Fishing about and about fishing
From F.I. Baranov to fishing quotas: on the problems of the contemporary fisheries management
The trail of fishery science is strewn with opinions of those who, while partly right, were wholly wrong."
Michael Graham, 1943, "The Fish Gate"
Not all that counts can be counted and not all that can be counted – counts.
Albert Einstein.
I am very grateful for your kind invitation to deliver this lecture and to you all for coming to hear it.
Some of the questions with which this presentation is dealing are increasingly nagging in the mind of many fishermen, fishery managers and decision makers in fishery industries in most countries. I’ll try to reflect on the developments that took place in approaches to fisheries management since, some 90 years ago, a young engineer Fiodor Iliich Baranov presented his analysis of the dynamics of exploited fish populations (Baranov, 1918).
In 1996, the Scientific Committee of the Kaliningrad State Technical University awarded me with doctorate. In my letter of thanks to the University’s Rector professor V.E. Ivanov I wrote: " I have always looked with a highest respect at the achievements of the Russian fisheries science and technology, even from that time when some 45 years ago, myself a young fisherman, I came across Prof. Baranov`s book "Teoriya i rasschet orudii rybolovstva" (The Theory and Calculation of Fishing Gear), the book which set me on the course I held to throughout my life”. One part of it was to look for rational explanations for every, however traditionally prevailing or officially accepted, implement, method, or theory and judge their value by concrete results and consequences.
Baranov, Fridman and the “ichthyologists”. All I know about Baranov is from reading his works and what others have written of him, (during a certain period quite unfavourably so), and what I’ve learnt from my good friend, Prof. Alexander Lvovich Fridman. Fridman was his student and during decades developed close acquaintance and very particular relations with Baranov. He held Baranov in a very great respect and had been his true disciple. But, on the other hand, Fridman stubbornly disagreed with Baranov’s judgement about the usefulness of model testing of trawls – an idea, which in spite of some administrative personal consequences, he stuck to and was found right.
Eventually, Fridman, succeed Baranov as Chair of the Faculty of Commercial Fisheries in Kaliningrad, and the rest is history. One may read about it in two of Prof. Fridman’s books: the Russian one “Priznanye” (Recognition) and the English one “World Fisheries: what’s to be done?” published in Australia in 1998.
Prof. Baranov had been a pioneer not only in fishing technology, but also in the application of mathematical models in the dynamics of fish populations, (Baranov, 1918, 1926). He symbolizes in my eyes the bridge between these two disciplines. I wonder what he would be telling us today if he could see the tremendous technical developments that have occurred during the last few decades in fishing in seas and oceans, on one hand, and the often excessive pressure that fishing fleets impose on commercial fish resources worldwide.
This is the latter aspect, which is the main subject of this presentation. Since the first half of the 20th century, the fishery management science now prevailing, mainly in Europe and North America, is based on mathematical models of exploited fish populations that Prof. Baranov was one of their earliest founders. Along with acoustic surveys, these are still the main pillars of wisdom on which fishery management is based and in the eyes of fisheries managers represent the main scientific basis for their decisions. But, today, a great argument is developing as to whether this "best available science" provides an adequate basis for rational fisheries management?
In fact this dispute started long time ago, when Hjort (1914) published a paper entitled “Fluctuations in the great fisheries of Northern Europe viewed in the light of biological research”, and Baranov (1918) published ”On the question of the biological basis of fisheries”.
Hjort concluded that, in the case of the few species he investigated, recruitment variability and variability of the strength of year-classes were the main cause of fluctuation of fish stocks. He also indicated that these fluctuations were driven primarily by the conditions prevailing at the time at which the development of the early life history stages of fish was taking place (Hjort, 1914). He considered the hydrographical and biological conditions at least as important as fishing with respect to the fluctuation of fisheries and of fish stocks.
Baranov approached the problem differently. He developed the management concept of single-species stock management that depended on a simple model - his catch equation. This was based on an assumption of equilibrium in a fished stock, and on quantitative evaluation of individual stocks as the dominant basis for management. Many of his followers believe that all that is needed is catch and effort data and some understanding of how the fishery operates to plug into the equation and do the arithmetic, (Fridman, 1987, 1998; Hester, 2008).
Baranov was unsuccessful in his attempt to introduce population dynamics model, into the Soviet fisheries. His approach was criticised by the famous Russian scientists Nikolay Knipovich, and later G.V. Nikolskii, (Fridman, 1987, 1998). After World War 2, Baranov was put on “deep freeze” and might have ended somewhere in the “planet of Gulag”, if not the protection of his student Prof. N.N. Andreev, who was at that time Secretary of the Communist Party Committee at VNIRO. Andreev, who’s been himself an outstanding fishing technologist, published the encyclopaedic Handbook of Fishing Gear and its Rigging that I had the privilege to translate into English.
