this ICCAT assessment review. They are using the same flashy and expensive techniques and have enlisted a similar claque of experts to “save the tuna” as they used in the late 90’s to save the swordfish.

As was so convincingly  demonstrated by the complete recovery of the swordfish stocks in spite of continued harvesting by the longline fleet, Pew science as voiced by Pew scientists was then far from the last word in the world of  fisheries      management. That hasn’t changed. Nor has their strategy. The same hackneyed messages of doom and gloom by the same overwrought scientists are presented as if they represent the main stream of fisheries research.

Rather than being swayed by their efforts to make the playing field at the upcoming meeting in Montreal as uneven  as the billions of dollars backing them up will allow, it’s crucial that the independent science as espoused by the independent scientists speak for itself.

As with swordfish almost a generation ago, we trust that the scientists and managers in Montreal this week will not be swayed by all of the hyperbole that they will find aimed directly at them, will evaluate the existing science for what it is, not for what the Pew people will try to tell them it is, and make decisions that are right for the fish and right for the fishermen.

We should note here that there seems to be no limit to what the people at the Pew Trusts will spend in their attempts to convince anyone who will listen to reduce or eliminate fishing but when it comes to investing even negligible resources into efforts to more accurately and extensively sample the fish stocks they seem so intent on saving, something that everyone agrees is necessary for more effective management, they seem singularly uninterested.

Comment here

A Pathetic Joke Reaffirm’s that some Politicians are Clueless

So. I’m sitting here listening to the Webinar/phone meeting that has just ended, approximately 1 hour and 25 minutes early!

Can’t even imagine holding a webinar session with no sound, but, heh, that’s our government for ya!

If I wanted to listen, (I did) I needed to tie up my telephone! I did!

There were probably twenty five listeners, and three or four asked question’s.

Earlier in the week, Senator Warren wrote an op – ed piece about the $10 Million in S-K dough NOAA was gonna “grant” back to the industry.

Guest View: Tide begins turning fishermen’s way

For the past two years, I have made many visits to Massachusetts fishing communities in New Bedford, Gloucester and the South Shore to hear about the challenges facing the industry. I’ve listened to boat owners and fishermen who face devastating catch allocation cuts, and I’ve spoken with net makers and icemen whose businesses depend on a strong fishing fleet to make ends meet. The message I’ve heard has been clear:

The truth is, she didn’t get it, and there are a few poli bum kisser’s (they know who they are) that trumpet her message as progress, instead of leaning in hard and making her get it.

Ray Lamont at the Gloucester Daily Times is not one of them.

Editorial: Fishing aid package far short of even basic needs

She did replace someone that did get it, and I’d bet Scott Brown would never patronize the fishermen he stood up for.

That’s all that op-ed was. Patronization of the desperate.

Grant is the key word here, and no clue when it comes to Liz Warren!

Today’s display of the S-K funding Folly was revealing to say the least.

Let the Competition Begin!

The guest list had nary a fisherman that needs relief attending the session, but plenty of professional grant hounds, with a few amateurs thrown in.

Today’s exercise was another example of fishermen getting the shit end of the stick.

 

 

Comment here

 

The Pew Charitable Trusts says Atlantic cod stocks are at “perilously low  levels,” and suggested that even the best fishing boat captains in the fleet  couldn’t find enough cod during the last fishing season to meet match their  quotas.

Pew also said the same law being used to replenish the ground fish stocks was  successful in rebuilding the scallop fishery, keeping New England fishing  revenue strong.

“The cod population is clearly in free fall, and if we over fish then we may  push them into extinction,” said Jeff Young, a spokesman for The Pew Charitable  Trusts.

“Even if we could find that flexibility, we really have to rebuild these  fisheries,” Bullard said. “That takes very painful measures to cut back these  stocks and that’s what we’re going to do.”

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Just chop the vegetables and shut up, will ya?

Chef Holly Smith of Café Juanita in Kirkland is one of dozens of local chefs that have joined “Chefs for Seals,” part of the Humane

Society of the United States’ Protect Seals Campaign. 

What is it about these chefs that makes them think the seals are going to support them as they serve up tilapia and Asian farm raised shrimp?

The seals will not tolerate eating that crap, no matter how hard the cook try’s to mask that swill.

Even seals have standards!

I realize that parody may offend the chefs but, shrugs, who care’s?

