From a reporter:
What I'm interested in is:
1. Your reaction to the study.
2. Your assessment of local fisheries based on what you have seen working with the SAFMC and well as the sanctuary.
My reply:
1a. That is an old study. Why is it drawing interest now?
1b. The statistical model that predicts collapse is very simple with a flow variable (collapsed fisheries that varies from year to year) regressed on a stock variable (cumulative number of years in the time series data). I created some data where the dependent variable (y in the paper) is a random number between 1 and 10 and the independent variable (x in the paper) is cumulative beginning with 1 and ending with 40 (years). My results aren't as impressive as those in the papers but it indicates a statistically significant relationship ... when there is none. If my simulated data is for the years 1970 to 2010 it would predict that all fisheries are gone by some year in the future too.
In short, I don't trust the model that generates 2048 as doomsday.
2. I would go with this information: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/fisheries_eco/status_of_fisheries/fssi.html
Here a two posts on that study from 2006 (no more crabcakes, ITQs).
The linear model doesn't fit the made up data but the double log model, the same functional form as this, fits pretty well (r=.32 which is less than .96, but still).