Baranov’s critics, from among ichthyologists, insisted that fisheries management must follow the life-history of the fishes exploited and account for the whole complexity of the many factors influencing the stock size. Until these are well-studied, the management should be based rather on qualitative information than on quantitative data. Some even insisted that fishing is not affecting the stock size. This, a century ago, in some stocks might’ve been the case. This was a quite legitimate scientific argument. What was not legitimate was that instead of maintaining the discussion at strictly scientific level, some of them started blaming Baranov for neglecting Marxist approach and trying to introduce "reactionary-bourgeois mechanistic theories", calling him “saboteur”, etc., (Fridman, 1987, 1998).
As rational scientists we remember of course that any truly scientific theory is characterized by its predisposition to being scientifically disproved. Any scientific theory that claims that it cannot be scientifically disproved becomes a religious (or para-religious) dogma. As scientists we are supposed to know, though we sometimes forget, that yesterday's scientific truth may become today's obsolete misconception, that today's scientific gospel was most certainly scorned upon yesterday, and probably, would be scorned upon tomorrow, and that what was scorned upon today may become the teaching of tomorrow. Like technology, working theories of yesterday, however useful, will ultimately give way to new ones that use new information, new data, and new technologies.
While rereading Fridman’s “Priznanye” and looking back at the dispute from the perspective of over half-a-century, I think that both, Baranov and his critics could’ve agreed on many of their basic postulates, and limit their argument mainly to methodology. But, it seems that the political climate prevailing at that time, as well as the defensiveness of ichthyologists against a cheeky engineer-mathematician transgressing into “their exclusive” domain have twisted a justifiable scientific debate into a personal and ugly condemnation of a great scientist.
Fish population dynamics models. While F.I. Baranov and later the Canadian W.E. Ricker had fathered fishery modelling, these were two British scientists, Ray Beverton and Sydney Holt, M.B. Schaefer an American, and several others, who further developed and introduced mathematical models to the fishery administrations in industrial countries. During the 1950s and 1960s, in contrary to the trend in the USSR, these models were eagerly and enthusiastically adopted by some fishery biologists. In another two decades models became the main tool used to assess fish stocks, calculate permissible yields, and advise fishery managers on TAC (total allowable catch), catch quotas, and other management steps. The principal assumption of this approach is that the amount of commercial-size fish in a stock (N) equals the residual numbers from last year plus fish recruited this year, less the amount that was fished out (fishing mortality (coefficient - F), and less those that died from predation and other natural causes (natural mortality (coefficient) -M).
Till today, the prevailing approach assumes that if F was known, N could be calculated, provided that M was known, all in line with Baranov's catch equation N = C/F , where: C – catch (Kristjansson & Ben-Yami, 2006). Science based on such models assumes that only the catch (C) and hence fishing mortality (F) are significantly changing. It makes fishing the sole cause for stock size fluctuations, which has spawned a concept that we can manage a fishery by just controlling the fishing.
An arbitrary value of M = 0.18 to 0.20, picked up some 100 years ago by a German scientist, is since followed by sheer inertia. It has been since used in the stock-assessment models and I saw it still being used by ICES for stock assessment in the Eastern Atlantic. In some cases, attempts are made to justify it statistically-mathematically by analyzing catch samples comprising several year classes. This level of M, however, is incompatible with local-specific, short-term fluctuations and with experts’ estimates that the world's marine birds consume 70M mt of fish, versus the 80M mt of global fish landings. With the predation by marine mammals, in many cases fishermen’s catch may perhaps be only one third to one half of total mortality, which may make M =~0.5 - 0.66 and far away from the 0.2 figure.
The conventional single-species stock assessment methodology for managing multi-species fisheries by single-species quotas is ecologically unsound and often counter-productive. Nevertheless, this is how many fisheries are regulated in many countries. Also physical and financial difficulties have motivated fisheries scientists to turn to spend most of their working time at computers serving dynamics models, which required less means and effort than ecological and biological research on-board vessels.
Since most models are relatively simple and do not involve too many variables and actual data, they are convenient and handled easily by most biologists and any computer. On the other hand, however, they are highly sensitive to the many guessed, "guesstimated", approximate and speculated inputs that are fed to them. The precise figures they emit may be in fact quite remote from reality. Hence, this methodology can be relied on, if at all, only for stocks existing under ecologically stable conditions and, in some cases, for long-living species. We should remember that Prof. Baranov based his model on lake and flatfish fisheries, both characterised by rather stable environmental conditions.
The models presently used by fishery scientists hardly comprise the various man-caused non-fishing variables, such as pollution or damage to inshore and offshore fish habitats, and their true-time effects on recruitment, natural mortality, availability and vulnerability of fish populations to fishing. They ignore also the influence of the climatic/hydrographic fluctuations and anomalies and of the weather vagaries on fishing operations and on species with narrow temperature preference limits. Such species, especially during spawning, hatching and larval stages may be critically affected. Ignoring the complex relations between stock size, cannibalism, and food availability, has led to overlooking the fact that large spawning stocks often produce poor recruitment and vice-versa: small stocks may produce large year classes.
