Fisheries Research Institute

Science serving the seafood consumer....

September 10, 2003

Introducing the Fisheries Research Institute – for another view of fisheries issues

The Fisheries Research Institute was formed by members of the U.S. fish and seafood industry with interests in tuna, swordfish, sharks, mahi mahi, and other highly migratory species (HMS) of fish. Members of this segment of the commercial fishing industry, which for the most part depends on the use of pelagic longline fishing gear, have suffered from public misperceptions about their fishery for the better part of a decade. The longline fishermen* on the East coast are among the leaders in developing and employing conservation-compliant and habitat-friendly fishing technology and techniques. These fishermen and the fish dealers who sell the fish they harvest, have established the Fisheries Research Institute to counter these misperceptions and to sponsor, encourage and facilitate research that will allow the continued sustainable harvest in the longline and other HMS fisheries while having the least possible effect on the ocean environment.

Utilizing the Fisheries Research Institute website (http://www.fisheriesresearch.org) and regular electronically distributed newsletters, we will keep the fish and seafood industry, members of the electronic, print and broadcast media, fisheries managers and elected officials up-to-date on current research and management initiatives as well as any other information that is relevant to maintaining a continuous supply of highly migratory fish species from the waters of the Northwest Atlantic to seafood consumers.

We will focus on the longline fishery. Among the issues we will initially address will be the ongoing progress we have made in bycatch reduction, health aspects of seafood consumption, and where our fishery is and where it is heading in terms of sustainable management.

Ocean issues in general and living marine resource management issues in particular tend to be very complex. With increasing media exposure, there has been a tendency to simplify – in many cases to oversimplify – and to sensationalize anything dealing with the oceans and with anthropogenic impacts on them. While this certainly lends itself to our “sound bite” culture, it stands in the way of people developing a solid understanding of what’s really going on in our coastal and offshore waters. An important part of our task with these newsletters will be to put these issues in a more realistic perspective – accepting that with a world population of over 6 billion (and increasing), the world’s oceans will become an increasingly important source of nutrient-rich food that cannot be harvested without some impacts. Our role as responsible stewards of our living marine resources is to ensure that these impacts are minimized and diminish neither the present nor the future productive capacity of our oceans.

While our primary focus will be on the longline fishery for highly migratory species, we will address other fisheries – and other issues – when warranted. All of our domestic commercial fisheries face the same challenges and hold the same promise for the future. While the methods by which fish and shellfish are harvested differ, once at the dock their handling, processing and marketing requirements are surprisingly similar. For U.S. fishermen, it’s become a much smaller and a much more interdependent world in the last few years. What affects a fishery in the Gulf of Mexico can have repercussions in the waters off Ketchikan, Alaska or Barnegat Light, New Jersey

Finally, unlike our more fortunate foundation-funded antagonists who work for a handful of academic institutions or “environmentally-oriented” NGOs, we can't afford national conference calls, “independent” panels, press receptions in Washington, or traveling road shows of self-styled scientific experts to orchestrate what have become media maulings of the commercial fishing industry. What we can afford is to work with legitimate scientists who are devoted more to science and to objectivity than to foundation funding, who report their findings in scientific journals and to colleagues rather than to public relations firms, and who commit to research projects to find answers rather than to reinforce preconceived prejudices. And we can afford to take their results, apply them in our fisheries and to our fishery management system, and trust that the agencies and the people who are responsible for developing our fisheries policies continue to look behind the expensive smoke and mirrors to the actual conditions of our fish stocks and in our fisheries. That’s all we want, that’s all we need, and this newsletter should help everyone to continue to do so.

If you have any questions or comments concerning materials contained in these newsletters, please feel free to contact Nelson Beideman, F.R.I. President, at bwfa@usa.net or Nils Stolpe, F.R.I. Communications Director, at nstolpe@fishingnj.org.

*We would be remiss if we didn’t at this point address what has become an important issue in some circles. We have and we will continue to refer to those folks who harvest fish commercially as “fishermen” regardless of their gender. This is the way males who fish prefer to be addressed and this is the way females who fish prefer to be addressed. We haven’t come across, or heard of, any of them who would rather be referred to as “fishers” and we’ll certainly honor their feelings. If this offends any of our readers, you have our deepest apologies, but the Fisheries Research Institute is about commercial fishing and the people who do it, and if they consider themselves fishermen, to us that’s what they are.