Fish Survival in Aquariums vs. the Ocean

[ackee]

Again, Cortez (Steve), you hit the bullseye. It's not just professional environmentalists that are full of crap. Academics have learned to step very lightly around areas that might affect grant funding, and anything controversial that might affect promotions and (gasp!) tenure.

Just about every scientist in academia whose field directly or indirectly touches upon natural systems and the environment knows what the fundamental causes are for the mass extinctions we are experiencing, and for the dying oceans. They also know they can't say anything that would anger the money sources and the government, so they discuss meaningless non-solutions, illusions, manipulated data, like the declining populations of a list of selected nations, and things that are, at best, only very temporary band-aids.

They criticize only safe targets, like the aquarium trade, while the forests of Asia and South America are leveled and the world's reefs hover on the brink. It's all about money. That's how we got to this point. I remember the University of Florida (and its faculty) maintaining absolute silence while developers, paper mills, and phosphate operations drag lined and raped the state and ruined irretrievably most of the once magnificent underwater world, but holding press conferences about sport fishing game limits and tagging programs.

As far as estimating the longivity of captive fishes is concerned, it's a non-issue, an excercize in idle curiosity. I've kept some marine fishes for as long as 14 years. A friend had a Rock Beauty for almost 20 years. So what. Is it possible for anyone with even half a brain to think of themselves as saviors of individual fish they 'rescue' from a shorter life in nature? Buy that man a Nemo doll.

 

[iamwrasseman]

vitz ,this is where the conversation has led us and we are doing just fine without your comments IMO . if you dont like it please leave us alone or if you want to fix the problem please report this to the mod and let him shut this down .i just dont get it and yes we may be a bit askew but all conversations has many directions as you can see.

 

[greenbean36191]

What killed the reefs in Jamaica, where 90% of them are dead rock? It was not collecting.

Jamaica isn't a great example to show that overcollection isn't a big issue since it's the poster child for overfishing by locals. Whether the fish they were collecting were for their own plates or for the hobby is largely irrelevant.

The aquarium trade is an easy target by cowardly and dishonest eco-frauds.

It has nothing to do with being cowardly and everything to do with setting priorities to get the most bang for your buck. You can throw a lot of money after the biggest problems and see little if any measurable effect or you can throw comparatively small amounts after smaller problems and see actual results, even if they're small. Given limited resources, most people choose the latter. MAC did a notoriously bad job with even a simple target like net collection. How much of an impact do you think that same money would have had on a bigger problem like farm runoff or curbing CO2 emissions?

Whether that money is properly managed and anything real gets done is an entirely different issue from how the priorities are set.

They also know they can't say anything that would anger the money sources and the government, so they discuss meaningless non-solutions, illusions, manipulated data, like the declining populations of a list of selected nations, and things that are, at best, only very temporary band-aids.

Wow, there are a lot of things wrong with this one sentence.

First, the government is the funding source for most peer-reviewed environmental research and recent history has shown that researchers both at private institutions and within government agencies like NASA and NOAA have no problem vocally disagreeing with the government in their findings. Our peers decide who does and doesn't get grant money, not the government, so whether we disagree with the government or not has virtually no bearing on our funding.

Second, most of us who are trying to warn of the problems are plain old research biologists, not fisheries managers, social scientists, or politicians. It's not up to us to come up with and implement practical solutions. If you want to know about physiological stress in reef animals I can tell you all about it. I can tell you what the problems are and why. I can tell you what needs to be done to fix the problems, but I can't tell you how to go about doing that.

Third, manipulating data in ways that change the conclusion, including making it up, changing numbers without explanation, or leaving out inconvenient information is a career-ending offense if you're caught. It's a very rare occurrence in the academic world.

I remember the University of Florida (and its faculty) maintaining absolute silence while developers, paper mills, and phosphate operations drag lined and raped the state and ruined irretrievably most of the once magnificent underwater world, but holding press conferences about sport fishing game limits and tagging programs.

Well, if the faculty of UF included lots of people who specialize in management of sport fisheries and few who study things like the impacts of phosphate mining or deforestation on fisheries (neither of which has seen much if any research in FL) then that seems pretty reasonable. Would you prefer non-experts doing press conferences on subjects they don't work on and which are poorly studied?