According to Hester (2008), the problem with modelling stocks is that of inadequate data and the shaky assumptions about how stocks respond to exploitation. Although, some recognize and pay lip service to the importance of ecological interactions with other occupants of the biosphere, to the importance of adequate data and of the fish biology, and to how the fishery is operated, they still use the prevailing methodology. This methodology is concealing the flaws in data in complex and questionable statements of probabilities, and bases management decisions on a point estimates with obscenely wide confidence intervals. Therefore, these variance estimates do not reflect the true levels of uncertainty. The result is that models are used as a substitute for data for stock assessments, (Ibid).
In the late 1970s and 1980s, this stock assessment and the ensuing management methodology came under a growing criticism by both, social scientists and ecologists. Beverton and Holt (1957) when still young, exalted scientists, constructed a model, which fitted rather sluggish and localized ground fishes. Beverton had returned to fisheries sometime in the 1980s and discovered that their simplistic model had become a holy gospel and was used in complex fishery systems. As a true scientist, on the 1992 - 1st World fisheries Congress in Athens he criticized the way how it was used and misused, spelled out the inadequacies of all models and warned against their misuse (Beverton, 1994).
According to Beverton, only close liaison between biological and physical research can tackle the effect of long-term climate change on fish stocks in an integrated manner. Multi-species and ecosystem research is vital for elucidating these long-term effects. Such effects stem from profound changes in the early life history of species and in basic productivity. The total amount of fish eaten by other fish, marine mammals, and birds is as great as or greater than that extracted by fishermen. Fishing is only one factor, and regulation by catch limits is fundamentally flawed, except in the simplest of single species fisheries. The total allowable catch (TAC) system is both wasteful and ineffective (Ibid). Presently, some 15 years later, an increasing numbers of fishery scientists and fishermen are coming to agree with Beverton’s statement.
Other critics include such scientists, as FAO biologists John Caddy and Serge Garcia, socio-anthropologist Russ McGoodwin, fishery bio-oceanographer Gary Sharp, economist Parzival Copes, and many people from the fishing industry and environmentalist organizations. Already twenty six years ago, FAO scientists concluded that many aspects of the models’ application were unsatisfactory, and questioned whether they were applied to situations corresponding to the special case for which they had been developed (Sharp et. al, 1983).
"Model-driven management ignores fishing people and their communities, does not take into account the social costs which may exceed the financial profits of the fishing companies, and does not produce true social and national benefits" - say social scientists. "Stock assessment models ignore inter-specific oscillations and environmental influences on fish populations, falsely assuming that their dynamics depend solely on fishing"- say ecologists.
Copes (1998) suggested abandoning mathematically impeccable naïve models in favour of a realistic, multi-disciplinary approximation of a working fishery, on the understanding that empirical verity should take precedence over theoretical precision. "For policy implementation in a real-life fishery, is it not better to be approximately right than precisely wrong?" wrote Prof. Copes.
In short, models, even those representing theoretically the mechanism of fish population dynamics, if they combine speculated approximated, guesstimated, and otherwise make-believe values, with some mathematical-statistical cosmetic make-up, are unable to produce correct figures. Notwithstanding, many current management systems, based on TACs and quotas, demand from their scientists to supply them with precise figures. These are demands that the science is unable to and thus shouldn't satisfy.
We should remember that Prof. Baranov, E.S. Russel (1931) and some of their followers proposed their models in the pre-computer age when both the information and data, as well as the data–processing power available to them have been a fraction of what's available nowadays, so that the presently ongoing debate on fisheries science and management would have been utterly irrelevant in their time. Even those who had followed them, as Beverton and Holt, Schaefer and others finalized their models 3 to 5 decades ago.
Quotas. Initially, the fish population dynamics models had been used for the fixing of TACs. In some fisheries, TACs led to highly competitive and hazardous “gold rush” fishing operations and to investment in excessively strong and fast vessels. One way to avoid this was dividing the TAC into quotas that were allocated to vessels, usually, according to their fishing history.
Riding piggy-back on such realities and on fishery models that soon became "bio-economic", neo-liberal economists came up with the thesis that stocks can only be sustainably exploited if they become a subject to free market forces. This is done through individual tradable quotas (ITQ, IFQ) or other privatisation options, and that profits are the main criterion to efficient stock exploitation. These economists axiomatically promoted a theory that property rights and maximum financial benefit and efficiency are a must for rational exploitation of fish resources. Since property rights are characterized by (i) security, or quality of title; (ii) exclusivity; (iii) permanence, and (iv) transferability, their application in fisheries boils down to ITQs. Thus, mere "fishing rights" have become "private property rights”. This approach was partly invited from inside the fisheries and given a friendly reception by large-scale interests and their proxies in the management mechanisms. It has been dominating fisheries management, especially in all those countries where, for various reasons, it was not met with strong opposition.
