I can tell you for a fact that your table listing a 96% decline in Goliath Grouper (formerly known as Jewfish) in the Florida Keys since 1956 is so patently false as to be absurd.
I would assume if this one is so distorted, the rest is as well. I have 34 years residency in the Florida Keys and i know the Jewfish and all other species in the Keys quite well. And yes, I have extensive college studies in marine biology.
Save your breath. ‘Cogitator’ made up his mind on man-made global warming a long time ago.
I caught one of them endangered Jewfish last fall...must’ve been over near the bridge to Marco.
Small one...maybe 5 pounder...and U-G-L-Y.
Below the link I've excerpted a relevant section.
"As noted by the GMFMC (1990) and the SAFMC (1990), fishing pressure on goliath grouper throughout the 1970s and 1980s impacted the abundance and density of the species in both the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic; total U.S. commercial goliath grouper landings are presented in Table 2. Commercial landings in the Atlantic Ocean peaked in 1977 with 72,000 pounds (Table 3). In the Gulf of Mexico, commercial landings increased in the late 1970s, and continued to increase until their eventual decline in the mid- to late-1980s (Tables 4-6). Because of fishing pressure in the commercial and recreational sectors, the abundance and density of goliath grouper significantly decreased throughout its range. In many cases, the species was completely eradicated from areas such as North and South Carolina for over a decade."
"Porch et al. (2003) summarized interviews with fishermen and divers who had been active in southern Florida since the 1960s or earlier. Specifically, the nine interviewees were asked their perception on the reduction in goliath grouper populations from the time they first started fishing to the time of the harvest prohibition in 1990. The average percent reduction reported was 86 percent, with a standard deviation of approximately 13 percent (Porch et al., 2003)."
“And yes, I have extensive college studies in marine biology.”
Your extensive knowledge means nothing, comrade. Did you know that driving your SUV, raising your children and being a productive citizen who believes in free enterprise, family, liberty and God is causing the polar bears to go extinct?
Ask nobama. He’ll tell you.
;-)
Reanalyses of fishery collapses incorporating criteria that included targeting, variability in fishing effort, and market forces discovered many false cases of collapse based simply upon a decline of catches to 10% of previous maximum levels. Consequently, we suggest that the low mean trophic level index calculated in the earlier article for the GOM did not reflect the overall condition of the fishery ecosystem, and that the 10% rule for collapse should not be interpreted out of context in the GOM or elsewhere. In both cases, problems lay in the assumption that commercial landings data alone adequately reflect the fish populations and communities.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2268206