UNLUCKY fishermen are all alike: We don’t know how to see. Read more here.
Fishing
American Activists Target Australian Fishers
A VERY large American philanthropic organisation based in Philadelphia, PEW, has a few projects on at the moment. In Washington DC it’s renovating and refurbishing a building in what it describes as “the heart of the nation’s capital”. According to its website seven floors will be for its staff and three floors for other NGOs (non-government, non-business organisations). That’s a lot of lobbying. Meanwhile in Australia its employed well known activist Imogen Zethoven to manage its “Coral Sea Campaign” which aims to close down fishing along the north eastern coast of Australia.
The previous Australian government [the Howard government] handed out hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate commercial fishing interests following the last campaign Ms Zethoven ran. That was when she worked for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
The fishing industry of north Queensland has been gutted over the last decade, but still environment groups come back for more – this time with money from Philadelphia in the US.
[Read more…] about American Activists Target Australian Fishers
Shark Numbers and Shark Attacks
THERE have been three shark attacks in Sydney waters over the last three weeks, but there is no agreement as to whether shark numbers are on the increase – or not.
According to NSW Deputy Premier, Carmel Tebbuts, there is no evidence of increased shark numbers in NSW but Ms Tebbuts does admit cleaner waterways around Sydney (via SMH).
According to the Department of Primary Industries chief scientist, Steve Kennelly, because waters are cleaner there are more sharks. Hang on! This is not what the Deputy Premier said.
Professor Kennelly explained we are seeing a healthy ecosystem, “to the point where we’re getting whales underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge and … lots of good bait fish coming in, tailor, king fish and so on and sharks feed on those things (via ABC).
Professor Kennelly did not mention that there have also been bans on commercial fishing in Sydney Harbour since a dioxin scare in January 2006 – this would also probably mean more fish.
According to Professor Kennelly not even new bans on hunting sharks (due to new fishing quotas) will impact on the risk of shark attacks (also via ABC Online).
Let’s summarize, sharks eat fish, so if there are more fish you might expect more sharks, add to this, new bans on hunting sharks, so again expect more sharks. More sharks might increase the risk of shark attacks. “Nah”, suggest some bureaucrats and politicians!
Wouldn’t it be better if government admitted that policies intended to increase the numbers of fish and sharks, are having an effect, and so the risk of shark attack could increase – and then explain how to mitigate like not swimming at dawn or dusk.
New ‘Save the Sea Kittens’ Campaign
Who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten? Read more here. [Via Wes George]
Climate Change and the Commercial Fishery (Again)
I posted a graph from L.B. Klyashtorin via Walter Starck on May 4, 2008, with comment from Walter that “I have never seen a more succint and telling argument to refute carbon dioxide government climate change”.
The graph though was not of the highest quality, and so Louis Hissink has had it redrawn:
The original post is here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/003005.html
Thanks Louis for the better quality graph.
Climate Change and the Commercial Fishery: A Note from Walter Starck
I have never seen a more succinct and telling argument to refute carbon dioxide governed climate change than the following graph from a study by L.B. Klyashtorin pubished as a technical paper by the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organisation.
from http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y2787E/y2787e1l.gif
The study entitled ‘Climate change and long term fluctuations of commercial catches: possibilities of forecasting’ concludes that 60-year climate oscillations correspond to the regular fluctuations of the populations and catches of the main commercial fish species.
“Analysing roughly 30-year alternation of the so-called “climatic epochs” characterised by the variation in the Atmospheric Circulation Index (ACI), the study revealed two ACI-dependent groups of major commercial species correlated positively with either “meridional” or “zonal” air mass transport on the hemispheric scale.
“Climate periodicity serves as a basis for a predictive model of the population and catches of major
commercial fish species. The model has two basic limitations.
(1) It is applicable to the abundant fish species only (commercial catch > 1.0 – 1.5 million tons) yielded over large areas, such as North Pacific or North Atlantic as a whole;
(2) The model is intended to analyse and forecast the long-term trends in the population of major commercial species with the assumption that general intensity of commercial fisheries will stay at its average level over the last 20 – 25 years.
“The concept of generating forecasts of anthropogenic climate change and consequent changes in fish production is beyond the scope of this study. However, there is a clear link between fish production and climate, so projecting future climate changes is of importance. Not only can climate be used to forecast commercial fish yields, but also it may be possible to estimate general changes in biological production on the global scale. It is therefore important to maintain databases on routine fisheries data and climate indices in the long term, in order to track these critical processes.”
This study trashes most of the classic examples of fishery collapse due to overfishing. Incidentally, the Pacific Dedadal Oscillation (PDO) has this year switched into its cooler phase.
Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) catastrophists are now belatedly accepting natural influences on global temperature to explain the current cooling. If natural cooling is possible then warming must be also and a similar amount of natural influence to that now being attributed to cooling would reduce the greenhouse contribution to the previously observed warming to little or nothing. AGW is beginning to look like the more and more convoluted epicycles invented to maintain the geocentric theory before it finally had to be abandoned.
Walter Starck
Townsville, Australia
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Klyashtorin L.B. 2001. Climate change and long term fluctuations of commercial catches: the possibility of forecasting. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 410, 98p. FAO (Food Agriculture Organization) of the United Nations, Rome.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.