Ransom Myers obituary in Nature

In this week's issue of Nature (10 May, 2007), Daniel Pauly has written an obituary of Dr. Ransom A. Myers. It may be found at the following link in the News and Views section: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v447/n7141/index.html.

Pauly, D. Obituary: Ransom Aldrich Meyers (1952-2007) Chronicler of declining fish populations. Nature 447 (7141): 160.

This is a wonderful and fitting tribute to someone who published several articles in this esteemed journal, and led to mainstream talk about the status of depleted populations of marine species. For those who do not have a subscription or access to Nature, I hope it can be made available through other media.

Ram died one month ago today

sunset Cape Breton August 2006

Listen to the touching NPR story on Ransom Myers

In "Science out of the Box," NPR featured "a story of a scientist who earned an international reputation for thinking outside the box." Below are some notes but it is much better to listen to the 3/30/07 edition at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9264815&ft=1&f=6851565 or download it from itunes.

Ram ... was one of those guys who always stood out at scientific conferences ... partly it was the kids - he had five - and one or two always seem to be following him around at a meeting. But it was also ... his ability to instantly see the hole in any argument. Biologist Charles Peterson said, Ram "had a twinkle in his eye and good humor but his comments were always sharp and to the point..."

Ram's voice from a few years ago: "the amazing thing we found...changing fundamentally the world's ocean without really thinking about it and really understanding it." Those studies made Ram a hero of conservatism.

Ram once said that it was bit of a fluke that he ended up studying species. He grew up in rural Mississippi. His precocious talent for math and science cause problems at school.
Andy Rosenberg said that Ram told him that "when he was in high school, he came to an agreement with the teachers that they had taught him everything they could and it would be better if that just left him in the library to learn things for himself."

....As a grad student at Dal, Ram began using his mathematical talent to understand how the oceans work. Andy Rosenberg was at Dal then & remembered Ram "coming out of the elevator with a stream of paper behind him (from the old teletype sheets) and Ram said 'I had this idea and I've written it up' and it fragments of sentences, equations and graphs ...he walked down the hall with a paper stream behind of him... that was just so much Ram."

Ram was never shy about defending his work. At one public debate, he titled his power point presentation "I AM RIGHT." Andy Rosenberg was there and the memory brought tears.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9264815&ft=1&f=6851565

"We are fishing our oceans to death"

Margaret Wente writes, "Ransom Myers is not a household name. He should be. The Nova Scotia biologist, who died last week at 54, was called the best fish scientist in Canada. He was also a leading authority on the greatest environmental disaster of our time. It's too bad that global warming gets all the ink, because the danger documented by Prof. Myers is right here, right now. We are fishing out the seas. We don't have to wait for global warming to wipe out species, because we are doing it already. Prof. Myers found that in the past 50 to 100 years, we have fished out more than 90 per cent of the world's biggest predatory fish -- tuna, swordfish, marlin, cod, shark. Most of the ones that remain are much smaller than the ones your grandpa saw. If somebody rewrote The Old Man and the Sea today, the old man's adversary would probably be a minnow. Today, we don't fish the seas -- we mine them. Ocean-going supertrawlers drag the seas to depths of 600 metres, sucking up the last of the giant bluefin tuna, along with tonnes and tonnes of bycatch (waste fish for which there is no market). They fish out one area and then move on, leaving a virtual desert in their wake. Prof. Myers's warnings were not speculation. He based them on a hard slog through the data of ocean trawler records through the years. Back in 2003, he warned, "We've got to cut fishing by 50 per cent, and if it's not done, we're going to lose the pelagic [ocean-going] species." Last week, his final piece of research was published in the journal Science. It found that populations of some of the biggest shark species off the eastern coast of the United States had also plunged by 90 per cent or even more. "If you go to any reef around the world, except for those that are really protected, the sharks are gone," Dr Ranson Myers said........... "The collapse was all blamed on the environment, on the seals, on the foreigners, when it was primarily Canadians," he (Dr. Ransom Myers) said later. "I saw that as the big lie, blaming it on anything but ourselves." So why are the big sharks going the way of the cod? Blame consumer tastes -- in this case, the Asian craze for shark-fin soup, which is considered a tasty if expensive delicacy. Shark fins sell for hundreds of dollars a kilogram, and shark-fin soup for as much as $100 a bowl. In a practice known as finning, fishermen catch the sharks on the high seas, cut off their fins and throw the carcasses back. It's illegal, but the high seas aren't well policed. As many as 75 million sharks were finned last year, says research team member Julia Baum. It's not too late to save the big fish. Prof. Myers's research has helped to bring about important changes in fishing practices and technology. But nothing much will happen without international laws, internationally enforced. Call it a sort of test case for global warming. If the world's fishing nations can't get together to save the fish, there's no hope for a pact on greenhouse gases.
Meantime, watch out what you're eating from the sea. As someone who loves sushi, this breaks my heart. But it's the ethical thing to do."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070403.wxcowent03/BNStory/National/?query
MARGARET WENTE From Tuesday's Globe and Mail April 3, 2007 at 3:58 AM EST

David Suzuki on Ransom Myers

"Dr. Ransom Myers was at the leading edge of conservation biology. He consistently strove to dig deeper and go further in the search for answers to pressing ecological issues. His efforts raised the public's understanding of the plight of our oceans, and he inspired a generation of marine biologists. His work will be sorely missed, and so will he. " h ttp://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly04060701.asp

Friday the 13th

Ram was born on Friday the 13th, 1952. A scientist is not superstitious. But the illiterate and uneducated often are superstitious. When we were growing up, we had a washing woman named Mary who was illiterate and superstitious. I remember Mary talking..."that Mister Randy...that Mister Randy.... he's done gonna blow up the whole town....don't that boy know he was born on Friday the 13th ......"

This is, perhaps, more indicative of the frozen place and time we grew up, rather than a reflection of Randy. The man who became Ram made his own luck, that is, until his Brain Cancer went undiagnosed (by the Candian govertment controlled health care system) until it was too late.

Ransom Myers' death a loss for science

Dr Ransom Myers "was indeed a distinguished scientist, an engaging public speaker and leading advocate for change. Sadly, we will now never know what else he may have accomplished. His death from a brain tumor, at just 54, came at the height of his scientific career and at a time when the world needs him most." The Review http://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentid=479977&catname=Editorial+%26+Opinion&classif=