Hilborn: Greenpeace attacks funding issue because science is sound
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Greenpeace files complaint about UW fishery professor
Greenpeace takes aim at high-profile UW fishery scientist in a complaint alleging he has not properly disclosed industry funding in his academic articles.
Ray Hilborn, a prominent University of Washington fishery scientist, is under attack from Greenpeace for sometimes leaving out mention of industry funding he receives in articles published in academic journals and elsewhere.In a letter sent Wednesday to university President Ana Mari Cauce, Greenpeace filed a complaint against Hilborn’s research practices, and asked for an investigation.Hilborn, over the years, has been a critic of Greenpeace as well as other environmental groups and researchers he accuses of overstating the impacts of fishing on marine resources.In the letter to Cauce, Greenpeace unleashed a broadside against the scientist.“The failure of Dr. Hilborn to fully disclose his ties to industry put both scientific knowledge and the reputation of the University of Washington at risk,” wrote John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA’s ocean campaigns director.Since 2003, Hilborn has brought in more than $3.55 million in industry dollars to the University of Washington, representing about 22 percent of the total outside funding he obtained from all sources during that period, according to documents released to Greenpeace under a public-disclosure request.Hilborn reviewed Greenpeace’s complaint and issued a response. He said his research threatens the repeated assertions by the environmental group that overfishing is universal and that the oceans are being emptied.“Obviously they are getting desperate because they haven’t been able to mount any type of attack on the quality of the science that I and this large group of collaborators have produced,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “So they got to attack the messenger.”Hilborn, 68, said he has not felt obligated to disclose industry funding unless it was specifically for the research that is the focus of an academic journal article. Hilborn said he has never deliberately left out mention of such funding.Some of the biggest industry funding came from groups in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska helping pay for salmon research. The money also flowed from Washington-based seafood companies, a trade association called the National Fisheries Institute, and the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council.Much of the money is used for staff and student salaries, Hilborn said.Altogether, the documents obtained by Greenpeace indicate Hilborn drew research funding to the university from at least 69 different industry sources, as well as consulting payments from others.Greenpeace’s Hocevar, in his letter to Cauce, cites more than a half-dozen specific examples of papers published by Hilborn that allegedly failed to include full disclosure.This represented a “significant departure from the accepted practices of his research community,” Hocevar wrote.Greenpeace’s complaint also criticizes an online fisheries-information service that reaches out to the media: cfooduw.org. Hilborn helped launch cfooduw.org last fall with financial help from the seafood industry that is not noted on the website.A UW spokesman said the Greenpeace complaint involves matters “we take very seriously.”“We will be looking into the issues raised by Greenpeace to determine if problems exist and what steps might need to be taken to address them,’’ said Norm Arkans, the UW spokesman.
Money and disclosure
Amid shrinking public funding, university researchers often reach out to private industry to fund their work. Researchers also may do outside contract work, which at the UW requires prior approval.The potential for industry funding to influence research has long been a topic of debate and controversy, and major journals have developed disclosure policies that attempt to lay out an author’s potential conflicts of interest.For example, the journal Science asks authors “to reveal any financial relationships that could be perceived to influence the research,” according to a statement released by Science.Hilborn has been published in many major academic journals, including Science, and is widely quoted in the media.His research at the UW School of Aquatics and Fishery Sciences has focused “on how to best manage fisheries to provide sustainable benefits to human societies,” according to his website. He has helped to launch a global database of fish stocks, and his awards include the 2006 Volvo Environment Prize and, this year, the International Fisheries Science Prize.He also has obtained funding from environmental organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council.But Hilborn, over the years, has spoken out against what he portrays as the unwarranted gloom and doom pushed by some environmental groups, which he accuses of pushing bad news about fisheries to boost fundraising.In a 2011 New York Times opinion piece headlined “Let Us Eat Fish,” Hilborn denounced “apocalyptic predictions about the future of fish stocks.” On his website and elsewhere, he has sought to debunk what he calls “myths” that include that most fisheries are overfished and that all fish stocks could be gone by 2048.“On average, fish stocks worldwide appear to be stable, and in the United States they are rebuilding, in many cases at a rapid rate,” Hilborn wrote.And in 2013 testimony submitted to Congress, he declared: “The major threat to sustainable jobs, food, recreational opportunity and revenue from U.S. marine fisheries is no longer overfishing, but underfishing.”
