Saving Seafood

Retraction: Study of marine protected areas deemed flawed with conflict of interest

December 17, 2021 — Sometimes fishermen get lucky, and their complaints about flawed data get noticed by scientists. Such was the case with an article about Marine Protected Areas that’s been used to justify a new push for ocean zoning — including the recent 30×30 initiative to shutter up to 30 percent of the nation’s waters.

“A retraction is a Big Deal in science, especially from a prominent journal,” wrote Max Mossler in a post on the University of Washington’s Sustainable Fisheries UW.

It’s an even bigger deal — or should be — if that article is being used to position policy at the federal level.

The original piece, Mossler writes, “claimed that closing an additional 5 percent of the ocean to fishing would increase fish catches by 20 percent.” Some of the biggest titles in the mainstream press picked it up.

We’re talking End of Fish by 2048-level propaganda.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Stuck at home? Here’s a fine way to find fish

September 17, 2020 — Between 85% and 90% of all seafood is consumed in restaurants or purchased from retail stores. So when COVID-19 struck in March, the seafood industry went into shock.

Gone were the restaurants that bought millions of pounds of seafood, including our beloved salmon, a mainstay of Pacific Northwest good eating. In 2017, for instance, Washington state’s total commercial catch was 666 million pounds—and that’s just one state’s catch.

Into this desperate situation stepped Max Mossler, ’16, managing editor and developer of Sustainable Fisheries, an entity of the UW School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences that explains the science of sustainable seafood. Mossler developed a Fish Map from information he collated from hundreds of commercial fishing lists. The map is a way for commercial fishing companies to sell their products directly to consumers. Want some fresh fish? Visit the website and tap one of the balloons on the map to see the name of the fishing enterprise and the type of fish on the “menu.”

Read the full story at University of Washington Magazine