Talk:Gary D. Sharp

I edited what was on the page down deleting his email footer citation (which I didn't see as really adding anything) and the extract from the book and the conclusion (which read as though it was puff from Sharp himself). Maybe the conclusion was an accurate summary of Sharps position but it doesnlt refelect what is on the page. As for the comment that "Sharp's position on climate change is very similar to those espoused by Exxon Mobil." This may be the case but if it were to remain we'd need a referenced summary of Sharps views on climate change and a comparison to Exxons (though I'd rather it just stuck to what Sharp's views are. --Bob Burton 23:30, 18 Jul 2005 (EDT)

Edit note
The following large section is entirely unreferenced. The bio note cited at the foot of the page isn't working and Sharp's website is either no longer operating or the server is temporarily down. I have relocated the material here pending the addition of references.--Bob Burton 16:48, 17 September 2007 (EDT)

is a skeptic scientist whose website is titled "A Chronology of Events, Places, Ecological and Societal Impacts".

Sharp's background as an ocean fisheries scientist began with research in the population genetics, physiology and behaviour of tuna and other pelagic species. He moved into looking at the application of evolving understanding about the relationship between oceanography and fisheries while he worked for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. He was one of the covenors of an international conference that resulted in a compilation of information about climate-driven responses in regional fisheries.

The Reports and Proceedings of the Expert Consultation on Neritic Fisheries Resources comprise 3 Volumes, totaling 1394 pages - available via these links:

Volumes 1 & 2 are:

http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/x6849e/x6849e00.htm 

ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/x6849e/x6849e00.pdf 

and

http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/003/X6850B/X6850B00.HTM 

ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/x6850b/x6850b00.pdf 

Vol.3:

http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/003/X6851B/X6851B00.HTM 

and/or

ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/x6851b/x6851b00.pdf 

Volume three - in which the last Chapter is by Sharp, Csirke and Garcia - provides an overview of the mess behind fisheries management models - quite analogous to the weaknesses of present day GCMs.

(When we wrote the preface for volumes 2 & 3 we thought, and rightly so, that what Johan Hjort wrote back in 1914 was still valid and-worth-repeating 70 years latter. Don't be surprised that the same message and what we and others wrote in ‘just’ three decades ago still needs being repeated every now and then!)

He has worked as Consulting Science Advisor to the Undersecretary of Oceans and Atmosphere and fisheries related work, including having been an Adjunct Professor for the Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia. He was Director of the NOAA/NPS Cooperative Institute for Research in the Integrated Ocean Sciences (CIRIOS) from 1990-1998, until Senator Trentt Lott reassembled his 'war room' against all the Naval/Ocean research community that exists in Monterey, California, and reassigned ONR staffers to NOAA/NOS Directors with the role of shutting down any NOAA/Naval links there...

From 1989-1998 he was active in both helping integrate the many ocean science institutions from San Francisco bay southward into the Montery Bay Region. When CSUMB was initiated, as Fort Ord was shut down, he was Chair of the Science Curriclum Development Commitee - and was eventually employed as Technology and Curriculum Advisor in an effort to inter-relate the many majors and their means of sharing objectives and information via rapidly evolving technologies, including GIS/GPS and visualization of extensive time series data.

He also wrote the FAO Department of Fisheries Position Paper on Climate Change, in consultation with his colleagues at FAO, in preparation for the UNCED in Brazil, in June, 1992.

In 2001he helped sponsor Leonid B. Klyashtorin, of VNIRO, the Federal Institute for Fisheries and Oceanography, Moscow, Russian Federation, with whom he had been active in promoting a document that presents the results of a study undertaken under contract to FAO by Professor Klyashtorin of the Federal Institute for Fisheries and Oceanography, Moscow, Russian Federation (Climate change and long term fluctuations of commercial catches:the possibility of forecasting. FAO FisheriesTechnical Report No.410, 98pp. FAO of the United Nations, Rome). The report was inspired by discussions with FAO staff following a seminar given by Professor Klyashtorin in Rome in which he presented the results of previous work.

