Why Do the “Environmentalists” Fear Honest Debate?
<The following represents the opinions of the poster, who is a commercial longline boat owner, not necessarily that of S.O.F.A. or the blog administrators.>
You have to wonder why an “environmentalist” like the guy who calls himself “Ted Williams” (he is NOT the baseball legend, nor does he have any apparent connection to the baseball legend other than using the name.) and apparently runs things on the Fly Rod + Reel Online site would fear honest debate and need to use lies and logical fallacy to rail against commercial fishermen.
Posting as “Cappy”, I recently had a debate with Mr. Williams in his territory. Well, I had part of a debate. He let it continue until he had no other comeback for my logic and continual insistence on using facts and truth other than to accuse me of “offering the inevitable rebuttal of all exploiters”, a “dead end erected by dead brains that leaves no possibility for rational debate”. How did he do this? He did it by dishonestly misquoting me, changing the meaning of what I had said by the lie of omission and then not allowing my response to be posted.
I said this:
“I don’t believe the data, as gathered, is complete enough or accurate enough to warrant shutting down an entire industry.”
But Ted quoted me like this:
“I don’t believe the data…”
He also accused me of lying when I pointed out that the logbooks that all reef fish permit holders are required by law to fill out at the end of each trip have no place in them where they ask about sea turtles one way or another. He thought he was trapping me when he misunderstood when I said the log books I filled in had no mention of sea turtles, and accused me of obviously lying as I must have encountered sea turtles while fishing and not entered that information into my logs.
He also accused me of “not understanding the language” because I had asked a rhetorical question regarding our industry representatives. The problem is, the question I asked was in no way a “rhetorical question”, it was simply a question that I would have liked to see his answer to.
So, how did this conservationist writer respond when I pointed out the above to him? Well, he doesn’t have to respond because he simply blocked my response to his lies and personal attacks from being posted.
Tell you what, Ted. I’ll post it here and invite you to continue the logical discussion I’ve tried to have with you while you continue to use logical fallacy, appeals to emotions rather than facts, and outright lies to attack a fishery and fishermen you obviously know nothing about and are willing to learn about only by reading the propaganda released by Center for Biological Diversity as they file yet one more of their unending string of lawsuits designed to tie up our court system and generate donations to enrichen their legal team.
The post Ted Williams was apparently afraid to let his readers see and respond to in his blog:
I have indeed read what I wrote, and it isn’t what you “quote”
Submitted by Cappy (not verified) on Sun, 04/19/2009 – 22:03.
Ted Williams Wrote: You asked a rhetorical question:
“You state that ‘Industry representatives for the bottom longline fishery and other fisheries acknowledge commercial fishermen are not always honest about the number of turtles with which they interact.’ Which industry representatives would this be?”
Either you are not familiar with the language or this is a statement of disbelief that there are indeed dishonest comm. fishermen, else why would you make it?
It isn’t a rhetorical question at all, are you sure you know what that means?
It is a question I would like to see your answer to. You claim industry representatives made statements concerning those who they represent. As I’m one of those supposedly being represented by them and none of my own industry representatives made the statements, I’m asking who said what you claim was said. Surely you can answer that unless you are making it all up.
Ted Williams Wrote: Did you expect CCC to list the liars by name? Street addresses? Phone numbers? I did not claim that all the industry reps that have lied to me work only for Gulf longliners.
If CCC is going to accuse someone of lying, they should be prepared to either name the liars or provide some sort of substantial evidence that the lies were made.
As for your own sweeping generalizations, the topic at hand is an issue concerning Gulf Longliners. Many people may have lied to you in the past, but the only ones that would be germane would be industry reps for the Gulf Longliners. Any others would be irrelevant. Was that your argument? Some other reps for a different industry once “looked you in the eyes” and lied? What a pathetic argument to make.
Ted Williams Wrote:You go on to make this statement: “I have a logbook that I fill in at the end of every bottom longline trip as required by regulations, and there is no mention of sea turtles in it.” Did you forgot what you wrote? Or do you still maintain that this is not a statement of non-interaction with turtles?
You are having a hard time twisting here. What I meant, as anyone can easily see from my follow up on the subject if not my original statement, and what is true, is that the logbooks that Gulf longliners fill out every trip have no questions and no mention of sea turtles in them. The original poster suggested the fishermen were lying when they supposedly falsified the information. I’m simply stating something that is easily verifiable as truth. The logbook (NOAA form 88-186) Gulf longliners use as per the regulations makes no attempt to gather information about sea turtles. The previous poster’s accusation of fishermen intentionally falsifying that information is simply not true, a lie in fact. There is no place on the logbook pages that asks about sea turtles nor is there a place in the form to enter information about sea turtles. I can’t make it any more clear than that but I’m somehow sure you will either attempt to spin it or choose to ignore it.
Ted Williams Wrote: You go on to write: “Then you attempt to say that my contention may be that we should ignore AIDS because cancer kills more people? I neither said that nor believe anything so silly.” But you use precisely this logic to suggest that we shouldn’t worry about longline mortality because it is not as great as mortality caused by beach manipulations and development. You will now grant, will you not, that that line of reasoning is absurd?
