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thank you

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for downloading the more or less podcast

1:20

where your weekly guy to the numbers in the news

1:22

and in life i'm charlotte macdonald

1:25

this week

1:26

a more than half of the world's fishing vessels

1:29

in the south china sea but

1:31

first one of our listeners got in touch

1:33

to question the stuff that made headlines in

1:36

a lot of the uk newspapers uk

1:38

women top list of world's

1:40

biggest female binge drinkers

1:42

report finds i'm not sure

1:45

if i should be proud or ashamed of my

1:47

fellow country women the headline

1:49

came from an hour c d report which

1:52

found that women in britain where top of the list

1:54

the heavy episodic drinking among

1:56

member nations that thirty eight mainly

1:58

high income countries

1:59

And loyal listener Isabel

2:02

wasn't the only one who thought the stats

2:04

needed a long hard look. My

2:07

name

2:07

is John Holmes. I'm a professor

2:09

of alcohol policy at the University of Sheffield

2:12

School of Medicine and Population Health.

2:14

John had his suspicions about the stat,

2:17

and looking at the sources he saw that there were quite

2:20

a lot of apples and pears, presumably

2:22

fermented, being

2:23

compared. There's two kind of things really

2:25

in play here. One is how

2:28

each country defines a unit

2:30

of alcohol, or as some countries

2:33

call it, a standard drink. And this can

2:35

range from eight grams of alcohol in

2:37

a unit in the UK up

2:39

to 14 grams of alcohol in the

2:42

US.

2:43

It's a bit odd to talk about grams of alcohol,

2:45

but this is how alcohol stats have worked out.

2:47

In the UK, a unit, that's eight

2:50

grams, equates roughly to a small

2:52

glass of wine, or half a pint of

2:54

beer. But in the US, a standard

2:56

drink

2:56

is 14 grams.

2:59

That's a big glass of wine, and near a pint

3:01

of beer, which is about half a litre-ish.

3:05

This difference means that if an American and

3:07

a Brit could have both, say,

3:09

three standard drinks, one

3:11

would have drunk nearly twice as much alcohol.

3:13

And then the second thing was how

3:16

they define a heavy drinking occasion.

3:18

So for example, in Australia, they define

3:21

it as four standard drinks, whereas

3:24

in some other countries, they were defining it as six

3:26

standard drinks, and others were defining

3:28

it as even more. So what we end

3:30

up when we put all that together is that for

3:32

some countries, they were asking people how

3:34

often you consume more than 40 grams

3:37

of alcohol on a single day. And

3:40

in other countries, they were asking how often you

3:42

consume almost 80 grams of alcohol.

3:45

So really, these comparisons between countries

3:47

weren't fair comparisons at all.

3:49

Because the UK binge

3:51

is at the lower end of what counts as a heavy

3:53

episode, more people are likely

3:55

to qualify, pushing the UK higher

3:57

up the charts. That's exactly

3:59

it.

3:59

Yeah, so the UK was kind of being biased

4:02

upwards in this list.

4:03

So, OK, if not right at the top, where

4:06

should women in the UK be on the chart? Well,

4:09

a less complicated source is the data

4:11

on alcohol sales and alcohol

4:14

tax records, also published

4:16

by the OECD.

4:16

The countries we see at the top of the

4:19

sales figures are kind of what we'd expect

4:21

as alcohol researchers. So, the Eastern

4:23

European countries are former Soviet states,

4:25

so Latvia, Lithuania, Czech

4:27

Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia.

4:30

Those countries have a long history of

4:32

very high levels of drinking. Although

4:34

they're doing a lot in recent years to tackle

4:36

it, they still remain at the top of the list.

4:39

And in that list, the UK sits 13th.

4:43

So, still relatively high, but much

4:45

closer to the middle.

4:46

And remember, these are just the OECD countries,

4:49

but it turns out that that does cover

4:51

most of the top drinkers.

4:53

The OECD looks mostly at high-income

4:55

countries, and high-income countries

4:58

do tend to drink more than lower-income

5:00

countries. So, this is probably a decent

5:02

snapshot of where the UK sits

5:05

relative to other countries. If

5:07

the data was good, the problem is

5:10

the data itself.

5:12

So, if you see a stat about alcohol based

5:14

on a survey, perhaps take it with

5:16

a pinch of salt and a slice of lime.

5:19

Because it turns out people aren't good judges

5:21

of how much they've drunk.

5:22

When we compare the amount of alcohol

5:24

reported by people in surveys

5:27

to the amount of alcohol we know is sold,

5:30

we very rarely find that the surveys

5:32

cover anywhere close to 100% of

5:34

what we know is being drunk each year.

5:37

Thanks to Professor John Holmes,

5:39

we spoke to the OECD who confirmed

5:41

they were not able to adjust the data across

5:43

countries.

5:48

And now, another of our

5:50

loyal listeners, Jason, asked us

5:52

to look into a fact he'd seen in a BBC

5:54

article about a fishing dispute between

5:57

China and the Philippines. The

5:59

article said that the South China Sea is

6:01

a rich fishing ground, and that More

6:03

than half

6:03

of the world's fishing vessels operate

6:06

in this area.