 

[ackee]

It was not overfishing or the use of fish traps that killed so much of the reef in Jamaica. After all, fisherman do not consume corals, and there has not been any commercial collecting in Jamaica for many years. The last commercial collecting I know of was near Negril, and was shut down by the Jamaican government in the early 1980s. It was a German operation with primarily European customers. The expansion of human settlement and the development of resorts, with road construction and other silt and pollution producing activity, killed much of the Jamaican reef systems. This is well established and widely known, documented by the Coral Reef Preservation Society and dozens of studies. Excessive fishing exists all over the tropics, but the reefs die only where overpopulation and shoreline construction take place. Where such activity is absent, there is a shortage of mature fish, but the coral reefs are generally healthy.

It is disingenuous to a startling degree to claim that only peer review governs grant distribution and that crossing swords with political entities has no effect on the selection of funded projects.

Having spent 30+ years in academia before retirement (not in the sciences) I know academics to be among the most cowardly and petty people imaginable. To avoid following the logic of data to more generalized conclusions when major issues are involved is, in my experience, less a modest unwillingness to go beyond the strict limits of one's discipline and more a fear of sticking one's neck out. It's like a physician refusing to touch an accident victim who is bleeding to death because their specialty is obstetrics.

 

[cortez marine]

There certainly has been no charge against science and scientists in general here ...which would be absurd, but in the selective and cowardly figures who misuse their credentials to push their own personal agenda at the expense of the general welfare of all.
It so happens that the aquarium trade has seen more then its share of environmental malpractice.
I know personally a number of corrupt and cowardly eco-sci folks who readily would choose the wrong options if it feathered their caps but a little.

The aquarium trades damage was aided and abetted by these types [ since 1983 ] who I hope do not represent a large % of their colleagues.

Defrauding mega corporate funders who apparently don't mind being lied to [ because tax write-offs seem to be the primary mission anyway ] has become a fixture in the eco-movement and an international pastime now.

Some big companies seek image repair. Especially ones that made billions off the war in Viet Nam.
They have created their own NGOs and have absorbed so many environmental groups into their orbit as to constitute a general coup over the now lucrative environmental movement that has forsaken its original purpose and now sells absolution to those that need it most.
In hard times w/ money hard to come by from true believers, making eco-groups sell out and behave to get corporate ngo funding is not hard.

And thats why the aquarium trade couldn't get reformed for the 15 million dollars raised and already spent on it.

And thats the real problem here.
Steve

 

[cortez marine]

And here Greenbean hits the nail on the head on an adjacent post explaining how things can go off the road.
Steve

Unfortunately, the general public (which again includes scientists who aren't experts in that specialty) often take their word at face value because they don't know how to or don't care to check. They simply assume everyone is honest- at least as long as they're telling you what you want to hear . This is one of my personal pet peeves, and until people get better at determining the reliability of sources I don't think the situation is going to get better.

==============================================

Pseudo science and pretentious environmental salesmanship [ ie. creative grant writing] can create an alternative reality and prosper while the truth is dumped by the side of the road, dumbfounded and muttering..."How can they get away that?"
I consider a history of thumbing a ride home to be my finest credentials.
Steve

 

[greenbean36191]

It was not overfishing or the use of fish traps that killed so much of the reef in Jamaica. After all, fisherman do not consume corals, and there has not been any commercial collecting in Jamaica for many years.... The expansion of human settlement and the development of resorts, with road construction and other silt and pollution producing activity, killed much of the Jamaican reef systems. This is well established and widely known, documented by the Coral Reef Preservation Society and dozens of studies. Excessive fishing exists all over the tropics, but the reefs die only where overpopulation and shoreline construction take place. Where such activity is absent, there is a shortage of mature fish, but the coral reefs are generally healthy.

Fishermen don't need to take corals to cause a decline in coral cover. In Jamaica they fished out the large predatory fish, then went after the less desirable herbivores because that's what was left. That left Diadema as the dominant herbivore. When the Diadema plague struck, the herbivore niche was left essentially empty, so the open space created by Hurricane Allen was taken over by algae, which choked out the corals. Removing enough fish, herbivores in particular, causes the whole community to destabilize. Hurricanes and other normal, otherwise temporary disturbances can then become triggers for permanent phase shifts. That's what happened in Jamaica, per the authorities on the subject- Terry Hughes, Rich Aronson (who worked at Discovery Bay in the 70s and early 80s and has great pictures of the decline in progress. I also studied under him for 2 years, but that's neither here nor there), Jeremy Jackson, Mark Hay, Nancy Knowlton, etc. Rich in particular has done work showing specifically that the decline there started before major development and was NOT due to siltation, and that at least in the past couple decades nutrients don't provide a good explanation. As I said before, Jamaica is the poster child for destruction via overfishing, and virtually every reef ecologist working in the Caribbean knows the story. It's one of the few places where there is little disagreement about the root cause of the degradation. I don't personally know anyone in the field that disputes overfishing as the root cause in Jamaica's decline.

