This distrust is most pronounced in industrialised countries with developed scientific institutions and state's bureaucratic establishment.

Normally, the common concern of all those mentioned in the title is how to operate their fisheries. The issues are many: the condition of the environment, overfishing, choice of management means and systems, the role and merit of fishery science, selection and powers of decision makers, and the understanding of the character and dynamics of the system and the relative roles and interaction of its main components: the fishery resources, the fishing people, and all the environmental factors, whether physical, biological, or resulting from non-fishing human activities.

The Martian on fisheries

A visitor from Mars would perhaps ask: "What's the problem? Doesn't everybody want healthy fisheries to supply fish for the growing Earth's population on a permanent basis (he may not be acquainted with the term sustainability)?" But then he might encounter a certified environmentalist, who'd say: "yes, but only if it won't hurt the environment, the sea bottom, and the fish stocks". The innocent Martian would probably ask: "How do you want to eat from a cake and keep it intact?" "Ask the scientists," would come the answer. "This is their job to show the way".

The Martian then goes to a scientist, who tells him that all that's needed is to make the fishermen catch fish only according to TAC that's based on MSY, which is the most they can catch without risking overfishing. But the Martian asks how do they know how much MSY is. "We make assessments," says the scientist. "We have mathematical models in our computers, we feed them with data, and they tell us what the MSY is".

"Oh,” says the Martian. “So they tell you what's the exact amount of fish…"

"Well, not so exactly," says the scientist, and being a honest man he adds “plus-minus 50 to 100%".

"So this is what you tell the fishermen?" "No, we don't talk much with fishermen. We report to the managers. We give them the MSY figures from the computer; they don't like the plus-minus thing".

"Do you go to sea with fishermen? So as to know what's going on?"

"Well,” says the scientist, “what we've got are samples and statistics and results of test fishing and acoustic surveys from our research vessels, and what we haven't got is the time to go fishing."

The managers told the Martian that they deduct off the MSY or add some percentage and call the result TAC. Then they divide it into quotas or catch-shares for the fishermen. And to be on the sure side they also tell fishermen how many days they can spend at sea to catch their quotas, and where to fish and where not. And whenever they're not sure of the MSY there's always the PP.

"What's PP?" asks the Martian. "Oh, PP is the precautionary principle – to be on the sure side (of fishes, of course) we reduce the TAC, or just tell them to stop fishing".

"And how many days do you spend at sea?"

"Who, us? Who's got time for that?"

Fishermen know

But, while fishing people who spend their lives at sea don't know how many fish are down there, they also know that neither the scientists nor the managers know either. But they know from their fathers and from their own experience, their logbooks and their memories, that sometimes when one thing happens, another is sure to follow, or not. They know the effect of present weather on next year's yields, and when abundance of one species indicates abundance or scarcity of another. But only a few scientists and managers would ask for and consider their opinion, which they often dismiss as ‘anecdotal’ and useless.

The late Jim O'Malley, an American fisheries activist, once said that "no scientist within a bureaucracy is immune from the pressures…" But, there are scientists and scientists; independent scientists, dissidents from the state controlled systems are often ignored, silenced, left unemployed, etc. Others, who acquiesce with the environmental advocacy, earn research grants and are awarded honours and money prizes.

Both, managers and scientists often accuse fishermen of cheating. But, cheating is not inherent in the fishing profession. So, why do fishermen cheat?

There’re two ancient Jewish adages, which partly answer this question. One says: “You shall not make rules that people cannot put up with”. The other says: “Not the mouse is the thief – it is the hole (in the wall)”. Rules, which fishermen perceive as illogical, preposterous, or non-equitable, and the underlying science erroneous, they find impossible or simply too stupid to bear with. Also rules that would be consistently beaten by some would end to be beaten by all.

Fisheries laws and regulations, whether logical and useful, or partly or fully irrelevant to what's happening within a fishery and its ecosystem, are the combined result of administrative pressures, political pressures by now powerful environmental advocacy, and inadequate or even fallacious science. Several corporate interests are engaged either directly or by proxy in financing environmental NGOs and some of its activists became environmental profiteers. NGOs reciprocate by forcefully promoting privatisation of fishery resources through quota systems, and diverting attention from industrial and other pollution to overfishing as the greatest villain.

By perpetuating the claim that without employing throngs of scientists, technicians, bureaucrats, and enforcement officers, there’ll remain no fish in the sea, the fisheries management business servesits own interests, whileconsequences of its decisions eventually determine how the benefits from the country's fishery resources are distributed among its society in general and among sectors within fishery industry and commerce, in particular. The management is always quick to blame fishermen, but, no way would it be held responsible for the damage its wrong decisions might've caused to the industry, the resource, and the environment.