http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/f ... /5692/1958

I love fishing and am sure most of you do, but just because we are recreational anglers doesn't mean that we don't have an impact especially on fish that we enjoy. And we can't blame all fish population problems on bad and uneducated anglers because most of them don't have the skill to catch these fish anyway. This is just food for thought because I have read many posts condemning commercial fishing and hope that more people realize that when they go on a headboat and limit out on muttons and kings, or slay macs at the pier that it has a real effect. The report isn't too long and doesn't have a lot of convoluted scientific terms and figures but was published in a scientific journal so i encourage all to read.

Recs will always blame commercial. Commercials are such a small percentage of fishermen.

I don't know, but that quote sounds like it could be correct in and of itself:



However, I bet that commercial guys catch far more than recreational.

None of my fishing buddies owns a purse net that can catch more fish (in weight/tonage) in one pass than everybody on this board combined will catch in a year.

It's a stretch to try and blame any one group of the of the overall fishing community. There a # of things that contribute that are nonfishing related. Pollution and habatat loss to name a few.

I posted this because of reading posts like this, before i read the report i had bet the same thing because it seemed logical, but it shows how in the south atlantic and gulf of mexico rec catches constitute a huge portion of total catch for some fish

Couple thousand commercials,.. many of them just doing the lobster, crab, clam/oyster thing. The others, many of those are just hook and line. Now,.. a few million recs, some taking limits, many taking way more illegally. I'd say recs do their share too.

I don't deny for a second that rec fishermen have an impact... they do.

But if your trying to make the argument that (world wide) millions rec fishermen even come close to taking the same amount of fish (fish, crabs, shrimp, whatever) that a few thousand commercial fishermen take, then you are incorrect...IMHO.

As a whole, the commercial guys take hundreds of times, in weight, than rec guys take.

Since when did this thread become world wide? Totally different topic.

Dude i wanted people to read the report, then apply two cents. It talks about sections of the the US fishery and it never says that recreational fisherman take more fish on the whole. It examines research flaws when we count in fish like pollock anchovies and menhaden when comparing comm and rec fishing because recreational fishermen usually target larger fish like snapper. When we examine the numbers closers they show that in some cases rec fishermen are having a greater impact than commercial.

Where in any of the posts up to this one made any mention that this was just a local thing? The link to OP posted (AAAS.org), is based out of Washington DC.

Among populations of concern, recreational landings in 2002 account for 23% of the total nationwide, rising to 38% in the South Atlantic and 64% in the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, it affects many of the most-valued overfished species—including red drum, bocaccio, and red snapper—all of which are taken primarily in the recreational fishery.
I used the above, basing my reply on the regional areas of Florida that is given.

OK, cool...don't take my comment personally, just putting in my .02

Where did you plagiarize that comment from?

I'm not going to debate those numbers...nationwide, I have no idea.

All I can say is on a worldwide scale that ONE seine/purse net can easily take +400 TONS of fish in one pass.

I take it you did not click and read the link in the opening post.

Touché, You're half right, I clicked on the link but refuse to register to most of these .org's

Bubbafishin, sorry for the derail....out.

i was going to stay out of this , this time but i had to laugh at this . since you brought the whole world in to this , take every person that fishes and give them one fish of there choseing , now add that up with and avg weight od lets say 3 lbs. now take the eintire year of commerical fishing qutoa's and compare that to the numbers you get from giveing every one a 3 lb fish , and thats not even counting on the millions of rec and commerical poachers , yes there are some of the commerical guys that poach thats a given , but the number of poaches on the rec side of this far exceed what there takeing , i have seen and reported many rec & commerical fishermen for poaching . but the main poaching is from rec fishing in shallow waters , now mmcauliffe (not singleing you out ) like many others that belive every word thats comes from the CCA and fishing shows that blame commerical fishing for everything , CCa is the ones that introduced the chatch shares to rec fishing , CCA is also the one that started all this with the bring back of the stevens act . want to see what the CCa and NOAA are up too got look and read here

http://www.fish2020.org/documents/Visio ... 202007.doc

commerical fishing has done more to help preserve the fishing than any of the thouasands of so called conservation groups out there , pretty soon your going to have to buy a f****** tag to catch a pin fish to use as bait or youll start seeing these pop up

Recs will always continue to ignore the math. I gave up trying to explain.

I remember a couple of years ago, someone came up to me, complaining that he was only getting $3.00 a lb for Pompano.

This was a rec. I could only laugh. Then just walk away.

The US comercial fishermen have been demonized due in a large part to the Japanese. I think people need to realise US comercial fishermen are in most cases restricted by weight or # the amount of fish they can catch annualy. Purse and seine nets are limited to certain species. Not to mention the comercial by catch has been greatly reduced over the last decade by new methods and technology.

The caption under the photo (copied from Wickopedia) said this haul was 400 tons

Hey, we can just cut everybodys' limits in half. Commercial and recs. The prices will go up in the market, product will be less, and everyone will be happy.

frist off the frist pic is of hearin which are very plentyful , and the second pic is of a head boat unloading so not really a fair compairison there .

second for hundreds of years commerical guys have had to report there catches while rec fishermen did not

the stats gathered for rec's is what have been gathered from boat ramps and at some piers by a limited group so thats not really fair either . if rec's had to report there catches just like the commerical guys there would be a lot meore crying from the recs becouse there catches would be reduced to almost nothing .

plain and simple
people have complained about commerical guys and cryied wolf for too long and now that they have just about regulated them to death and it wasnt changeing the fish stocks , there learning that they have to put stricter regs on rec fisherys to help improve the stocks , yes i have done commerical fishing shrimping , long line , snaper fishing , ect

but like when i was shrimping the capt was haveing to buy new nets / or devices to put on them to stay with in the regs .

people complaind they we were killing to many baby fish so we had to put what are called brd's (bycatch reduction device) or fish excluder , then it was the sea turtles , yes there were a few caught but they were cut out of the net and put back in the water unharmed but yet we had to put ted's in ( turtle excluer device ) .


now if you watch many fishing shows and when the camera pans around you will normaly see a shrimp boat there , they follow the boats and fish behind them . hell we had a few that even came up to us fo chum




bottom line people that are crying and moaning about commerical fishng is just hurting them self in the long run

I don't dispute the captions statment. I do however dispute it's accuracy. I've done 400 ton lifts and I know of no net material that would support that weight. Thats 800,000 lbs. We are talking about the capacity of a 3 1/2 inch drawn steel cable with 5 layers of 3/8 strands. Not to mention you would need a heavy lift floating crane to lift it. Think about it this way. An average locomotive weighs around 360 tons. A seiner may take 400 tons in a trip but I doubt they can do it in one haul. I know the haddock and pollick factory ships in Alaska are some of the largest net boats in the buisness and they only take 10 tons a haul. I think Wikipedia may have a typo in this case.

Oh come on now...it's on the Internet, it must be true!!!

Exactly! And we all know Wikipedia is always right