You can see Terry's overview of the story here:
http://www.bren.ucsb.edu/academics/courses/260/Readings/Hughes_1994.pdf

And one of Rich's papers on the subject. The discussion outlines what is known about the causes of decline in Jamaica vs. elsewhere in the Caribbean.
http://faculty.disl.org/Publications/ele_586.pdf

It is disingenuous to a startling degree to claim that only peer review governs grant distribution and that crossing swords with political entities has no effect on the selection of funded projects.

Given that peers review grant proposals, what's disingenuous about that? When I send a proposal to the NSF, you think congress or the president looks at it or they put me on a funding blacklist for disagreeing with them? No. It goes to other biologists (at least 3) who are serving temporary, volunteer positions as NSF reviewers and they make the determination based on predetermined and publicly available guidelines. What is their incentive for denying funding for disagreeing with the government?

 

[ackee]

I carefully read one of the two papers (Richie's), and it does not really conform with what your description of its findings. I don't want to get involved with small details, but 'Rich' does say that the data he collected in Jamaica is "eqivocal" regarding overfishing. He also mentions that data from Barbados suggests that the decline in specific coral species is not due to overfishing, but rather from land based pollution and siltation. The shifts he describes also do not establish the sequence you assert, and his mention of herbivorous fish displacement is rather dismissively passed over. A decline in urchins, he writes, allowed algal proliferation. This appears to be the opposite of your interpretation regarding an increase in urchins because of a decline in herbivorous fish numbers due to overfishing. Perhaps I misread, or it might be that your opinions are supported by the other paper that I did not read. Still, it's interesting that you cite material that seems to contradict what you claim is the common consensus of all researchers in this area. It always pays to check cited sources. They don't always conform to the interpretations offered by those doing the citing. An old story.

 

[poolkeeper1]

One massive volcanic eruption on this Planet would do more damage than we could ever do unless we nuke the planet. Your Doomsday 100yrs does not hold water. After millions of years and untold destruction that has happened to Earth since It's formation you flatter yourself (us) with the ability to change things so greatly as to destroy what has not been done by all of Earths history since day 1 JMHO Earth will be here long after were gone and forgotten same as the Dinosaurs or what ever was before them. Just a thought!

 

[iamwrasseman]

yes it will burn ,freeze and start again just to be burned again and the freeze .and in the end it will blow up ! we dont have but a smidgen of effect on this place in the grand sceme of things .we may have sped things up a few hundred years but to a few million what's a few hundred hundred ?~ nothing ~

 

[poolkeeper1]

One massive volcanic eruption on this Planet would do more damage than we could ever do unless we nuke the planet. Your Doomsday 100yrs does not hold water. After millions of years and untold destruction that has happened to Earth since It's formation you flatter yourself (us) with the ability to change things so greatly as to destroy what has not been done by all of Earths history since day 1 JMHO Earth will be here long after were gone and forgotten same as the Dinosaurs or what ever was before them. Just a thought!

 

[iamwrasseman]

right on key poolkeeper1

 

[ackee]

Besides, our tiny lifespans make all this blowing up, freezing, burning, vulcanism, etc. almost irrelevant. I think it will be great fun if, as I'm on my deathbed with only hours left before I shuffle off this mortal coil, a huge chunk of space rock is discoverd, something the size of Rhode Island, heading straight for this dinky little planet. I would not, however, want this to happen days before my demise, just in case there's something really good on TV, like this evening's last Conan O'Brian Tonight Show. I know this attitude is incredibly selfish, but there it is.

 

[greenbean36191]

I carefully read one of the two papers (Richie's), and it does not really conform with what your description of its findings.

Perhaps you should read the other one, which is the one that gives the summary of the decline and how we know about it. These are hardly the only papers on the subject, just the ones that I found public access PDFs of.

He also mentions that data from Barbados suggests that the decline in specific coral species is not due to overfishing, but rather from land based pollution and siltation.

... in Barbados, not in Jamaica. The findings in this paper specifically rule out siltation and imply that nutrient loading is unlikely to blame.

A decline in urchins, he writes, allowed algal proliferation. This appears to be the opposite of your interpretation regarding an increase in urchins because of a decline in herbivorous fish numbers due to overfishing.

