Presentation is Everything

[CaptTB]

A month or so back I had my yearly group of students from Rutgers University at the basin. Each year Bonnie from Rutgers brings her students down to the Co-Op, my dock and a couple other places to hear people like myself talk about various topics involving fisheries, fishermen and fisheries management.

One of the topics I brought up was a set of statistics from the National Marine Fisheries Service 'Fish Stock Sustainability Index' or FSSI.

I pointed out that while the index, which looks at the status of the major fished stocks in the US (ones that we actually fish for commercial and/or recreationally, not every fish stock in the ocean) stated that nearly 75% of the major stocks were NOT overfished, experiencing overfishing or approaching and overfished status, that you will NEVER see that online or in the media!

Instead of a headline reading "Over 70% of all major fish stocks are Healthy...." what you WILL see is "NEARLY 30% of ALL MAJOR FISH STOCKS ARE IN TROUBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Well, a few days ago a friend of mine pointed me to a web site to check out.

Lo and behold, I read THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE.

I have since posted my response (which you can read at that site as well) and made sure to contact Bonnie from Rutgers. After she laughed at the fact that I said it, and a month later there it was, she proceeded to e-mail her class which is to meet tomorrow. Some of the kids laughed and nodded in agreement with me when I commented on the fact that you will see negative press but not positive press, hopefully they will take my words a bit more to heart once they see it for themselves.

Thought you all would be interested.

[dales529]

Nice post Capt Interesting read; If only it fell on the RIGHT ears.