Critics and supporters
Greenpeace is attempting to label Hilborn an “overfishing denier,” comparing the professor to so-called climate-change deniers who are a minority in a scientific community that overwhelmingly accepts that fossil-fuel combustion contributes to global warming.“This issue is analogous and no less important,” said Hocevar, who accuses Hilborn of downplaying the effects of overfishing.Other researchers dispute Greenpeace’s comparison. They say Hilborn has been a leader over the decades in a wide range of important research projects in the North Pacific and globally.“I think that in general Ray’s work has been highly acclaimed by many scientists. He is not sitting way on the edge,” said Gunnar Knapp, a University of Alaska-Anchorage fishery economist who has collaborated on research with Hilborn.But some marine scientists have been at odds with him.They include Daniel Pauly, a University of British Columbia marine biologist who shared the 2006 Volvo prize with Hilborn. Pauly has authored numerous papers about the global decline in fish stocks that have been attacked by Hilborn as lacking creditability.In an interview, Pauly criticized Hilborn as an industry-friendly scientist who has failed to properly disclose his funding.“We all are certainly affected by where we get money from, and certainly have to make that available for discussion,” said Pauly whose own affiliations include an unpaid seat on the board of Oceana, a major marine-conservation group.Hilborn said he draws money from a wide range of sources, and rejected the notion that he has been swayed by industry money.That money is not a problem “but a natural part of working on solutions,” Hilborn said. “They (industry) should be paying part of the bill.”
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Greenpeace Attacks Ray Hilborn as 'Overfishing Denier' as He Receives Major Int. Science Prize
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After suffering a series of defeats in which US government Science bodies demolished Greenpeace claims of overfishing and habitat destruction in US waters, Greenpeace has turned on Univ. of Washington Professor Ray Hilborn. Hilborn is the foremost scientific advocate of fisheries stability and has contributed to worldwide understanding that when fisheries quotas and habitat protections are enforced, stocks recover and can be fished sustainably.Greenpeace lost a major battle and public relations campaign recently over Bering Sea Corals when a huge scientific effort undertaken by NOAA decisively showed the claims of habitat destruction by Greenpeace were unfounded. This embarrassed Greenpeace in front of its retail partners— to whom it had described the Bering Sea Coral campaign in apocalyptic terms as a do or die mission to preserve the Bering Sea.In two weeks, Prof. Hilborn will receive the International Fisheries Science Prize at the World Fisheries Congress in Busan, South Korea. This prize is awarded every four years by a consortium of international fisheries science organizations.The award to Prof. Hilborn is in recognition of the profound impact he has had in a 40-year career where he has applied research and scientific investigation to the ever-changing problems of fisheries management and conservation.Hilborn has been the leading voice that has changed public and government perception that overfishing was an environmental disaster that could not be controlled. instead he and his colleagues have documented time and again where fisheries management is successful and have compiled the most detailed global database on fish stocks and catch history to show that in many of the developed areas of the world, fisheries sustainability has been achieved.This message is anathema to Greenpeace, whose fisheries activism depends on maintaining a continuous atmosphere of crisis.The latest attack is a letter to the University of Washington questioning the funding Ray Hilborn has received from 2003 to January 2016.Greenpeace tries to smear Hilborn with the same charges used against Climate Science deniers, who have concealed funding sources in published papers. The difference is 1) that Hilborn represents mainstream fisheries science, not radical extremes beyond scientific consensus, and 2) Hilborn fully