The ‘presentist bias’ in time-series data: Implications for fisheries science and policy

Zeller, Dirk; Pauly, Daniel

doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2018.01.015

Cited by 32 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 35 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…31.6 t/year. As for other historical reconstructions and contemporary fisheries statistics (Engelhard et al, 2016;Zeller & Pauly, 2018), our estimates are based on a number of assumptions and are inevitably affected by sampling and taphonomic biases. It assumes that the average density value at Cubatão I can be conservatively expected for all sites in Babitonga Bay.…”

Section: Pre-columbian Catchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following recent catch reconstruction approaches (Freire et al, 2015; Pauly & Zeller, 2016;Zeller & Pauly, 2018), we used the density of fish remains from Cubatão I and the total volume of sites in this region to derive estimates of average fish catches in Babitonga Bay over a period of ca. 6,000 years.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Anthropogenic impact on marine ecosystems is unarguably one of the most pressing issues in marine conservation (Pinsky, Jensen, Ricard, & Palumbi, 2011;Roberts, 2010;Worm et al, 2009). There is a growing consensus that our understanding of this process is historically distorted (Pauly & Zeller, 2016), biased towards statistical records that fail to integrate a broad range of fishing practices (Pauly, 1995;Zeller & Pauly, 2018), and the legacy of longstanding human use of aquatic environments in most parts of the world (Jackson et al, 2001;Pinnegar & Engelhard, 2008). Fish and shellfish remains from archaeological contexts can offer valuable qualitative and quantitative information for reconstructing the scale of human exploitation of aquatic resources in the past, notably throughout prehistory (Erlandson & Rick, 2008;Jackson et al, 2001;Lotze & Worm, 2009;McKechnie et al, 2014;Plank, Allen, Nims, & Ladefoged, 2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Pre‐Columbian fisheries catch reconstruction for a subtropical estuary in South America

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Small‐scale fisheries provide food and livelihoods for thousands of people along the Brazilian coastline. However, considerable uncertainties still surround the extent to which artisanal and subsistence fisheries contribute to the total of national landings and their historical ecological significance. Fisheries monitoring is deficient in Brazil, and historical records are limited to irregular accounts spanning the last few decades, while this coastline has supported human populations for at least 6,000 years. Here, we estimate pre‐Columbian subsistence catches for a large subtropical estuary in southern Brazil. Our results suggest that prehistoric populations may have extracted volumes of fish biomass higher than or comparable with historical subsistence fisheries in the region, and that the latter is likely underestimated. If a long‐term perspective is required to evaluate the current economic value and status of fisheries in subtropical and tropical South America, this should go beyond the historical time interval and integrate the contribution of pre‐Columbian archaeology.

show abstract

Section: Pre-columbian Catchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Pre‐Columbian fisheries catch reconstruction for a subtropical estuary in South America

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The underreporting or misreporting of marine catches and fishing effort may bias stock assessments and hamper fisheries management because a large proportion of the total biomass removed by fishing is not accounted for [1, 2]. This, in turn, may influence national policies on fisheries [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This statement, however, does not appear in internationa databases of GFCM and FAO and constitutes a clear case of ‘presentist bias’, a term that has been recently proposed in fisheries science to describe the overestimation of the present against the past [12]. It refers to an improvement in an official catch reporting system (such as an inclusion of a previously unmonitored activity related to fleet, gear or region) that leads to an increase in recent reported catches without the corresponding past (unmonitored) catches being corrected for retroactively [3]. ‘Presentist bias’ is an inadvertent consequence of the effort most countries make to improve their national data collection and reporting systems [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Artificial upward trends in Greek marine landings: a case of presentist bias in European fisheries

Tsikliras

Dimarchopoulou

Pardalou

2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

According to the official landings as reported by the international databases for Greece, the declining trend of the Greek marine fisheries landings that had been continuous since the mid 1990s has been reversed during the last two years, with the total marine fisheries landings showing elevated catches after 2016. We claim that this upward trend is an artifact that is attributed to the combined reporting of the landings of additional fleets since 2016 that had been separately reported before and resulted in 20-30% inflation of the landings. In 2016, the Greek statistical authorities included the landings of 10 000 small-scale coastal vessels with engine horsepower lower than 20 HP together with the remaining coastal vessels, purse-seiners and trawlers whose landings formed the official reported Greek marine fisheries landings from 1970 to 2015. We acknowledge that this act of partial catch reconstruction improved the resolution of the landings and the officially reported values are now more realistic. However, the artificial, albeit inadvertent, inflation of the official Greek marine fisheries landings as they appear in international databases is a clear case of ‘presentist bias’ and may distort stock assessments and ecosystem modeling. As the currently misleading data stand, they are cause for substantial misinterpretation and analytical errors that can influence fisheries policy and have serious implications for fisheries management. We suggest that researchers should refrain from using the combined time-series and that a correction should be applied to the original time series (1970-2015) to account for the entire small-scale coastal fleet.

show abstract

Responses in fisheries catch data to a warming ocean along a latitudinal gradient in the western Pacific Ocean

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The ‘presentist bias’ in time-series data: Implications for fisheries science and policy

Cited by 32 publications

References 35 publications

Pre‐Columbian fisheries catch reconstruction for a subtropical estuary in South America

Pre‐Columbian fisheries catch reconstruction for a subtropical estuary in South America

Artificial upward trends in Greek marine landings: a case of presentist bias in European fisheries

Responses in fisheries catch data to a warming ocean along a latitudinal gradient in the western Pacific Ocean

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About