The Humane Society of the United States’ Protect Seals Campaign., and the chefs, who appear to be snobby towards people, and prefer to raise an issue strictly based on vanity, and decorative icon’s.

If the chefs are doing this to take a stand, why won’t they take a stand against world hunger?!

As the new trend in fishery management is eco based management, the seals cannot be removed from the equation. They are now a primary predator in the eco system because of a number of reasons, one in the United States being the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and another being the un palatable appeal of environs, pro and amateur, and the anti fur movement.

I know that the idea of eco based management will appeal to them in the spirit of being “in tune” with the eco system.

It will be interesting to watch them try to separate a top predator in the eco based management system in the name of vanity, because this is apparently what they have taken a stand against, to the point of a boycott of Canadian fish products.

They will now be forced to accept the fact that seals will be on the menu, as there is an over abundance of this resource having a detrimental affect on other species in the eco system.

To focus on fur products and ignore the protein that seals would provide, utilized by the hungry people of planet that don’t get enough of it will expose the chefs as just trendy interlopers looking for attention or humanitarians toward their fellow human beings.

Comment here

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The contentious issue of seals, marine mammal population’s and public comment ignorance.

Posting link’s to story’s for fisherynation.com viewer’s today, and over the past few day’s, some issues stand out and I thought I’d address them. These are my opinion’s, and mine only.

If you agree, or disagree, you have an opportunity to present your opinion. Submit them through the contact, located on the blue menu bar, and they will be featured. Keep it civil, and on point, please, with no insults or vulgar language.

During the week, I posted three articles about “Study shows depleted fish stocks can come back from the brink”, with the claim cod will never recover in Canada because there are no management measures in Canada to foster a recovery, and besides, it’s to late for them.

Two articles contained the doom and gloom analysis of fisheries scientist Jeffrey Hutchings at Dalhousie University.

In two articles, it appears the authors who interviewed Mr. Hutchings were content to accept his opinion without questioning of any other factors related to the cod issue. These were “blame the fishermen”, ignore the problem’s forums.

The third article posted about the study, appeared at Pys.org.

It was like I had never read the first two!

I am used o the articles that are pointed. with the fisheries being the only factor when it comes to fish stock’s, even though I suspect it’s more complicated, but almost simple enough for me to understand.

Why is it that the scientist’s, and the environmentalists choose to ignore the thing’s we can control to increase cod stock’s in the North Atlantic, east and west? They can’t be in denial forever, and they will be forced to deal with reality if they want to eat fish, or if the fishing industry is going to survive.

We are on this sustainability thing, right?

Marine Mammals are increasing in numbers that are now detrimental to the fish stock’s we prefer to see the populations of, increase.

There are seal issues along the Western Atlantic, and on the East Atlantic, also.

Alaska with the exploding populations of Sea Otter’s is having problem’s, getting the Wanted – “Dead or Alive” posters ready.

They too are having a negative effect on species we desire to harvest and consume.

The population has doubled in the last decade which would mean it would double again in five years.

These stock’s and various species provide livelihoods that are even further in jeopardy if these issues continue unabated.

We will discuss the other predatory species of cod herring, dogfish skates and lobster another time.

An interesting event occurred in American Samoa regarding a predatory specie, and three US Government agencies, decided that eradication was worth implementing as the Crown-of-Thorn starfish became a threat to coral, and it was decide euthanasia was the only option. This is a precedent setting event.

A predatory species is predatory species, whether it’s a starfish or a marine mammal.

The comments at the article “EU ban on trade in seal fur set to be overturned” – European court expected to back attempt by pelt traders and sporran makers to reverse 2010 ruling, are a good indication of the general publics’ opinion.

What they tell me is, these people, all of them food consumers, have no sense of the gritty reality of food production, or, life in general.

These are the people that would say eat more chicken, or just vegetable’s, but if they invested 25 minutes into Ray Hilborn, and they were honest, they’d realize fish consumption in a burgeoning human population cannot be replaced. It’s irreplaceable!

The basis for the opposition to harvesting marine mammals is shallow.

To them, it’s about human vanity. Why else would the headline focus on fur and sporrans?

All I see is references to outrage over vanity,

No outrage for the people in Nambia that eat these seals to survive, as the Seals of Nam’s group threatens Adventure Travel and Trade Association (for the upcoming travel summit in Namibia in October); the Namibian embassy in the United States; the Henties Bay municipality; Namibian Ombudsman John Walters; the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources; and numerous other businesses, travel agencies,” to further their shallow campaign.