discloses his financial backing.Of the $3.55 million in industry funding identified by Greenpeace, over $2 million has gone to support the University of Washington field program in Bristol Bay Alaska, a program that is widely acknowledged to be the premier science program working on salmon ecosystems. This is funded partly by Alaskan CDQ groups.The best approach is to let Ray speak in his own words. I think most readers will agree with him that this is a sign of desperation on the part of Greenpeace, as Hilborn is successfully countering its message of imminent destruction of all fisheries.Ray Hilborn:I would like to thank Greenpeace for offering this opportunity to advertise our research and its results.Greenpeace is unable to attack the science I and my collaborators do; science that threatens their repeated assertions that overfishing is universal and that the oceans are being emptied. On the contrary, it is clear that where effective fisheries management is applied, stocks are increasing not declining, and this is true in North American and Europe as well as a number of other places. Overfishing certainly continues to be a problem in the Mediterranean, much of Asia and Africa.This prize is awarded every four years by fisheries science organizations from a number of countries including the U. S., Australia and Japan. In my plenary address I will be showing where overfishing is declining or largely eliminated, as well as where it remains a problem. This is a message Greenpeace seeks to discredit.Instead of focusing on the science, Greenpeace has alleged that I failed to disclose “large amounts of money from the fishing industry and other corporate interests. ”The essential issue is conflict of interest. Greenpeace seems to believe that industry funding is tantamount to a conflict of interest, regardless of its purpose. Thus, any time I discuss fisheries I would need to disclose each and every grant or contract I have ever received as a conflict of interest. Taking that approach I would also have to disclose funding from all of the environmental NGOs that have also helped to fund our research and education efforts, including the Society for Conservation Biology, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund.Perhaps I would also need to disclose the numerous private foundations and government agencies that have funded our work every time I discuss fisheries. The list of funders would be as long as some of the papers.I, like all reputable scientists, take conflict of interest seriously. This is one reason we acknowledge all funders of the research work discussed in each paper at the end of the document.The other, of course, is to give credit where credit is due. The fishing industry, like environmental NGOs, government agencies, and public and private foundations, are actively involved in funding our research and education efforts that help create and sustain fisheries nationally and globally. In fact, it is in the financial interest of fishing communities and industries to find solutions that are sustainable and provide for healthy stocks into the future. And funding from these groups should be considered part of an inclusive, transparent and honest research process.According to Greenpeace’s calculations, industry funding constitutes 22% of the research funds received by the University of Washington to support research and education efforts I lead. Those monies support staff and students and pay for field expenses.During the period Greenpeace collected data on my grants and contracts, I received $16.1 million in research funding, of which Greenpeace classified $3.5 million as industry.The top three “industry” groups they list are community groups in small Alaskan communities where fishing is the source of survival. These are not big industrial interests but small communities.Of the total industry funding, over $2 million has supported our field program in Bristol Bay Alaska, a program that is widely acknowledged to be the premier science program working on salmon ecosystems.Fisheries issues are contentious because natural resources are limited, directly affect the lives of many, and everybody has, or wants, a stake. My belief is that all voices need to be heard, and all stakeholders need to be at the table.