It almost seems as if you're intentionally trying to distort what I said. I will make it as simple as I can. The herbivorous fish were overfished. The urchin population increased to fill that niche left open by the missing fish. The urchins died off. There were no herbivores left. The algae took over. That's the same story I wrote out above, the same story in Terry's paper, and the same story Rich is referring to in his paper.

Again, you should read the other paper. There was a documented decline in herbivorous fish as fishing pressure increased. The catches and catch per unit effort are documented and indicate a switch from predatory fish to herbivorous fish, declining fish size, and declining CPUE- all of which indicate overfishing. Mark Hay's work has shown that the huge numbers of urchins that occurred there were a recent occurrence, not seen in the past, indicating that they filled the empty niche left by the missing fish.

If you think my story is different from the one Rich is working from, email him yourself and ask him "What sequence of events led to the decline of Jamaica's reefs?" I can guarantee he will give you the same sequence I listed- and he might even give you pictures.

Still, it's interesting that you cite material that seems to contradict what you claim is the common consensus of all researchers in this area.

"Groundwater discharge through the karstic reef framework introduces significant quantities of dissolved nutrients to the nearshore environments of Discovery Bay, including CPR (D’Elia et al. 1981), as it must have for thousands of years, but whether nutrient loading in CPR is higher now than in the past is unknown. However, nutrient
concentrations on the fore reef have remained consistently lower than at CPR over the last two decades (D’Elia et al. 1981; Lapointe 1997; W. K. Fitt, personal communication)....The difference in bioerosion between the cores from CPR and
the modern death assemblage from LTS, therefore, cannot be
explained in terms of nutrient loading."- i.e. same problem, not attributable to the common cause of nutrient loading, so changes in nutrient loading aren't the most likely explanation. Rich has done other research showing that once Diadema started to come back on some reefs, the algal cover was immediately knocked back, which also indicates it's top down control rather than an increase in nutrients as the modulator of algal cover. [edit]I can't find a free PDF, but you can find the abstract and first page here: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2670807.

"Conversely, if sedimentation rates have increased recently in Discovery
Bay because of altered patterns of land use, the results should have been biased towards more rapid burial and less bioerosion of modern A. cervicornis material, exactly the opposite of the pattern seen in our results."- I'm not sure how he could be more direct in stating that it's not siltation from land use.

"Based on an interpretation of historical records, Pandolfi et al. (2003) asserted that corals have also been in decline for centuries, and that overfishing was the leading cause. Our data from Jamaica are equivocal on the first point (early coral decline) and, therefore, on the second (causation by early overfishing) as well. Other evidence from Barbados suggests localized mortality of acroporid populations dating to European colonization in the 17th century, but that was apparently the result of increased terrigenous input rather than fishing pressure (Lewis 1984; see also McCulloch et al.
2003)."- THIS study didn't show that corals have been in long-term decline in Jamaica (which is in contrast to what is seen in Barbados) because that's not what they were looking for. Therefore, the data specifically from THIS study cannot be used to support (or deny) Pandolfi's assertions that the reefs in Jamaica have been in decline for centuries or that it is primarily due to fishing. Luckily, this is hardly the only study on the decline in Jamaica.

Given those full quotes in context, tell me where I've misrepresented them.

Go back and read Terry's paper and tell me where I've distorted the sequence of event or where it points to overfishing not being the root cause. From the conclusion of that paper- "Althought it was not widely recognized at the time, Jamaica's reefs were already extensively damaged by the late 1970s (from direct and indirect effects of overfishing) to the extent that the synergistic effects of two subsequent hurricanes and the Diadema die-off were sufficient to cause a radical phase shift to algae (Fig. 6)."

 

[ackee]

Methinks thou doth protest overmuch.

I'll read the other paper. I do recall (probably imperfectly) that somewhere or other you transitioned from the overfishing of herbivorous fishes to a plague of urchins (which, of course, are herbivores), this leading somehow to algal problems. Please be assured that I have no desire to distort anything you have written. I am reassured that what appeared to be contradictions between what you wrote and the data in one of the papers you cited was due to a solicitous and thoughtful attempt to keep things simple by compressing sequences a bit.

It's important to note that the study by Rich focused on one species of coral in one bay on the north coast of Jamaica. I know that this area has been used by coral researchers for decades, but it is misleading to write "in Barbados, not in Jamaica" when it could easily be reversed to 'in one bay in Jamaica, but not in Barbados', with the same very restricted significance.

