Monthly Archives: November 2010

the asshole paradox: salmon theory parade… (we’re getting close folks)

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We might be getting so close to the true reason for salmon declines…  I can almost smell it.

throes of death on Stellaquo --- by Lisa Loewen

It’s as strong as a decaying humpy in the noon day soon; or thousands of humpies rotting in the noon day fall sun.

This is groundbreaking, revolutionary, cutting edge, best of the best practices, and ‘benchmark’ of all benchmarks, the immeasurable measurable, the objective objective and strategic strategy…

Maybe we should stop the Cohen Commission, save some time and money, and get down to work on fixing the great salmon killer:

The asshole paradox…

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The Globe and Mail ran a Mark Hume article today:

…A panel of retired and current senior officials with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans described Monday, for the Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River, how the wild salmon policy was hammered out in a series of intense discussions between 2001 and 2005.

Officials said there was not only conflict between outside stakeholders and DFO, but also internally between departmental scientists and fisheries managers.

…A series of e-mails obtained by The Globe and Mail show that DFO officials often bristled at criticism they were getting from NGOs while the policy was being developed.

In one communication, Mr. Chamut describes conservationists, who were in discussions with DFO in shaping the policy, as “assholes.”

(It’s quite odd this… I can think of a few politicians that have been removed from their posts due to comments less harsh than this. Yet, public service employees may not be held to the same standard…?)

Sadly, the “asshole” statement is the history of salmon ‘management’ over the last century or so — ever more so in the last fifty years or so, and heating up substantially in the last two decades. It is a mirror image of so many fisheries around the world that exploded in growth over the last half century — too many fisherfolks; not enough fish

…and apparently too many assholes criticizing the processes dealing with these issues.

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See here’s part of  the asshole paradox: Simply by owning up to the fact of being an asshole, you are well on your way to becoming an ex-asshole.

I was one of those “assholes” that did work for NGOs that criticized the Wild Salmon Policy.

I still criticize it… it’s a bunch of nice words on paper with very little budget to be implemented with any real meaning. It’s full of bumpf and bafflegab — says a lot without saying much at all. The issues that salmon face (or any threatened ecosystems) will not be solved by techno-scientific empty-terms parading on paper as ‘solutions’.

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(whewee, thank ghad, I feel better now… maybe I’m on my way to becoming an ex-asshole)

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And, yet… this view of from within the federal ministry tasked with looking after wild salmon is prevalent — Anyone from outside of the organization that criticizes its work… is an asshole. Or even someone from outside of one’s department… is an asshole)

Not with everyone in the organization, not by any sense of the imagination. There are many great folks within DFO — however any institution that has a history of labeling critics as “assholes”… will have a hard time breaking that institutional history.

(case in point, I think my name might have been followed by “what an asshole…” at meetings over the last while where I’ve attempted to ask some hard, honest questions of the federal ministry responsible for looking after wild salmon)

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Does it not amaze you how kids nursery rhymes  and schoolground taunting remains very much the same over time…?

e.g., “sticks and stones will break my bones…”

It’s an institutional culture.

Does it not amaze you that the antics within the House of Commons, our national governing institution, remains very much the same over time… you know… the “hear, hear” and “mr. speaker…” — and that it does not operate much different than an elementary school playground?

“what a bunch of assholes… we don’t need to listen to them… we know what we’re doing here… we know best…”

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And, so what do you think happens with those working outside of DFO looking in and being critical?

“oh those assholes… there goes frigging DFO again on their strategic, objective, benchmarking, best practicing policy…”

And thus the paradox:

All of those outside of DFO, criticizing DFO material — are assholes.

All of those inside of DFO, producing DFO material — are assholes.

My only question then is… what does that make retired ex-DFO people? (such as the one’s testifying at the Cohen commission this week)

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Well, at least if everyone would admit they’re an asshole… then we could have a crapload of people on their way to becoming ex-assholes.

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So what is the great theory that solves the great mystery of salmon disappearances (and reappearances)?

All us assholes.

everything is Marketing…and death by PowerPoint…

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I’ve read this ‘marketing statement in a few places… the death one, I made up somewhat… and there is a lot of truth to both — including the wild salmon world.

