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EDITORIAL: SEA SENSE: They're All Connected: Building Back Fish Stocks Takes an Ecosystem-Wide Approach

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Jun. 7--Fourth in a series

The core problem is simple: People are eating more fish, which creates an urgent need for smarter decisions on how many we can catch now, without killing our chances of catching them in years to come. The solution is complex, because scientists and fishermen look at it differently.

To fishermen, scientists seem too remote from the briny reality of braving the ocean to harvest an elusive but nutritious protein source. Some see scientists as controlled by the hypnotizing influence of environmental groups with an "anti-fishing" agenda. To scientists, fishermen can look like two-legged predators whose dollars-and-cents motivation too often disturbs the delicate balance of ecosystems.

Fishermen concede that there was overfishing in the 1990s, but they say fish stocks are recovering well, thanks to management plans now in place. Scientists say far too many stocks have not yet returned to healthy, sustainable levels. But commercial fishing interests have a strong voice in the eight regional fishery management councils that decide on the catch. Our view: The system needs tweaking, to make councils take scientific advice.

It is certainly true that fishermen have a lot of knowledge to share. "Guys who spend 20 years on the water catching fish," says Bonnie Brady of Montauk, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, "why are they not considered professionals?"

But even with the advice of their fishermen members, councils do make mistakes. For one species, summer flounder (fluke), the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the National Marine Fisheries Service set a catch quota, but conceded that it offered only an 18 percent chance that fluke wouldn't be overfished. Environmentalists sued, and a federal appeals court rejected the quota with a sneer: "Only in Superman Comics Bizarro world, where reality is turned upside down, could the National Marine Fisheries Service reasonably conclude that a measure that is at least four times as likely to fail as to succeed complies with the law."

Still, scientists and fishermen need not be at odds. Right here on Long Island, we have two examples of how science can help.

In the Great South Bay, scientists from The Nature Conservancy are working to replenish shellfish on 13,000 acres of depleted bay bottom, once harvested by a large firm called the Bluepoints Oyster Co. Now the conservancy owns it, and its scientists are trying to restore it, working with the baymen who know intimately this resource that once provided them with a good living, but now does not.

As quickly as the scientists plant baby clams, however, larger-than-usual numbers of crabs eat them. Scientists say one reason for the crab proliferation is the depletion of a natural predator, the oyster toadfish, a spectacularly ugly critter that has found favor on Asian palates. Baymen noticed that demand and hastened to meet it with a supply.

Scientists also cite the decline of another crab-eating fish, the American eel. Dams on Long Island streams - built for mills or the ice pond industry, but now part of our road infrastructure - cut off some of the best stretches of river from the eels. These dams, plus other factors across the eels' ocean range, have eroded the eel population - great news for crabs, but not for baby clams. So Jake Kritzer, a young scientist with Environmental Defense, is working with Suffolk County, the Town of Brookhaven and others, to build fish ladders and, if possible, remove dams.

The dams-eels-crabs-clams interaction is a small example of what ecosystem-based management entails: looking not just at one species, but its food, it predators and its habitat. And the work of these scientists, which will help fishermen, is just one of many good arguments for giving science a stronger voice in managing our fisheries.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Newsday, Melville, N.Y.

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