No, you're not missing anything (Hi, by the way) - that's essentially how it is. How soon the fisheries would collapse if current fishing levels were to continue, though, is uncertain, as is how strict the quotas need to be to avoid that - the estimates are based on the best available evidence, but they're still estimates. The fishermen - who have large investments in boats and employed crew, and a living to lose - favour higher quotas than the marine biologists, who don't.
Personally, I think that it's been obvious for twenty or thirty years that this day has been coming, and investment decisions should have been made with that in mind, but then what do I know?
And why didn't the reporters ask harsher questions of the fishermen? I don't know. They didn't, to be fair, ask dreadfully difficult questions about the quality of the fish population projections either.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2002-12-21 03:54 pm (UTC)Personally, I think that it's been obvious for twenty or thirty years that this day has been coming, and investment decisions should have been made with that in mind, but then what do I know?
And why didn't the reporters ask harsher questions of the fishermen? I don't know. They didn't, to be fair, ask dreadfully difficult questions about the quality of the fish population projections either.