What good is science?

There appears to be a classic standoff between science and the demands of the market regarding Atlantic bluefin tuna. "Stocks are dwindling", say the scientists; "fish on" say the countries with a big economic stake in the fishery.

For anyone who lived through the collapse of the Atlantic cod, the situation and the rhetoric seem familiar.

And remember, we stopped fishing the cod in 1992. They still haven't come back.

Unplugging the São Francisco River

Some bad news from Brazil: the National Water Agency has just approved a reduction in river flow downstream of the Xingo dam (the picture from Google Earth shows Xingo and a bit of the river below).

The reduction is supposed to be "temporary", and the reason is to ensure enough water for "users." As far as I can tell, this means electricity generation and agriculture. Fish don't seem to have been consulted.

"The End of the River" contains more on this sordid story of chipping away at streamflow, and how the needs of the ecosystem seldom seem to get considered.

Technology to the rescue?

We keep seeing depressing reports of big, iconic fish species that seem to be dwindling in the wild. Then, on the heels of those reports, stories about how technology will come to the rescue. In the case of fisheries, the technology is usually a hatchery.

Here's a couple of typical stories: the first is about over-fishing of Mediterranean bluefin tuna, and the second is about figuring out how to farm a huge tropical river fish from the Amazon, the pirarucu. Put them together and you get food for thought.