Promoting Cooperation to Maintain and Enhance
Environmental Quality in the Gulf of Maine

Winter 2001

By Jon Percy

The collapse of groundfish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic knocked the fishing industry for a loop, but it sparked a minor boom in the publishing business. William Warner's Distant Water details his impressions as a deckhand aboard super-efficient factory trawlers that "fished too well for their own future." Mark Kurlansky's Cod provides a sweeping overview of the natural history of cod, the centuries-old cod fishery and the contribution of the fish to the settlement and growth of the New World. Michael Harris's Lament for an Ocean chronicles the international intrigues, bureaucratic bungling, corporate greed and scientific obfuscation that swirled about Canada's spiraling groundfish crisis. Michael Dwyer's Sea of Heartbreak, published earlier this year, is a horrifying account of the cruelty, blatant wastefulness and callous disregard for marine life and the environment by those who should be most attuned to the interdependencies and vulnerabilities in the sea.

In The Great Gulf, David Dobbs tacks across these same troubled waters. Ostensibly about the Great Gulf of Maine, the book is really a perceptive exploration of another Great Gulf, the profound "rift between fishermen and ... scientists over how to look at the ocean and think about fish." There is a legacy of "corrosive hostility" stemming from decades of discord, doubt and mistrust on both sides. To gain a more visceral grasp of these antagonistic perspectives he sailed the Gulf both as a "volunteer scientist" on National Marine Fisheries Service survey vessels and as a deckhand on the 44-foot trawler Ellen Diane.

Deftly he unravels the laborious, complex process whereby scientists estimate groundfish abundance and calculate the largest numbers that can be caught without compromising the populations. Much of the time it is a thankless task. Typically, the results of their efforts are derided as "garbage" by the fishing industry, particularly when their findings indicate declining populations and the need for harvesting restraint. The appointed management council that drafts the harvest regulations, has a "substantial industry presence" and often ignores such calls for reductions in catch. The fishing representatives simply don't believe the "junk" generated by a "math driven, statistical fishery science." Furthermore, it galls fishermen that their hard won knowledge of the sea is callously and flippantly dismissed as "anecdotal evidence" with no scientific merit. It is hardly conducive to an atmosphere of dialogue, cooperation and mutual respect.

Henry Bryant Bigelow. Photo courtesy of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center

But it hasn't always been this acrimonious. In a lengthy opening section Dobbs provides a fascinating glimpse into the career of a pioneer in the study of the Gulf of Maine. Henry Bryant Bigelow, a quintessential scientist, recognized early in his career the value of the untapped store of information garnered by generations of fishermen plying the same waters that he was studying. He respected this "common knowledge" and honed an ability to select from the dross the nuggets that he wove seamlessly among the science of his seminal works on the oceanography, plankton and fishes of the Gulf.

Today few scientists have the knowledge, patience or courage to draw upon the "fishing smarts" of those who don't know data, but do know the sea and can "think like a fish." Dobbs rails against an assessment process that places unquestioning faith in the computerized population models of desk bound analysts, yet rejects the opinions of those who have spent a lifetime attending to the habits of fish and anticipating the changing moods of the ocean. However, he is just as critical of fishermen who scathingly label all assessments "garbage" because scientists don't "know the back end of the boat." He is sympathetic to the problems faced by the many dedicated scientists doing their best under intense pressure to get the numbers right.

Dodds ultimately finds some solace in an awareness that "some of the better people from both camps" out there are determined to stop yelling at one another and work together to save the fisheries. If they aren't successful in bridging this Great Gulf it is unlikely that the beleaguered fish stocks of that other Great Gulf will shoal in their former abundance anytime soon.

Books mentioned in this article:

"Sea of Heartbreak: An Extraordinary Account of a Newfoundland Fishing Voyage,” by Michael J. Dwyer, 2001. Key Porter Books, Toronto, Ontario. 207 pages.

"The Great Gulf: Fishermen, Scientists, and the Struggle to Revive the World's Greatest Fishery” by David Dobbs, 2000. Island Press/Shearwater Books, Washington D.C., Covelo, California. 206 pages.

"Lament for an Ocean: The Collapse of the Atlantic Cod Fishery: A True Crime Story,” by Michael Harris, 1998. McClelland & Stewart Inc., Toronto, Ontario. 389 pages.

"Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World,” by Mark Kurlansky, 1997. Walker and Co., New York, N.Y. 294 pages.

"Distant Water: The Fate of the North Atlantic Fisherman,” by William W. Warner, 1984. Penguin Books, New York. N.Y. 338 pages.