EDF chief hedges on key ’08 report

By Richard Gaines | Staff Writer

Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, conceded Monday his organization’s 2008 policy paper predicting a jellyfish-dominated oceanic catastrophe oversimplified the problem.

“Oceans of Abundance,” which was underwritten by the Walton Family Foundation and co-authored by NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, then an EDF official, foresaw “the collapse of global fisheries in our lifetimes,” to be replaced by “massive swarms of jellyfish” — unless the wild stocks were immediately privatized and commodified for “catch share” trading in the global investment market.

EDF’s Rader was responding to a Monday Times story about the publication in the February issue of BioScience on research that found no evidence of a trend toward an explosion of the jellyfish — or “gelatinous zooplankton” — filling the void left by the removal of more complex fishes.

The team was headed by ecologist Robert Condon of the Dauphin Island Sea in Alabama and 17 other scientists.