Ocean Calamities: Delineating the Boundaries between Scientific Evidence and Belief

Abstract

We welcome the contributions of Jacquet and colleagues (2015) to the debate we opened (Duarte et al. 2015). They begin by pointing out that marine extinctions go unnoticed and that, by waiting to collect data before taking action, we are losing precious time. They therefore imply that, by calling for a more rigorous analysis of ocean calamities, we are slowing progress for ocean protection. This is a false dichotomy. We called for a more critical examination of data so that we may better assess the generality, severity, and immediacy of ocean calamities in order to better focus—not slow down—conservation efforts. This debate is about neither distributing shame (cf. Jacquet 2015) nor assessing who holds superior scholarship practices. Indeed, we deliberately stressed the limitations of evidence in our own work (e.g., Vaquer-Sunyer and Duarte 2008).