I really doubt the African nation of Nambia, or it’s hungry people care about the fur, or even sporrans for that matter, but leave it up to people that have warped senses of purpose to threaten a country of poor people by holding back “tourist” dollars!

Based on,,,,,ideology?

Let’s talk about cruelty!

EU ban on trade in seal fur set to be overturned

Namibia: Seal Campaigners Continue With Harvest Protest

Stopping spread of crown of thorns is to kill it

Draft SE otter population assessment out

 “Canada’s cod, and many other depleted fish, unlikely to recover”

“Study offers bleak outlook for fish recovery” 

Study shows depleted fish stocks can come back from the brink

Comment here

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NOAA Fisheries Service? No such agency!

First off, I’m a cranky old person.

I wasn’t always like this, but time and events have taken their toll.

I’m not ready for the dirt sandwich, although, ya never know!

For quite a while now, something has really been bugging me, and it has nothing to do with my crotchetiness.

NOAA, and the National Marine Fishery Service have pulled a MMS.

Recall before Deep Water Horizon, the agency overseeing the offshore drilling operations were under the MMS moniker

Following revelations of cozy industry / agency interactions of lewd behavior, the administration abandoned MMS and changed it to BOEM, trying to erase it’s shameful past.

I guess strippers, drinking bashes and cocaine abuse between regulators and industry had something to do with that if I recall correctly.

In NOAA’s case, the shameful OLE debacle of NMFS must have had the same affect.

It appears NOAA is ashamed of the National Marine Fishery Service name, and avoid using it when ever possible.

They can’t though, and every time I get information about anything, it is communicated through an un official agency called NOAA Fisheries Service, an agency that does not exist!

Looking at the attractive logo, and the ease of pronouncing NOAA Fisheries, it reminds me of slick tobacco packaging.

You know, pretty colors with attractive font’s and graphics, hiding the negative impacts, or in some cases , death from it’s use.

I wanted to know when the official transition had taken place, because they have websites all over the place with the “un official” logo and non name, and as close as I’ve become to them, I didn’t recall any notices about it.

I made an inquiry.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 1:45 PM,  <[email protected]> wrote:

I would be interested in seeing the official documentation regarding the shift to the title “NOAA Fisheries Service”Thank you.

I received this.

from: Allison McHale – NOAA Federal <[email protected]>

to: [email protected]

cc: Paul Jones – NOAA Federal <[email protected] _mce_keep=”true”>

date: Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 5:24 PM

subject: Re: inquiry

 Important mainly because of the words in the message.

Our official name is still the National Marine Fisheries Service.  NOAA Fisheries Service or NOAA Fisheries has for many many years been our common use name since we are the fisheries part of NOAA.

Thank you, Allison, for the response. I appreciate that. BH

I knew that the official name is still National Marine Fisheries service because every time I get a notice with the fancy logo, directly below, it usually announces, “The National Marine Fisheries Service” today,,,” You get it.

With sequestration causing the agency to shut down, yes shut down – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plans to shut down most agency operations for four mandatory furlough days in July and August in response to sequester-related budget cuts, according to the agency’s acting chief. continued!, I can’t help but to wonder how much money has been spent on converting all the websites, all the stationary, all the everything’s it has been un officially attached to.

That’s one thing cranky old people do. Bitch about the cost.

Comments can be made here

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As grim fishing year approaches, industry tries to deal with new catch limits

BOSTON –  Deep cuts in catch limits will  hit New England’s fishing fleet in less than three weeks, and there’s little  hint any real relief is coming. But regulators and fishermen are still seeking  ways to lessen a blow fishermen warn will finish them off.

As time grows short, Gloucester’s Al Cottone said he and his fellow fishermen  seem to be facing the future in a sort of “state of shock.”

“Everyone’s in denial. They still think, you know, someone’s going to come in on  their white horse and save us,” he said.

“What are people doing to help the industry?”

I’ve tried to mount up and be a rider. I have not been successful.

What I see is herds of black horses being ridden by hypocritical green cowboys riding rough shod over a bunch of un organized fishermen, manipulating natural phenomena, and cherry picking snippets of information to further the cause of the anti fishing conservation groups.

