Scary stuff. I heard somewhere that some people are predicting that seafood will be no more by 2048. And then there was

the PBS video on the serous Salmon stock issues posted by Tanglediver. and if you believe Sport fishing magazine (which I

am inclined to do) plenty of commericial boats around the world respect monet not quotas, and governments are not doing

enough to stop the illegal catches. Even worse, many governments are bowing to comercial interests and setting

unsustainable quotas. Disturbing to say the least. Especially when a study concluded that sustainable recreational

swordfishing pumped something like 17 times as much money into the local economy as did unsustainable comercial

swordfishing did. I read it a while ago, and it was a local study, so if I am mistaken please correct me. Sportfishing

magazine has further led me to believe that while there have been significant improvements in commercial regulations, many

of the dangerously low stocks are still decling, just at a lesser rate. additionally, they have reported that countries

with larger quotas have been catching pelagics that roam all over including the United States. I would glady give up

buying seafood to protect the sport I love. I will endorse any commercial limitation that has scienific evidence to back

it up as a neccesary action to conserve our fish populations. I will not however, endorse any panic reaction to the scary

decline in fish populations. All to often I hear veterans talk about the good old days where just catching limits was

a bad day. I don't want to be a veteran one day talking about how a great day was catching one legal fish for dinner. I

would hate to be a member of the last generation to be able to enjoy fishing. My dream is to get a good job in California

and save up for my very own fishing boat. I would never spend tens of thousands of dollars on a boat if I could not use it

for fishing. Our fish stocks are declining and our sport along with it. Everyone on this site knows this sport is worth

protecting. We are the ones that are going to have to fight for it. Research, global sustainable quotas, and harsher

punishments are the places to start.


P.S. If someone has independent scientific facts to dispute what I have learned, I would very much like to hear it.


P.P.S. sorry if you were displeased with the rant, that has been building up for a while.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Trapt in Arizona,

Imagine the impact to the commercial industry, and the major decline in by-product ( non targeted species, killed and thrown back into the seas as they are not allowed to be retained under the license of the vessel ) if we, the sport fishing public, were allowed to sell off some of our catch to the local marketeers?

The fisheries, in my little opinion, would begin to rebound as we can only take so much on a single rod and reel.

Just a thought.

pigsticker,
The right term is "by-catch" but no matter what you call it it's a disgusting waste of the resource.
Some fisheries have around 90% by-catch.

The crash of the Grand Banks cod fisghery should have opened eyes but it hasn't.

There is an article in Sportfishing magazine about ex longliners who all quit because they got sick of all the By-catch. They spoke of many other people who also quit because they were sick of all the destruction they saw first hand that there operation was causing. That would be a cool solution Pigsticker, if a significant amount of the quota was caught by us. Definetly a good way to cut down a huge amount of bycatch and habitat harm. It would also do so much more for the economy as more fisherman and operations would have to be set up to catch the same amount of fish, including more money for the environment in the form of licences.