Trade in fishing rights eventually must hit the weaker stakeholder. The richer vessel owners or their covert sponsors accumulate quotas by buying off the weakest boat owners. This happens, especially, when governments allocate individual quotas too small for single vessel owners to pay their way.Pricing licenses and quota entitlements above the value of fishing boats and gear prevent small stakeholders to re-enter fisheries and new ones to join. Quota system has been displacing communities and even cultures. It is causing discards of good fish not covered by quota, and if kept - false catch reporting thus turning fishermen into “criminals”. With quotas too small, and with large bycatch of non-quota species, honest fishing may deteriorate into all sorts of illicit activities, placing the fishermen in a position in which their only choice is to cheat or quit!!!…
Since marketable quota systems favour the financially stronger, they invariably lead to a gradual displacement of small-scale individual or family-owned fishing enterprises, and sooner or later to the concentration of fishing rights in the hands of a few, either specialized fishing companies, or large holding corporations for whom fishing may be only one branch of a multifarious business. Such concentration eventually would occur even where there are legislative attempts at stipulating acquisition of quota by some maximum values. Hence, there is a growing concern of "privatization by stealth".
A quota gone from a fishing community is gone forever, together with all the associated jobs, services, and income. If it were not for growing social opposition, a worldwide adoption of ITQs would have proceeded faster. This trend is exactly what Baranov was warning against in his later years, although for conditions existing at that time in the USSR. According to him the policy that favoured fleets of offshore and oceanic fisheries was detrimental to inshore, artisanal and small-scale fishing communities of fishermen who were basically hunters and individualists (Fridman, 1987).
Managers introducing quotas into small-scale or mixed fisheries must be aware that their social, economic, and political ramifications favour large-scale business at the expense of small-scale operators of local fisheries and local processing industries, and threaten the whole small-scale fishing sector. ITQs also effectively exclude part-time participants in local fisheries and favour the owners, while disregarding crewmembers. Hence, selection of ITQ for such fisheries must reflect the political and social attitudes of the respective government.
We have come a long way since Baranov’s (1918, 1926) insights into the fish population dynamics. Should Prof. Baranov appear miraculously among us, could it be that he would say, as Ray Beverton 18 years ago, that his model was being employed beyond its capability, and thus misused and applied for ends that were far from his intentions?
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REFERENCES
Baranov, F.I. 1918. On the question of the biological basis of fisheries. Nauchn. Issled. Ikhtiol.Inst. Izv., 1: 81–128 (in Russian).
Baranov, F.I., 1926. On the question of the dynamics of the fishing industry. Nauchn.Bull.Rybn.Khoz., 1925 (8):7–11 (in Russian)
Ben-Yami, M. 1997. Lecture delivered on January 28, 1997, to the members of the Scientific Council of the Kaliningrad State Technical University at the ceremony of awarding him with the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa (English version).
Beverton, R.J.H. and S.J. Holt. 1957. On the dynamics of exploited fish populations. Fishery Invest.London. Ser. 2 (19):533 p.
Beverton, R.J.H. 1994. The state of fisheries science. In: Voitglander, C.W. (Ed.). The State of World’s Fisheries Resources. (Proc.World Fish.Congr., 1992. Plenary Sessions. (Oxford & IBH Publ. Co. Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi). P. 25-62.
Copes, P. Alternatives in Fisheries Management. Discussion Papers, D.P.98-02. Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
Fridman, A.L. 1987. Priznanye (In Russian – “Recognition”). Kaliningradskoe Knizhne Izdatel’stvo. 303 p.
Fridman, A.L. 1998. World Fisheries: what is to be done? (Baird Publications, Australia). 239 p.
Hester, F. 2008. Opinion posted on Fishfolk/Internet, 18 Nov., 2008.
Hjort, J. 1914. Fluctuations in the great fisheries of northern Europe viewed in the light of biological research. Rapp.P.-v.Réun.Cons.int.Explor.Mer. 20:1–228.
Kirpichnikov, V.S.. 1981. Genetic bases of fish selection. (Transl. from Russian by G.G.Gause). Springer Verlag, New York.
Kristjansson, J. and M. Ben-Yami. A Proposal for an Alternative Fisheries
Management Regime in the Irish Sea. February 2006. http://www.fiski.com/english/fact.html
Russel, E.S. 1931. Some theoretical considerations on the « overfishing » problem. Journal du Conseil, 6(1):3-20. (ICES/CIEM International Council for the Exploration of the Sea/Conseil International pour l'Exploration de la Mer).
