Saving Seafood

Ray Hilborn receives international fisheries science prize

May 26, 2016 — Ray Hilborn, a UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, this week will receive the 2016 International Fisheries Science Prize at the World Fisheries Congress in Busan, South Korea.

The award is given to Hilborn by the World Council of Fisheries Societies’ International Fisheries Science Prize Committee in recognition of his 40-year career of “highly diversified research and publication in support of global fisheries science and conservation,” according to a news release.

For Hilborn, who has received numerous awards for his research — including the Volvo Environment Prizeand the Ecological Society of America’s Sustainability Science Award — this recognition is particularly significant because it comes from other experts in fisheries science.

“It’s very gratifying in that it is experts in fisheries that are doing the evaluation and selection for this award,” Hilborn said.

Read the full story at the University of Washington

JES HATHAWAY: Getting Past Greenpeace

May 17, 2016 — I will admit, I was relieved to see a piece from the broader scientific community (not just fisheries science) that defends Ray Hilborn against the attack Greenpeace launched against him last week.

Hilborn defended himself quite well almost immediately, which is no surprise, given his reputation for being even-keeled, plainspoken and precise.

But this bulleted defense from Southern Fried Science, “Six thoughts about Greenpeace’s attack on Ray Hilborn,”doesn’t just defend Hilborn, it’s a defense of the scientific community. As it should be, because the Greenpeace attack was in effect a declaration of war on all scientists who specialize in a field of study. If you get close enough to a subject, you’re bound to work with groups that have a vested interest in the same subject. That’s how research specialists do their work. What Greenpeace is claiming is that if a scientist does not list in full his or her entire CV of funding with every article, op-ed, interview, paper, panel discussion, etc., then they’re hiding something.

Read the full story at the National Fisherman

Hilborn: Greenpeace attacks funding issue because science is sound

May 13, 2016 — University of Washington fishery scientist Ray Hilborn has responded to Greenpeace’s accusation that he often fails to disclose industry funding when writing or speaking about the extent of overfishing.

In a letter sent Wednesday to university president Ana Mari Cauce, Greenpeace filed a complaint against Hilborn’s research practices, and asked for an investigation.

Hilborn, over the years, has been a critic of Greenpeace as well as other environmental groups and researchers he accuses of overstating the impacts of fishing on marine resources.

“Greenpeace is unable to attack the science I and my collaborators do; science that threatens their repeated assertions that overfishing is universal and that the oceans are being emptied,” he said in a response on his blog.

“On the contrary it is clear that where effective fisheries management is applied, stocks are increasing not declining, and this is true in North America and Europe as well as a number of other places. Overfishing certainly continues to be a problem in the Mediterranean, much of Asia and Africa.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ANDREW THALER: Six thoughts about Greenpeace’s attack on Ray Hilborn.

May 13, 2016 — First, some background:

Or, just read Trevor Branch’s timeline.

1. The idea that scientists should declare every source of funding over the history of their career on every scientific paper is impractical and wholly unnecessary in a connected world where anyone can effortlessly access a researcher’s CV. Non-profit NGOs only need to file one financial disclosure statement every year, not attach it to every press release, and that is also perfectly adequate.

2. Transparency in funding is important. Claiming that a researcher is failing to disclose funding information when that information clearly is available and accessible erodes public trust in science and makes everyone’s job harder. Greenpeace didn’t send a team of stealth lawyers on an o’dark thirty raid of the UW mainframe, they asked for the information and were given it.

Read the full opinion piece at Southern Fried Science

Fisheries scientists to address flaws in past forage fish research

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – May 2, 2016 – Dr. Ray Hilborn, a marine biologist and fisheries scientist at the University of Washington, has launched a new initiative aimed at addressing key issues surrounding forage fish science and the impacts of forage fishing on predator species. Dr. Hilborn’s Forage Fish Project is one of several scientific efforts occurring in the next few months to expand the existing body of scientific research on forage fish.

Comprised of 14 renowned fisheries scientists from around the globe, the Forage Fish Project held its inaugural conference last month in Hobart, Australia, where it identified shortcomings in the existing forage fish research. Specifically, it found several issues with work produced by the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, whose April 2012 report, “Little Fish, Big Impact,” concluded forage fish are vulnerable to overfishing, among other findings.

The Forage Fish Project, which includes two members of the Lenfest Task Force, began work to address these flaws, with the goal of producing an accompanying study later this year.

In Hobart, Project members found that most of the models used in previous forage fish studies, like the Lenfest Task Force report, left out factors such as the natural variability of forage fish stocks, and the extent of size overlap between fisheries and predators. The group also found multiple indications that the Lenfest study greatly overstated the negative impact of forage fishing on predator species.

“Most [food web] models were not built with the explicit intention of evaluating forage fish fisheries, so unsurprisingly many models did not include features of forage fish population biology or food web structure that are relevant for evaluating all fishery impacts,” according to minutes from the Hobart meeting.

