Three years ago, Dalhousie marine biologist Boris Worm made
international headlines when he warned that all the world’s seafood
could disappear by 2048 unless drastic measures were taken to protect
fisheries.
Worm’s paper, “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem
Services,” which was published in the journal Science, was hotly
contested by other scientists, including fishery scientist Ray Hilborn,
of the University of Washington.
Both scientists, who are considered leaders in their respective
fields, were invited to debate the issue on the American National
Public Radio show On Point. But, rather than the expected knockdown,
drag-out battle of feuding academics, the pair found common ground.
“In talking to each other live on air,” Worm explains, “we realized
that we were agreeing on more things than it first appeared. Also, we
had a shared sense of purpose in helping to end overfishing. We
realized that this was a chance for collaboration, and bringing two
historically divided schools of thought together.”
That meeting of minds led last week to the publication, also in
Science, of “Rebuilding Global Fisheries.” The paper, with lead
authors Worm and Hilborn, was co-authored by 19 other marine biologists
and fisheries scientists, hailing from five continents.
“This study was about trying to find all the possible data sources,
all the evidence that could help us understand the fisheries situation,
both globally and region-by-region,” says Worm. “Nobody has been able
before to look this deeply into this, I believe.”
The result is that while Worm’s dire 2006 warnings were correct,
some fisheries have been turned around thanks to proper management.
“Overfishing is not a one-way street, if we act in time,”
stresses Worm. “We must transform our relationship to the ocean, from
historical over-exploitation to a new focus on recovery. Instead of
asking, ‘How can we get it,’ let’s ask, ‘How can we bring it back.'”
—Tim Bousquet
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This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2009.
This is almost exactly like the propaganda article that appeared in the Dal internal publication, DalNews, found here (it is even the same happy picture):
http://dalnews.dal.ca/2009/07/30/BorisWorm…
Unfortunately, both these pieces overlook Worm’s more specific findings about the Atlantic Canada fisheries:
http://www.canada.com/Atlantic+fisheries+s…
“Recovery rates in Eastern Canada are slow or non-existent, said Boris Worm” to canada.com.
I interviewed Dr. Worm directly for this article.
And, I’ve written much on the state of our fisheries. See:
http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/the-catch/C…
I follow fisheries news closely, and was aware of the new Science article the day it came out, well before Dal’s press release was issued.
No one is minimizing the state of the fisheries. Rather, the message is that despite the dire threats facing the fisheries, there is, even at this late date, something we can do about it.
Tim, I’m sorry but you did an amazingly poor job. Especially painful is the second to last paragraph of your article:
“The result is that while Worm’s dire 2006 warnings were correct, some fisheries have been turned around thanks to proper management.”
The 2048 is not taken seriously (and is even scorned and used as a punch line) by the almost all fishery scientist with at least rudimentary quantitative skills (as well as any first-year statistics student).
The methodology for the 2048 prediction is flawed and has been described numerous times in the literature. To quote a paper by Ray Hilborn “Reinterpreting the State of Fisheries and their Management (caption Figure 2)”:
This analysis (Worm et al. 2006)estimates that currently more than 50% of the stocks in the region have collapsed, whereas abundance-based analysis (grey squares) shows only 2 out of 32 stocks were overfished in 1999 NMFS (1999) and 2005 (NMFS 2005). This ecosystem is widely regarded as one of the
best managed fishing systems in the world. The specific problem with this analysis by Worm and others (2006) is that for
over half of the stocks in the data-base, there are no regular catch statistics and most collapses are artifacts of how catches
are estimated.
I could go on and on but critical evaluation is supposed to be your job. You dropped the ball: Pathetic.
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