Reef Madness

"How many fish will become contaminated, and how high become the chances of getting cancer if you eat them, essentially remain unanswered questions."

Back when there was an official Pensacola Beach Residents web site and Linda Leithner was writing a column called Island Insights, she had occasion to observe:

"Most economic impact studies are like the annual Oscar Awards ceremony, only with leather patches on the elbows to resemble serious research. They tend to be fatuous exercises in self-congratulation based on questionable assumptions that reaffirm a pre-existing bias. Nevermore so, it seems, than when the study is funded by the very entity in question."

We were reminded of this over the past week as we encountered time and again in the pages of the Pensacola News Journal references to an "economic impact study" that proved sinking the U.S.S. Oriskany would mean a boost of "millions of dollars a year" for the Pensacola area economy.

• Last Sunday, PNJ reporter Polyana de Costa lived up to her delightfully sunny name by quoting Pensacola tourism director Ed Schroeder as saying, "Pensacola will become an international diving attraction." He specifically referred to "a 1998 study by Florida State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration" for empirical support.
  
• On Tuesday, PNJ reporter Larry Wheeler dropped the FSU connection altogether and claimed the report was authored "recently" by the NOAA: "The Oriskany is expected to boost the local economy as it attracts sport fishing charters and recreational divers. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently estimated an extra $11.3 million a year for the local area."
  
• Wednesday, Wheeler again referenced the same number but without the misidentified authorship when he wrote, "Once on the bottom, the Oriskany will become an artificial reef. It is expected to attract divers and sports fishermen who could generate as much as $11.3 million a year in additional economic activity for the Pensacola Bay Area."
  
• By Thursday, PNJ news reporter Eric Drew was sticking his own calculator in treacherous waters by quoting another local tourism promoter who plainly relied on the same economic study to say, "We're anticipating millions of dollars in economic impact."

Obviously, PNJ reporters -- or at least the tourism promoters they lean on as sources -- love economic impact studies. It's a shame no one actually reads them.

The "economic impact" study everybody was applauding is a 500+ page tome produced by two professors at FSU, a NOAA economist, and "five Florida State University College of Business students majoring in Hospitality Administration." The prime contractor was the State of Florida's "Office of Fisheries Management and Assistance Service."

Do you suppose that state bureaucrats in an agency with a name like "Fisheries Management and Assistance Service" have a stake in proving that "assisting" "fish management" through a "service" like artificial reefs is beneficial for the public?

The title of the economic impact study is, "The Economic Impact and Economic Value of the Recreational Use of Artificial Reefs in a Five-County Area of Northwest Florida." The complete study, for those of you who need a sleeping aid, can be found here.

Much of it is repetitive from one county (and chapter) to the next. Chapter 5, pertaining to Escambia County, starts at page 391 (in pdf format). Sure snoozers can be found on nearly every page, along with countless grammatical errors and writing so leaky the thing barely floats:

• "This techniques is [sic] not based upon the willingness to pay question posed above."
  
• "What is this value? It is the interpreted [sic] as the incremental recreational value afforded to the average fisher by artificial reefs as a recreational aid on a fishing day."
  
• "We shall discuss this further after we gave reviewed [sic] the two other procedures used to estimate the WTP as discussed above."

We could go on and on -- about as long as this unfortunate study does -- but you get the idea. It's hard to put much faith in the mathematics of an economic impact study when the authors can't even get simple English sentences right.

Even taking everything the study has to say as gospel, there are reasons to wonder just how much the ex-Oriskany reef really can boost the local economy. Everyone's had great fun watching the thing happen, and we are certainly among them. No doubt a few additional divers will visit Pensacola every year for the thrill of seeing it rust away up close; and the charter boats have a new destination to visit. But are these modest advantages enough to say the Pensacola area can expect "millions" in additional tourist revenue every year?

One of the study's key findings is that by far the largest impact will come from recreational fishermen, not divers. It found, moreover, that such "users would like the reefs deployed some distance from shore to maximize fishing success, but placed in no more than 150 feet of water." [emphasis added]

As it happens, the Oriskany is now "sitting pretty," to use Troy Moon's words in Friday's News Journal, some 217-233 feet beneath the surface. That's considerably deeper than 150 feet.

Another finding explodes the common wisdom "that artificial reefs increase the overall abundance of fish." It turns out this has no basis in fact, according to the economic impact study everybody loves to cite. With admirable candor, the study's authors state flatly, "[N]o scientific study is known to the authors that definitely establishes that the fish population is actually increased with artificial reefs."

Fish newly attracted to the Ex-Oriskany reef were living somewhere to begin with. Apparently, science has no reason to think that in their new home they will procreate any faster or more successfully.

Nor is it clear that the reef will improve the quality of life for fishes -- or the humans who consume them. It turns out that along with the Oriskany the U.S. Navy also sunk an estimated 700 pounds or more of cancer-causing PCB's, most of it shielding communications cables. As the environmental advocacy group Basel Action Network pointed out in formal objections to the Oriskany plan filed in January, the EPA has said repeatedly there is no "safe" level of PCB contamination.

Another study -- this one, a 'modeling' study into the environmental and health hazards posed as the Oriskany's PCB's leach into Gulf waters -- was nearly as worthless as any "economic impact" study you'll find. Since a Navy ship the size of the Oriskany has never before been scuttled to make an artificial reef, there's no real-world data to rely upon in predicting whether and to what extent the PCB's will increase the cancer rate in Pensacola or elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. Consequently, the Navy invented a computer "model" to simulate it.

How many fish will become contaminated, and how high become the chances of getting cancer if you eat them, essentially remain unanswered questions. As the final report acknowledges, in the computer study --

"The major sources of uncertainty were the assumptions and parameters used in the models, the applicability and sensitivity of the benchmarks used in the assessment, and uncertainty about the sources of PCBs on the vessel."

That pretty well covers the waterfront, you might say. It all boils down to one big shrug and a "Who knows?"

All of these studies and projections and modelings remind us of another story. It's been said that the great American humorist Robert Benchley, when he was an undergraduate at Harvard, awoke late one morning to realize that he had a final exam that day in some obscure subject like International Relations. It was the classic undergraduate's nightmare: he had forgotten to attend class all year long, he didn't know a thing about the subject, and he'd never seen the texbook.

Nevertheless, Benchley raced to the classroom and arrived just in time. His heart sank as he read the test. It was a two-hour exam with one essay question: "Describe, analyze, and discuss the Russo-Swedish Fishing Rights Treaty of 1790 from the viewpoint of the Russians or the Swedes."

Knowing nothing whatsoever about the matter, Benchley began by writing, "I propose to describe, analyze, and discuss the Russo-Swedish Fishing Rights Treaty of 1790 from the viewpoint of the fish." And then he did so.

Benchley passed the course.

This should inspire the Pensacola Chamber of Commerce. One "economic impact" that surely can be netted from the Oriskany reef is some kind of huge, multi-generational federal grant to study the economic impact of artificial reefs from the viewpoint of the fish.