Tunageddon Revisited

We have all heard a lot of doomsday prophecies about the death of the oceans and the immanent collapse of all fisheries in this century. The principal prophet of doom recently published an article in the 31 July 2009 issue of the popular magazine Science that acknowledges that fisheries can be managed. All you need is some credible stock assessments and some managers willing to decide in favor of sustainability. The trouble is that most jurisdictions have neither.

The first author of this paper, Dr,. Boris Worm, was also a coauthor, with the late Ransom Myers, of the 2003 paper that attempted to show that tuna populations had decreased by 90%. That paper was wrong in just about every way it is possible to be wrong. If it had been submitted as an exercise in a beginning fisheries class, it would have received an F. Yet Nature magazine published it. See the whole sorry saga. Some of the many well managed and non-collapsed fisheries included in Worm's most recent emission are tuna fisheries. I'll leave it to the reader to imagine whether the 2003 paper is discussed.

Alarmist junk science, such as that perpetrated by Nature magazine in 2003, does a great disservice to the cause of sustainable resource management. It undermines the credibility of serious scientists (and thereby encourages fisheries managers to do nothing). It instills a sense of helplessness and dread in the general public (and therby fosters widespread indifference). Worst of all, no practical solutions are offered to redress the situation. I guess the intent is to mobilize public support for some cause or other. But I haven't seen any improvement in tuna fishery management since 2003; if there has been any change, it as been for the worse.

Nature magazine should repudiate the 2003 paper. It clear the air for a more constructive debate tuna fishery management. It would also probably sell a lot of copy.