DrWatson

This is because that's what intelligent folk do. They know they don't know everything, so they reach out to experts who know more than they do.

Science is not a crutch. The regulations are a result of the scientific evidence of the population decline. That science is peer reviewed. In this case the reports of Mackenzie and Clement have been reviewed by their peers, the Scientific Committee of the ICW. "15.3.3.1 REVIEW OF ABUNDANCE ESTIMATES The Committee agreed at last year’s meeting to review the abundance estimates for Hector’s dolphins intersessionally (IWC, 2016t, p.365). A formal process was established intersessionally following IWC procedures for such review including the creation of an Intersessional Exp

No Yes, and you also pretty much did exactly the same with this statement in general. You took an idea (a subjective idea) presented it as a fact and made it general. The greatest issue with scientific studies is that science is hard and it does take a lot of knowledge, and brain power to evaluate the work - that’s why we use peer review, and don’t simply allow Larry and Sindy from X - formerly known at Twatter - and their millions of stupid idolisers to determine what’s true and what’s not. Popularity is not peer review. Additionally, many people are

We need to make sailing fun again - fun for everyone who ever dreamed of being blown across a puddle in a walnut shell.

Yeah I spent about 12h in the English Channel pushing into 25-30 on Firefly. Started out with some very good swells, prob 6m with quite ugly sea on top. Was pretty glad it moderated and died away around 8pm (as predicted) - not sure I wanted to spend a whole night doing the same.

Huge assumptions here are that dolphins will know to stay away from the thing that’s making the huge racket, that said huge racket won’t confuse them, and that the visual identification of a big arse flying machine dragging it’s razor blade appendages in the water as an identifiable danger will be made by the dolphin. The approach speed may be the same but picking up an orca on your sonar or visually is going to be easier than picking up set of foils that have the frontal projection area of a toothpick. The BOI issue is different because the dolphins are/were starving - not being run d

Coming into dock, crewman - big guy - on the rail with dock line in hand ready to step off and make fast. He takes a big step as we’re prob just on a metre out. All good, he can make the gap, but his gammy knee buckles and down he goes between the dock and the boat with rapidly diminishing space. I slam the boat into reverse to back out a bit. Catastrophe averted but was damn scary. And he surfaced with the dock line still in hand to complete the task…

I found a report that was linked from the initial discussion piece whenever it was that it was notified. I’m not a marine biologist but the scientific rigour one would expect to be found to hang a policy like that on was massively lacking. The report was at best based on a level of science I would expect to find in a third rate primary school science fair. Mostly assumptions and negation of major untracked variables including a lack of evidence on food resource assessment and assumptions of human behaviour.

Agree completely. Wasn’t intending a comparison.

This whole discussion about dolphins has me thinking again about the dolphin policy in the BOI. Q. Has anyone actually read the scientific report and study upon which the “bylaw” was based?

At least the sun shone today while I holy stoned the deck still blowing dogs off chains, tho

Nice morning for it…. good angle, too

Yep! mind you it took me 12h to get here from home. It’s like living in Auckland and keeping a boat in Welly!

We just arrived in Brest. Got out of the taxi and it hailed, turned to rain after 10 min, and hasn’t stopped. That was 3h ago. Storm forecast for the next 2 days, lol…

hahaha, appreciate the effort, Jon, but I'm too tired to bite