"Some of the hottest journalistic action is still in following the money. But don't look to your local newspaper, newsmagazine or public radio station for enlightenment, because the money trails today often radiate from a handful of the nation's wealthiest "charitable" foundations, and end with those media outlets themselves." (Robert Fritchey - author of Wetland Riders)

 

 
 
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Oceans are large, they are constantly changing, they are affected by all sorts of human activitivities and natural phenomena, and most of what goes on in them is hidden to us. Unless you're someone who makes a living dealing with the oceans at some level, your primary source of information vis a vis fishing, habitat degradation, etc. is the popular media. Unfortunately, today's journalists, producers and editors are poorly equipped, either via education, background or budget, to appreciate how complex ocean and fisheries issues actually are. Hence reporting on ocean issues - and the vast majority of the public's understanding of them - suffers greatly from today's soundbite culture. Poorly documented (or completely undocumented) press releases, supposed independent researchers bought and paid for by agenda-driven foundations, recreational fishing columnists who are little more than industry shills, short-sighted politicians whose interests extend no farther than keeping narrowly focused pressure groups happy, and competition among user groups are all conspiring to obscure what's really going on in the world's oceans today. Our goal is to present the "other side" of the picture, to do the research that isn't being done, and to - in the words of Watergate's Deep Throat - "follow the money." We need rational ocean policies, and we're never going to have them if our decision makers, and the public they are serving, don't fully appreciate what's going on.  

 
"No one expects that the terrestrial environment in 2008 is going to bear any resemblance to what it was in 1908. With almost 7 billion people, well over a billion motor vehicles, a quarter of our land area devoted to growing livestock feed or for grazing, and our per capita consumption of just about everything at levels that were unthinkable a hundred years ago, how could they? What we’ve been doing on the land is at best reflected and at worst concentrated in our inshore and offshore waters. Yet the “conservationist” agenda and our fisheries management system assume that the carrying capacity of our marine waters hasn’t changed in a century, and that when that capacity isn’t reached, it’s time to cut back on fishing once again. How much of this economically devastating cutting back can the commercial fishing industry endure?"(http://www.fishnet-usa.com/
fishing_centric_management.htm)
 Read "From another perspective," Nils Stolpe's regular column published in National Fisherman.

Contact Nils Stolpe at nilsstolpe@fishnet-usa.com

Did they really write that?

"Daniel Pauly, the director of the Fisheries Center at the University of British Columbia and a noted expert on global fishing trends, cites the example of the earliest anglers, Stone Age peoples in Africa who eradicated a six-foot-long catfish 90,000 years ago and then moved on to another animal. 'This pattern,' Pauly says, of fishermen 'exterminating the population upon which they originally relied, and then moving on to other species, has continued ever since.'" (The Catch, P. Greenberg, NY Times, 10/23/05)

 "In the developing world, entire countries depend on fishing. If fishing is doing what we say, then essentially, there is no tomorrow for them. We can expect that in a few decades there will be no fish left." (Daniel Pauly quoted in In A Few Decades, There Will Be No Fish, D. Jones, The Toronto Globe and Mail, 10/29/05)

 '"I realized one has to work through the public and the conservation community," he (Daniel Pauly) said, adding that he has received international notice partly because he is not "one of the gloomies." While other scientists deliver dire messages about the state of the world, he says, "I always laugh, because it's so absurd that it is funny. People think [others are] gloomy, and they know I am saying the same thing, but they don't put me among the gloomies.'" (In the same Globe and Mail article cited above)

Unless Dr. Pauly means something other than crepe hangers when he refers to "gloomies," not only is he one of them; as his words demonstrate so precisely, he might be considered a charter member of the club.