Opinion

December 5, 2014 — Bottom line: The California sardine may be the best-managed fishery of its type in the world — the poster fish for effective ecosystem-based management.

Recently the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to change the sardine harvest control rule, increasing the upper limit of the sardine harvest fraction from 15 percent to 20 percent. The decision came after an exhaustive set of scientific workshops and analysis involving more than 60 people, held over the past two years to respond to a research paper that suggested that sea surface temperature (SST) measured at Scripps Pier in Southern California, which had been employed as a proxy for sardine recruitment, was no longer correlated with recruitment success.

But apparently this fact was lost on environmental activists who cried foul to the media, claiming that sardines are crashing, and the management response to the crisis is to just fish harder.

Claims that the council voted for a more aggressive fishing rate miss the point: nothing could be further from the truth. But the truth is complicated.

We know that California’s sardine population is strongly influenced by ocean temperatures: warmer waters tend to increase sardine productivity, while colder waters tend to decrease it.

“The northern sardine stock has been declining for several years due to poor recruitment, and there is concern that it will decline further in the next couple of years,” says Dr. Richard Parrish, one of the authors of the original sardine control rule. “Although no one can predict the environmental conditions that will occur in the future, the pessimistic view is that the northern stock will continue to decline and the optimistic view is that the present warm water conditions will herald increased recruitment.”

Read the full opinion piece at the Monterey Herald

December 11, 2014 — Just as the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council has taken proactive steps to stabilize the Gulf's recreational red snapper fishery and end chronic recreational overages with accountability measures and sector separation, Congressman Jeff Miller of Florida has introduced the Gulf of Mexico Red Snapper Conservation Act of 2013, H.R. 3099.

The bill would shift red snapper management away from the National Marine Fishery Service and to the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission and its member states, essentially undermining the mandates of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act that have rebuilt roughly 60 percent of the nation's overfished stocks since 2006.

Any legislation that removes fishery management for nationally economically important species like red snapper from the successes of the Magnuson-Stevens Acts to the Gulf States Commission and its state partners could destabilize the fishery and erode the progress made under a management system that has had many proven and measurable successes.

For certain, the road to Gulf recreational red snapper recovery, one we are still navigating by the way, has not been without its fair share of potholes and dangerous curves. We recreational anglers have witnessed our average size fish get bigger, while our seasons grow shorter and shorter as we reach our quota quicker.

But the other 800-pound gorilla in the room is the shortening of seasons due to the Gulf States extending state-water days longer than those of the federal season. The National Marine Fishery Service must shorten recreational fishing days in federal waters to account for the additional catch created by the longer, liberal state seasons. This dynamic has led to mistrust of the National Marine Fisheries Service's management system without considering the state's actions.

Read the full opinion piece at Al.com

December 10, 2014 — It's been 11 months now since Congress allocated $75 million in federal disaster funds to help ease the effects of the economic disaster that has befallen fisheries around the nation, with more than $30 million targeted to aid the Northeast groundfishery, and $14.9 million of it headed for Massachusetts.

Yet, nearly a year later, even the second phase of the three-pronged aid distribution remains in limbo, still not in the hands of the fishermen, shoreside businesses, crew workers and others who not only need the money, but are entitled to it.

So it's good to see Massachusetts' two senators — Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey — and New Bedford-based congressman William Keating press federal Department of Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker to accelerate the release of $8.3 million to the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries for its disbursement to the fishermen and others on this disaster's front lines.

And it's high time that they also looked into a next phase of allocation to provide a more fitting level of assistance to an industry that is not only caught in the existing "economic disaster" first declared in 2012, but in a worsening crisis given the fact that, in the Northeast and specifically affecting Gloucester, new landing limits clamped on the industry beginning last spring, and now a set of inshore closures decreed by NOAA's Northeast administrator, John Bullard, have plunged the industry into a more dire state than it faced two years ago — even with the first round of federal aid.

Read the full editorial from The Gloucester Daily Times

December 11, 2014 — In the battle against inept federal management of Gulf of Mexico red snapper populations, Mobile's freshman congressman Bradley Byrne is attracting regional attention and support. Alabama anglers ought to keep heat on Alabama's other House and Senate members to actively back Byrne's efforts

Coastal Alabamians, whether fishing enthusiasts or not, are by now well familiar with the problems of federal management. Ample evidence, in most cases incontrovertible, shows that the feds understate the amount of snapper in the Gulf and vastly overstate the amount of snapper actually caught. The mismeasurement is especially egregious, both ways, in Alabama.

