Posted by John M. on February 08, 2004 at 14:48:06:
In Reply to: CONFLICTING SCIENCE ON MARINE RESERVES posted by Chris on February 08, 2004 at 13:50:10:
Am now scanning through sections of the Robert Shipp anti-reserve piece. He covers fished species around the US, but one of the groups he looks at on the Pacific Coast is rockfish. He lists the "reserve benefits for maximum sustainable yield" for rockfish as "limited; reserves not as important as stringent traditional management measures".
THEN, in the text, he explains that of the 16 rockfish species where the population status is known, "overfishing is no longer occurring on any stocks." He goes on to imply that because the traditional fisheries managers have restricted this fishery, it'll all be OK... nothing more is really needed.
What he neglects to mention is that the overfishing is no longer occurring BECAUSE there were so few of these species left that they had to close pretty close to the entire fishery.
If we let them drive a species to near extinction, then finally realize they've done so and close the fishery (both commercially and recreationally) darn close to everywhere, then the traditional fisheries managers are doing a good job and we all should be happy and relax about it all????
He also notes that careful consideration should be given to the economic impacts of any further action taken to attempt to restore rockfish populations. Folks, the entire California commercial fisheries annual ex-vessel value is $100 million. We're destroying our ocean for peanuts. The car tax repeal cost $4000 million ($4 billion), but we're worried about negatively impacting one portion of a $100 million industry! (Yep, the value goes up when you include processors, etc, but it doesn't go up that much...)
Does he think we're idiots?