My own personal observations of fishing activity in Jamaica is limited to only a few hundred unstructured encounters and therefore technically anecdotal, but I have to say that I saw very few herbivorous fishes in the nets and traps. Parrotfishes were mentioned somewhere, but as you know these fish primarily eat corals and similar things, excreting all that wonderful fine white sand. Tangs were the only herbivores I saw caught in any numbers, and these seemed to be a small catch percentage. Butterflyfish and Angelfish outnumbered herbivores.

There is also the issue of very healthy reefs in heavily overfished places where there is almost no development and small populations. Dominica comes to mind. It's the 2nd poorest Caribbean country (after Haiti), but the population is only 70,000 and the tiny airport limits the growth of tourism. They do depend heavily on fishing, both as a vital food source and as a form of employment second only to farming. The only damaged reefs are where the cruise ships discharge filth and near a coastal sand mining operation. Otherwise, the reefs are pristine, although there are almost no large fish, and anything that swims is pursued, caught and eaten. The coral reefs are beautiful, vibrant, wonderfully alive, and virtually free of algae. There are lots of urchins despite frequent hurricanes, and they do a great job.

I always have reservations when I read certain scientific papers because they are so often eventually demonstrated to be incorrect. Most are very narrow constructs that continue popular lines of research, and frequently disagree with other papers following other paradigms, as Rich's intertextual citations and references clearly demonstrate. The search for dissertation topics deemed acceptable, and publish or perish mandates sometimes have unfortunate consequences.

 

[Elan L.]

sorry for not reading the whole thread (kinda bounces back and forth a lot hard to follow) but on the topic: It seems to me people are seeing the life of fish in the wild and fish in the reef that have actually survived getting to your aquarium. There are many many fish that die to get just one to the lfs, then at the lfs to you. From my working in an lfs for a while i learned that a large ratio die after shipping. so yea your fish may live 10 years after its already in your tank, but all the fish it took to get there?

 

[greenbean36191]

Methinks thou doth protest overmuch.

Multiple implications of intellectual dishonesty, especially coupled with the implication that it's par-for-the-course among scientists in general doesn't tend to be well-received.

I know that this area has been used by coral researchers for decades, but it is misleading to write "in Barbados, not in Jamaica" when it could easily be reversed to 'in one bay in Jamaica, but not in Barbados', with the same very restricted significance.

Absolutely. Taken in isolation it would be questionable to extrapolate the trends from this study in Discovery Bay to the whole of Jamaica. However, given the total body of evidence that shows that the pattern and timing of decline in Discovery Bay is typical of Jamaica as a whole, it's not unreasonable to assume similar causation. That's not to say that there are NO places in Jamaica where pollution or siltation are the most important players in degradation, but on the island as a whole, overfishing seems to be the dominant player.

There is also the issue of very healthy reefs in heavily overfished places where there is almost no development and small populations. Dominica comes to mind. It's the 2nd poorest Caribbean country (after Haiti), but the population is only 70,000 and the tiny airport limits the growth of tourism. They do depend heavily on fishing, both as a vital food source and as a form of employment second only to farming. The only damaged reefs are where the cruise ships discharge filth and near a coastal sand mining operation. Otherwise, the reefs are pristine, although there are almost no large fish, and anything that swims is pursued, caught and eaten. The coral reefs are beautiful, vibrant, wonderfully alive, and virtually free of algae. There are lots of urchins despite frequent hurricanes, and they do a great job.

To be clear, the reefs around the Caribbean are in all states of decline for all different reasons. We know that other causes are to blame in other areas and in a lot of places we still don't really know what's going on. However, what you describe in Dominica is typical of an overfished Caribbean reef and would have described Jamaica 30 years ago too. The difference in Jamaica and Dominica is the urchins. In Jamaica they were wiped out by the Diadema plague in 1983 and in Dominica they largely survived and are currently one of the healthiest populations in the Caribbean. While the urchin population in Jamaica was still intact the reefs there still looked healthy too with the exception of the missing fish.

I saw the same thing on overfished reefs in isolated parts of the Bahamas when I was working with Rich.

The thing is that the heavy reliance on urchins to keep the algae at bay and the reef healthy is apparently a recent occurrence and largely an artifact of overfishing (including removal of manatees and sea turtles). Large numbers of urchins don't seem to have been the norm for most of the history of the Caribbean reefs.

I always have reservations when I read certain scientific papers because they are so often eventually demonstrated to be incorrect. Most are very narrow constructs that continue popular lines of research, and frequently disagree with other papers following other paradigms, as Rich's intertextual citations and references clearly demonstrate.

