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What is the motive of ICES, putting a wrecking ball through the sector after all the progress that we have made in the last 15 years? Ironically, some of the progress is based on their own advice. It is important that we do not lose sight of the direction of the overall stock recovery plan.
There are very strong emotive opinions and political agendas to close the eel sector. However, we should always bear in mind, ICES is also subject to these pressures and as we have seen recently not all ICES advice is based on data and science.
It does seem that ICES is taking a completely different direction from previous years and reverting to historical arguments to support their new agenda.
In the light of the recent ICES advice there is a need to change the emphasis away from precautionary approach towards one that is evidenced based. Otherwise, negative outcomes from the precautionary approach will have been effectively endorsed by the ICES advice statement.
If it was their intention to destabilise the sector, it has been a success. Panic with farms trying to acquire sufficient stock to last for another three years while the sector is run down and a suspension of all further investment.
The glass eel season has already started. Is it a realistic managed objective to expect the sector to close in 2022? ICES advice has already caused Natural Resources Wales to close all Welsh eel fisheries. The advice is neither helpful, practical or sound. How could ICES have got it so wrong? Is this a credible organisation? To many people ICES will appear as a dysfunctional and self-serving organisation blinded by group thinking.
The eel sector has strongly rejected the ICES advice. This is evidenced in both the DUPAN and SEG response to the ICES report. Links below. Their opinions reflect our own, we are all alarmed at the advice given which seems to be based on outdated research.
In 1961 some of the world’s most strategic brains gathered in the White House not to discuss the future of a species but revolutionist communism, at the time a most pressing outbreak in Cuba. The Americans mulling a response included Robert McNamara, CIA Chief Allen Dilles and of course the President JF Kennedy. Their answer was to implement the Bay of Pigs invasion. One of the most notorious foreign policy fiascos of the 20th century, an operation so inept, so hare-brained, it now seems inconceivable that it was ever given the green light by anyone, let alone a contingent of the most eminent thinkers on the planet, but that is what happened.
President Kennedy later recalled “Minutes after the project started to fall apart; we all looked at each other and asked: 'How could we have been so stupid? When we saw the wide range of the failures, we asked ourselves why had it not been apparent to somebody from the start?” The answer, of course, was “GroupThink”, that blanket of camaraderie that smothers clear analysis, as members of a tight-knit band strive to preserve group cohesion above all else, against a common enemy, prizing their place in the club more than anything, suppressing their own doubts and silencing those of others, while leaping to conclusions without proper evaluation of data:'
So neatly does the word "GroupThink" express this concept that it is tempting to believe it has always existed and it certainly exists in ICES. It was not until more than a decade after the Bay of Pigs invasion, in 1972, that Irving Janis, a psychologist at Yale University, coined the term, leaning on the dystopian "doublethink:" of George Orwell's 1984:
It is easier now to understand why it exists. Standing out comes at a cost. Janis describes how, As members of a tight knit group against a common adversary (a sector exploiting eels) the group seeks a comfortable unanimity of events not only to preserve group adhesion but also above all else to secure the global prize of winning the credibility for saving the eel.
GroupThink seems to occur most often when a respected or persuasive leader is present, inspiring members to agree with his or her opinion. People settle for a preferred interpretation of events suppressing their own doubts and silencing those of others while leaping to conclusions without proper evaluation of the situation.
The group cloaks itself and its chosen path of morality. Dissenters become not just wrong, but somehow evil. Members of the club, meanwhile, are ideated by an image of themselves as both right and virtuous. I have had the privilege of observing regulators for more than 50 years. If too many people agree with the agenda, it might be advisable to pay extra attention to the dissenting voices. There are scientists with a different view to ICES unfortunately not very visible. However, the dissenters might have it right. At the very least, it’s worth considering that possibility. There is also a conspicuous absence of these scientists and stake holders involved in the decision-making process. They are not welcome. It distorts the comfortable unanimity.
Glass eel recruitment may well remain at low levels but this does not mean there are no recruitment surpluses. The Geometric Mean is based on the years 1960-1979, these were halcyon years of glass eel recruitment. For example prior to the 1960 there was only one glass eel depot in the UK, This increased to seven during this halcyon period and now the numbers are back to one. There is little fishing data to support the 1960-79 geometric mean for the UK. On the other hand social and cultural records and the proposal to introduce a close season prior to 1960 would suggest something different.
The non-fishing anthropogenic impacts cannot be ignored, managing eel populations is different from managing marine populations, ICES needs to be less fish centric. The ICES fisheries position is difficult to reconcile in the context of the very significant financial investment (millions) being undertaken to restore habitat and migratory pathways. Regrettably it has taken more than twenty years to bring about some of these major changes and now ICES is suggesting we go back three of four decades and start again. The current advice clearly demonstrates that they simply do not have the skills and experience. Closing the eel sector will not resolve the problem. No one dares to stand up and point out the astonishingly simple fact that habitat and migratory pathways are key to the problem of the decline of eel populations.
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