An incomplete analysis

BioScience
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Abstract

Niles and colleagues (2009) do not present all of the data relevant to the issues they address in the article they wrote for BioScience. They reference unnamed sources for pre-1997 horseshoe crab harvest to conclude that recent harvest exceeds historic harvest. In fact, reported landings from New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia in 2006 (352 metric tons [mt]) were between landings in 1989 (365 mt) and 1990 (232 mt) (www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/commercial/inaex.html), despite nonmandatory reporting coastwide before 1998 (Kreamer and Michels 2009). They present egg densities from New Jersey beaches only. Of the 11 Delaware beaches sampled, eggs in the top 5 centimeters exceeded their monitoring target of 50,000 per square meter at 5 in 2006 and at 6 in 2007 (Kalasz et al. 2008). They rely on the Delaware trawl survey for historic trends. Nine fishery-independent surveys have been used to assess trends in the Delaware Bay region, and several began before 1990 (Smith et al. 2009a).
Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title An incomplete analysis
Series title BioScience
DOI 10.1525/bio.2009.59.7.20
Volume 59
Issue 7
Year Published 2009
Language English
Publisher American Institute of Biological Sciences
Contributing office(s) Leetown Science Center
Description 1 p.
Larger Work Type Article
Larger Work Subtype Journal Article
Larger Work Title BioScience
First page 541
Last page 541
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