Since their efforts together began, Sharp published the FAO Technical Paper 452 entitled "Future climate change and regional fisheries:a collaborative analysis" issues of Global Change versus Global Warming are discussed. The larger perspective is presented of Earth as a warm, wet planet, that experiences frequent cold periods via climate history graphics of Earth's recent million years of climate variation, from paleoclimate research. The hydrological cycle is described, and its relevance to fisheries is made clear. Climate-related dynamics have had serious consequences in evolution of species, society and fisheries variability. Both production variabilities and changes in vulnerability due to constant dynamics of ocean motion affects are described.

Professor Klyashtorin spent six months in Monterey bay as a NOAA Visiting Scientist at the NOAA/NMFS Pacific Fisheries Environment Lab, and he and Sharp worked together to get these important messages about climate and fisheries linkages out into the public, and considered by the various fisheries management staff. It was then quite clear that the Russian Climate Sciences were far more mature than those of most western sciences, and that the Russians had a firmer perspective on how to use their knowledge in a useful forecastive fashion, in lieu of the 'conventional' fisheries approach from hindcasts - with 'mean' expectation projections - the least likely scenarios in Nature.

The recent result was the publication of Klyashtorin, L.B.; Lyubushin, A.A. (2005) Cyclic climate changes and fish productivity. VNIRO Publishing: Moscow, Russia. ISBN 5-85382-212-8. 235 pp. - in Russian - This has now been translated for publication in English, along with some powerful messages about the value of this approach in contrast to the various methods employed around the globe in fisheries management settings of various dimmensions. English version.pdf available here: 

http://narod.yandex.ru/100.xhtml?alexeylyubushin.narod.ru/Climate_Changes_and_Fish_Productivity.pdf

Edit Notes

 * User Gsharp updated part of the lead par to add material not available in the cited bio note. So I have accepted it and added a reference for it to Sharp.
 * He also added a big slab of text and refs to articles (see below) which made the page unreadable. For the moment I have relocated them here. I still can't get the link to his resume on his website to work so I can't check what is on his website vs what he has posted here.
 * My inclination is to add a little more of his bio details, add a summary of his research work and just add a link to his own site for those wanting a complete listing of his articles (assuming I can get the link to his site to work). --Bob Burton 18:05, 19 September 2007 (EDT)

A MORE COMPLETE Biographic Resume is available at: where you will find that he started his career as a geneticist, studying the population structures and genetics of ocean fishes, porpoises, in the Eastern Pacific - and spread his expertise into upper ocean dynamics related to behavior, physiological ecology and population responses to the environmental changes on all time and space scales. Eventually writing Chapters and editing the Physiological Ecology of Tunas, Academic Press, 1978 - the first effort to bring the many aspects of modern System Science into the world of fisheries management. This, ultimately, led him to compile the monthly mean ocean data sets for the ocean basins - and in 1979 - the publication of Areas of potentially successful exploitation of tunas in the Indian Ocean with emphasis on surface methods. Indian Ocean Programme, FAO, Rome, Tech. Reports IOFC/DEV/79/47 - 1979. This became the basis for the evolution of the western indian Ocean high Seas Fisheries, and helped resolve the over-investment that had created havoc in the eastern tropical Atlantic fisheries - as the fleets that operated in competition there, split up and some moved into the Indian ocean Fisheries - managed under the scrutiny of Regional Bodies that were more attuned to what his messages were about 'how many boats could fish in such a size-related water body - without damaging the resources - or being hyper-competitive. This ocean fishery is now one of the best managed - and has stimulated the economies of the island communities involved - without their having to invest in new vessels - but through services provided to the fleets, and opportunities to develop processing facilities, such as the world's now most prolific tuna canning industry in Thailand.