Sharp, J.D., J.Csirke and S.Garcia. 1983. Modelling fisheries: what was the question? In: Sharp G.D. and J. Csirke (Eds). Proceedings of the expert consultation to examine changes in abundance and species composition of neritic fish resources, San Jose, Costa Rica 18–29 April, 1983. FAO Fisheries Report 3 (291), FAO, Rome, Italy.
From F.I. Baranov to fishing quotas: on the problems of the contemporary fisheries management
The trail of fishery science is strewn with opinions of those who, while partly right, were wholly wrong."
Michael Graham, 1943, "The Fish Gate"
Not all that counts can be counted and not all that can be counted – counts.
Albert Einstein.
I am very grateful for your kind invitation to deliver this lecture and to you all for coming to hear it.
Some of the questions with which this presentation is dealing are increasingly nagging in the mind of many fishermen, fishery managers and decision makers in fishery industries in most countries. I’ll try to reflect on the developments that took place in approaches to fisheries management since, some 90 years ago, a young engineer Fiodor Iliich Baranov presented his analysis of the dynamics of exploited fish populations (Baranov, 1918).
In 1996, the Scientific Committee of the Kaliningrad State Technical University awarded me with doctorate. In my letter of thanks to the University’s Rector professor V.E. Ivanov I wrote: " I have always looked with a highest respect at the achievements of the Russian fisheries science and technology, even from that time when some 45 years ago, myself a young fisherman, I came across Prof. Baranov`s book "Teoriya i rasschet orudii rybolovstva" (The Theory and Calculation of Fishing Gear), the book which set me on the course I held to throughout my life”. One part of it was to look for rational explanations for every, however traditionally prevailing or officially accepted, implement, method, or theory and judge their value by concrete results and consequences.
Baranov, Fridman and the “ichthyologists”. All I know about Baranov is from reading his works and what others have written of him, (during a certain period quite unfavourably so), and what I’ve learnt from my good friend, Prof. Alexander Lvovich Fridman. Fridman was his student and during decades developed close acquaintance and very particular relations with Baranov. He held Baranov in a very great respect and had been his true disciple. But, on the other hand, Fridman stubbornly disagreed with Baranov’s judgement about the usefulness of model testing of trawls – an idea, which in spite of some administrative personal consequences, he stuck to and was found right.
Eventually, Fridman, succeed Baranov as Chair of the Faculty of Commercial Fisheries in Kaliningrad, and the rest is history. One may read about it in two of Prof. Fridman’s books: the Russian one “Priznanye” (Recognition) and the English one “World Fisheries: what’s to be done?” published in Australia in 1998.
Prof. Baranov had been a pioneer not only in fishing technology, but also in the application of mathematical models in the dynamics of fish populations, (Baranov, 1918, 1926). He symbolizes in my eyes the bridge between these two disciplines. I wonder what he would be telling us today if he could see the tremendous technical developments that have occurred during the last few decades in fishing in seas and oceans, on one hand, and the often excessive pressure that fishing fleets impose on commercial fish resources worldwide.
This is the latter aspect, which is the main subject of this presentation. Since the first half of the 20th century, the fishery management science now prevailing, mainly in Europe and North America, is based on mathematical models of exploited fish populations that Prof. Baranov was one of their earliest founders. Along with acoustic surveys, these are still the main pillars of wisdom on which fishery management is based and in the eyes of fisheries managers represent the main scientific basis for their decisions. But, today, a great argument is developing as to whether this "best available science" provides an adequate basis for rational fisheries management?
In fact this dispute started long time ago, when Hjort (1914) published a paper entitled “Fluctuations in the great fisheries of Northern Europe viewed in the light of biological research”, and Baranov (1918) published ”On the question of the biological basis of fisheries”.
Hjort concluded that, in the case of the few species he investigated, recruitment variability and variability of the strength of year-classes were the main cause of fluctuation of fish stocks. He also indicated that these fluctuations were driven primarily by the conditions prevailing at the time at which the development of the early life history stages of fish was taking place (Hjort, 1914). He considered the hydrographical and biological conditions at least as important as fishing with respect to the fluctuation of fisheries and of fish stocks.
Baranov approached the problem differently. He developed the management concept of single-species stock management that depended on a simple model - his catch equation. This was based on an assumption of equilibrium in a fished stock, and on quantitative evaluation of individual stocks as the dominant basis for management. Many of his followers believe that all that is needed is catch and effort data and some understanding of how the fishery operates to plug into the equation and do the arithmetic, (Fridman, 1987, 1998; Hester, 2008).
Baranov was unsuccessful in his attempt to introduce population dynamics model, into the Soviet fisheries. His approach was criticised by the famous Russian scientists Nikolay Knipovich, and later G.V. Nikolskii, (Fridman, 1987, 1998). After World War 2, Baranov was put on “deep freeze” and might have ended somewhere in the “planet of Gulag”, if not the protection of his student Prof. N.N. Andreev, who was at that time Secretary of the Communist Party Committee at VNIRO. Andreev, who’s been himself an outstanding fishing technologist, published the encyclopaedic Handbook of Fishing Gear and its Rigging that I had the privilege to translate into English.