Two upcoming fishery management workshops will also evaluate forage species on the East and West Coasts of the U.S., the first organized by the Southwest Fisheries Science Center and the Pacific Fishery Management Council. The workshop, which will be held in La Jolla, Calif., from May 2-5, will focus on how to improve stock assessment methods for northern anchovy and other coastal pelagic species. Attendees will evaluate model-based assessment approaches based on routinely assessed pelagic species from around the world, consider non-assessment approaches to estimate fish stocks, and develop recommendations for how the SWFSC should evaluate coastal pelagic fish stocks in the future.

A similar forage fish workshop will be held May 16-17 in Portland, Maine. This workshop will focus on Atlantic herring, with the goal of establishing a rule to specify its acceptable biological catch (ABC), the recommended catch level for any given fish species. An effective ABC rule will consider the role of Atlantic herring in the ecosystem, stabilize the fishery at a level that will achieve optimum yield, and address localized depletion in inshore waters.

Ultimately, these various forage fish workshops and projects are striving to use the best available science to update previous research and determine sound management practices for forage species.

Read the full minutes from the Forage Fish Project conference in Hobart, Australia

Learn more about the upcoming coastal pelagic species workshop in La Jolla, Calif.

Learn more about the upcoming Atlantic herring workshop in Portland, Maine

Professor Ray Hilborn wins 2016 International Fisheries Science Prize

April 11, 2016 — SAVING SEAFOOD — Professor Ray Hilborn, of the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, was recognized by the World Council of Fisheries Societies for his contributions to fishery management science.

“Professor Hilborn has had an extremely impressive career of highly diversified research and publication in support of global fisheries science and conservation. Throughout his 40-year career, Ray has been a model of dynamic and innovative science, and in the application of this work to the ever-changing problems of fisheries management and conservation in both marine and freshwater ecosystems. Professor Hilborn’s Prize will be awarded at the World Fisheries Congress in Busan, South Korea in late May.”

In recent years, Professor Hilborn has been one of the organizers of the Ram legacy Database at the University of Washington, which is the most complete global database on fish stocks, biomass surveys and catch history ever assembled.  The resulting analysis and modeling from this database have not only united many fisheries scientists around the world who had been portrayed by the media as opposing each other in terms of fisheries conservation issues, but the database has also served to highlight a road map for fisheries conservation efforts over the next twenty years.

As a result of these efforts, Hilborn has been instrumental in changing the perception that fish stocks were being fished to extinction and instead has shown that when fisheries management principles are properly applied, strong stock recoveries take place.

Frustrated by the public misperception about the actual state of major fisheries, Hilborn and other colleagues have created cfood a website scientists use to communicate with journalists and the general public about fisheries science issues.  The database, and website, have been particularly helpful in countering organizations who use distorted or outdated fisheries science to alarm regulators and the public.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

Here’s How the Number of Fish in the Ocean Could More Than Double by 2050

March 31, 2016 — Fish populations around the world have been decimated by overfishing — but new research suggests that this could soon change if the world got its act together.

Fishermen around the world could haul around 16 million more metric tons of fish than they do today and generate $53 billion more in profits while more than doubling the amount of fish left in the oceans by 2050 if they adopted sustainable fishing practices, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Those practices would involve a so-called “catch share” model of fisheries management. In catch share systems, regulators figure out the maximum number of fish that can be hauled from the sea without hurting future fish populations. The regulators then divvy up that amount of fish into shares that are distributed to individual fishermen. Each fisherman has a set amount of fish they are can catch in the year.

“If you can reform fisheries and eliminate their competitive nature, there’s enormous room for profits, catch, and abundance,” said Ray Hilborn, a professor of marine biology and fisheries science at the University of Washington who co-authored the study with researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Read the full story at VICE News

Good Management can Lead to a More Sustainable Future

March 30, 2016 — A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows that there is a triple bottom line, that abundance, catch and profit can all be increased by reforming fisheries management in places where it has not been reformed. It provides the most comprehensive estimates of the status of global fisheries and shows that the large fish stocks of the world that provide 95% of global catch on average are at about the abundance that would produce long term maximum yield, and fishing pressure on average is below traditional targets. Less than 20% of fish stocks appear to be overfished by U.S. standards.

Comment by Ray Hilborn, University of Washington, @hilbornr:

The paper by Costello and others (including myself) Global fishery prospects under contrasting management regimes that appeared March 28 in PNAS, provides the most comprehensive assessment of the status and potential of global fisheries. Its key finding is that when stocks are overfished, most can recover within 10 years if the appropriate management measures are taken. This means that globally we could have more catch, more fish in the ocean and more profit. Most of the potential for this “triple bottom line” comes from Asia where fisheries are both large, and at present, mostly unmanaged. We must distinguish between fisheries that are reformed and those that are poorly regulated and remain in a race to fish.

Diving deeper into the estimated current status of fish stocks, we find it depends greatly on the size of the stock. Although the paper examined the status of 4,324 individual stocks, just 719 of them provide 96% of the catch. From the perspective of catch, profitability, and fish in the ocean, it is the 719 that are critical and feed us.

