Archive for the ‘Salt Water’ Category

Photo courtesy ricardodiaz11 via Flickr

The Alliance for Sustainable Fisheries has released the results of an environmental poll, conducted by Responsive Management, which finds “the public strongly wants the ocean to be protected, but not with total marine closures.”

The sponsors are upset about the establishment of some new protected ocean areas where all fishing — both recreational and commercial — is banned. It’s a quality poll, but there are no real surprises — the main findings in the research echo other environmental polls and surveys:

“An overwhelming majority of U.S. residents support (90%) legal recreational fishing in general, with most of that being strong support. Additionally, large majorities of U.S. residents support legal recreational fishing in National Forests (80%), National Parks (78%), and Wilderness Areas (72%).”

And also…

“Among U.S. residents, support for protecting U.S. ocean waters and ocean life is nearly unanimous: 78% strongly support doing so, and another 17% moderately support it, for a sum of 95% in support.”

The finding worth discussing is this:

Disagreement is particularly high (86%) with the statement, “All U.S. ocean waters should be fully protected with no human use allowed.”

In market research, the public routinely rejects absolute statements of any kind, from any side of the issue, about any nature protection or pollution control topic. By honing in a the complete closure aspect of the marine protected areas, the Alliance has found the one aspect of the marine protected areas plan that a significant majority of individuals would object to. That’s another poll that goes on the pile in support of this word that works: balance.

Also noteworthy, there is some shoptalk in some of the questions — and this degrades the reliability of some of the findings. For example…

The survey asked respondents if they agree or disagree that some change to the natural
biodiversity in U.S. ocean waters is acceptable to guarantee a continued food supply through fishing and shellfishing: agreement (71%) far exceeds disagreement (20%).

Given the substantial number of people who don’t understand what biodiversity is, I’m not sure if this particular finding (in an otherwise solid environmental poll) can be trusted.

Environmental advertising from the environmental group Oceana

Oceana is one of my favorite of the big DC environmental groups, because they take risks and keep trying to make their point. But what’s the takeaway from this environmental advertising?

If you saw this on the subway platform on your way home, could you explain to your spouse what it was about?

How would you fix it?

News media — newspapers, TV, radio — are about the least effective way to reach and influence local officials about nature protection and pollution control, at least according to the “Market Inventory and Needs Assessment for the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve,” conducted by Responsive Management in 2007. In this survey of “people who, in a professional or volunteer capacity, make decisions affecting the health of coastal resources,” the respondents reported that their top source of information was peers of one type or another — municipal engineers, professional contacts, environmental groups who come calling.

But if you ask everyday citizens tell you about where they get their information, it would be almost the opposite — media (still #1, but losing ground fast), Internet (still #2 but gaining ground fast), and then personal contacts of various kinds. Here’s what I think this means: online and media communications efforts should be directly aimed at citizens and voters, indirectly aimed at elected officials and other decisionmakers.

For example, if City Alderwoman Jones won’t make time on her schedule to meet with you personally about the upcoming pollution control law, run an ad in the local newspaper that tells the voters in her district that Alderman Jones is neglecting her responsibility to hear a balanced range of views about an upcoming pollution control law. It will certainly get her attention!

Do not run an ad that tells her what you would have told her in the meeting. If she’s anything like the officials interviewed for this study, this is not an effective way to get her to pay attention to this.

Click here to read the full report.

While we’re on the subject

You will be better able to interpret market research reports if you know how they are conducted. And you can get some first hand experience by signing up to take some surveys with the Ipsos i-Say Survey Panel.

As a panelist, you receive periodic invitations to take surveys on various topics. It’s not only free, they’ll thank you with various prizes and sweepstakes entries. But do it for the learning experience, not the chintzy prizes. It will open your eyes to see how serious communicators pre-test their messages before launching them. You can do it, too!

Source: Sensual Shadows Photography, via Flickr

“Recreational saltwater anglers pumped more than $31 billion into the U.S. economy in 2006, with Florida, Texas, California, Louisiana and North Carolina receiving the largest share,” that’s according to a new study issued by NOAA’s Fisheries Service, one of god-knows-how-many “outdoor recreation is important for the economy” studies that some government agency or nonprofit will put out this year to try to get the public to take nature protection seriously.

Is it true? Sure, I think so — but everyday citizens pretty much don’t. At least that’s what the polling firm Responsive Management found when they asked them in a nationwide series of focus groups:

The idea that either fishing or boating, except for commercial fishing and/or boating, was a major economic issue, was not seen as believable.

Source: Anglers and Boaters Attitudes Towards Various Messages That Communicate the Benefits of Fishing and Boating: Results of a Series of Nationwide Focus Groups, Responsive Management, 2001

And here’s the thing about those everyday citizens — they don’t read dry government reports, so they will go right on doubting despite all the hard work that went into this one.

But while everyday citizens are very skeptical about claims that that outdoor recreation is a big part the economy as a whole, they still think it’s important — because it’s healthy for their bodies, and even more importantly, for their families. Stress relief and family togetherness consistently top the list for why most people make time to enjoy nature and the outdoors.

So NOAA, if you want regular folk to take fishing seriously, how about putting out a report documenting how many families will go saltwater fishing together next year?

How about estimating how many more hours of parent-child bonding there will be and how many less hours of TV watching there will be, thanks to saltwater fishing?

How about quoting some family counselors, ministers, or anybody else who can speak with authority to the benefits of the relaxation and togetherness that comes from spending time in the great outdoors, instead of bureaucrats and academics tossing around billions and millions and calculations and extrapolations?

Here’s the thing: everyday citizens will believe that. And they think it’s mighty important, too.