Baranov’s critics, from among ichthyologists, insisted that fisheries management must follow the life-history of the fishes exploited and account for the whole complexity of the many factors influencing the stock size. Until these are well-studied, the management should be based rather on qualitative information than on quantitative data. Some even insisted that fishing is not affecting the stock size. This, a century ago, in some stocks might’ve been the case. This was a quite legitimate scientific argument. What was not legitimate was that instead of maintaining the discussion at strictly scientific level, some of them started blaming Baranov for neglecting Marxist approach and trying to introduce "reactionary-bourgeois mechanistic theories", calling him “saboteur”, etc., (Fridman, 1987, 1998).
As rational scientists we remember of course that any truly scientific theory is characterized by its predisposition to being scientifically disproved. Any scientific theory that claims that it cannot be scientifically disproved becomes a religious (or para-religious) dogma. As scientists we are supposed to know, though we sometimes forget, that yesterday's scientific truth may become today's obsolete misconception, that today's scientific gospel was most certainly scorned upon yesterday, and probably, would be scorned upon tomorrow, and that what was scorned upon today may become the teaching of tomorrow. Like technology, working theories of yesterday, however useful, will ultimately give way to new ones that use new information, new data, and new technologies.
While rereading Fridman’s “Priznanye” and looking back at the dispute from the perspective of over half-a-century, I think that both, Baranov and his critics could’ve agreed on many of their basic postulates, and limit their argument mainly to methodology. But, it seems that the political climate prevailing at that time, as well as the defensiveness of ichthyologists against a cheeky engineer-mathematician transgressing into “their exclusive” domain have twisted a justifiable scientific debate into a personal and ugly condemnation of a great scientist.
Fish population dynamics models. While F.I. Baranov and later the Canadian W.E. Ricker had fathered fishery modelling, these were two British scientists, Ray Beverton and Sydney Holt, M.B. Schaefer an American, and several others, who further developed and introduced mathematical models to the fishery administrations in industrial countries. During the 1950s and 1960s, in contrary to the trend in the USSR, these models were eagerly and enthusiastically adopted by some fishery biologists. In another two decades models became the main tool used to assess fish stocks, calculate permissible yields, and advise fishery managers on TAC (total allowable catch), catch quotas, and other management steps. The principal assumption of this approach is that the amount of commercial-size fish in a stock (N) equals the residual numbers from last year plus fish recruited this year, less the amount that was fished out (fishing mortality (coefficient - F), and less those that died from predation and other natural causes (natural mortality (coefficient) -M).
Till today, the prevailing approach assumes that if F was known, N could be calculated, provided that M was known, all in line with Baranov's catch equation N = C/F , where: C – catch (Kristjansson & Ben-Yami, 2006). Science based on such models assumes that only the catch (C) and hence fishing mortality (F) are significantly changing. It makes fishing the sole cause for stock size fluctuations, which has spawned a concept that we can manage a fishery by just controlling the fishing.
An arbitrary value of M = 0.18 to 0.20, picked up some 100 years ago by a German scientist, is since followed by sheer inertia. It has been since used in the stock-assessment models and I saw it still being used by ICES for stock assessment in the Eastern Atlantic. In some cases, attempts are made to justify it statistically-mathematically by analyzing catch samples comprising several year classes. This level of M, however, is incompatible with local-specific, short-term fluctuations and with experts’ estimates that the world's marine birds consume 70M mt of fish, versus the 80M mt of global fish landings. With the predation by marine mammals, in many cases fishermen’s catch may perhaps be only one third to one half of total mortality, which may make M =~0.5 - 0.66 and far away from the 0.2 figure.
The conventional single-species stock assessment methodology for managing multi-species fisheries by single-species quotas is ecologically unsound and often counter-productive. Nevertheless, this is how many fisheries are regulated in many countries. Also physical and financial difficulties have motivated fisheries scientists to turn to spend most of their working time at computers serving dynamics models, which required less means and effort than ecological and biological research on-board vessels.
Since most models are relatively simple and do not involve too many variables and actual data, they are convenient and handled easily by most biologists and any computer. On the other hand, however, they are highly sensitive to the many guessed, "guesstimated", approximate and speculated inputs that are fed to them. The precise figures they emit may be in fact quite remote from reality. Hence, this methodology can be relied on, if at all, only for stocks existing under ecologically stable conditions and, in some cases, for long-living species. We should remember that Prof. Baranov based his model on lake and flatfish fisheries, both characterised by rather stable environmental conditions.