Read the full story at CFood

Research finds trawling not as devastating as often portrayed

November 23, 2015 — An ongoing two-year independent study on trawling and its effect on benthic sea life — species that live on sea floors where trawling occurs – has found that the practice may not be as devastating as it is portrayed by some NGOs.

The study called, ‘Trawling: Finding Common Ground on the Scientific Knowledge Regarding Best Practices’, is being funded by the Walton Foundation and the Packard Foundation in partnership with the National Fisheries Institute, and is being done by a group of international scientists who are collecting and assessing data of global sea floors where trawling occurs.

The major data collection and analysis for the project has been completed, including assessments of mobile bottom contact gear in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, South Africa and most of the US, making it six times more extensive than and previous compilations.

According to Ricardo Amoroso of the University of Washington, who presented the data at this year’s Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle, public perception of trawling is often negative. Common public beliefs include the equivalent of 10 football fields are trawled every four seconds and that trawling is turning the seafloor into a desert.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

JOHN SACKTON: Media’s Rampant ‘Fisheries Are Going Extinct’ Claim Finally has Serious Rebuttal from Scientists

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [The Editor’s View] by John Sackton — Nov 3, 2015 — The following headline came across our newsfeed this morning “Some South China Sea fish ‘close to extinction'”, courtesy of Agence France Presse.

The report was based on a quote from Rashid Sumaila, director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit of the University of British Columbia.

“The South China Sea is… under threat from various sources. We need to do something,” said Sumaila.

“The most scary thing is the level of decline we have seen over the years. Some species (are facing) technically extinction or depletion,” Sumaila, who headed the study, told a press conference in Hong Kong. 

Having not seen the paper, it is not possible to evaluate his statements. But they are readily taken up because they feed into a media narrative that has proved very hard to change: fisheries around the world are dying because of human greed and overfishing.  This narrative has been central to NGO campaigns focused on fisheries. 

For many years, there was no organized response, and especially no way for journalists to get accurate scientific information. If they were fed a quote, such as “90% of the worlds stocks were unsustainably harvested” as appeared in Newsweek this summer, or that fish is ‘aquatic bushmeat’ comparable to eating monkeys and rhinoceros, as was said by Sylvia Earle, they have no way to evaluate its truthfulness. No wonder that seafood seems so controversial.

A group of scientists has come together through Ray Hilborn and his colleagues at the University of Washington, that is finally providing real-time commentary and rebuttal – i.e. pointing out the basic science – which in many cases does not support these media stories. 

Our companion story today by Peggy Parker has more detail on Hilborn’s rebuttal to Newsweek, where he said one article ‘may set a record for factual errors’.

The idea is not to simply point out poor science and unsupported conclusions, but to encourage media to use their website cfooduw.org, as a resource whenever they see a scientific claim about fisheries.

For example, just in the past few days, scientists from around the world have posted comments on a range of global topics.

Hilborn pointed out, and the Newsweek editors accepted, a correction that not 90%, but 28.8% of fish stocks were estimated as overfished. Would they have run the story if they had not been pitched intitally that 90% of fish stocks have collapsed?

Steve Cadrin of the University of Massachusetts comments on recent articles about cod in both New England and Newfoundland.  He says “The lesson from both of these papers is that rebuilding the stocks to historical levels depends both on fisheries management … and on the return of favorable environmental conditions.” 

“Stock assessment models are simplifications of a much more complex reality. Stock assessments typically assume that components of productivity (survival from natural mortality, reproductive rates, growth) are relatively constant. These assumptions may be reasonable for relatively stable ecosystems. However, considering the extreme climate change experienced in the Gulf of Maine, such assumptions need to be re-considered.  Alternative approaches to science and management are needed to help preserve the fishing communities that rely on Gulf of Maine cod.” 

Two tuna scientists collaborate on a story in response to the charge by Greenpeace that John West is breaking its sustainable tuna pledge by buying fish caught with FADs.

FADs are a type of fishing gear (radio monitored fish aggregating devices) that have become very widely used for pelagic tuna. The two scientists, Laurent Dagorn and Gala Moreno, point out in a comment and a recent paper the important issues with FADs are 1) quantifying, with scientific data, how big that impact actually is, 2) determining if the impact is acceptable for the amount and diversity of fish caught, 3) comparing it with the impact of other fishing gears, and 4) implementing measures to reduce an impact if it is too high for the ecosystem, taking into account all fishing impacts. 

This provides a real road map for a discussion of FADs and how they should or should not be used, in contrast to the campaign claims that they are simply destructive types of fishing gear.  Dagorn and Moreno point out that all food production (including organic farming) involves making choices about modifying ecosystems, and tuna fishing should not be considered in isolation, but in how it meets the goal of providing food for global populations.

Aggregating and making this kind of fisheries science easily accessible is one of the most concrete actions that has been taken in years to counteract the misinformation that so many of us in the industry experience every day. 

It is an effort that deserves wholehearted support, including publicizing the resource to local writers and editors. Please visit their website at cfooduw.org.

This opinion piece originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.