fiski

4.6.2009 | 20:08

Kolamokstur á elda Greenpeace

Nýlega kom út grein eftir Einar Árnason o.fl. í Háskóla Íslands þar sem spáð var hruni þorsks við Ísland. - Ég sendi umsögn um greinina til Fishing News í London:

Another shovel of coal to Greenpeace's fire.

The authors find that so called Pan I alleles in Cod is highly correlated with depth. AA fish are shallow-water and BB deep-water adapted. AB fish are somewhat intermediate.

They maintain that the shallow water "type" is over fished and will eventually crash. Therefore, fishing intensity in shallow water should be reduced. They believe that fishing is the main source of mortality.

The conclusions drawn from a sparse material are plain stupid. It is increasingly common to create fear in order to draw attention to "scientific" bullshit.

This excerpt from the article describes the attitude of the authors to fisheries:

"Man the hunter has become a mechanized techno-beast, a highly efficient predator. In particular, commercial fisheries searching for fish with computerized fish-finders and airplanes and scooping up fish with several thousand-ton capacities with ships powered by several thousand horsepower engines are a case short-term conservation/management measures that also meet concerns about long-term evolutionary impact. Thus conservation of old, big fish is promoted as a combined short- and long-term conservation strategy. Evolutionary changes were implicated in the collapse and non-recovery of the northern cod of Newfoundland and in the near collapse of North Sea cod"

The old myth again. The Northern Cod was not over fished. The stock starved to death due to a shift to lower temperature, and very conservative fishing management at the same time. Low fishing pressure in a hunger situation accelerates the downwards process.