My impressions of the 2013 ICES Annual Science Conference

My impressions after a week of presentations, discussions, and lots of delicious food:

• Of all the interdisciplinary conferences I've been to so far, the ICES meeting was the most scientific (read: least political, notwithstanding ICES's role as advisory body for fisheries policy), and the most constructive in its interaction with social scientists (read: economists). Besides EAERE (which I consider a disciplinary meeting) I was once at an ESEE meeting, and once at the European Congress for Conservation Biology. I had mixed feelings about those for their tendency to bash "mainstream economics" (whatever that may be) and to blur the line between science and activism. Perhaps it's because those communities have the hidden assumption that nature is best left alone by man, whereas fisheries scientists investigate, by definition, a form of interference in nature.
• Is it just me, or is there a major disconnect between textbook fisheries economics and the practice of fisheries management? Concepts we teach (notably maximum economic yield and the role of the discount rate) are nowhere to be seen - in fact, I once heard a fisheries industry representative refer to maximum economic yield as "a plaything for economists". In our teaching we hardly pay attention to the stochastic nature of fish stocks, but these days fisheries science is all about reference points and harvest control rules - which only make sense in a stochastic context.
• Economists can make big contributions to fisheries management by further strengthening how fisheries models describe human behaviour. So far those contributions were largely confined to modelling where fishers fish, but what about investments in gear, or boats? Let alone market structures, global developments (tilapia!), value chains, and policy-makers.
• Iceland is like an extreme version of Norway. Thought the Norwegian landscape was rugged? Iceland has volcanoes, and geysers! And where I thought Norwegians don't give a hoot what the rest of the world thinks of hunting and whaling, only Icelanders can serve raw whale meat and rotten shark to a crowd of foreign scientists. (And it was delicious! The whale, that is.) Neither do Icelandic pubs have qualms with playing the entire Velvet Underground & Nico, including John Cale's ear-piercing viola solo in Heroin.

Lava, limpets, and lotsa fresh fish

What I did last Summer: spent two weeks on the Azores.

Why The Azores? Because they have the perfect climate for a summer holiday (a steady 25 degrees), lots of hiking trails, plenty of fresh seafood, many small natural swimming pools, and great opportunities for spotting whales and dolphins. And I was fascinated by this Portuguese outpost almost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where locals still caught sperm whales in the 1980s with small rowing boats, and where the ocean is a natural part of the landscape.

It's magnificent. All nine islands originated from volcanic activity, the remnants of which are visible in the form of dead volcanoes in the landscape. Settlements are crammed between the steep slopes of the volcanoes on one side and the ocean on the other side, often on what the Azoreans call fajas: small areas of flat land, often consisting of rubble from collapsed rocks. On one side the volcanoes, which used to spew fire and sulfur but are now covered in sinister dark boulders of basalt; on the other side the ocean, thriving with life but also unpredictable and dangerous. You can truly say the Azoreans live between the devil and the deep blue sea.

A taste of local marine biodiversity:
grilled limpets on the island of Sao Jorge

Before you go, read Moby Dick. The American sperm whale fishery of the nineteenth century, so vividly described by Herman Melville, brought whaling to The Azores. Until the Azoreans abandoned whaling in 1983, their method of whaling was very similar to the method described in the book. The Azorean whalers approached the whale in small rowing boats, from which they drove a harpoon into the sperm whale's body. In panic the whale would quickly dive to escape his attackers, who, by means of the rope attached to the harpoon, would be able to track the whale's location. When the whale resurfaced, the whalers would further wound the whale until it succumbed. Catching one whale could take a dangerous and blood-drenched struggle of several hours.

I admit it must have been the most gruesome way of killing an animal, and I'm sure few visitors mourn its demise. But for the Azoreans, especially the people from whaling towns like Lajes do Pico, it was a valuable tradition and a source of pride. We were so lucky to arrive on Pico in the middle of its Whalers Week. Lajes do Pico features two whaling museums, a few whale watching companies, and a small fleet of traditional whaling boats. During the Semana Dos Baleeiros, as the week is called in Portuguese, the people of Pico honor Our Lady of Lourdes, the whalers' patroness saint. The week is a mix of live music (lots of brass bands), folkloric and religious processions, and lots of food (fish, fish, and some meat) and drink (we stuck to the caipirinhas).