The models presently used by fishery scientists hardly comprise the various man-caused non-fishing variables, such as pollution or damage to inshore and offshore fish habitats, and their true-time effects on recruitment, natural mortality, availability and vulnerability of fish populations to fishing. They ignore also the influence of the climatic/hydrographic fluctuations and anomalies and of the weather vagaries on fishing operations and on species with narrow temperature preference limits. Such species, especially during spawning, hatching and larval stages may be critically affected. Ignoring the complex relations between stock size, cannibalism, and food availability, has led to overlooking the fact that large spawning stocks often produce poor recruitment and vice-versa: small stocks may produce large year classes.
According to Hester (2008), the problem with modelling stocks is that of inadequate data and the shaky assumptions about how stocks respond to exploitation. Although, some recognize and pay lip service to the importance of ecological interactions with other occupants of the biosphere, to the importance of adequate data and of the fish biology, and to how the fishery is operated, they still use the prevailing methodology. This methodology is concealing the flaws in data in complex and questionable statements of probabilities, and bases management decisions on a point estimates with obscenely wide confidence intervals. Therefore, these variance estimates do not reflect the true levels of uncertainty. The result is that models are used as a substitute for data for stock assessments, (Ibid).
In the late 1970s and 1980s, this stock assessment and the ensuing management methodology came under a growing criticism by both, social scientists and ecologists. Beverton and Holt (1957) when still young, exalted scientists, constructed a model, which fitted rather sluggish and localized ground fishes. Beverton had returned to fisheries sometime in the 1980s and discovered that their simplistic model had become a holy gospel and was used in complex fishery systems. As a true scientist, on the 1992 - 1st World fisheries Congress in Athens he criticized the way how it was used and misused, spelled out the inadequacies of all models and warned against their misuse (Beverton, 1994).
According to Beverton, only close liaison between biological and physical research can tackle the effect of long-term climate change on fish stocks in an integrated manner. Multi-species and ecosystem research is vital for elucidating these long-term effects. Such effects stem from profound changes in the early life history of species and in basic productivity. The total amount of fish eaten by other fish, marine mammals, and birds is as great as or greater than that extracted by fishermen. Fishing is only one factor, and regulation by catch limits is fundamentally flawed, except in the simplest of single species fisheries. The total allowable catch (TAC) system is both wasteful and ineffective (Ibid). Presently, some 15 years later, an increasing numbers of fishery scientists and fishermen are coming to agree with Beverton’s statement.
Other critics include such scientists, as FAO biologists John Caddy and Serge Garcia, socio-anthropologist Russ McGoodwin, fishery bio-oceanographer Gary Sharp, economist Parzival Copes, and many people from the fishing industry and environmentalist organizations. Already twenty six years ago, FAO scientists concluded that many aspects of the models’ application were unsatisfactory, and questioned whether they were applied to situations corresponding to the special case for which they had been developed (Sharp et. al, 1983).
"Model-driven management ignores fishing people and their communities, does not take into account the social costs which may exceed the financial profits of the fishing companies, and does not produce true social and national benefits" - say social scientists. "Stock assessment models ignore inter-specific oscillations and environmental influences on fish populations, falsely assuming that their dynamics depend solely on fishing"- say ecologists.
Copes (1998) suggested abandoning mathematically impeccable naïve models in favour of a realistic, multi-disciplinary approximation of a working fishery, on the understanding that empirical verity should take precedence over theoretical precision. "For policy implementation in a real-life fishery, is it not better to be approximately right than precisely wrong?" wrote Prof. Copes.
In short, models, even those representing theoretically the mechanism of fish population dynamics, if they combine speculated approximated, guesstimated, and otherwise make-believe values, with some mathematical-statistical cosmetic make-up, are unable to produce correct figures. Notwithstanding, many current management systems, based on TACs and quotas, demand from their scientists to supply them with precise figures. These are demands that the science is unable to and thus shouldn't satisfy.
We should remember that Prof. Baranov, E.S. Russel (1931) and some of their followers proposed their models in the pre-computer age when both the information and data, as well as the data–processing power available to them have been a fraction of what's available nowadays, so that the presently ongoing debate on fisheries science and management would have been utterly irrelevant in their time. Even those who had followed them, as Beverton and Holt, Schaefer and others finalized their models 3 to 5 decades ago.
Quotas. Initially, the fish population dynamics models had been used for the fixing of TACs. In some fisheries, TACs led to highly competitive and hazardous “gold rush” fishing operations and to investment in excessively strong and fast vessels. One way to avoid this was dividing the TAC into quotas that were allocated to vessels, usually, according to their fishing history.
