Beyond our scope

(from the February, 2009 issue of National Fisherman)

The American Prospect describes itself as “an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas...” With a website that attracts a million visitors daily, and a paid circulation of 37,000 it’s anything but inconsequential.

Accordingly, I approached the article in it on November 24th “Saving the Fishbanks” by journalist Colin Woodard (he also writes for The Christian Science Monitor) with trepidation. This was justified, not just because it was more of the same old same old, but because Mr. Woodard did such a curiously lopsided job of reporting on the underlying – or not – science and the involved scientists.

He reported on the work of, and quoted, Boris Worm, Callum Roberts, Dan Pauly and Elliot Norse, four premier ocean crepe hangers funded by OFCT. While that is troubling, even more troubling is that he reported their work, which I don’t consider as anything but advocacy science, as accepted fact. For example, he wrote of fisheries managers being concerned with the decline of the large sharks on the eastern seaboard but missing “the knock-on effects (of the decline), which included the decimation of North Carolina bay scallops, Chesapeake oysters, and other shellfish.” I addressed this in a previous column, identifying it as the latest “fishing is the root of all oceanic evil speculation” based on nothing more substantive than shark and selected shellfish populations declining simultaneously (see http://www.fishnet-usa.com/natfish_sharks_rays.htm). He also covered “fishing down the food chain,” a supposed phenomena for which there is no supporting evidence in the U.S. fisheries (see http://www.fishnet-usa.com/then_now.html), the totally unsubstantiated and generally scoffed at prediction that “the world’s commercial wild-caught seafood species will have collapsed by 2048,” and that “ninety percent of the world’s large predatory fish have been harvested since 1950,” an idea that found virtually no acceptance in that segment of the scientific community that hasn’t been swayed out of any semblance of objectivity by big-buck foundation funding.   

On the slightly bright side, the anti-fishing science that Mr. Woodard reported on was “news” from several years or more back; nothing new and nothing particularly newsworthy from the sound bite perspective that controls news today. Perhaps once you’ve predicted that the oceans will be empty of useful fish in forty years, there’s not much more to say. Even brighter, he also gave a lot of space to NMFS Chief Scientist Steve Murawski and Portland Fish Exchange general manager Bert Jongerden, both making it clear that our fisheries were improving, and to Maine fisherman Ted Ames and his controversial ideas for increased local control of fisheries. To his credit, Mr. Woodard didn’t focus entirely on bad news, but then how could he?

U.S. fishermen are getting better at conservation, and Mr. Woodard did mention that the OFCT scientists grudgingly recognized that.

In fact, as far as the world’s fisheries are concerned, US fishermen are demonstrably among the best. Debunked predictions of oceanic catastrophes can’t be laid at their feet. Therefore, why this slavish devotion by supposedly objective writers writing for a predominantly U.S. audience – or by U.S. envirorgs whose membership and influence don’t extend beyond our borders – to supposed excesses that our fishing industry is either beyond or is moving away from at head-spinning (and far too often, budget-busting) speed? Is it just “do-good” idealism or a somewhat darker pragmatism?

Getting back to Mr. Woodard, consider his book, Ocean’s End: Travels Through Endangered Seas. According to Publisher’s Weekly, “drawing on his travels across six continents and 100,000 miles, Woodard skillfully supports his argument that pollution, harmful fishing practices, ignorance and global warming are destroying the world's oceans.” Obviously there’s an audience for material like this, but it’s a U.S. audience understandably focused on U.S. problems. So how can writers like Mr. Woodard, or organizations like Oceana, reach that audience? Sadly, it seems, by some kind of guilt by association that seeks to hold U.S. fishermen responsible for the supposed sins of their fathers or their overseas colleagues.

Suppose Mr. Woodard wrote that most US fisheries are in good shape and getting better (inarguably they are), and that the problems are in the rest of the world? As having a populace that the news media have convinced live in increasingly crime-ridden neighborhoods (they don’t) demonstrates, local crises are the ones that sell. And what are the odds that anyone in Oceana’s world is going to write a check or support legislation to “save” fish in the waters off Somalia or in the Antarctic. Accurate or not, what the US public takes to heart must be a lot closer to home than that.

Nils E. Stolpe