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University of Washington Study: Pacific "Blob" Likely to Return in Five Years Time
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SEAFOODNEWS.COM [Peninsula Daily News] By Chris McDaniel - April 22, 2016The so-called “warm blob” that emerged in 2013 and 2014 off the Pacific Northwest and just recently dissipated is a recurring phenomenon — known as a marine heat wave — expected to return in five-year intervals, according to a recently released University of Washington study.Unusually warm oceans can have widespread effects on marine ecosystems, scientists say.Warm patches off the Pacific Northwest from 2013 to 2015, and a couple of years earlier in the Atlantic Ocean, affected everything from sea lions to fish migrations to coastal weather.The study — published in March in the journal Geophysical Research Letters — reviews the history of such features across the Northern Hemisphere.Happen at sea surface “We can think of marine heat waves as the analog to atmospheric heat waves, except they happen at the sea surface and affect marine ecosystems,” said the study’s lead author Hillary Scannell, a doctoral student in oceanography.“There are a lot of similarities.”Co-authors of the study are Andrew Pershing and Katherine Mills at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Michael Alexander at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Andrew Thomas at the University of Maine. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.Land-based heat waves, Scannell said, are becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change.Scannell and her collaborators’ work suggests this also might be happening in the north Atlantic and Pacific oceans.Marine heat waves Their study found that marine heat waves have recurred regularly in the past but have become more common since the 1970s, as global warming has become more pronounced.The new paper looks at the frequency of marine heat waves in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific since 1950.Scannell did the work as a student earning a master’s degree at the University of Maine, where she was inspired by the 2012 record-breaking warm waters off New England.“After that big warming event of 2012 we keyed into it and wanted to know how unusual it was,” Scannell said.Warm blob The study also analyzes the “warm blob” that emerged in 2013 and 2014 off the Pacific Northwest.The authors analyzed 65 years of ocean surface temperature observations, from 1950 to 2014, and also looked at how these two recent events stack up.In general, the results show that the larger, more intense and longer-lasting a marine heat wave is, the less frequently it will occur.The study also shows that the two recent events were similar to others seen in the historical record, but got pushed into new territory by the overall warming of the surface oceans.An event like the northwest Atlantic Ocean marine heat wave, in which an area about the size of the U.S. stayed 2 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for three months, is likely to naturally occur about every five years in the North Atlantic and northwestern Pacific oceans, and more frequently in the northeast Pacific.The blob in the northeast Pacific covered an even larger area, with surface temperatures 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for 17 months, and is expected from the record to naturally happen about once every five years off the West Coast.El Niño years In the northeast Pacific, the record shows that marine heat waves are more likely during an El Niño year and when the Pacific Decadal Oscillation brings warmer temperatures off the west coast of North America.The blob likely got an extra kick from a possible transition to the favorable phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, as well as from the overall warming of the ocean.“The blob was an unfortunate but excellent example of these events,” Scannell said.“As we go into the uncharted waters of a warming climate, we may expect a greater frequency of these marine heat waves.”Scannell also is a co-author of an earlier study published in February in which the authors define the term “marine heat wave” and specify the duration, temperature change and spatial extent that would meet their criteria. That study was led by researchers in Australia, who were curious about a warm event from 2010 to 2011 in the Indian Ocean.Streamlined definition “We’re working towards a more streamlined definition so we can more easily compare these events when they occur in the future,” Scannell said.Better understanding of marine heat waves could help prepare ocean ecosystems and maritime industries, she said.At the University of Washington, Scannell currently works with Michael McPhaden, an affiliate professor of oceanography and scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looking at air-sea interactions along the equator and other factors that might create marine heat waves.
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Status of Stocks 2015: U.S. Fisheries Continue to Rebuild
April 20, 2016
Professor Ray Hilborn wins 2016 International Fisheries Science Prize
April 11, 2016 — SAVING SEAFOOD — Professor Ray Hilborn, of the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, was recognized by the World Council of Fisheries Societies for his contributions to fishery management science.“Professor Hilborn has had an extremely impressive career of highly diversified research and publication in support of global fisheries science and conservation. Throughout his 40-year career, Ray has been a model of dynamic and innovative science, and in the application of this work to the ever-changing problems of fisheries management and conservation in both marine and freshwater ecosystems. Professor Hilborn’s Prize will be awarded at the World Fisheries Congress in Busan, South Korea in late May.”In recent years, Professor Hilborn has been one of the organizers of the Ram legacy Database at the University of Washington, which is the most complete global database on fish stocks, biomass surveys and catch history ever assembled. The resulting analysis and modeling from this database have not only united many fisheries scientists around the world who had been portrayed by the media as opposing each other in terms of fisheries conservation issues, but the database has also served to highlight a road map for fisheries conservation efforts over the next twenty years.As a result of these efforts, Hilborn has been instrumental in changing the perception that fish stocks were being fished to extinction and instead has shown that when fisheries management principles are properly applied, strong stock recoveries take place.Frustrated by the public misperception about the actual state of major fisheries, Hilborn and other colleagues have created cfood a website scientists use to communicate with journalists and the general public about fisheries science issues. The database, and website, have been particularly helpful in countering organizations who use distorted or outdated fisheries science to alarm regulators and the public.
