Posted 07/23/2012
According to Kitty Simonds, one of the possible reasons for a decline in the abudance and size of nearshore fish in Hawai’i is …
“Visitors feeding our fish food that they shouldn’t be feeding them.”
And as for the disruptions that ocean acidification will have on coral reefs?
Not to worry, says Simonds. “In terms of the coral reefs, you know, you can replant them … someplace else around the island.”
Those improbable statements were made by Simonds, executive director of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council, in an interview carried on the PBS Newshour on July 19. Simonds and three representatives of Native American and Alaskan groups were interviewed by the Newshour’s Hari Sreenivasan as part of the Newshour’s series “Coping with the Effects of Climate Change.”
Aside from Simonds, the interview subjects gave sober, sensible answers to Brown’s questions.
Micah McCarty of the Makah Nation in Washington state said as a result of less stream water and warmer temperatures, salmon eggs might not be viable. Mike Williams of the Akiak native community in Alaska told of the dangers of running dog sleds over thinning ice and of having to go out further from shore to hunt for walrus and seals. Jeff Mears of Wisconsin’s Oneida Tribe spoke of the difficulties in designing and improving infrastructure and services to adapt to anticipated impacts of climate change.
But Simonds?
In an interview that was to focus on the impact of climate change on native communities, Simonds’ answers were bizarre and off-point.
In response to Sreenivasan’s first question about the impact of climate change, Simonds stated:
“We used to have much larger fish, different species,” she said. “They seem to have changed. And I’m not sure whether it’s climate change or the visitors feeding our fish food that they shouldn’t be feeding them. So, for me, it’s that, because we always ate fish at least three or four times a week.
“So that has been a large change. And the fishermen have to go farther and farther out to catch fish, in fact outside the 200-mile zone. And we have fewer fish around the coral reefs. Those actually were the best eating fish for us. We would love to — they were small, and we would fry them up, and they were delicious. Well, there are very few of those left.”
Later on in the segment, Sreenivasan lobbed a softball in her direction:
“Kitty Simonds, you probably know about ocean acidification and coral reef bleaching and perhaps even the introduction of foreign species and what sort of interplay that has.”
“Yes, in terms of the coral reefs, you know, you can replant them,” Simonds responded. “And that’s the — you know, because of the coral bleaching, they’re going to have to think of ways of replanting the coral someplace else around the island.
“And they do thrive. So that is one of the solutions in terms of the coral reefs. They’re very important to the islanders because of — the fish that live around the coral reefs are the fish that the islanders eat. So, once that goes away, the fish goes away, they lose their culture.”
Simonds was interviewed in Washington, D.C., where she (and other Wespac folks) were attending the third annual “Living Earth Festival” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Among other subjects, those in attendance were to discuss the effects of climate change on tribal communities. At a webcast of the event’s one seminar on the subject, Simonds was nowhere to be seen among the handful of people in the audience.
EH-Xtra Commentary by Patricia Tummons
To see the interview or read the text, go to:
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