Clarifications to ‘An achievement in conservation’

I would like to comment on and clarify some misconceptions made by Mr. Ken Kramer in his Letter to the Editor on Wednesday, Aug. 27, in the Saipan Tribune under the heading “An achievement in conservation.”

First, Ken states that commercial fisherman will undoubtedly set up a permanent presence on the outskirts of the marine monument, where they will find the only profitable fishing. The resources that Ken is referring to are primarily pelagic tunas and billfish, which would be the only species that commercial fishermen would be interested in from an economic standpoint. In the fisheries science and management field, we refer to those species as Highly Migratory Species or HMS.

As the name implies, these species migrate great distances across the Pacific Basin, while some even undertake trans-equatorial (across the equator) and trans-oceanic (from one ocean to another) migrations. Additionally, the migratory routes of HMS are influenced by major oceanographic events such as El Niño (sea surface temperature warming), La Niña (sea surface temperature cooling), as well as the dynamic transition zone chlorophyll front, making the migratory routes of HMS highly variable.

Moreover, the spawning of oceanic pelagic species occurs over vast areas in the Pacific in warm surface waters with the locations, much like the migratory routes of adults being heavily influenced by various oceanographic variables. As expected, eggs and larvae are distributed widely. Therefore, the HMS that Ken refers to are not restricted to arbitrarily determined two-dimensional spatial boundaries on the high seas, as proposed by the Pew Environment Group.

Ken has actually confused the spillover effect, often used to describe the movement—due to density dependent factors—of generally shallow-water MPA-reared bottom-habitat dependent fish to adjacent areas outside the MPA boundaries where harvest is permitted, with the reality of the life history and ecology of the pelagic HMS.

Second, Ken writes, “All other oceanic waters are predicted to be overfished by the year 2050, according to numerous scientific reports.” What Ken has referred to was one paper published in 2006 in Science by Worm et al. (2006) that purports a worldwide collapse of fisheries resources by 2048. The publication of this paper, aptly coined as “Tunageddon 2048” by John Tierney of The New York Times (Nov. 4, 2006) for its alarmist assertion, received widely distributed worldwide media coverage at the same time Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and the United Nations was debating a ban on high seas bottom-trawling.

Caputi (2007) suggested that this was a textbook study in disseminating misinformation disguised as science with the express purpose of influencing political debate. The very notion that fisheries worldwide would collapse by a prescribed date caused reactions from extreme concern to practical skepticism. Comments by fishery professionals on the Worm et al (2006) paper noted various shortcomings of the analysis, beginning with the reliability of the data sets used, assumptions made about those data sets, the use of catch data to reflect stock abundance trends, the model used to fit the data, as well as the extrapolation of neashore reef and estuarine studies to pelagic ecosystems (Hlker et al 2007; Jaenicke 2007; Longhurst 2007; Wilberg Miller 2007).

Dr. Ray Hillborn of the University of Washington (CBC.ca News Dec. 8, 2006) in reference to the 2048 deadline (no pun intended) stated that, “This particular prediction has zero credibility within the scientific community.” An earlier prelude paper in Nature authored by Myers Worm (2003) that attempted to conclude that worldwide pelagic fish stocks had been reduced to 10 percent of their original stock size was also widely refuted by prominent fisheries scientists for reasons including but not limited to the use of aggregated catch-per-unit-of-effort (CPUE), interpretation of the aggregated CPUE with respect to individual stocks, misunderstanding of the dynamics of longline fishing and the size and age structure of the target species, and an overly restrictive definition of the spatial scale of the tropical ocean (Walters 2003; Hampton et al 2003; Hampton et al. 2005; Polacheck 2006; Siebert et al 2006; Uozomi 2006).

Hampton et al (2003) concluded that Myers and Worm do the fisheries community a disservice by applying a simplistic analysis to the available data, which exaggerates declines in abundance and implies unrealistic rebuilding benchmarks. Thus, the declared reductions of worldwide pelagic stocks, as well as the notion of a worldwide fisheries collapse by 2048, after appropriate peer-review that included closer examination of the data and the methodologies employed, were concluded to be erroneous.

It should be emphasized that these two studies were funded by the Pew Charitable Trust, whose stated goal is the creation of large ocean no-take MPAs. Forrest Pitcher (2006) noted fundamental scientific flaws with a study that attempted to claim significant overfishing in Australia, to quote: “It is evident that careless interpretation of fisheries statistics increases confusion and may undermine the credibility of legitimate conservation efforts.” The authors then concluded of the Pew-funded study, “We recommend that the Pew Charitable Trust withdraw this report from any further mailings and publish a statement recognizing the ill-informed and misleading nature of the arguments presented within the report.”

It is obviously apparent that the results of any scientific study funded by Pew be viewed with a high-degree of skepticism, as such studies appear to attempt to fit analysis to pre-determined conclusions.

Third, Ken also stated, “…rapidly growing human populations around the world and the billions upon billions of mouths needing nourishment.” In order to feed those billions and billions, as Ken employs the classic expression from the late Dr. Carl Sagan, nations will continue to harvest fisheries resources. Unfortunately, what Pew and their supporters have failed to envision are fisheries that continue to harvest, but in a more efficient and accurate manner. That is, fisheries that harvest the appropriate life cycles of the resource while reducing bycatch, including protected species.

Significant management advances in the reduction of bycatch for the U.S. and Japanese longline fishing fleets have been made in recent years (Boggs 2004; Gilman et al 2005; Gilman et al 2006; Minami et al 2006; Yokota et al 2006), none of which were funded by the Pew Charitable Trust. These highly innovative management measures appear to have escaped the arguments of Pew as they campaign for President Bush’ blue legacy. Without the advancement of such technology, the number and size of pelagic MPAs worldwide will be irrelevant.

Furthermore, the imposition of MPAs without any sound scientific justification is simply akin to drawing random shapes on a map and does nothing to actually improve stocks of HMS or protected species.

Finally, the advocacy-based attempt by Pew to justify their CNMI monument proposal, under a fisheries science veil, fails to address the various components, or ABCs, required to create a functional MPA:

a) Bottom up community management buy-in;

b) An iterative scientific approach to resource management;

c) An analysis of the fisheries stocks and ecosystem conditions and the level of threats facing each;

d) Identification of special life history aspects of each species that are sensitive to fishing pressure or anthropomorphic events (e.g. spawning aggregation areas);

e) Identification of specific objectives for the MPA and a procedure to measure whether these objectives are being achieved.