Good News for Fishermen?

Billionaire entrepreneur Ted Turner is pretty sure that global warming will mean the end of land-based food crops. Speaking to Charlie Rose during a recent PBS television interview, Turner predicted that, “We’ll be eight degrees hotter in... not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow,” says Turner. “Most of the people will have died and the
rest of us will be cannibals.”

As a joke this would be pretty feeble, but it seems Turner was serious. In the hour-long interview with Rose last month, Turner claimed that failure to address global warming would mean the breakdown of civilization. “The few people left will be living in a failed state,” says Turner, “like Somalia or Sudan, and living conditions will be intolerable. The droughts will be so bad there’ll be no more corn grown.”

We can’t speak for everyone, but we’re pretty sure the employees of Fishermen’s News will exhaust all other options before resorting to cannibalism.

While Turner was making his dire predictions, a group of NOAA scientists had traveled to Ghana to teach 40 government officials and university students to become trained marine resource observers, able to provide scientific data needed to manage their fish stocks. The information will provide crucial scientific information about fish stocks and bycatch to Ghana and to international organizations, such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

The US Navy will provide training space on board the HSV Swift (high speed transportation vessel). The vessel will be used as a teaching platform where the students will learn how to spend time as observers on fishing boats, identifying and counting species of fish, recording marine mammal sightings, and learning how to unhook and free sea turtles and sea birds that may get
caught in fishing gear.

“We feel privileged we were invited to share our expertise with our colleagues from Ghana,” said Jim Balsiger, acting director of NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “More and more we find that our marine ecosystems are linked together, so the better quality data we can collect and share, the
better we can manage our fisheries together.”

This training mission is part of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act commitment to enhance international cooperation in fishery management by improving the monitoring and compliance with international fishing regulations.

Marine observers work on fishing vessels throughout the world collecting information about the amount of fish being caught and about interactions with marine mammals, sea turtles and sea birds. More than 50 different observer programs operate in the world’s oceans. Scientists use the
information collected by observers for fishery management programs.

“We’ll expand training programs into other nations in West Africa, later this year,” Balsiger said. “We are hoping to use this program as a model around the world.”

Turner’s prediction seems to be premature.

Chris Philips
Managing Editor