Why I Love To Blog -- Reason #22 -- May 23, 2017

On March 19, 2017, I posted a screenshot of this "fake story" and noted why it was a "fake story."


Finally, Bloomberg got around to reading the blog and posting their own story. First, the screenshot form the Bloomberg story:

From the linked Bloomberg article:

Since the late 1980s, catches have been at record-high levels despite decades of intense exploitation. We have never produced so many lobsters. Even more interesting to managers is the fact that catch levels remained relatively stable from 1947 to the late 1980s.

While scientists do not agree on the reason for these high catches, there is a growing consensus that they are due, in some measure, to the long history of effective regulations that the lobster industry has played a key role in developing.

Two of the most prominent and straightforward regulations are that lobsters must be thrown back in the water not only if they are too small but also if they are too big (because mature lobsters produce the most offspring), and that egg-bearing females must not only be thrown back but also marked (by notches cut in their tails) as off-limits for life.

Acheson calls this "parametric management" -- the rules "control 'how' fishing is done," not how many lobsters are caught -- and concludes that "Although this approach is not supported by fisheries scientists in general, it appears to work well in the lobster fishery."