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New NASA Study Shows Lessening El Nino Impacts This Spring
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A new NASA study documents the current El Nino impact on the marine food chain, hoping to show where recovery may begin this spring. The preliminary conclusions are that a recovery from El Nino is underway and that in Chile and Peru, impacts were less devastating than the 1998 super El Nino.An El Nino, in which masses of warm tropical water slosh eastward to the coast of South America, has a huge impact on primary marine production, which NASA scientists are currently studying.El Nino's mass of warm water puts a lid on the normal currents of cold, deep water that typically rise to the surface along the equator and off the coast of Chile and Peru, said Stephanie Uz, ocean scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. In a process called upwelling, those cold waters normally bring up the nutrients that feed the tiny organisms, which form the base of the food chain."An El Nino basically stops the normal upwelling," Uz said. "There's a lot of starvation that happens to the marine food web." These tiny plants, called phytoplankton, are fish food -- without them, fish populations drop, and the fishing industries that many coastal regions depend on can collapse.NASA satellite data and ocean color software allow scientists to calculate the amount of green chlorophyll -- and therefore the amount of phytoplankton present.The ocean color maps, based on a month's worth of satellite data, can show that El Nino impact on phytoplankton. In December 2015, at the peak of the current El Nino event, there was more blue -- and less green chlorophyll -- in the Pacific Ocean off of Peru and Chile, compared to the previous year. Uz and her colleagues are also watching as the El Nino weakens this spring, to see when and where the phytoplankton reappear as the upwelling cold water brings nutrients back to the region."They can pop back up pretty quickly, once they have a source of nutrients," Uz said.Researchers can also examine the differences in ocean color between two different El Nino events. During the large 1997-1998 El Nino event, the green chlorophyll virtually disappeared from the coast of Chile. This year's event, while it caused a drop in chlorophyll primarily along the equator, was much less severe for the coastal phytoplankton population. The reason -- the warmer-than-normal waters associated with the two El Nino events were centered in different geographical locations. In 1997-1998, the biggest ocean temperature abnormalities were in the eastern Pacific Ocean; this year the focus was in the central ocean. This difference impacts where the phytoplankton can feed on nutrients, and where the fish can feed on phytoplankton."When you have an East Pacific El Nino, like 1997-1998, it has a much bigger impact on the fisheries off of South America," Uz said. But Central Pacific El Nino events, like this year's, still have an impact on ocean ecosystems, just with a shift in location. Researchers are noting reduced food available along the food chain around the Galapagos Islands, for example. And there has been a drop in phytoplankton off the coast of South America, just not as dramatically as before.Scientists have more tools on hand to study this El Nino, and can study more elements of the event, Uz said. They're putting these tools to use to ask questions not just about ocean ecology, but about the carbon cycle as well."We know how important phytoplankton are for the marine food web, and we're trying to understand their role as a carbon pump," Uz said. The carbon pump refers to one of the ways the Earth system removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When phytoplankton die, their carbon-based bodies sink to the ocean floor, where they can remain for millions of years. El Nino is a naturally occurring disruption to the typical ocean currents, she said -- so it's important to understand the phenomenon to better attribute what occurs naturally, and what occurs due to human-caused disruptions to the system.Other scientists at Goddard are investigating ways to forecast the ebbs and flows of nutrients using the center's supercomputers, incorporating data like winds, sea surface temperatures, air pressures and more."It's like weather forecasts, but for bionutrients and phytoplankton in the ocean," said Cecile Rousseaux, an ocean modeler with Goddard's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office. The forecasts could help fisheries managers estimate how good the catch could be in a particular year, she said, since fish populations depend on phytoplankton populations. The 1997-1998 El Nino led to a major collapse in the anchovy fishery off of Chile, which caused economic hardships for fishermen along the coast.So far, Rousseaux said, the phytoplankton forecast models haven't shown any collapses for the 2015-2016 El Nino, possibly because the warm water isn't reaching as far east in the Pacific this time around. The forecast of phytoplankton populations effort is a relatively new effort, she said, so it's too soon to make definite forecasts. But the data so far, from the modeling group and others, show conditions returning to a more normal state this spring.The next step for the model, she said, is to try to determine which individual species of phytoplankton will bloom where, based on nutrient amounts, temperatures and other factors -- using satellites and other tools to determine which kind of microscopic plant is where."We rely on satellite data, but this will go one step further and give us even more information," Rousseaux said.