I will grant that your continuing attempts to use logical fallacy are absurd, yes. You claim I use “precisely this logic” when in fact there is no logic in the statement YOU made for anyone to use. I never said, and have never implied, that we shouldn’t worry about longline mortality.
What I believe is that your continued embrace of the “close down the evil fishery” subject when you know full well that other activities, including ones such as recreational boating that you yourelf engage in, are more damaging to the turtle populations is hypocritical and disingenous.
What I do believe is that attempting to focus blame for nesting decline on a small fishery that is basically an easy target while choosing to ignore larger factors that cause far more damage to the turtles is simply cowardly.
What I believe is that attempting to blame the longline fishery for the decline of turtle nesting when even Oceana’s extrapolation of the data set shows that the fishery is responsible for 3% of the missing female nesting turtles and more reasonable extrapolation of the data could put it as low as 0.5% is simply taking the easy road to perfoming some sort of “ecological service”. Moreover, attempting to gather donations from the public to “help fight this threat” as more and more ecological organizations are doing is dishonest and simply taking advantage of many American’s desire to do the right thing.
What I have said is that the mortality to sea turtles from longline fishing is NOT as great as the figures used to prepare the lawsuit and being used to drum up public support for the lawsuit and donations to the groups bringing the lawsuit would imply.
I say that the data set is incomplete, insubstantial, and flawed.
Here is but one example:
- In the course of the study, the largest number of documented turtle takes were documented by an observer on one anomalous trip, 7 out of the entire total of 18 were in fact taken on this one trip. This is something called an “outlier” by responsible scientists and statisticians and would, in any responsible study particularly one with such a small data set, be thrown out as it can seriously perturb statistical estimates.
- Furthermore, this particular trip was reported to the NMFS as a combination shark and reef fish trip. However, no mention was made by the observer as to whether the sets that caught the abberant number of turtles were reef fish (grouper) sets or shark sets.
This alone is enough to determine the data set is flawed. When you factor in the fact that the shark fishery is for all intents and purposes now shut down (the only participants have “research permits” and full observer coverage) it makes it even more clear how essentially useless the data from this one trip that accounts for more than a third of the takes observed in a full 18 months is.
You of course have no knowledge of any of this as you apparently don’t find it necessary to review the data the NMFS is actually using. In fact, the NMFS themselves said in 2008:
“the extrapolated estimates […] should not be assumed to be reasonable.”
You don’t know this because you apparently make no attempt to learn anything about the “causes” you champion beyond a quick surface reading and a rallying cry of “shut the liars down”. The NMFS has no real idea of what is going on because for years they have been compiling incomplete and useless data sets in a hodge podge manner that results in nobody really having any idea what is going on. However, the regulators still have a mandate to regulate so they do it from a position of ignorance.
One that you support fully.
Ted Williams Wrote: No one is suggesting that the fishery be “shut down.”
How would you characterize a six month closure of a fishery? How would you suggest the participants support their businesses, their homes and their families while they wait out this proposal?
- “Gulf Council officials said the closure, once implemented by National Marine Fisheries Service, can be in effect for up to six months while the council considers other long-term solutions. The closure could be renewed by the council for another six months, if necessary, officials said.”
Ted Williams Wrote: The plaintiffs merely want to “suspend” it until the feds figure out how to prevent more turtles from being hurt or killed. If, as you claim, they’re not being hurt or killed, that should be a very simple and quick task.
This can’t possibly make any sense even to you. First, despite your repeated misquotes and disinformation, the official terminology is “closure” not “suspend”. Second, how on earth can you study something while it is suspended or more correctly “closed”? How do you learn something about anything if the first thing you do is put a stop to it?
Ted Williams Wrote: Finally, you have offered the inevitable rebuttal of all exploiters, land or sea: “I don’t believe the data…” That’s a dead end erected by dead brains that leaves no possibility for rational debate.
I appreciate the ad hominem attack, it shows you for what you really are.
Despite your claim that the argument I offered is typical of the “dead brain” the problem is that you have to dishonestly misquote what I did say and lie by omission to make it appear that I said something completely different from what I really said for your argument to fit. The factor here that leaves no possibility for rational debate is your own inability to address the actual issue and your need to resort to repeated logical fallacy and misquotes to make your “points”.
What I said is “I don’t believe the data, as gathered, is complete enough or accurate enough to warrant shutting down an entire industry.”
What you dishonestly claim I said was “I don’t believe the data…”
Even the brain dead can see the huge difference there.
In closing, to quote Dr. Trevor Kenchington
“Where threatened species are concerned, no losses should be taken lightly and all practicable means of reducing the number of loggerhead caught on reef-fish longlines, as well as the proportion of those caught which die as, must be taken – as the Magnuson-Stevens Act requires. However, reef-fish longlining is only a very minor contributor to the range of threats facing the loggerhead. Besides the many other causes of death, this one fishery accounts for perhaps 0.1% of loggerhead killed by fisheries. It may have been responsible for 0.5% of the loss of breeding females from the Florida beaches in the past decade. While those estimates are necessarily highly uncertain, they are sufficient to show that reef-fish longlining is only a distraction from the real causes of the serious declines in the loggerhead populations.”
Comments on the Number of Interactions Between Loggerhead Turtles and Reef-Fish Longline Gear in the Gulf of Mexico (2008)