6:07

If you search the net, this claim appears

6:09

a lot. It even pops up on the US State

6:12

Department website. But is

6:14

it true? We

6:15

tracked it back to an academic paper

6:17

called Boom or Bust? The Future

6:19

of Fish and the South China Sea. It

6:22

was created by taking numbers from different reports

6:25

put out by the UN's Food and Agriculture

6:27

Organization, the FAO.

6:29

One

6:30

from 2014 says that 3.2

6:33

million fishing vessels operate worldwide.

6:36

The other comes from a 2012 report

6:39

which has a table giving a figure for the South

6:41

China Sea

6:42

as 1.77 million vessels.

6:45

Put the two figures together and you could say that

6:47

more than half of all fishing vessels in

6:49

the world are in the South China Sea. Except

6:53

that 1.77 million figure is not

6:55

good.

6:56

In terms of conveying the impression that the

6:58

South China Sea is full of vessels,

7:00

it's actually not really wrong,

7:03

but it is a bit overstated. It's not

7:05

half.

7:06

This is Simon Fung Smith, Senior

7:08

Fishery Officer for the FAO in their

7:10

regional office in Bangkok. He produced

7:13

this figure of 1.77 million vessels

7:15

in the South China Sea. Just to refresh

7:17

everyone of where that is.

7:19

This area is bounded by South

7:21

China, Vietnam, the Philippines,

7:24

Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Peninsula

7:26

of Malaysia and also sort of Sabah,

7:29

Sarawak and Kalimantan of Indonesia.

7:31

The key thing about this South China Sea is the geopolitical

7:34

importance of the area. The fishing figure

7:36

is meant to illustrate

7:37

that. Let's

7:39

look at this figure. Starting with the basics,

7:41

what even counts as a fishing vessel?

7:43

You have outriggers which are

7:45

a few metres long, almost so narrow. Simon

7:48

gave us a very thorough list. Essentially

7:50

it encompasses a lot. You have open

7:52

deck push netters. Of course you have big

7:55

trawlers where they carry.

7:56

The problem with the 1.77 number

7:58

was with the number of vessels. from the

8:00

Philippines. This is

8:02

a very old stat and Simon had to add

8:05

the number for the whole of the Philippines to

8:07

his total because he didn't have a regional

8:09

breakdown, something he makes clear

8:11

in his report. But the

8:13

Philippines is made up of lots of small islands,

8:16

most of which don't border the South China

8:19

Sea.

8:19

And this is where it becomes a

8:21

bit problematic because the aggregate

8:23

figure for the Philippines is the entire

8:25

country. It's not just the South China

8:28

Sea part of it. And the thing is

8:30

that that figure for the Philippines

8:32

is about 1.4 million vessels or 1.388 million

8:36

vessels, which out of a figure of 1.77,

8:39

you realize very quickly that the majority

8:41

of that big figure of the 1.7 million

8:43

is the Philippines, but not all of that is

8:46

going to be operating in the South China Sea.

8:48

To give you an idea of just how wrong

8:50

this number is, Simon dug out the latest

8:52

official figures from the Philippines, which

8:55

are now broken down by region. There

8:57

are just 53,000 Filipino

9:00

vessels registered around the South China

9:02

Sea. Compare that to the 1.4 million used

9:06

in the original calculation and you

9:08

can start to see the scale of the overstatement.

9:11

If you count the amount of fish

9:13

caught rather than the boats, the South China Sea

9:15

equates for only 12% of the

9:17

global fishing catch. And a

9:19

lot of that catch comes from just offshore.

9:22

They will be operating only

9:24

maximum tens of kilometres from the

9:26

shore, the heart of the South China Sea,

9:29

where the overlapping claims occur. These are

9:31

a long way from shore. You can't really sustain

9:33

a fishing fleet out there. They have to be fairly big

9:35

vessels capable of going out to sea,

9:37

being refuelled at sea and what have you.

9:40

Even with all these caveats, a

9:42

recent FAA report shows that the vast

9:44

majority of fishing vessels are in Asia.

9:47

The number of vessels in Europe and North America are much

9:50

lower because they have large commercial

9:52

boats which can catch a lot of fish.

9:59

If you see any stats

10:02

you'd like us to look at, get in touch by emailing

10:04

moreorless at bbc.co.uk. That's

10:08

all for now. Goodbye.

10:15

When you're ready to pop the question, the

10:17

last thing you want to do is second guess the

10:20

ring. At BlueNile.com, you

10:22

can find the perfect ring for her with

10:24

guidance from Blue Nile's jewelry experts

10:26

who are on hand 24-7 and

10:28

the ease and convenience of shopping online.

10:31

For a limited time, BlueNile.com

10:33

is offering 36-month special financing

10:36

on minimum purchases of $1,000. Restrictions

10:39

apply. See BlueNile.com for details.

10:42

That's BlueNile.com. BlueNile.com. Our

10:45

world is changing, and with change

10:48

comes new challenges, from rising sea

10:50

levels to coastal erosion to extreme

10:52

weather. Communities, scientists,

10:55

and innovators are addressing the complexity

10:57

of our collective global future with

10:59

innovation. Discover Climate Next

11:02

from AWS,

11:02

a new series exploring

11:04

how people and technology work together

11:07

to design powerful solutions to address

11:09

climate change. Learn more at aws.amazon.com.

11:13

sustainability.climatenext.