Attached comments from our marine biologist, who has met Beth Clark.
"Facts are: A number of toothfish fisheries have been significantly
overfished, primarily within the EEZ's of countries that have been unable or
unwilling to provide naval vessels to protect their resources. These have
been fished to levels that are now uneconomic to fish, but are not at
extinct levels.
The USA now has border controls and a catch documentation scheme in place to
ensure that any toothfish consumed in US restaurants comes from legal and
sustainable fisheries. Ban it in the restaurant, and the person that will
probably suffer the most is a Chilean peasant who goes out in a dory each
day and handlines down to 1500 m to catch a couple of toothfish, brings it
ashore so that it can be airfreighted to the US, and he can then feed his
family. These guys catch quite a few thousand tonnes per year, because
there are a lot of them.
For every one tonne- 5-6 are illegal is totally wrong, and the CCAMLR group
that reviewed IUU fishing last November (Beth is a member) concluded that
more was legal caught than illegal.
And Orange Roughy is not extinct, and they should read the latest reports
about the biggest, longest running fishery in the world- the Chatham Rise,
where the catch limit was increased last year because the stock is above
MSY."
Dennis Thomas
Sealord Group, NZ
-----Original Message-----
From: BARRY COHAN [mailto:COHAN@earthlink.net]
Sent: Friday, 8 February 2002 11:23
To: seafood@ucdavis.edu
Subject: charlatans masquerading as ecologists
Help. The other night a meeting was held in San Francisco that was attended
by many of the most influential and successful restaurateurs in the area.
They were told by a group including 1) Beth Clark, "a biologist and director
of the Antarctica Project" , and Robert Mazurek, "a fisheries research
biologist for the Monterey Bay Aquarium's seafood watch program", among
perhaps others (I was not there: this is all pieced together from newspaper
articles as well as radio news pieces). What they were told was, 1) At the
current level of fishing, Chilean Seabass will be extinct (in some accounts,
just "commercially" extinct) in 5 years 2)"of the most popular seafood
dishes, Chilean sea bass is in the worst shape. Worse than orange roughy,
worse than sharks,worse than rockfish and Atlantic swordfish. 3)"For every
ton of legally caught fish, 5 or 6 tons are taken illegally"....I heard a
lot more, but I developed a case of vertigo that I haven't been able to
shake since.
Please, ucdavis-ites, .edu me. And soon, please....
Barry Cohan
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