A biographical note states that his current interests are on "the topics of Climate and Global Change, and the applications of climate and upper ocean monitoring related to aquatic resources." This is best exemplified by the many international workshops and reports that he stimulated while working as the FOA Fisheries Department's technical advisor on high seas fisheries and climate/ocean related issues. working with Jorge Csirke, Serge Garcia and John Caddy, and a long list of fresh water fisheries experts and tecnology experts toward a more realistic fisheries management convention resulted over a decade or so in many well accepted publications:

Colonization: modes of opportunism in the ocean. pp. 125-148 In: Report and Documentation of the Workshop on the Effects of Environmental Variation on the Survival of Larval Pelagic Fishes. (G.D. Sharp, convenor). IOC Workshop Series No. 28, Unesco, Paris. 1981.

Report of the Workshop on Effects of Environmental Variation on the Survival of Larval Pelagic Fishes. pp. 1-47 In: Report and Documentation of the Workshop on the Effects of Environmental Variation on the Survival of Larval Pelagic Fishes. (G.D. Sharp, convenor). IOC Workshop Series No. 28, Unesco, Paris. 1981.

Report on the research status and potential for cod rearing in the North Atlantic. from a meeting of consultants held in Svanøy, Norway, from 2-9 August, 1981. FAO/Norway Trust Funds. 13pp.

Atlas of Living Resources of the Sea. FAO Publication. (G.D. Sharp and J.-P. Troadec, eds.) Fourth Edition. 1981.

Ocean sciences in support of living marine resources: a report. 1982. Canad. J. Fish. Aq. Sci. 39(7):1059-1070. (A.Bakun, J.Beyer, D.Pauly, J.G.Pope, and G.D.Sharp). (Sharp was the editor and compiled the results from this working groups' week-long gathering in Rome).

Trends in respiratory work and ecological position in the marine ecosystem. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. 76A(3):405-412. Proceedings of Symposium on Comparative Cardiac Function in Lower Vertebrates, B. Tota and O. Poupa, eds. 1983.

Neritic systems and fisheries: their perturbations, natural and man induced. pp. 155-202 In: Ecosystems of the World: Part 27. Ecosystems of Continental Shelves (H. Postma and J.J.Zijlstra, eds.). Elseviers Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam-Oxford-New York. 1988.

Physics and fish populations: shelf sea fronts and fisheries. pp. 659-682 In: Proceedings of the Expert Consultation to Examine the Changes in Abundance and Species Composition of Neritic Fish Resources, Sharp, G.D. and J. Csirke, eds. San Jose, Costa Rica, 18-29 April 1983. FAO Fish. Rep. Ser. 291, vol. 2, with J. Hunter.

Modeling Fisheries: What was the question? pp. 1177-1224 In: Proceedings of the Expert Consultation to Examine the Changes in Abundance and Species Composition of Neritic Fish Resources, Sharp, G.D., J. Csirke, and S. Garcia, San Jose, Costa Rica, 18-29 April 1983. FAO Fish. Rep. Ser. 291, vol. 3

Tuna fisheries, elusive stock boundaries and illusory stock concepts. 1983 Collect. Vol. Sci. Pap. ICCAT /Recl. Doc. Sci. CICTA/Colecc. Doc. Cient. CICAA, Vol XVII (3):812-829.

Ecological efficiency and activity metabolism. pp. 459-474 In: Flows of Energy and Materials in Marine Ecosystems: theory and practice. M.J.R. Fasham, ed. Plenum Press. New York and London. 1984.

Sharp, G.D. and J. Csirke, eds. 1983: Proceedings of the Expert Consultation to Examine the Changes in Abundance and Species Composition of Neritic Fish Resources, San Jose, Costa Rica, 18-29 April 1983. FAO Fish. Rep. Ser. 291, vols. 2-3. 1294pp.

Csirke, J. and G.D. Sharp, eds. 1983: Report of the Expert Consultation to Examine the Changes in Abundance and Species Composition of Neritic Fish Resources, San Jose, Costa Rica, 18-29 April 1983. FAO Fish. Rep. Ser. 291, vol 1. 100pp.