Based on these huge mismeasurements, the feds impose shorter and shorter snapper seasons, and smaller catch limits, almost annually. This year the Alabama snapper season was nine days; in 2015 it might be cut to two. The shortened season is a huge blow to the Alabama tourism/recreation economy and of course a massive infringement on the avocations of hundreds of thousands of sportsmen. It's also environmentally unsound: Rising snapper populations crowd out other Gulf species and thus create an eco-system imbalance.

Read the full opinion piece by Quin Hillyer at AL.com

December 9, 2014 — Why is more of the halibut resource wasted in the Bering Sea than landed and sold? Thirteen out of 14 fish in the Central Bering Sea will be wasted next season. Overall, the entire Bering Sea will only have 2.4 million pounds of halibut that can be sold in 2015, while more than 6 million pounds will be killed and thrown overboard as bycatch.

Halibut connects people throughout the state of Alaska. From Ketchikan to St Lawrence Island to Adak, halibut feed our families. We subsist on, find enjoyment with, traditionally revere and honor these fish. Sport, subsistence, charter and commercial fishermen all depend on halibut. Our muscles strain to land them, and — in turn — their muscles make us stronger and sustain us. Why do we allow this resource to be wasted and ruined? These conscious acts are going to ruin us. This is not how we should manage fish so important to us as Alaskans.

Coastal communities throughout the state depend on halibut. We build boats and trailers, hire welders and diesel mechanics, shop at grocery stores and tackle shops, fill our freezers, invest in Bed and Breakfasts and hotels, construct cranes and docks and ramps, collect taxes, travel and invite guests — all for the halibut.

Halibut is an iconic Alaska fish. Its management used to be held up as something good and admirable. Now, it is mealy and obfuscated; no one is taking responsibility. Alaskans need to lead before it’s too late. Is this the gold standard of fishery management at work?

The International Pacific Halibut Commission is supposed to do the biological research and set sustainable limits. All fish stocks fluctuate naturally, and halibut stocks have been in decline for more than a decade. Halibut grow slowly and potentially live for a long time. Unfortunately, the best science shows there are no exceptional or even average cohorts of small fish coming in the near future to save us.

Read the full opinion from the Home Tribune

 

December 8, 2014 — As somebody who has championed science all his career, carrying a lot of water for the profession against its critics on many issues, I am losing faith. Recent examples of bias and corruption in science are bad enough. What’s worse is the reluctance of scientific leaders to criticise the bad apples

Science as a philosophy is in good health; science as an institution increasingly stinks.
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics published a report last week that found evidence of scientists increasingly “employing less rigorous research methods” in response to funding pressures. A 2009 survey found that almost 2 per cent of scientists admitting that they have fabricated results; 14 per cent say that their colleagues have done so.

This month has seen three egregious examples of poor scientific practice. The most recent was the revelation in The Times last week that scientists appeared to scheme to get neonicotinoid pesticides banned, rather than open-mindedly assessing all the evidence. These were supposedly “independent” scientists, yet they were hand in glove with environmental activists who were receiving huge grants from the European Union to lobby it via supposedly independent reports, and they apparently had their conclusions in mind before they gathered the evidence. Documents that have recently come to light show them blatantly setting out to make policy-based evidence, rather than evidence-based policy.

Second example: last week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a supposedly scientific body, issued a press release stating that this is likely to be the warmest year in a century or more, based on surface temperatures. Yet this predicted record would be only one hundredth of a degree above 2010 and two hundredths of a degree above 2005 — with an error range of one tenth of a degree. True scientists would have said: this year is unlikely to be significantly warmer than 2010 or 2005 and left it at that.

Read the full opinion piece at The Global Warming Policy Forum

December 8, 2014 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and their National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) have just made the situation worse and not just for our local fishermen. NOAA is cutting the overall quota in the Gulf of Maine for cod fish for the 2015 fishing season by 75 percent from this year’s 1,550 metric tons (MT) to a mere 386 MT in the Gulf of Maine.

One thing many people agree on these days is that it is increasingly hard to make a decent living. Many point to the widening dichotomy between the incomes of the “haves” and “have-nots.”

