2 December 2013
Last week, George Monbiot, renowned environmental journalist for the Guardian, launched a full frontal attack on Seafish.
Seafish is more than capable of defending itself and did so.
However,
in his blog George Monbiot suggested that because cod stocks in the North Sea
were still below levels seen in the 1970s, the Marine Conservation Society were
right to warn consumers not to eat North Sea cod and Seafish was wrong to
criticise them for doing so.
The
NFFO used Twitter to suggest that Mr Monbiot’s comments in respect of North Sea
cod were “scientifically illiterate.” The 1970s saw what scientists
call the “gadoid outburst”, when, for reasons, possibly
environmental, that are still poorly understood, most of the cod-type species
saw a massive explosion in recruitment out of line with anything seen over the
rest of the historical record. The point that we were making was that it was
nonsense (if not deliberately misleading) to use this apparently freakish
population explosion as the benchmark for safe levels of exploitation of North
Sea cod now.
The
Tweet reached its destination because Mr Monbiot answered in person in angry
terms referring to “our bullshit campaign.” Leaving aside that there
is no “campaign”, the retort triggered a kind of guerrilla hit and
run exchange on Twitter across the course of the afternoon in which Greenpeace
and others joined in, with greater or lesser relevance.
The
Federation, in hopefully calm and reasoned tones, pointed repeatedly to the
ICES science which shows that the biomass for North Sea cod has increased for
seven successive years, that there has been a dramatic reduction in fishing mortality
(fishing pressure) and that in the catch forecasts provided by the scientists there
are options that would allow the 2014 quota to be set at +20% and still achieve
a +34% increase in biomass, whilst simultaneously cutting discards of mature,
marketable fish. After the Federation had sent to George Monbiot a copy of a scientific
paper of a paper indicating that even under the current conditions of low
recruitment, North Sea cod will achieve (F) maximum sustainable yield by 2015,
there was radio silence.
The
lessons from this bad tempered exchange are important. Firstly it turns out
that Mr Monbiot was not necessarily “scientifically illiterate”, it’s
just that he didn’t bother to look at the science before writing his blog. By
asking, in the final tweets of the exchange for the link
to ICES advice, he was confessing that he had gone for the jugular without
paying the slightest attention to the evidence and the authoritative work of
stock assessment scientists.
Leaving
aside whether consumers pay any attention whatsoever to the kind of “advice”
provided by the Marine Conservation Society, it has become clear over the last
few years that the fishing industry needs
fisheries scientists. Despite the tiffs we have had in the past and the
fact that counting the number of fish in the sea is an inherently complex task,
the fishing industry needs fisheries science for its rational, measured and
evidence-based approach. To abandon science is to leave ourselves at the mercy
of the sensationalist and alarmist media and to reduce ourselves to the same
type of mudslinging.
It is
difficult to know what effect this kind of exchange on social media has on
public perceptions about fishing and fish stocks. However, it can be said that
it at least allowed the Federation to make the point to our growing number of
followers that anyone familiar with ICES
science would find it difficult to credibly argue that our fisheries are on a
downward trend. The contrary is true. Fish stocks are responding to the
huge reduction in fishing pressure beginning around the year 2000 and right
across all of the main species groups in the North East Atlantic. If only that
message sinks in to the environmental journalists, our efforts will not have
been wasted.