Two sorts of science

摘要

IT APPEARS THAT fisheries management science and fisheries science move on straight, parallel, never meeting courses. The former is employed by governmental or inter-governmental fishery management systems, and is based on population dynamics of selected commercial fish rather than on their ecology. The latter science comprises fish life history, ecology, fishery-system oceanography, ocean food pyramid and inter-special dynamics. Management-scientists' tunnel vision focused on overfishing, apparentlydisregarding writings by those researchers who study whole fishery ecosystems. Some years ago, a Canadian professor, George Rose, told a NW Atlantic cod-fishery symposium that stocks cannot be "recovered" by diagnosing overfishing, catch restriction andmoratoria, as there are also other facto'rs responsible. Or Chris Reid said that an oceanic "regime shift" had affected the abundance and timing of the cod larvae's planktonic food. Fish move northwards at the same rate as plankton. Dr M J Kaiser proposed adjusting fishing operations to the life history of cod.