Riding piggy-back on such realities and on fishery models that soon became "bio-economic", neo-liberal economists came up with the thesis that stocks can only be sustainably exploited if they become a subject to free market forces. This is done through individual tradable quotas (ITQ, IFQ) or other privatisation options, and that profits are the main criterion to efficient stock exploitation. These economists axiomatically promoted a theory that property rights and maximum financial benefit and efficiency are a must for rational exploitation of fish resources. Since property rights are characterized by (i) security, or quality of title; (ii) exclusivity; (iii) permanence, and (iv) transferability, their application in fisheries boils down to ITQs. Thus, mere "fishing rights" have become "private property rights”. This approach was partly invited from inside the fisheries and given a friendly reception by large-scale interests and their proxies in the management mechanisms. It has been dominating fisheries management, especially in all those countries where, for various reasons, it was not met with strong opposition.
Trade in fishing rights eventually must hit the weaker stakeholder. The richer vessel owners or their covert sponsors accumulate quotas by buying off the weakest boat owners. This happens, especially, when governments allocate individual quotas too small for single vessel owners to pay their way.Pricing licenses and quota entitlements above the value of fishing boats and gear prevent small stakeholders to re-enter fisheries and new ones to join. Quota system has been displacing communities and even cultures. It is causing discards of good fish not covered by quota, and if kept - false catch reporting thus turning fishermen into “criminals”. With quotas too small, and with large bycatch of non-quota species, honest fishing may deteriorate into all sorts of illicit activities, placing the fishermen in a position in which their only choice is to cheat or quit!!!…
Since marketable quota systems favour the financially stronger, they invariably lead to a gradual displacement of small-scale individual or family-owned fishing enterprises, and sooner or later to the concentration of fishing rights in the hands of a few, either specialized fishing companies, or large holding corporations for whom fishing may be only one branch of a multifarious business. Such concentration eventually would occur even where there are legislative attempts at stipulating acquisition of quota by some maximum values. Hence, there is a growing concern of "privatization by stealth".
A quota gone from a fishing community is gone forever, together with all the associated jobs, services, and income. If it were not for growing social opposition, a worldwide adoption of ITQs would have proceeded faster. This trend is exactly what Baranov was warning against in his later years, although for conditions existing at that time in the USSR. According to him the policy that favoured fleets of offshore and oceanic fisheries was detrimental to inshore, artisanal and small-scale fishing communities of fishermen who were basically hunters and individualists (Fridman, 1987).
Managers introducing quotas into small-scale or mixed fisheries must be aware that their social, economic, and political ramifications favour large-scale business at the expense of small-scale operators of local fisheries and local processing industries, and threaten the whole small-scale fishing sector. ITQs also effectively exclude part-time participants in local fisheries and favour the owners, while disregarding crewmembers. Hence, selection of ITQ for such fisheries must reflect the political and social attitudes of the respective government.
We have come a long way since Baranov’s (1918, 1926) insights into the fish population dynamics. Should Prof. Baranov appear miraculously among us, could it be that he would say, as Ray Beverton 18 years ago, that his model was being employed beyond its capability, and thus misused and applied for ends that were far from his intentions?
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REFERENCES
Baranov, F.I. 1918. On the question of the biological basis of fisheries. Nauchn. Issled. Ikhtiol.Inst. Izv., 1: 81–128 (in Russian).
Baranov, F.I., 1926. On the question of the dynamics of the fishing industry. Nauchn.Bull.Rybn.Khoz., 1925 (8):7–11 (in Russian)
Ben-Yami, M. 1997. Lecture delivered on January 28, 1997, to the members of the Scientific Council of the Kaliningrad State Technical University at the ceremony of awarding him with the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa (English version).
Beverton, R.J.H. and S.J. Holt. 1957. On the dynamics of exploited fish populations. Fishery Invest.London. Ser. 2 (19):533 p.
Beverton, R.J.H. 1994. The state of fisheries science. In: Voitglander, C.W. (Ed.). The State of World’s Fisheries Resources. (Proc.World Fish.Congr., 1992. Plenary Sessions. (Oxford & IBH Publ. Co. Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi). P. 25-62.
Copes, P. Alternatives in Fisheries Management. Discussion Papers, D.P.98-02. Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada
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Kirpichnikov, V.S.. 1981. Genetic bases of fish selection. (Transl. from Russian by G.G.Gause). Springer Verlag, New York.
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Management Regime in the Irish Sea. February 2006. http://www.fiski.com/english/fact.html
Russel, E.S. 1931. Some theoretical considerations on the « overfishing » problem. Journal du Conseil, 6(1):3-20. (ICES/CIEM International Council for the Exploration of the Sea/Conseil International pour l'Exploration de la Mer).
Sharp, J.D., J.Csirke and S.Garcia. 1983. Modelling fisheries: what was the question? In: Sharp G.D. and J. Csirke (Eds). Proceedings of the expert consultation to examine changes in abundance and species composition of neritic fish resources, San Jose, Costa Rica 18–29 April, 1983. FAO Fisheries Report 3 (291), FAO, Rome, Italy.