Book reviews
On the Sex of Fish and the Gender of Scientists: Collected Essays in Fisheries Science (Fish and Fisheries 14. Series ed. T. J. Pitcher) Daniel Pauly Chapman and Hall, London etc., 1994 ISBN 0-412-59540-0, Β£35.00 Soft cover, acid-free paper, pp. xviii + 250, 16 tables, 57 figures Daniel Pauly is a prolific scientist and a charismatic presence; a career in the tropics has led him to develop new perspectives on fisheries and new techniques for their assessment. All told, he has become one of the world's most influential fisheries professionals.
An opportunity to sample Pauly's golden eggs in a single basket must command our attention. The series foreword encourages us by referring to Pauly as the "Stephen Jay Gould of the fisheries world." An evaluation of that comparison based on this collection, however, yields answers of yes, maybe, and no, depending on the criterion.
Yes: This collection does resemble Gould's in the range of topics and the essential link to biology and science. The 27 essays are organized into five parts -tropical fisheries, patterns in fish biology, overfishing, fisheries science, and fisheries literature. Few in our business have written broadly enough (or enough, period) to cover this range. Like Gould, Pauly is a free thinker.
The writings are strongest early in the book, where two messages predominate. First, Pauly promotes tropical fisheries as important resources per se and as models for scientific inquiry. He takes us to task for ignoring the value of tropical discoveries for temperate fisheries analysis. Second, he condemns overfishing and blames scientists along with greedy fishers for its existence. Pauly asserts that we have clung to simplistic models that underestimate overfishing, despite better conceptual and computational tools now available.
Pauly is correct on both counts. And if this collection can goad temperate scientists to study tropical fisheries with more open minds, then it will be a success. Towards that end, the book contains some excellent case examples and more than 50 figures useful for teaching (Pauly praises 'data-rich' writings in one essay, and he is true to his cause throughout the collection).
Maybe: Gould is extraordinarily talented at linking arts, sciences, and topical events to stimulate our thinking. In several entries, Pauly does the same, most successfully in terms of science and fisheries. His skill is most apparent in essays on mythology and fisheries and on fish stock assessment (which includes a flow chart that asks 'How does everything interact?' and provides one path leading to '42' -an answer well known to galactic hitchhikers).
The collection's title piece nicely links biologists' interpretations of natural phenomena to their own genders and appropriately promotes the encouragement of women in fisheries science. However, the going gets dense and frivolous (despite Pauly's denial) in his analysis of fisheries research in an imaginary two-dimensional world and indulgent when he reanalyses a diving magazine's shopping guide for regulators. I was left wishing for more substantive forays into the real world, with more meaningful lessons.
No: Unfortunately the collection does not achieve its promise, especially in the second half. Most later entries are newsletter reprints; consequently, they tend to be