When fishers don't listen to scientists

[George.]

Happens every time:

https://nautil.us/where-have-all-the....1669683207578

Cause:

As he descended and the seafloor came into view, Braxton Dew witnessed a phenomenon few others had ever seen: a mountain of king crabs. There were some 9,000 of them, towering above his head once he reached the seabed. He checked the depth gauge: 75 feet. He captured a photograph.
...
In 1996, Dew used the photo to help demonstrate to NOAA administrators that the survey methods they used to estimate adult king crab populations were flawed.1 It was too easy to pull the sampling net through an aggregation and extrapolate that highly localized density to an entire region. If this occurred, the population estimates used by government managers of Alaska’s king crab fishery could be inaccurate.
According to Dew, the evidence he presented caused turmoil inside NOAA. He was transferred from Kodiak to Seattle; underwater crab research conducted by the agency declined sharply. He remained there for 12 years without assignment, waiting to publish his final manuscripts in the NOAA Sea Grant Collection, in which he laid out evidence suggesting that king crab management should better account for factors like social behavior and habitat preference.2 Some of the papers would spend over a decade stalled in review until his former bosses retired in the late 2000s.

Effect:

When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the first-ever cancellation of the Bering Sea snow crab season in October—and extended the closure of the king crab fishery—explanations were thin. Headlines relayed what the government had gathered: Nearly 11 billion crabs had, effectively, disappeared.

[CWSmith]

Here is another side of that coin:

Some 15 or 20 years ago the State of Maryland wanted to declare a moratorium on oystering (or was it crabbing?). They offered to pay the local fishermen what they had declared on their taxes in return for NOT fishing and the fishermen declined.

Why do you think that is?

... They were cheating on their taxes and not declaring what they actually made. That means they were harvesting more than they admitted.

[George Jung]

Yep. 'Conservationists, my arse. See it here, in our Ag. With all the intensive crop production/chemicals/fertilizers, plus all the large feedlot operations, the groundwater in Nebraska has areas where the nitrate levels are unhealthy, and climbing. There are laws, and mechanisms to enforce - but those responsible refuse to do so.

We has met the enemy - and He is Us! comes to mind.

[mizzenman]

Its just science, number and graphs, it does not have anything to do with reality.

[Gerarddm]

Well, that'll kill The Deadliest Catch TV show.

[L.W. Baxter]

reads like it wasn't the fishers who didn't listen, in this case, but the overseeing government agency.

almost sounds like noaa was tainted by corruption. but it could just be normal "we know better than you" bias.

[George Jung]

maybe. in our area, the local boards, making those determinations, are the area farmers/providers dependent on those farmers. Undoubtedly a corrupted system, conflict of interest.

[Garret]

reads like it wasn't the fishers who didn't listen, in this case, but the overseeing government agency.

almost sounds like noaa was tainted by corruption. but it could just be normal "we know better than you" bias.

Sure sounded that way to me.

[David G]

In any resource extraction industry, the incentives tend to be stacked in favor of MORE... until we extract ourselves right out of business. My family is no longer in the plywood mill business because we did that with Douglas Fir harvests in the Pacific NW.

And regulatory capture is a very real thing... and greed never sleeps. Regulators need to be both honest, and constantly vigilant. They aren't always. It's an old pattern.

For an entire book explaining how the pattern works, by using one species as an example, I very much recommend Kurlansky's book 'Salmon'. Esp. the appendices. One can read selected chapters and skim the rest, but definitely don't skip the appendix.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49396437-salmon

[bluedog225]

Regulatory capture. Everywhere.

When was the last time you heard the president (any president) speak to the importance of increasing your household’s savings?

[David G]

Regulatory capture. Everywhere.

When was the last time you heard the president (any president) speak to the importance of increasing your household’s savings?

Acton Dictum.

And, while the R's have embraced the corruption whole-heartedly, neither party is immune. And no level of govt. is safe. The longer we allow the Gini coefficient to move the wrong way... the worse it'll get.

"When there is an accumulation of money and power into fewer and fewer hands, people with the mentality of gangsters come to the fore. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" -- Lord Acton

[George.]

reads like it wasn't the fishers who didn't listen, in this case, but the overseeing government agency.

Which suffers no influence from the lobby of a multimillion dollar "industry"?

[Breakaway]

Originally Posted by L.W. Baxter
reads like it wasn't the fishers who didn't listen, in this case, but the overseeing government agency.

almost sounds like noaa was tainted by corruption. but it could just be normal "we know better than you" bias.

Sure sounded that way to me.

Me three.