Facts? We don't need no stinkin' facts

(from the November, 2006 issue of National Fisherman)

I am skeptical of efforts by “conservationist” organizations to help the fish or the “fishers.” There are folks who feel this skepticism is misplaced, that those well-meaning “conservationists” are on the side of the angels and their collective utterances should be accepted without question and immediately made the basis of national and international policy.

Occasionally situations arise that clearly justify my skepticism.

In 1998, researcher and Pew Fellow Ransom Myers co-authored a paper in the journal Science claiming that, without government protection, the barndoor skate was facing extinction. News of this ecological disaster was trumpeted far and wide, generating a request to list the species as endangered, pouring more fuel on the anti-trawling fire, providing more justification for marine protected areas, and on and on. The pending extinction was featured in “doom and gloom” publications by the Pew Oceans Commission, the Marine Fish Conservation Network, the American Fisheries Society, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Reference Librarian, and seemingly any other group with space to fill, an ax to grind or a thirst for foundation dollars.

Since then the MPAs haven’t been created, the trawling controls haven’t been put in place and the other measures that would have been mandatory had barndoor skates been declared endangered haven’t been instituted. Have the barndoor skates continued Dr. Myers’ rush to extinction?

Not hardly. In “Super Sized Catches,” NMFS’ Northeast Science Center reported on the most recent Spring Bottom Trawl Survey “the second leg brought in two record catches. The first, at station 212, had 147 barndoor skates that weighed in at 1,304 pounds…. This is triple the number of the next largest catch of barndoors… It is five and a half times the third largest catch…. (it) had almost three times the total number of individuals caught between 1975 and 1990!”

Dr. Myers was just a wee bit off in his Chicken Little predictions. What are the odds that he or anyone at Pew, the Marine Fish Conservation Network or the American Fisheries Society has attempted to set things right?

Then there was a Portland Press Herald Maine Voices column, “Congress can still keep fishery alive,” by Associated Fisheries of Maine’s Maggie Raymond on July 18. Ms. Raymond started out “as Congress prepares to revise the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act it must strike an important balance between the conservation of fish and the preservation of fishing communities.” She continued with an argument supporting legislation sponsored by Congressmen Pombo of California and Franks of Massachusetts, then wrote that the groundfish fishery “stands on the precipice of destruction because so much of our necessary infrastructure is simply unable to keep an economic foothold while being slammed with repeated and overly restrictive regulations.” She finished “less than half the total allowable catch for groundfish set by fisheries scientists was actually landed by New England fishermen. Strict regulations prevented a full harvest. The value of what could have been landed but instead was left in the ocean was nearly $50 million.”

Of course, the antis were (and are) totally opposed to the Pombo/Frank legislation or anything allowing any flexibility in the management process or any leeway to fishing communities. Accordingly, on July 30 Roger Fleming at the Conservation Law Foundation responded. He didn’t specifically rebut anything Ms. Raymond had written. Instead, he wrote that in her column “Maggie Raymond portrays New England's groundfish populations as thriving.” He followed with “Ms. Raymond's failure to disclose her own special interest - one of the fishery's largest trawl vessels - may help explain her mishandling of the facts. It may also explain her advocacy for ‘eliminating government red tape’ and ‘providing flexibility’ to regulators.” He also went through the obligatory groundfish doom-and-gloom litany yet again.

Nils E. Stolpe