SFF chief executive Bertie Armstrong said: “The article, aimed at a scientific audience, recognises in its opening paragraphs scientific inadequacies of collecting local experiments and theories together and then making global assumptions. It then proceeds to do just that.
“As an example of the flawed nature of this approach we might look at the population explosion graphs of the 1960s which were at the time extrapolated into the future, predicting a doomsday scenario for mankind. That didn’t happen because the slope of the graph changed.
“The trends underlying the problems covered in the Science magazine article are also changing, but that has been ignored. Three ocean ecosystem villains are mentioned: exploitation; pollution and habitat destruction. We have strenuous improvement efforts being made in each of these areas but the article fails to recognise this, preferring to paint a much more dramatic picture which is scientifically superficial and invites damaging misinterpretation.
“Using the Scottish fishing fleet – the second largest in the EU – as an example, dramatic reductions in the last five years has seen the fleet match the sustainable catch opportunity, which has enabled us to achieve the sustainable harvesting of this fine natural resource.”
TheFishSite News Desk