At the beginning of this past week I sat through two days of presentations from the Department of Fisheries and Ocean on fisheries catch monitoring including: First Nation fisheries, commercial and recreational/sport. (One of my recommendations to presenters was to visit Garr Reynold’s blog and some of the work of … I also recommend work and books on how to present statistical and quantitative information)

Part of the reason for this is:

‘everything is marketing‘

or

‘marketing is everything‘

Seth Godin has a decent post on the issue from January this year:

Scott McCloud’s classic book on comics explains a lot more than comics.

A key part of his thesis is that comic books work because the action takes place between the frames. Our imagination fills in the gaps between what happened in that frame and this frame, which means that we’re as much involved as the illustrator and author are in telling the story.

Marketing, it turns out, works precisely the same way.

Marketing is what happens in between the overt acts of the marketer. Yes you made a package and yes you designed a uniform and yes you ran an ad… but the consumer’s take on what you did is driven by what happened out of the corner of her eye, in the dead spaces, in the moments when you let your guard down.

Marketing is what happens when you’re not trying, when you’re being transparent and when there’s no script in place.

It’s not marketing when everything goes right on the flight to Chicago. It’s marketing when your people don’t respond after losing the guitar that got checked.

It’s not marketing when I use your product as intended. It’s marketing when my friend and I are talking about how the thing we bought from you changed us.

It’s not marketing when the smiling waitress appears with the soup. It’s marketing when we hear two waiters muttering to each other behind the serving station.

Consumers are too smart for the frames. It’s the in-between frame stuff that matters. And yet marketers spend 103% of our time on the frames.

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See, it’s not just public service workers that succumb to the “death by PowerPoint” disease; I was audience to another dreadful PowerPoint presentation on Wens this past week following two days of fisheries meetings. This presentation was on literacy in Canada. The sad part is that some of the stats within the presentation were rather stunning — the presentation itself, however… was absolutely dreadful.

It was jammed full of graphs from Microsoft Excel (about as much creativity as a block of concrete) and slides so full of ‘bullets’ they looked like beer cans dead by a fence post at a rural redneck protest against Canada’s long gun registry.

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To give you an idea of some of the stunners… over 9 million Canadians have literacy levels of Level 1 and 2 — on a 5-Level scale. Level 3 is the level suggested to be the minimum to function effectively in today’s society — and about equivalent to a high school graduate.

One of the industries with the biggest gaps between what is required for literacy skills, and what is actually present in the workforce:

Healthcare.

(now that’s a scary thought).

Worse yet… research suggests that 98% of nurses do not have the literacy skills required for their often highly technical jobs.

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Here’s the challenge:        you  can have some of the best, most alarming, most important, statistics and information ever…     However, if you can not present them well (e.g. the “frames” as Godin calls them), or in a unique way that cuts through the buzz of today’s Information Age… you and your info will be lost in the noise of today’s society. You won’t even make it to the space in between the frames… other than folks suggesting “man… did you stay awake for that PowerPoint presentation…”

(And trust me, spending hours agonizing on the little bullet point animation tricks — e.g. “checkerboard from right”, “flash from left” and so on and so on — only make it worse.

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How does this fit in the salmon world?

Well… everyone is so busy trying to prove their own statistics (see post on for dangers of this), or arguments, or “best practices”, or “strategic frameworks” or “statistical models” for saving salmon — and thus many seem to have forgotten the: “in-between frames stuff.”

An other big part of the “in-between stuff” (you know, it’s like how coffee breaks and lunch time are always the most productive components of workshops or conferences) is that the frames that corral the “in-between” should be seriously innovative, seriously different, and just plain… less serious.

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The combination of PowerPoint — or overhead slides in general — and a speaker to provide narrative, is an excellent tool; it’s an opportunity. However, like the great yin and yang, it’s also a frigging crutch.

Some PowerPoint presentations are so bad these days that i’d almost prefer if people put their entire presentation in tiny print and asked me to read it and ask questions when I was done.

PowerPoint hell by N. American leading salmon scientist

Case in point from a keynote speaker, who is also a leading North American salmon scientist, at a conference this past March with delegates from all around the Pacific Rim.

Death by PowerPoint… double ‘p’ homicide…

Collaboration: the key to social change

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Now here’s a thought:

“It’s not technology or money that’s lacking but a culture of collaboration,” Richard Alvarez, president and CEO of Canada Health Infoway told The Globe and Mail recently.

