Herring Scrap 44: School's Out
There, done. My thesis defense happened early last month. I passed. After that I had a last little round of revisions and then a micro-edit micro-battle to get all the formatting just right so this document can live forever in perfect (arial-12) repose and I got an email saying I'd satisfied all the requirements of my task and could leave.
After all that my computer allergy flared up; I took a few weeks to not look at it at all and be outside. Last scrap I told you I'd offer the conclusion here in serial form and I don't quite want to do that at this point. I feel like I've over-extended my license to be redundant here, and so all that's left to do is share the document in full. So here it is, at this link, my very own thesis, A Model Fishery In Bad Relations; do with it what you will.
In it, I present the growth of a harmful fishery in Sitka as something that has been justified by a rigged type of science within a rigged sort of public process; I show that public outcry has been rebuffed by an official (and unearned) posture of non-concern. I get there by reading old reports and old newspapers, and by listening to elders speak in a regulatory process, and by learning how herring population assessment has evolved, and by doing a bespoke comparative review of it all.
It's not my favorite thing I've ever done. This thesis is the product of a writing process that I didn't enjoy and only wanted out from, it surely reads accordingly, and that's too bad but so it goes. I can imagine ways that people might encounter it and find it some combination of helpful, interesting, and generative, and so that's good. Specific to the situation in Sitka, I think it lays out, albeit stiltedly and mincingly, an explanation of why and how ADF&G's claims about herring abundance over time in Sitka are totally bogus, and of why and how the bogusness of the claims matters. I hope that this thesis reveals (and signposts) some of the ways that ADF&G's knowledge claims about herring population trajectories in Sitka are grandiose, absurd, obfuscative, dangerous. I think people who are interested in knowing just how full of shit fisheries science can be, or interested in wrestling with the varied implications of that phenomenon - that is to say, reckoning with the profound failings of fisheries science and governance schemes to work justly, sensibly, honestly, reflectively - could find something to chew on here. The thesis probably does a few other things besides, beholder depending; anyhow, it'll do. If you read it, I hope there's something in there that resonates or makes you go ah or ahh or aaa or even huh. If you don't, no sweat; I'll give a talk or write the important parts better sometime.
A few people have asked if I plan to keep doing herring scraps now that that part is over with, and indeed I do. Stay tunad.