Climate and fisheries : Cause and effect and the quest for elusive time series. 1986. pp. 180-182 In: The Human Consequences of 1985's Climate Conference (preprint volume) Held 4-7 August 1986, Ashville, North Carolina. American Meteorological Society.

Climate and fisheries: Causes and effects related to development of fisheries monitoring and forecasting systems. Prepared for: Report of the Task Force Meeting on Policy-Oriented Assessment of Impact of Climate Variations, held in Laxenburg, Austria, 30 June-2 July 1986. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

An Ecological Framework for Marine Fishery Investigations. 1987. FAO Tech. Paper 283. 152 pp. (with John F. Caddy), available in English and Spanish.

Climate and Fisheries: cause and effect or managing the long and short of it all. 1987. In: The Benguela and Comparable Ecosystems. (Payne, A.I.L., J.A. Gulland and K.H. Brink, eds.) So. Afr. J. Mar. Sci. 5:811-838.

Climate and Fisheries: Cause and Effect - A system review. 1991: pp. 239-258. In: Long-term Variability of Pelagic Fish Populations and Their Environment. (T. Kawasaki, S. Tanaka, Y. Toba and A. Taniguchi, eds.) Pergamon Press, Tokyo.

Climate Change, the Indian Ocean Tuna Fishery, and Empiricism. 1992: pp. 377-416 In: Climate Variability, Climate Change and Fisheries. M.H. Glantz, ed., Cambridge University Press.

Fishery Catch Records, ENSO, and Longer Term Climate Change as Inferred from Fish Remains From Marine Sediments. 1992 : PP. 379-417 In: Paleoclimatology of El Niño - Southern Oscillation, H. Diaz and V. Markgraf, eds., Cambridge University Press.

Pieces of the Puzzle: Anecdotes, Time Series and Insights. 1993. In: Benguela Trophic Functioning Symposium, (A.I.L. Payne, et al. eds.) So. African J. Mar. Sci. 12:1079-1992.

Comments on the global ocean observing capabilities, indicator species as climate proxies, and the need for timely ocean monitoring. 1993. Oceanography, 5(3):163-168. Sharp, G.D. and D.R. McLain.

Fisheries, El Niño-Southern Oscillation and upper ocean temperature records: an eastern Pacific example. 1993. Oceanography, 6(1): 13-22. Sharp, G.D. and D.R. McLain. -

and on it goes -

In 1986 he was contracted by the NOAA Administrator to help produce the first 'Ecosystem-based management Plan" program development plan -  - Working within the many NMFS regional fisheries management bodies staff - each region had developed their appropriate PDP - all of which was buried by Congress during and post the first Bush Administration - only to be reborn 20 some year later - still unfulfilled.

While in this position, he was also asked to attend the evolving NOAA Climate Change Program meetings - to see how their 'observation systems' might be integrated into the long overdue fisheries monitoring and management programs - as they were prior to the imposition of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Management act in the mid 1970s - that pushed US fisheries into the age of computer modeling - rather than the necessary real world monitoring and applied science that was evolving at various research centers, i.e, Aberdeen, Scotland; Plymouth, UK; La Jolla, California; Seattle, Washington; and much of Japan and Russia.

The analogy between this 'reversal of progress' to the Global Climate Modeling that evolved since the emergence of the CO2-dependence of the global warming since the mid-1970s is startling - and similarly, the total dependence on sub-climate time scale observations has led the entire political community into a quagmire - as the longer-term records from regional fisheries, social histories, and related climate changes are simply ignored - or worse - as in the Mann, Bradley and Hughes "Hockey-Stick - carefully 'disappeared' so that more funds can be dumped into wasteful, and unlikely scenario generations using poorly representative computer models that cannot yet provide realistic replications of the necessary regional climate regime pattern changes - Science is All About Skepticism - and real world, well reviewed observational data sets - not just junk numbers from severely biased urban weather stations - or worse - very expensive poorly parameterized nonsense modeling projects.

All getting in the way the actually 'dwindling' in situ observations necessary for successful management of our ocean's natural resources.