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30 articles and 36 000 words later we feel that we have said as much as we wished and as much as you, the reader, probably would like to hear about general principles of fishery management. From now on we will try to use the space allocated to us in Fishing News International to discuss general, topical issues relevant to the fishing industry. In our first few articles in this new series of articles we would like to initiate a discussion on the role that data and computing technology play in the management of fish resources. As usual our approach will be somewhat critical and provocative but we hope, nevertheless, still factual and informative.
“It’s all about information” says Cosmo (Ben Kingsley) in the movie Sneakers “The world isn't run by weapons anymore, or energy, or money. It's run by little ones and zeroes, little bits of data”. While it is debateable that the world isn’t run by weapons anymore, modern weaponry is also governed by these “little ones and zeroes” referred to by Cosmo as the binary stones of computer language. The real technical revolution of the twentieth century is, arguably, the development of information technology.
Fishers are by virtue of their occupation, conservative (the sea is very unforgiving), protective of their data and suspicious of any new technology which could be used by scientists to control their operation. For these reasons, while they readily adopt digital technology for remote sensing and navigation, they are far less receptive to the incorporation of information technology into their operation.
Skippers do believe that data are important; the fact is that many of them are obsessive collectors of operational data. The problem is that most skippers see these data as a means to assist them to find fish. There is no appreciation of data as a strategic tool and hence there is very little interest in the more complex aspects of data gathering and data analysis. The same applies to shore skippers and fleet managers – for them data are production sheets and quota reports. The reality is that very few in the fishing industry understand the crucial role that information technology plays or could play in the management of their resources, and the significant impact it has on their business and livelihood.
The face of fisheries management has changed considerably over the last 20 years. Ever-increasing computing power has allowed quantitative scientists to test and implement population models which were previously unmanageable. To quote from our own experience, a simple and short version of a size structured model for the South African West Coast Rock Lobster resource spanning a time period of 20 years took about a week to run in 1990. A much more complex model simulating 130 years of the fishery with 20 year forecasts now takes about 85 minutes to run.
The importance of this leap in technical capacity is that fisheries scientists are able to employ increasingly realistic population models to explore different and very realistic possibilities about population dynamics with considerable ease. Unfortunately this creates a dangerous situation of hyper-rationality, in which the realism of the models tends to anaesthetise the critical faculties. Nevertheless, this advance in hardware and software has placed considerable power in the hands of quantitative scientists. This in itself would not be a problem if skippers and managers had an appreciation of the technological gap that has opened up between their knowledgebase and the knowledgebase used by management agencies and governments to manage fish stocks. Unfortunately most fishers believe they should come out of their corner fighting, and that they can wage this battle against modern “weapons” with sticks and stones. They often believe that they can outsmart quantitative fisheries scientists by providing them with partial, or worse, incorrect data. Both the presumption of the need to fight a battle, and their ability to wage it in their terms is counterproductive.
Managers in many fishing companies still fail to see the direct benefit they could and should derive from quantitative assessment work for day-to-day boardroom decision-making. Go to any financial service business and you will see that the entire business is linked to quantitative projections, mathematical models, risk assessments and other data driven decision aids. However, many fishing company directors will make huge investment decisions without once consulting a stock assessment scientist. The cost of such misconception and ignorance is enormous.
On another front there is a common misconception in the fishing industry that management authorities cannot and should not make management decisions when data, and scientific knowledge, are lacking. There are two problems with this view; a) there will never be a time when we have complete knowledge of all biological, ecological, physical, environmental and other data relevant to the management of fish resources – so this is not a realistic expectation, and b) scientists must use whatever data they have to assess the state of the stock and its productivity. Consequently when scientists feel that critical data are either not available or not reliable their duty is to be extra cautious. This means that they should, under circumstances of uncertainty, give more weight to more conservative interpretations of the data – that is those that assume resources are more depleted and/or less productive.
In a September 2003 issue of the Economist, an article suggests that “when disasters prompt new policies, the results may be disastrous”. It goes on to criticize the tendency by decision makers to respond to crises in an emotional and populist manner to satisfy headline grabbing journalists and a disenchanted public. Journalists and a number of scientists tend to refer to heavily depleted fish stocks in emotionally loaded terms coupled with demands for radical action. While many fish resources are indeed excessively depleted, there is an emotional overtone whenever fish resources are discussed. Often in these cases tall stories, supposition and a subjective interpretation and presentation of information is fed to the public as the real thing.
The reality is, of course far more complex than this. Few have had any exposure to the basic concepts underlying renewable resources, and so do not appreciate that in order to exploit a resource on a renewable basis, it is in fact necessary to deplete the resource biomass. Indeed, in order to optimally exploit fish resources, the biomass must be depleted to between 30 % and 50 % of its pristine size. The public at large have no concept of the fact that it is virtually impossible to fish commercially without severely reducing the number of large, old individuals in a population.
“hostile” agendas which are well versed at using the scientific process to good advantage. An example is the aggressive use by organisations like the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) of scientific arguments aimed at promoting wildlife conservation goals. This is a fair and legitimate platform of engagement and arguably the most objective one (though not flawless as we shall see later). Any alternative is open to political and ideological abuse.
The risk of not being an honest “data broker” is far too great for the industry. A recent publication in the May 2003 issue of scientific journal “Nature” by Ransom Myers and Boris Worms suggests that 90% of the world’s fish stocks have been removed by commercial fishing companies over the last 50 years. They suggest that the only way to confront the industry’s “irresponsible behaviour” and to save the world’s fish resources is to completely close large portions of the sea to fishing. Their call has the ear of many prominent scientists. For example, a group of British scientists lead by Professor Callum Roberts of York University suggests that the world’s oceans are in crisis as a result of the massive over-exploitation of fish resources, and the breakdown of the oceanic food web. They have suggested that as much as 40% of the marine environment should be closed to fishing if there is to be any hope of a recovery.
Debating the merits of such claims lies outside the scope of this article. However our experience has been that such statements and sentiments find automatic acceptance and support from large sections of the scientific community and the general public. The protective and often deliberately inaccurate manner, in which fishers record fishing data leaves a vacuum of knowledge that, in the absence of reliable information, can be filled by rumours and allegations. In the game of rumours and vague allegations the fishing industry will always emerge as the loser. Only well documented and independently verifiable data can save the industry from public and scientific condemnation and from an economic catastrophe.