Scientists disregard historical research at their peril. Here is a striking example of how multi-disciplinary collaboration needs to be improved - and the danger to policy if not @oceans_past @oceanhistories @ICES_ASC #shiftingbaselines @ERC_Research Thread: 1 of 9
Schijns, Froese, Hutching & Pauly just published academic-oup-com.elib.tcd.ie/icesjms/advanc… based on historical catch data that are widely out of sync with all that the ERC-funded NorFish project published: www-tandfonline-com.elib.tcd.ie/doi/full/10.10… 2/9
Schijns et al publish Newfoundland cod catches 1504-2019 and estimate peak landings of 162,000 tonnes in1788. They argue that historical fisheries (at least up to 1950s) were sustainable at 200,000 tonnes and that only in 1968 did catches reach dangerous levels of 800,000 t. 3/9
NorFish estimated total landings in the Newfoundland fishery of 600,000 tons in 1788 and average landings of 400,000 t through the 18th century. 4/9
The NorFish data sources include original archival documentation. Schijns et al results are based on a compilation of published findings up to 1995. 5/9
Schijns et al disregard the open data published by the HMAP project (available for the past 15 years), and our corrected list of data, applying the capacity trend method 6/9
Does this matter beyond historical accuracy? Yes, the bottom line is that they claim that unsustainable practices are a recent thing. To many fisheries scientists this boils down to one thing: we can disregard all but the recent past. 7/9
We demonstrate that dangerous levels had been reached by handlining technology and that the fishing effort was only curtailed by the Franco-British wars. 8/9
So: Pre-industrial technology was sufficient to impact marine life in a big way. We need to understand these changes going back in order to understand the magnitude of ecological change. History matters . 9/9
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