Hilborn-Worm: Not a Human Interest Story
The New York Times failed to mention that the fish stocks in the Northeast have rebounded quite well. This is one of the most positive aspects of the report as well as the one most relevant to New York readers, and it happened without the imposition of catch shares.
If you’re at all familiar with fishing issues, and if you’re reading this it’s a safe bet that you are, you’re aware of the publication in the current issue of the journal Science of an important article dealing with fisheries management from a global perspective. In the article, Rebuilding Global Fisheries, lead authors Ray Hilborn and Boris Worm and over a dozen coauthors conclude that not all is doom and gloom in the world’s fisheries and that we’re not facing the inevitable decline of all of our fisheries culminating in an ocean filled with jellyfish and similar critters.
There’s been a reasonable amount of media coverage of the article, and I don’t intend to add to or rehash any of it here, so to stay informed I suggest that you examine some of it on your own (starting with Richard Gaines’ work in the Gloucester Times). What to me is much more interesting is the character of some of that coverage, particularly relative to the coverage of other “blockbuster” fisheries research that we’ve been subject to over the past few years.
For anyone familiar with the real-world status of domestic or international fisheries, the article didn’t break any new ground. Most simply stated, some of the world’s fisheries are in good shape, some are improving, some are in trouble, and fisheries management can and does work though it’s not effectively applied everywhere. There aren’t any revelations there unless your understanding of fisheries issues is no more profound than that provided by the anti-fishing, marine conservationist claque with their “the oceans are devastated and it’s all the fishing industry’s fault” mantra.
Also not news, though still edifying to see in print, is the fact that the fisheries off the Northeast US were doing well and getting better (be on the lookout for an upcoming issue of FishNet USA in which I’ll be writing about what’s really happening with the New England groundfish fishery). Management in New England and the Mid-Atlantic is paying off, at least for the fish.
Most of the media coverage of the report made note of this, adopting the general tone that things aren’t as bad as they might be, and there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
However, a curt press release by Rebecca Goldburg, director of Marine Science at the Pew Environment Group (which along with all of the other Pew-supported organizations has been part of a frighteningly well-financed campaign pushing for a revolution in how we mange our fisheries and our oceans) totally ignored all of the positive content in the report, ending with "two scientists who once held opposing views about the state of ocean fisheries now agree about the significance of global fisheries declines and the solutions needed to reverse these trends. If fishery managers worldwide heed these important scientific findings, then we have an extraordinary opportunity to restore ocean fisheries." No surprises there, why would anyone connected with the Pew machine want to admit that there’s anything positive going on in the oceans? Pew’s been pushing an agenda, and why should that change?
But what about the supposedly objective media?
In her coverage, Cornelia Dean at the New York Times focused almost exclusively on the “human” dimensions, rhapsodizing about scientists from two previously opposing camps finally coming together for the greater good of us all, and of the world’s oceans and fisheries.
While she did report that the authors “wrote that management techniques like closing some areas to fishing, restricting the use of certain fishing gear or allocating shares of the catch to individual fishermen, communities or others could allow depleted fish stocks to rebound,” Ms. Dean failed to mention that the fish stocks in the Northeast have rebounded quite well. This is one of the most positive aspects of the report as well as the one most relevant to New York Times readers, and it happened without the imposition of catch shares. Need I mention that catch shares, in essence a system of privatization of our fisheries, are at the foundation of the fisheries management revolution that the Pew campaign has been fomenting?
Looking back at Ms. Dean’s coverage of the publication by Boris Worm that was the first in the string of events that led to the recent Science article (Study Sees ‘Global Collapse’ of Fish Species, 11/03/2006), she went much farther into the scientific nitty-gritty, among other things quoting Jane Lubchenco, at the time at Oregon State University and now head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as saying the article was “compelling…. It’s a meta analysis and there are challenges in interpreting those, but when you get the same patterns over and over and over, that tells you something.” Somehow Ms. Dean failed to get Dr. Lubchenco’s reaction to Rebuilding Global Fisheries, about as close as one can get to an outright refutation of the study she found so compelling, and one by that study’s principal author. Now there’s an opportunity that I can’t imagine any journalist passing up, but Ms. Dean did.
(As a perhaps relevant aside, Josh Reichert, Director of the Pew Trusts’ Environment Program, fully endorsed Dr. Worm’s earlier work.)
Is Ms. Dean’s coverage of Rebuilding Global Fisheries reporting or is it editorializing? The people at the New York Times didn’t identify Ms. Dean’s piece as “opinion” so it’s probably meant to be the former. However, when looked at in relation to her reporting on Dr. Worm’s prior, though objectively less compelling, work and considering her penchant to educate Pew-supported researchers in how to deal with the media in tropical resorts (see Sea Around US Project Newsletter, November/December, 2002 at NewsLetter ), is that what the readers of the New York Times, still one of the most important daily newspapers in the country, are actually getting?
Do a web search on “Cornelia Dean Pew” and compare any of the pieces Ms. Dean has written on Pew funded, supported or endorsed initiatives to her almost totally dismissive coverage of the good news content of Rebuilding Global Fisheries. While she did write “but they [the authors] also agreed that fish in well-managed areas, including the United States, were recovering or doing well,” that’s hardly the take home message I came away with.
One of the most important points in Rebuilding Global Fisheries is that managing fisheries as we have been doing it in the United States has been and will continue to be effective. We don’t need a revolution in fisheries management to get to sustainable fisheries because in fishery after fishery we are either there or well on the way and the mega-foundations that are pouring money into “reforming” how we do it would do well to find something really useful to do with their dollars. For whatever reason, that got right by Ms. Dean. Unfortunately, that means that it probably got by the people who read the New York Times.
They deserve more than that, and so do our fishermen and those that depend on them.