Coastal Conservation Association (CCA)

The Scorpion and the Frog

By Ted Venker
TIDE
Jan/Feb 2005

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream

 and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back.

The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?"

The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out.

But in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog.

 The frog starts to sink and knowing they both will drown,

has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

Replies the scorpion: "It is my nature..."

As a kid, I always found that old Aesop story a little bewildering. Why on earth would the scorpion do that? Didn’t he realize that if he could just control himself, he would have lived, made it to the other side and maybe gone on to achieve great things? Why did he just throw it all away? How dumb are scorpions, anyway?

The scorpion’s answer is just as confusing as ever.

The environmental community and sportsmen’s groups meet on one side of the river quite often. The two camps have differing points of view on just about every topic, but our overall goals align on a variety of issues. We both want to see the natural resources of this country enhanced and available for future generations. We want healthy populations of fish and wildlife. We want clean air and water, and we want quality habitat.

In short, there are plenty of reasons for us to share a ride across the river to achieve these goals.

Given that, many anglers were perhaps surprised to pick up their local newspaper back in August and find out that they were being accused by environmentalists of causing the demise of many important fish stocks. A study, commissioned by the Pew Foundation and appearing in Science magazine, boasted the title, “The Impact of United States Recreational Fisheries on Marine Fish Populations.”

With a robust promotional effort behind it, the study spawned dozens of articles in newspapers across the country that pointed the finger directly at recreational anglers for the current plight of several fish stocks, without bothering to acknowledge several critical facts, like the decades of commercial overfishing that drove them into that condition in the first place.

Why would a pillar of the environmental community commission a study which is clearly designed to put unnecessary pressure on its natural allies, the conservationists?

Perhaps it is simply in its nature.

While money does not seem to be an object with these particular studies, it seems no amount could procure credible science to support this attack. The study turned out to be so flawed that the director of the National Marine Fisheries Service told a radio audience in North Carolina that his agency was troubled by the lack of any real science behind it. Editors of sportfishing magazines dedicated entire columns to it and found it quite easy to take the study apart piece by piece. CCA sent a letter to the editor of Science magazine signed by 20 other conservation groups protesting the misleading nature of the report.

There were enough holes in the study that the members of the CCA National Government Relations Committee, with input from CCA’s Atlantic and Gulf Fisheries consultants, chose to generally ignore it since they could not imagine a fishery manager taking it seriously.

There is not much danger that this study will win a Nobel Prize, but real damage was done by the voracious public relations machine, which managed to get a flawed, misleading study out in front of an unsuspecting public.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of a river somewhere, a frog was left wondering why he would ever trust a scorpion.