…Wicked problems are complex and deeply rooted and they involve many stakeholders in government, business and the community. No single actor, no matter how much money and clout it has, can overcome such problems. Instead, all the stakeholders must make common cause, contributing skills, influence and resources that can make social transformation unfold.

Achieving social change requires a different set of operating values, according to Michael Edwards, author of Small Change: Why Business Won’t Save the World. These operating values are co-operation rather than competition, collective action more than individual effort, and patient, long-term support for systemic results over immediate results.

I couldn’t agree more…

The last several days I have been on the road. Monday and Tuesday were spent in a conference room with the curtains closed watching numerous PowerPoint Presentations by Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) staff. All of the presentations were focussed on fisheries catch monitoring — First Nation, commercial and recreational.

(with some irony the next two days of my trip involve literacy and community development — I’ll have a post soon with thoughts on the importance of the links between all of these)

The two day “workshop” was put together by a ‘committee’ of First Nations and DFO reps. Unfortunately, they may not have got the memo on the ‘operational values’ espoused above:  “co-operation rather than competition, collective action more than individual effort, and patient, long-term support for systemic results over immediate results.”

I don’t doubt that the intention for positive results was forgotten… just that some of the approaches are the same old, same old. For example, one of the first presentations was a ‘concept’ presentation. “Concept” in that there was nothing to share other than the concept of another DFO “strategic framework”. There were some “ideas thrown around” on how a “risk continuum might look like”.

Nothing concrete, nothing overly solid.

The issue I have, is not the fact that the presentation was about a forthcoming document, and was presented in the spirit of trying to let folks know about a “Draft” document coming out that would involve “consultation”.

The issue is that if there is a true spirit with the Department to truly engage in collaborative management, or joint management, or the scariest term “co-management”… then it can’t continue to write Draft documents and “strategic frameworks” behind closed doors and then suggest that they are “open for input”.

If collaboration is not present from the beginning — such as the moment pencil hits paper — then the ‘wicked complex deeply rooted problems’ (e.g. looking after wild salmon) will only continue to fester and knot themselves so tight that all circulation is choked off.

This is not to necessarily sound like another DFO-bashing rant, as I met some very good people that work within the organization with passion and fervor for the issues; it’s more to suggest that we can all do better.

We have to do better.

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As suggested above: everyone involved “must make common cause, contributing skills, influence and resources that can make social transformation unfold.”

As “collaborate” does mean: “To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.”

However that is made very difficult when the player with the majority of the sticks, balls, bats and financial resources lays the first foundation with no input from others and then says — “ok, now we’re ready for your input…”

Once words are on paper — and ‘risk continuums’ and ‘strategic frameworks’ and ‘cost-benefit analysis’ and so on — then positions are entrenched, defensive barricades have been erected, the artillery is ready to fire, and the momentum of the growing snowball rolling downhill is underway.

When there are power imbalances, resource imbalances, 150 years of not-so-good history, and some real barriers to empathy and understanding of other teams — then ‘common cause’ (e.g. the fish and all they support) and social transformations become even more difficult then they already are.

Salmon Theory Parade

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Salmon Parade Float

In honor of the parade of theories on wild salmon, wild salmon declines, wild salmon inclines, salmon behavior and so on, and so on — I have added a new category to the blog “Theory Parade”.

salmon float

Here’s one of the floats in that parade — the low food supply float. This float in the parade is decorated with a lack of phytoplankton, a lack of volcanic ash, and a lack of North Pacific Gyre — however there is some El Nino on one side of the float and some La Nina on the other side, driving the float is the Pacific decadal oscillation, on the rear are some squid and mackerel, and on the front is a beautiful sparkling dead zone of ocean acidification.

As you can probably guess… this is more of a float for Halloween then Christmas.

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This headline out of the Vancouver Sun yesterday:

The theory here, in essence, that the chum from Goldstream (just north of Victoria, BC) went out to see in 2007 the same year that last year’s returning adult sockeye would have gone out as little gaffers.

Somehow between 2007 and 2008 — these theories (i.e. parade floats) suggest — the North Pacific shifted from a Saharan wasteland of salmon starvation to a Pacific Eden of dates of honey. Some suggest volcanic eruptions and ash deposited on the sea created a phytoplankton boom and thus the Pacific salmon Eden.

salmon parade

Further, thus, unless the Indonesian eruptions of late are depositing on the North Pacific, this year’s sockeye boom might only be a one off Thanksgiving Parade… we now return to a Saharan-like wasteland…

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Returning to Goldstream for a moment… the un-mentioned in the article is the great cost at which Goldstream Creek has any salmon in it whatsoever. See it has, as far as I understand, at least three dams on it — largely for drinking water and what not. Yet, millions of dollars have been spent on the bottom last kilometre or so of the stream to “restore” salmon habitat.

