IGM Big Sting Ray

Inter-Galactic Memo

To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt, Crypto-marine biologist
Re: Record-breaking Stingray

The U.K. Telegraph has a story this morning of a massive, 55 stone ray (that’s 770 pounds to us Yanks) in the Mekong River. It was 7 feet long and 7 feet wide. Holy mackerel! That’s a big fish. It shattered the previous record for a fresh water fish (46 stone catfish) set in 2005. And all this guy was trying to do was tag rays for research. It took him several hours to finally lift the beast off the bottom of the river. 13 men finally lifted it onto the boat, reminding the scientist of that line of Jaws; “we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
There was a throwaway line at the end of the article which I will now quote for you, and then critique.

Although its numbers are unknown, experts believe the population has dwindled by 20 per cent over the last 10 years, making the possibility of extinction extremely high.

Let’s see now, what could possibly be wrong with that statement? Hmmmmmm? If the number of rays is unknown, how can they estimate a decline? And again, if the number is unknown, how can a possible 20% decrease over the last ten years (a meaningless guess) point to the possibility of extinction being extremely high? Does this come under that well-known scientific principle called “wishful thinking?” We all know that species heading for extinction translate to big cash in the form of grants. Based on the logic of the above quote, there could be 100 billion rays in existence. A 20% decrease would leave 80 billion. Yep, that’s the brink of extinction alright. See, because if we don’t know how many of something there are, it becomes difficult to project rates-of-loss. Yet another example of crisis by fiat. Boy, am I glad I’m here to ferret out all this stuff for me.