There is no doubt the economic downturn is hurting everyone these days and apparently Greenpeace is no exception. Take a look below at a fundraising email that went out on Friday. Greenpeace is using an erroneous scare story that it concocted to goad supporters into forking over their hard earned money to help stem the tide of a crisis that it invented.

You’ll remember last Thursday Greenpeace announced that the Alaska Pollock stock was on the “verge of collapse.” It blamed over fishing or “the enormous amounts of fishing being removed from Alaska’s Bering Sea” and suggested that “poor oversight and mismanagement” was to blame.

All this Greenpeace, says is, evidenced by a National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) assessment of the mid-water pollock population that showed it is about half of what it was this time last year. So, with that little nugget and a history of misinforming people, Greenpeace set out to announce the stock is collapsing and start raising money on this news immediately.

Greenpeace is as off-base as it has ever been with this latest scare campaign. In fact Jim Ianelli, NMFS assessment scientist who conducted the survey explained to Intra Fish on Friday that the mid-water Pollock population was down because of water temperature and they expected that when they assessed the groundfish population they would find those missing fish… and wouldn’t you know it– they did.

• Because ocean temperatures were cold again for the third straight year, more pollock kept closer to the ocean floor than they normally would, he said, skewing the survey results.

  “The mid-water survey is effective down to a half-meter from the bottom, but for the assessment numbers that get presented, we only go down to three meters from the bottom,” said Ianelli.

  The groundfish survey surveys the bottom, and when those numbers are calculated, estimates were 92 percent of the biomass that was expected, he said.

  “We were so remarkably close to expectations,” said Ianelli. “That is about three million tons of fish on the bottom, so if you add those two together it’s roughly four million pounds, which is the number seen in both surveys.”

What’s more IntraFish asked NMFS point blank if there was any overfishing of Alaska Pollock indicated by any of its research.

• “Not by any measure for this upcoming season.”

So, there you have it, once again in Greenpeace’s playbook half-truths and fundraising goals trump ground truth science.

Greenpeace Solicitation:

Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:48:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: Greenpeace
Subject: Fw: World’s Largest Food Fishery in Danger of Collapse

XXXXXXXXXX —

I want to share some shocking news with you.

The National Marine Fisheries Service just revealed that populations of Alaska pollock, the largest food fishery in the world, have dropped 50 percent since last year. I am forwarding our press release below.

Please help us prevent the collapse of our fisheries by making a generous gift today. Today is the final day of our challenge grant and your gift will be matched dollar-for-dollar. This is clear evidence that we need to act and we need to act now: please click here to donate.

Our challenge grant has raised $64,190 towards our $75,000 goal. I thank all of you who have given so generously to protect our oceans, together we can make a difference.

For the oceans,
John Hocevar
Oceans Campaigner