CLOSING THOUGHTS: A GLIMPSE AT THE NEW ENGLAND OFFSHORE FISHERY IN 2061

Abstract

The range of perspectives on New England offshore fishery contained in preceding articles, reflecting wide breadth of views expressed by speakers at Conference on History, Status, and Future of New England Offshore Fishery held at Connecticut College on April 16 17, 1999, is truly impressive. The written contributions parallel oral presentations, allowing reader to note marked degree of respect between two essentially distinct communities, fishers on one hand and governmental manager-scientists on other. Given nature of their respective livelihoods, these two communities often find themselves at odds with one another. A careful reading of foregoing papers leaves us with an appreciation of how much hard-earned information has been acquired over years about our coastal and offshore marine environment, about various fish populations that reside therein, and about multi-faceted fishing industry that harvests these resources. We are also left with a sense of how intrinsically complex these natural and economic systems are, and, as a consequence of their complexity, how far we have yet to go before learning enough to effectively manage these systems. Beneath respect alluded to previously, a degree of ambivalence can perhaps be detected in some of presentations by fishing industry about many of conclusions put forth by scientists, modelers, and statisticians. One whose roots are firmly in academic community is left with somewhat hollow feeling that he or she may, to some degree, be witnessing time-honored tactic of blaming messenger. We as a society will only at our peril avoid recognition of inevitable consequences of ever-increasing demand in face of limited supply. A dozen years from now, on occasion of 100th Anniversary of Connecticut College, if it hosts another conference on New England offshore fishery, will papers report that plight of this fishery was much improved in intervening decade? Will some government bureaucracy, some association of fishing industry, some community of scientists, or a combination thereof have managed to cut Gordian knot comprised of inter-twining strands of the facts of economic life and the truths of a complex ecosystem? One need not introduce implications of potential climate change, nor be a pessimist by nature, to hesitate in answering in unequivocal affirmative.