Despite a robust stock market and signs of abundant wealth around us, the general feeling is that bringing home the bacon is harder than it was before the financial crisis. As if providing for ourselves is not enough of a challenge, many of us worry about our increasing waistlines, eating a healthy diet, procuring fresh locally sourced items to put on our family’s plates.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and their National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) have just made the situation worse and not just for our local fishermen. NOAA is cutting the overall quota in the Gulf of Maine for cod fish for the 2015 fishing season by 75 percent from this year’s 1,550 metric tons (MT) to a mere 386 MT in the Gulf of Maine. This follows a 77 percent cut the year before. The “compromise” amount of 386 MT is still above the limit of 200 MT that NOAA desired.

Read the full opinion piece at The Scituate Mariner

December 5, 2014 — Bob Shipp says the red snapper stocks in the Gulf of Mexico are healthier "than they've ever been in history." He knows what he's talking about: The New Orleans native chaired the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama for 20 years and served two nine-year stints on the federal Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council. His "Guide to Fishes of the Gulf of Mexico" is a go-to resource for anglers.

Video taken during an August research cruise off Alabama showed reefs teeming with red snapper, he told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Outdoors writer Todd Masson in an interview. That is typical, he said.

Federal fisheries managers aren't able to measure the fish along reefs, the deputy assistant administrator for regulatory programs for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told a congressional panel Thursday.

And there is the problem, at least part of it. Despite NOAA officials' claims to the contrary, the agency doesn't know nearly enough to accurately measure red snapper in the Gulf.

That is why U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, a Republican representing coastal Alabama, and other Gulf Coast officials are pushing for changes in the way snapper is managed. "We have lost confidence in you. … Frankly, I think we've come to the point where we need to take it away from your organization and give it to the people that live in that area who will do it right and do it with sound science," he told the NOAA official Thursday at a hearing on the Gulf of Mexico Red Snapper Conservation Act.

The legislation, which was introduced in 2013 by Florida Rep. Jeff Miller, would shift responsibility for management of red snapper to the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission. That is an interstate compact including Louisiana and other Gulf states.

Read the full story from The Times-Picayune

November 29, 2014 — Claiming purely “scientific” motives, Japan’s political leaders are cynically planning to resume whale hunting in the Southern Ocean, despite the International Court of Justice finding that the Japanese government regularly violated its obligations under the international ban against commercial whaling off Antarctica.

The government suspended this year’s hunt after the March ruling, in which the court noted that about 3,600 minke whales were caught since 2005 to be sold as commercial food, with little if any new research produced about the slain creatures.

Trying to claim adherence to the treaty, the government announced Nov. 18 that it would resume the hunt next year with “famous scientists from home and abroad,” but reduce the kill to 333 minke whales, about a third the number from recent hunts. Humpback and fin whales would no longer be killed.

The plan is a variation on the same evasion of treaty obligations, just as Japan’s insistence on “science” as its prime motive rings hollow in a field where experts say nonlethal research already suffices.

Read the full opinion piece from The New York Times

December 4, 2014 — Good stewardship of the whole watershed matters — from the pristine network of rivers, streams, and lakes where salmon life begins, to the deep ocean waters where they mature and roam until their great migration home again.

For the last 35 years, those dependent upon Bristol Bay have been frustrated by the uncertainty created by federal administrations’ ever-changing positions regarding whether or not to lease Bristol Bay’s rich fishing grounds and adjacent marine waters for offshore oil and gas development. Gov. Jay Hammond first fended off the U.S. Department of the Interior, but by 1988, after Govs. Bill Sheffield and Steve Cowper took up the fight to safeguard the fisheries, all legal recourse was exhausted and the North Aleutian Basin Lease Sale 92 was held, allowing oil and gas development in Bristol Bay to occur.

Exploration would have soon followed, but the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, spewing oil and fouling waters and coastlines for hundreds of miles, changing the course of events.

Congress intervened to postpone exploration on active leases to allow more time to address the risks to Bristol Bay. Fishermen, seafood companies, and conservation groups, with support from Govs. Wally Hickel and Tony Knowles, descended on Washington, D.C., to press the Interior Department to buy back the leases. In 1995, the leases were canceled, the oil companies went away, and fishermen breathed a collective sigh of relief.

But by 2007, the exact same area that had been bought back was once again being considered for development, only to be canceled again a few years later by the current administration.

Read the full opinion piece at Alaska Dispatch News