New White Paper on Resource Sharing

RESOURCE SHARING:  The Berkeley Criterion

On August 10^th Wild Oceans will release a “white paper” entitled Resource Sharing: The Berkeley Criterion, written by president Ken Hinman. It describes what he believes to be a more balanced, more natural and far wiser alternative to our present way of managing marine fisheries, specifically those for key prey species. Hinman recommends policies that sustain ocean fishing, but in a way that protects the broader ecosystem and its living communities.

Instead of fishing as a part of the natural system, as one among many predators, we take the species we want in the quantities we demand, without regard for sustaining other forms of life in the sea.  “A different approach is essential to our co-existence with wild oceans,” Hinman says, an approach outlined in his paper.  “The future of fishing, I believe, lies in the balance.”

The publication of Resource Sharing comes at a time when there are critical decisions facing the New England, Mid-Atlantic and Pacific Fishery Management Councils, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and Congress; decisions that will determine how we define ecologically sustainable fishing in the future.

The author has spent a good part of the last 20 years studying the science and conservation of forage species. This 40-page paper explains why our current fishing strategies are ecologically harmful (Part One), dispels common misconceptions about where fisheries management is now in relation to where we need to be (Part Two), and summarizes an emerging consensus among scientists and policy-makers about how we should be protecting the ocean food web, right now (Part Three).

To reserve an advance copy of Resource Sharing: The Berkeley Criterion, click here.