The whaling industry has disappeared, not because of animal welfare concerns or because they ran out of sperm whales, but because the products from whaling (oils, fats, proteins, with many applications in cosmetics, agriculture and industry) got more and more competition from cheaper synthetic alternatives. But no more than three years after the local whale oil factory closed down, the first whale watching company emerged. Nowadays a complete industry has evolved in whale watching, swimming with dolphins, diving with sharks, and so on. I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but in any case we enjoyed seeing real-life sperm whales (their flukes, at least). As regards the dolphins, if you're lucky you only have to take the ferry to spot them:

The Azores have a small-scale tuna fishery that catches mainly skipjack tuna by pole-and-line. The islands have their own brands, certified with the Friend of the Sea label, and they export most of it to Italy where their particular brand is much preferred. We didn't get to see much of the fishery but we could see the vessels in many of the harbors we passed.

And that, I must say, was perhaps the main treat of the place: fresh fish, fresh seafood, everywhere you go. Species you never heard of but that taste deliciously. A waiter warning you that the fish is not fresh but frozen (the only Dutch restaurants not serving fish from the deep-freeze are vegetarian restaurants). And all that washed down with some delicious Pico wine or mainland vinho verde.

Back to work.

(Almost) three days of (almost) night

This is as light as it gets where I was this week:

The location is Tromsø, Norway. I was there the last few days to discuss the effect of climate change on arctic fisheries. Interestingly, this effect is not necessarily negative - for the Norwegians, that is. Stocks like mackerel may move northwards, making more mackerel available to Norwegian fishers at the expense of more southern less northern fleets (like the Dutch). Other effects may be that arctic stocks become more productive, and as stocks get larger they can also be found in places where they weren't before. So the University of Tromsø gathered together fisheries economists from Norway, Denmark and Iceland (adding a stray Dutch aspiring fisheries economist and a Mexican professor) to discuss what the economic effects may be, where these effects take place, and how economists can analyse these effects.

My highlights from this meeting:

• Much of the research in this domain is descriptive: what is happening, and what may happen in the future? This concerns issues varying from what fishers do, where they will fish and how intensively, to the willingness of countries to cooperate in fisheries policy when stocks move northwards.
  
• Prescriptive research - which routes should be kept open, where should marine protected areas be allocated - is scarce. I was one of the few participants presenting such research, and even that was about Vietnamese mangrove forests (not exactly arctic) and Dutch agri-environment schemes (not exactly marine or arctic). Juan Carlos Seijo had a very nice presentation about where to allocate a marine protected area in an ecosystem where the commercial fish originates from a particular (nursery) area. Not very surprisingly, one should protect the nursery area from fishing, but if you take into account what fishers do the effect of the allocation also depends on whether the nursery lies close to the fishing port or far away from it.
  
• Norwegians are delightfully unapologetic about hunting and whaling. I can't blame them: they have plenty of fish, minke whale and game, and as far as I can see they manage these stocks fairly well. Meanwhile, the Dutch get squeamish about whether we should cull deer (but hunting is cruel), let them starve (which is even crueler), or risk hitting them on the highway (would you like a deer in your windscreen?).
  
• All the more surprising that the Dutch hunted whales, seals, and other cuddly arctic fauna on a large scale before the Norwegians did.
  
• Norwegian is a very efficient language. "Hello how are you today?" is "hej"; "thank you very much" is "takk". Why waste energy on redundant syllables?
  

Tromsø is a fascinating place. After Murmansk it is the largest city above the polar circle, and around this time of the year the sun does not rise - you get some twilight between 10am and 2pm, that's it. The city is proud of its arctic hunters (like Wanny Woldstad) and explorers (like Roald Amundsen). But I admit I'm glad to have some sunlight again.

Illegally obtained evidence in whaling research?

Apparently some biology journals refuse to publish research on whales if data for that research come from commercial whaling, as this paper in the ICES journal describes. Frankly the authors (all from a Norwegian research institute) are not happy with that.

I am no legal expert so I don't know whether such research is a case of illegally or improperly obtained evidence. I understand why such evidence is not accepted in court: you don't want to encourage police officers breaking the law themselves to catch a criminal. By the same token, you don't want to encourage researchers breaking international treaties for their research.

Nevertheless, I have mixed feelings about the international whaling bans. I once made this picture on the Bergen Fish Market:

Yes, I tried whale meat. It's not exactly a delicacy. I also asked what species it was and they told me it was minke whale. If you check minke whale in the IUCN Red List you will find the species is not threatened in any way. But what about the species next to the whale meat? There are many different eel species, but the eel you buy in most shops is European Eel - critically endangered, according to the IUCN Red List.

Why do we eat eel, which is on the brink of extinction, while we get so upset about minke whale, which is so abundant? I admit: smoked eel tastes much better than whale meat.