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This is a rebuttal to a publication by John C. Briggs in the April 2008 issue of Fisheries in which he suggested introducing fishes and invertebrates from the North Pacific into the North Atlantic to increase diversity toward improving fisheries in the latter. We argue otherwise for reasons that Briggs downplayed or never considered. Using examples of introductions within the Pacific and the Atlantic, and movements of species from the Pacific to the Atlantic, we provide a record of failures and damage or dangers to native species from the few introductions that became successful. We argue that a lack of diversity of fishes and invertebrates in the North Atlantic versus that of the North Pacific is not the problem to be corrected by introductions as Briggs suggested. A record of overfishing and management policies is the problem in the North Atlantic. Introductions from the North Pacific to the North Atlantic are not worth the costs or the environmental risks involved.

Systematists study and name the diverse forms of life and determine the evolutionary relationships among them. Increased interactions are needed between systematists and fishery scientists so systematists can obtain the material they need to study, and systematic problems of importance to fishery scientists can be resolved. The current shortage of systematists in some taxonomic groups, such as many invertebrate taxa, requires cooperative efforts by systematists and fishery scientists to train more specialists. Existing fishery sampling programs can aid in monitoring and understanding biological diversity at relatively little additional cost by expanding collecting efforts to include more taxa. The resulting voucher material serves to document the presence of a given species in time and space, and these specimens can be used for baselines of such things as heavy metals, pesticides, and parasite loads. Systematists need to translate their technical papers into practical guides and keys that can be ...