MTN 75:31-32 Book Review

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Book Review

Michael L. Weber
2281/2 South Juanita Avenue, Redondo Beach, California 90277 USA

Caught in the Net: The Conflict Between Shrimpers and Conservationists

by Anthony V. Margavio and Craig J. Forsyth, with Shirley Laska and James Mason
176 pages (6 x 9 inches), cloth edition only
3 black/white photographs; 1 line drawing
Copyright 1996; Language English; ISBN 0-89096-669-9
Publisher: Texas A & M University Press, Drawer C, College Station, Texas 77843
Price: US$ 32.50 plus $4 shipping within the U. S. ($5 shipping to foreign destinations)

Anyone working near shrimp or sea turtles during the last decade would have found it hard to avoid the TED [turtle excluder device] controversy - a controversy as intense if not as broadly known as the controversy over northern spotted owls and logging in the Pacific Northwest region of the U. S. Remarkably, the TED controversy has received little comprehensive academic review. With publication of Caught in the Net: The Conflict Between Shrimpers and Conservationists, we had reason to hope for a careful, disinterested analysis. We will have to wait.

Instead of drawing upon readily available materials, CAUGHT IN THE NET relies on hearsay evidence and recirculates rumors that are no more credible today than they were ten years ago. Although the authors conducted extensive surveys of shrimp fishermen's attitudes, which they seem to accept for objective reality, the authors did little to investigate the thinking, decisions, and activities of sea turtle scientists and conservationists.

For example, rather than reviewing the extensive literature on the status of sea turtles and their capture in shrimp trawls, Margavio and Forsyth rely on the views of a single biologist, whose singular opinions just happen to coincide with the interests of TED opponents. Astonishingly, based on this biologist's critique, the authors dismiss the conclusion of the 1990 National Academy of Sciences' review that incidental capture in shrimp trawls has been the major anthropogenic cause of sea turtle mortality. Similarly, they question the motives of sea turtle scientists in Government, but leave unexamined the motives of scientists whose daily work was with the shrimp industry.

Margavio and Forsyth deal no more responsibly with the conservation community. The authors renew the charge that conservationists did little to protect sea turtles from other threats such as poaching, beach development, and international trade. These charges are similar to those raised by international traders in sea turtles who told conservationists that the real problem was shrimp fishing, or by condominium developers who pointed the finger at them both. All three groups shared one thing in common - they were being dogged by conservationists. When I first became involved in sea turtle conservation in 1980, there already were hundreds of scientists and volunteers in the U. S. and beyond who were working to address all these problems and more. Even a casual inquiry into sea turtle conservation efforts over the last 25 years would have revealed as much.

Caught in the Net adopts a sadly cynical view of people's motivations for trying to conserve sea turtles. In this instance, the authors insist that conservation groups pressed for the adoption of TEDs in order to maintain funding support from their members and to divert attention from nameless corporate evildoers ... never mind that for decades scientists had been issuing calls to action that Government and industry ignored, or that these same conservationists had been battling corporate misdeeds as well.

Finally, the authors of Caught in the Net lump shrimp fishermen from North Carolina to Texas together into an undifferentiated mass of anger. Here they do a disservice to the rich diversity of attitudes and views that mark a fishery composed of hundreds of docks, thousands of boats, and tens of thousands of individual people. In doing so, the authors misrepresent the challenge of provoking change in that fishery.

Some people would like to bury the TED controversy in the past, while others would like to settle old arguments. The intensity of the TED controversy and its long history begs for some careful, comprehensive analysis. As L. A. Nielsen suggested in his 1995 article in Fisheries ("The Practical Use of Fisheries History"), evaluating and analyzing past conflicts can help guide our response to future conflicts. Remarkably, there is little interest in such historical analysis. Caught in the Net might have corrected that deficiency, but instead the book has merely compounded it.