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Shifting headlines? Size trends of newsworthy fishes

The shifting baseline syndrome describes a gradual lowering of human cognitive baselines, as each generation accepts a lower standard of resource abundance or size as the new norm. There is strong empirical evidence of declining trends of abundance and body sizes of marine fish species reported from...

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Autores principales: Francis, Fiona T., Howard, Brett R., Berchtold, Adrienne E., Branch, Trevor A., Chaves, Laís C.T., Dunic, Jillian C., Favaro, Brett, Jeffrey, Kyla M., Malpica-Cruz, Luis, Maslowski, Natalie, Schultz, Jessica A., Smith, Nicola S., Côté, Isabelle M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6378912/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30783570
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6395
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author Francis, Fiona T.
Howard, Brett R.
Berchtold, Adrienne E.
Branch, Trevor A.
Chaves, Laís C.T.
Dunic, Jillian C.
Favaro, Brett
Jeffrey, Kyla M.
Malpica-Cruz, Luis
Maslowski, Natalie
Schultz, Jessica A.
Smith, Nicola S.
Côté, Isabelle M.
author_facet Francis, Fiona T.
Howard, Brett R.
Berchtold, Adrienne E.
Branch, Trevor A.
Chaves, Laís C.T.
Dunic, Jillian C.
Favaro, Brett
Jeffrey, Kyla M.
Malpica-Cruz, Luis
Maslowski, Natalie
Schultz, Jessica A.
Smith, Nicola S.
Côté, Isabelle M.
author_sort Francis, Fiona T.
collection PubMed
description The shifting baseline syndrome describes a gradual lowering of human cognitive baselines, as each generation accepts a lower standard of resource abundance or size as the new norm. There is strong empirical evidence of declining trends of abundance and body sizes of marine fish species reported from docks and markets. We asked whether these widespread trends in shrinking marine fish are detectable in popular English-language media, or whether news writers, like many marine stakeholders, are captive to shifting baselines. We collected 266 English-language news articles, printed between 1869 and 2015, which featured headlines that used a superlative adjective, such as ‘giant’, ‘huge’, or ‘monster’, to describe an individual fish caught. We combined the reported sizes of the captured fish with information on maximum species-specific recorded sizes to reconstruct trends of relative size (reported size divided by maximum size) of newsworthy fishes over time. We found some evidence of a shifting baseline syndrome in news media over the last 140 years: overall, the relative length of the largest fish worthy of a headline has declined over time. This pattern held for charismatic fish species (e.g. basking sharks, whale sharks, giant mantas), which are now reported in the media at smaller relative lengths than they were near the turn of the 20th century, and for the largest species under high risk of extinction. In contrast, there was no similar trend for pelagic gamefish and oceanic sharks, or for species under lower risk of extinction. While landing any individual of the large-bodied ‘megafish’ may be newsworthy in part because of their large size relative to other fish species, the ‘megafish’ covered in our dataset were small relative to their own species—on average only 56% of the species-specific maximum length. The continued use in the English-language media of superlatives to describe fish that are now a fraction of the maximum size they could reach, or a fraction of the size they used to be, does reflect a shifting baseline for some species. Given that media outlets are a powerful tool for shaping public perception and awareness of environmental issues, there is a real concern that such stories might be interpreted as meaning that superlatively large fish still abound.
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spelling pubmed-63789122019-02-19 Shifting headlines? Size trends of newsworthy fishes Francis, Fiona T. Howard, Brett R. Berchtold, Adrienne E. Branch, Trevor A. Chaves, Laís C.T. Dunic, Jillian C. Favaro, Brett Jeffrey, Kyla M. Malpica-Cruz, Luis Maslowski, Natalie Schultz, Jessica A. Smith, Nicola S. Côté, Isabelle M. PeerJ Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science The shifting baseline syndrome describes a gradual lowering of human cognitive baselines, as each generation accepts a lower standard of resource abundance or size as the new norm. There is strong empirical evidence of declining trends of abundance and body sizes of marine fish species reported from docks and markets. We asked whether these widespread trends in shrinking marine fish are detectable in popular English-language media, or whether news writers, like many marine stakeholders, are captive to shifting baselines. We collected 266 English-language news articles, printed between 1869 and 2015, which featured headlines that used a superlative adjective, such as ‘giant’, ‘huge’, or ‘monster’, to describe an individual fish caught. We combined the reported sizes of the captured fish with information on maximum species-specific recorded sizes to reconstruct trends of relative size (reported size divided by maximum size) of newsworthy fishes over time. We found some evidence of a shifting baseline syndrome in news media over the last 140 years: overall, the relative length of the largest fish worthy of a headline has declined over time. This pattern held for charismatic fish species (e.g. basking sharks, whale sharks, giant mantas), which are now reported in the media at smaller relative lengths than they were near the turn of the 20th century, and for the largest species under high risk of extinction. In contrast, there was no similar trend for pelagic gamefish and oceanic sharks, or for species under lower risk of extinction. While landing any individual of the large-bodied ‘megafish’ may be newsworthy in part because of their large size relative to other fish species, the ‘megafish’ covered in our dataset were small relative to their own species—on average only 56% of the species-specific maximum length. The continued use in the English-language media of superlatives to describe fish that are now a fraction of the maximum size they could reach, or a fraction of the size they used to be, does reflect a shifting baseline for some species. Given that media outlets are a powerful tool for shaping public perception and awareness of environmental issues, there is a real concern that such stories might be interpreted as meaning that superlatively large fish still abound. PeerJ Inc. 2019-02-15 /pmc/articles/PMC6378912/ /pubmed/30783570 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6395 Text en © 2019 Francis et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science
Francis, Fiona T.
Howard, Brett R.
Berchtold, Adrienne E.
Branch, Trevor A.
Chaves, Laís C.T.
Dunic, Jillian C.
Favaro, Brett
Jeffrey, Kyla M.
Malpica-Cruz, Luis
Maslowski, Natalie
Schultz, Jessica A.
Smith, Nicola S.
Côté, Isabelle M.
Shifting headlines? Size trends of newsworthy fishes
title Shifting headlines? Size trends of newsworthy fishes
title_full Shifting headlines? Size trends of newsworthy fishes
title_fullStr Shifting headlines? Size trends of newsworthy fishes
title_full_unstemmed Shifting headlines? Size trends of newsworthy fishes
title_short Shifting headlines? Size trends of newsworthy fishes
title_sort shifting headlines? size trends of newsworthy fishes
topic Aquaculture, Fisheries and Fish Science
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6378912/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30783570
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6395
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