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North Coast crab boats finally head out to sea
BODEGA BAY — Long-idled fishermen settled Tuesday on an opening price for Dungeness crab, transforming Bodega Harbor into a beehive of activity as they streamed out to open waters to begin the commercial crabbing season at last.Radiating relief and even cheer as they stocked up for the sleepless days and nights ahead, captains and deckhands wasted no time leaving the docks once stakeholders at the state’s major ports reached agreement on a price.Crab should hit local markets by the weekend, lured by thousands of traps baited with chunks of squid and mackerel cut up while still frozen on the docks Tuesday.“We’re just happy to go to work,” said Mark Gentry, a 30-year veteran of the fishery, who had only to finish pumping fuel into the tank of his boat, Rampage, before he and his crew could depart Spud Point Marina on Tuesday afternoon.“Ready to go play,” said Sean Amoroso, captain of the Donna Mia. “Ready to play and get a paycheck.”The state’s Dungeness crab catch is typically valued above $60 million, peaking in 2011-12 at $95.5 million. Crabbers make the vast majority of their income in the season’s first few weeks. The opening price agreed to Tuesday is $2.90 a pound, just under the $3 at which they started the 2014-15 season.Many of the fisherman and, especially, their crews have been through desperate times in recent months as an unprecedented delay in the opening of the commercial season dragged on week after week, caused by an outbreak of harmful algae and a related neurotoxin called domoic acid.The season normally opens Nov. 15 south of the Mendocino County line and Dec. 1 in waters north of there. The closure meant crabbers missed out on the lucrative Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s markets, with months still to go before the fishery would reopen — though they didn’t know it at the time.When state regulators earlier this month finally notified commercial crabbers they could begin harvesting the succulent crustaceans last Saturday, the delay had cost them 4 1/2 months.They waited at dock several days more while test crabs were fetched, cooked and measured to ensure they met the threshold of 25 percent meat. Crabs from different ports came in above the mark, North Coast Fisheries President Mike Lucas said Monday.Fish processors and fishermen in Bodega Bay, Half Moon Bay and San Francisco all agreed by late Tuesday morning to start the season at $2.90 a pound, inciting a mad dash to acquire bait, fuel, groceries and other necessities no one wanted to buy until they could be sure of covering their costs.By afternoon, dozens of boats had motored from the harbor out to open ocean as those remaining hustled to join them.“This is what we love to do,” Annabelle deck hand Merlin Kolb, 45, said as he cut bait and loaded it into plastic containers.His crew mate, Diego Quiroz, grinned. “We’re going to try to get some money,” Quiroz, 52, said. “Been working for $10 an hour just to make it.”It’s unclear what can be salvaged of this year’s season before the crab shed their shells and fishing is no longer feasible without harming future generations. Many local crabbers said they hoped to eke at least several weeks out of the fishery, if not a month or two.
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