I’ve watched an endless parade of politicians exclaim they would do everything possible to preserve a 400 year old industry that’s reputation has been skewed by a well organized highly financed special interest sector that operates as an army of non profit, tax deductible lawyer assholes who believe they have all the answers. To everything.

Which leads to this.

Plan to open no-fishing zones faces opposition

Allowing commercial fishing in closed areas would bring stocks even closer to ruin, said John Crawford, science and policy manager for the Northeast Fisheries Program of the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is spearheading an effort to slow down NOAA’s approval process long enough to ensure that in-depth environmental impact studies will be done. More than 70,000 residents up and down the Atlantic Coast and 100 scientists have expressed opposition to the plan in comments to NOAA.

“The habitat has to be protected,” Crawford said. “This is the opposite response of what a rational person would have.”

That’s seventy thousand progressives that had nothing better to do than respond to a mega campaign staged by Pew, and  CLF non profit, tax deductible, NOAA insider Peter Shelley, and his for Cods Sake appeal where he ignores facts about the Cod Stocks, as in like, they move?

The big mystery has been solved by an old fisherman in Newfoundland, and he has the answer about where the cod went. His back yard!

Hasn’t seen fishing like this in almost fifty years!

Of course, Shelley’s in denial, and would rather utilize the short comings of the fishery “science”.

“The habitat has to be protected,”

Unless Crawford opposes offshore wind farms along the New England coast, he should keep his Pew mouth shut.

Your View: Polluter blockade of New Bedford wind jobs finally falling

The senior communications manager for the National Wildlife Federation decided he should communicate his feelings about his support of habitat destruction.

Ocean Industrialization is exactly that. Habitat destruction.

I realize Miles Grant, another green energy, crony envirocapitalist, thinks he knows what’s best for the planet, but that’s only because as a communicator, he’s not a listener, or a researcher, because if he were, he would clam up and oppose the destruction caused by pile driving, cable trenching, and chemical spills associated with the construction he endorses.

His masterpiece of hypocrisy is literary pollution in it’s purest form.

Same with Peter Shelley. I’m quite sure he’s a Cape Wind rah rah kinda guy.

I know his boss is!

Which lead’s to this.

Meet John Kassel CLF President / Cape Wind Shill / Advocate of Ocean Destruction, and a crappy blogger, too.

Also included in his article,

Just as there is no doubt that our oceans are treasures, so too is there no doubt that they are being damaged. Bottom trawlers damage huge swaths of the ocean floor with their heavy chains, doors and dredges, likened by some scientists to a bulldozer scraping the delicate floor of a pristine forest. New England’s oceans are rising much faster than predicted. They are also becoming more acidic from harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Recent record increases in precipitation may even be fundamentally altering plankton production, jeopardizing the very productivity of our marine web of life.

As it stands, the commentary of ocean acidification is a legitimate argument.

As far as fundamentally altering plankton production, Kassel mentions nothing of pollution, like estrogen, and chemicals flushed through our bodies being injected into the ecosystem via sewerage treatment, which also have negative affects.

He does hammer away at the fishing industry’s methods of modern day harvesting methods that he finds unpalatable.

I will argue, the notion is unfounded, while he bulldozes his Cape Wind preference as a harmless project that with just the right amount of pixie dust sprinkled on it, will deliver energy to New England with no environmental consequence!

11 years. That’s how long we’ve been waiting for the promise of Cape Wind: clean, renewable energy; new, green jobs; reduced air emissions and carbon pollution; energy at a predictable price over the long-term; and energy security. At a time when the evidence of global warming is overwhelming, and the need for jobs critical, unleashing the potential of this home-grown offshore wind project can only be a good thing.

Now this is rhetorical hyperbole at its finest!

I wrote that on Oct 4, 2012

I posted this on April 14,2013

Which lead’s to this.

Noise Pollution from an Ocean Idustrialization Shill

Your View: Polluter blockade of New Bedford wind jobs finally falling, Miles Grant lives in New Bedford and is senior communications manager for the National Wildlife Federation. Offshore wind energy can and must be developed in a wildlife-friendly manner. Plenty of baloney in this guys display case! Read it here.

Miles Grant’s article has an uncanny familiarity to it. Like it reads like Kassel’s!

Barbara Durkin tie’s this up this loose end nicely.

Which lead’s to this.

