{
  "id": "1997-may-car-catches-big-fish",
  "slug": "1997-may-car-catches-big-fish",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-may-car-catches-big-fish.html",
  "year": 1997,
  "month": "May",
  "monthNum": 5,
  "headline": "CAR catches big fish",
  "kicker": "Hook, line & Pulitzer",
  "author_name": "John McQuaid",
  "author_title": "Reporter",
  "affiliation": "The Times-Picayune",
  "summary": "A journalist describes using databases, mailing lists, and online communities to research fisheries management, discovering that regulatory efforts consistently lagged behind fish depletion while also meeting his future spouse through professional networking.",
  "keywords": [
    "fisheries",
    "research",
    "databases"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Data & Databases",
    "Health & Environment"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "Excel",
    "Internet",
    "Listserv"
  ],
  "full_text": "scientist put it, this was a \"science of elegant post-mortems.\"\n\nOne other database trick helped demonstrate this point. Looking for a way to analyze whether the government's actions to protect fisheries were working, I got a list of all fishery management plans used by the Fisheries Service for the last 20 years, including hundreds of amendments and updates. Taking this as a raw indicator of regulatory activity, I used Excel to total the amendments by plan, by region, and by year. The results indicated that the government was consistently behind the curve, producing a mind-boggling complex pile of regulations to protect fisheries only after they were depleted.\n\nSchleifstein and I also subscribed to fisheries-related mailing lists that generated dozens of messages ranging from the useful to the ridiculously arcane each day. For example, the Fishfolk listserv administered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology brings together social scientists, managers, biologists and fishermen in a freewheeling discussion. Because they offered a mosaic of expertise and opinion, the lists were useful for developing and refining some of the framing ideas of the series. They were also useful for more mundane tasks—tracking down sources, or answering technical questions. At one point, I was curious about the origin of the fishery science terms \"recruitment\" (what happens when fish reach a catchable age) and \"year class\" (all the fish born in a given year). So I posted the question to the lists. I got dozens of responses, including one from a curious scientist who went to a library and researched the question for me. The terms originated early in the century, apparently in the work of Russian scientists. I was a little disappointed that they didn't come from college football, as some had theorized. The Fishfolk list also provided me with one additional benefit. Trish Clay, a Fisheries Service anthropologist, was one of its founders. I was impressed with her posts to the list, and arranged via e-mail to interview her. We're now engaged to be married in October.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
    {
      "slug": "1997-may-hook-line-and-pulitzer",
      "score": 0.24
    },
    {
      "slug": "1996-october-car-helps-catch-big-fish-story",
      "score": 0.216
    },
    {
      "slug": "1994-june-online-sources-you-cant-do-without",
      "score": 0.152
    },
    {
      "slug": "1996-july-new-ire-l-and-nicar-l-addresses",
      "score": 0.128
    },
    {
      "slug": "2000-september-mapping-listservs",
      "score": 0.128
    }
  ],
  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-may-car-catches-big-fish.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1997-may-car-catches-big-fish.json"
}