Goldstream

Also, as far as I understand, it was never really a huge salmon producer historically.

About a decade or so ago I was on a ‘field visit’ to Goldstream as part of a “restoration”/”reclamation” conference. This was the time when millions upon millions of dollars was being poured into stream restoration and rehab; the time of the great Forest Renewal program; and other various slush funds.

cash cow... cash salmon?

There was some decent work done around BC at that time — however there were also some great gravy train — cash cow pet projects as well. One of them being Goldstream.

I asked the question, while touring the million dollar projects, is there a relation between the stream a mere miles from the urban Provincial capital and the amount of money being spent on a stream that will never be “restored” unless the dams are torn down…?

ohhh, the dirty looks — or “stink eye” as we call it around our house.

watching Chum at Goldstream

Sure, one could front the argument that the number of people that walk the trails of Goldstream, learning about salmon and habitat rehab, that this makes it all worth it…

It’s a similar argument that suggests that the “salmon in the classroom” project, whereby elementary kids raise salmon in classroom aquariums, is an excellent opportunity to teach about ecology, salmon life histories and so on. And, that when those kids release those baby salmon into the streams in buckets and then a few years later watch the adults return — is also a great learning opportunity.

However, is it also such a wise idea to teach our youth that the simple solution to ecology is technology?

Or, that to “restore” streams we simply need to get professional engineers involved and spend millions of dollars on heavy equipment and highly engineered habitat structures?

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The real story around B.C. this year is that the bumper sockeye return to the Fraser River is largely an exception. Furthermore, that bumper is mainly just to the lower and lower-mid Fraser (e.g. the Adams River run probably comprises as much as 60-70% of the total Fraser sockeye return this year). There are no records up here in the Upper Fraser river for sockeye or any other salmon — or sturgeon for that fact.

About the only ‘record’ I’ve heard from other areas, is a good return of steelhead to the Skeena River — some theorizing that its because there was such a limited gillnet commercial fishery at the Skeena mouth this year (one of least species-selective methods of fishing).

Sure there were some decent salmon runs here and there — but when a stream such as Goldstream with its millions of dollars in human-made habitat structures and hatchery released chum, has a near record low run — or at least the bare minimum escapement to support the future (e.g. 4500 adults) — then we are far from out of the woods.

(worse yet, we sure as hell don’t have a breadcrumb trail like Hansel and Gretel to follow to get ourselves out of the deep dark woods).

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somewhat more disturbing to me is statements such as this from the Vancouver Sun article:

Dick Beamish, senior scientist at the Department of Fisheries and Ocean’s Pacific Biological Station, said returns at Goldstream are below the numbers expected, but chum runs around the Strait of Georgia were expected to be down this year…

… The good news is that, even if no more fish turn up, the 4,500 that have already spawned are enough to sustain the run.

“That is a sufficient number of fish to meet conservation goals for this year,” Beamish said.

No offence intended to Mr. Beamish — however its these sort of statements made with such certainty that may very well have got us into this position in the first place.

How can we be so sure that the “conservation goals” are being met… when we don’t even know what has caused the crash of so many salmon runs over the last decade?

How do we know that “conservation goals” are being met and that 4500 adult chum spawning in Goldstream is enough to ‘maintain’ the run when we have no idea what the baby salmon from these adults are going to have to face in the North Pacific (or Salish Sea for that fact) when they migrate out?

Well… the only thing we have is past knowledge. What has happened historically.

That’s great… but it’s only half the story.

In an age of such uncertainty — with things like climate change, shifting ocean currents, rapid ocean acidification, erupting volcanoes potentially fertilizing oceans, and the like — how can we run around making comments with such certainty that:

“The good news is that, even if no more fish turn up, the [whatever number] that have already spawned are enough to sustain the run.”

We just don’t know.

How do we, thus, then look after salmon in a time of such uncertainty and potential for rapid changes? Well… it’s called the precautionary approach.

With a whole lot of weight on the PRE and the CAUTION.

Meanwhile… the theory parade continues…