BARBARA DURKIN – Your View: Cape Wind offers only empty promises so far. Spanks the communications manager of National Wildlife Federation

April 16, 2013              ENGO, Letter to the Editor, New England, Offshore Wind/Industrialization

Her response to this drivel.  Your View: Polluter blockade of New Bedford wind jobs finally falling continued

NWF makes jobs claims on behalf of Cape Wind that are unfounded. For 22 months, from April 1, 2011, to Dec. 31, 2012, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center Wind Technology Testing Center has created zero jobs, according to the federal government’s Recovery Tracker. The MACEC ratepayer surcharge program is the source of the $13.2 million used to develop the testing center. The center also received a $2 million DOE grant, and funding by U.S. taxpayers through ARRA stimulus of $24.7 million. We have no jobs to show for our $40 million spent. continued

Supporting article by Menakhem Ben-Yami  https://fisherynation.com/battlefrontoffshore-wind-industrialization

Nothing will destroy habitat like ocean industrialization. What’s it going to be Mr. Crawford?  Mr. Shelley? Mr. Kassel? More hypocrisy?

(calling Dr. Moe, Dr. Larry, Dr. Curley)

The politicians, if they were honest instead of opportunistic vulture pretenders would realize there is no possible way to support two industries that are non conducive, but because of pie in the sky green wet dreams of “free “energy which is not cost effective, driven with tax incentives, they say the right words hoping they can fool everyone into thinking they can be all things to all people.

Ya know what? They can’t be.

They need to be put on the hot seat, and grilled.

They need to decide.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/14/as-grim-fishing-year-approaches-industry-tries-to-deal-with-new-catch-limits/print#ixzz2QRsrXkJd

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130414/OPINION/304140310

http://www.pressherald.com/news/fishermen-questioning-plan-to-open-new-areas-_2013-04-15.html?pagenum=full

http://bore-head007.newsvine.com/_news/2012/10/04/14224982-meet-john-kassel-clf-president-cape-wind-shill-advocate-of-ocean-destruction-and-a-crappy-blogger-too

Noise Pollution from an Ocean Idustrialization Shill  https://fisherynation.com/archives/7260

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Industry Transformations

I used to jump like an electricians apprentice getting his first jolt every time I’d get an email alert from certain places.

I’d drop everything and post it on newsvine, and in the beginning, fisherynation.

I’m not so jumpy anymore.

I got one today about The Gulf of Maine Research Institutes Trawl to Table rsvp for permit holders and Captains to rub elbows with chefs, restaurant owners, and food service professionals for the day.

The permit owners and captains that do any kind of reading must realize that fishermen and chefs in recent times have meant chefs ripping and gutting fishermen as unsustainable louts, at least in Europe and in Canada, anyway, not to mention the Save the Swordfish days.

The mission is to build awareness of the sustainability of the groundfish ground fish resource and improving the  profitability and resilience of fishing businesses.

There will also be interactive gear displays, the latest in gear research and quality handling technology, and important information on accessing restaurant and food service markets, with an emphasis on the value of promoting underutilized species!

The chef’s will show off the latest in potato peelers, the latest latex glove for safe handling, and pass on important information!

The permit holders will be wondering how to squeeze a couple of extra nickel’s from of a pound of a shrinking commodity, and will be eager to find that margin advantage. Where will it come from, and who will pay for it? That is the question.

One thing you’ll notice about the fishing industry is richness of statistics. For everything, but, here’s one I did not know.

Restaurants sell 70% of the seafood consumed in the United States.

This from the email alert:

Chefs and restaurant owners influence what consumers want. Successful  chefs are most concerned with quality of product, traceability, and  sustainability. Yet, they often lack access to the latest and most  accurate information on Gulf of Maine seafood and the industry that  harvests it. This is your opportunity to have a conversation with chefs  from your area about the importance of sourcing locally and supporting  Gloucester’s fishing fleet.

So. Back to the question. Who is going to get filleted for that margin advantage?

From my seat, it looks like the auctions are the ones that are about to see a drastic transformation.

There is already a drive for fishermen to increase their profit margins by selling direct to savvy consumers.

There are innovate company’s that are offering alternatives to fishermen that remove some of the risks of being a hero, or a zero, depending on whether they “hit the market” or not.

We have been watching this industry transform rapidly.

Which industry entity will experience the next transformation?

I think it will be the fresh fish auction.

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