NARRAGANSETT, R.I., — June 12, 2013 — A growing online database of worldwide fisheries research is helping scientists better understand the relationship between managing fishing pressures and restoring depleted fish stocks, a Rutgers University professor said at a lecture Tuesday at the University of Rhode Island.
The data should help dispel a common misperception that once a population has collapsed, it cannot rebound, said Olaf Jensen, an assistant professor at Rutgers’ Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.
“Stocks do and can recover,” he said. “There is no evidence of a point of no return. … Most fish populations seem to retain their resiliency.”
But, in one of his many “good-news, bad-news” contrasts, Jensen noted that three-quarters of 62 depleted stocks worldwide continue to be fished at intensities too great to allow populations to rebound.
Jensen spoke at the Graduate School of Oceanography as part of an annual public lecture series sponsored by the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting.
In his remarks, he emphasized that managing fisheries is far more complicated than simply telling fishermen to stop catching a particular species and that decisions involve countless tradeoffs.
And while the RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Database is a growing boon to researchers around the world, Jensen said, the science is still particularly challenging.
“Counting fish is like counting trees,” Jensen said, quoting a colleague, “except they’re harder to see and they move around.”
Furthermore, some nations conduct little research or keep secret the results of their research for proprietary reasons.