It's always a good idea to take new research with a grain of salt. However, that doesn't mean dismissing new research out of hand. That would kind of defeat the purpose of doing science in the first place. Unless there's an obvious flaw in a study then it should be taken as tentatively correct until it's proven wrong. On the other hand, if other methodology arrives at the same answer, there's a good chance the results are robust. At some point you have to assume certain paradigms to be true if you expect to make any progress. If it turns out later that that assumption was wrong, oh well. That's the way science works.

 

[ackee]

Thank you for a well-resoned reply. I agree with most of what you wrote, especially your concluding paragraph.

A few minor quibbles: I did a lot of diving in Jamaica 30+ years ago, particularly between 1976 and 1988. Undersea Jamaica 30 years ago did not look like today's Dominica. They are very different in fundamental ways. The purely volcanic origin of Dominica accounts for much of this, as does the lack of environmental degradation in Dominica during the same period that saw massive construction projects and the official and unofficial creation of coastal townships (especially near Kingston) during the same period.

I am curious about research regarding the causes of the urchin plague. I have seen it described, but not in a manner that explains its presence in some places but not in others. If, for example, a deterioration of environmental conditions made urchins less resistant to diseases, then the picture changes fundamentally regarding the causation of algal prolifertion and vanishing corals. Healthy urchin populations very quickly recover from hurricane damage, something I've seen vividly demonstrated several times.

I also am not clear on exactly which herbivorous fishes were depleted by overfishing. Has this been established through systematic study? My casual observations in Jamaica over many years are that the absence of large carnivorous fishes resulted in a focus on smaller carnivores and omnivores. What I have seen in large numbers for sale and in fishermen's traps in Jamaica and elsewhere, over several decades, have been Snappers, Grunts, Squirrelfish, Queen Triggerfish, Hamlets, Mackerel, Goatfish, large Butterflyfish, Croakers, Jacks, etc. Any assertion that herbivores replaced carnivores in fisherman's catches would, it seems to me, require quantitative evidence of some kind. This, I assume, must exist, since it is one of the cornerstones of the overfishing theory.

Again, my thanks. What you seem to have perceived as an attack on your academic integrity was intended essentially as a questioning of certainty in the areas under discussion. My position was stated more clearly than anything I wrote in the last paragraph of your most recent post, and I apologize if my clumsy approach distressed you in any way.

 

[cortez marine]

In my 30 year span of experience in the Sea of Cortez, the mismanagememt of the food fisheries deleted predators from the reef and gave rise to an
unnatural abundance of tropical/ornamental fishes.

Any honest assessment would have revealed this as a certainty.
However, there will seldom be such a thing as it would go against a prevailing knee jerk to blame 7-8 tropical fish collectors for the reef changes instead of the 1,000's of fisherman that worked the poorly managed region.

Tropicals allow travel junkets to far flung venues and give inordinate power to a few "technical experts" who always gloss over the socio-economic impacts in favor of exotic research projects that never end and never result in law.

I found Greenbeans assertion that peer review would keep thing honest to be humorous in the context of another culture.
What I know from my life of experience in a few foreign venues is that plagerism, fudging the facts, doing surveys and transects from an office and playing for time, grants, gear, plane rides , per diems, perks and props and self promotion to be the order of the day.

Honest scientists were set aside and
corrupt, old school political administrators selected and sorted thru the science they wanted and discarded the inconvenient.

It used to be my hope that real science could prevail as by its very definition it is the search for truth.

If not for the work I have ghost written and the double and triple billings I would be forced to pay biologists to keep them on track, I might not believe it myself. Bad fraudulent reseach would prosper with gease money and good research would be set-aside with out it.

Science is merely an instrument in the hands of people w/ all their human frailties. In the USA and assorted areas, it may suffer peer review and have consequences. In Mexico, Philippines, Indonesia it is safer to be flexible then honest.
Steve

 

[ackee]

Hey Steve. We met, briefly, many years ago, shortly after your cyanide articles were published in Fama. This is a very different world, not at all like it was 30 years ago. It's much, much worse, and more openly corrupt.

I was in Baha a couple of years ago, and was surprised to find Blue Spotted Jawfish in reasonably shallow water, less than 20 meters. Santa Rosalia is an interesting place. Do you know it?

Belize has recently made spearfishing by tourists illegal. I would be surprised if there were ever more than 10 tourists spearfishing at any given time in the history of Belize. It does show, however that the government there is on the ball, and taking action against threats to the environment.