Anglers debate who's catching what: he said … she said …

Boat/US Magazine, Nov, 2004 by Ryck Lydecker

"The large impacts of recreational fisheries surprised us and they may startle many people, including fishermen, concerned about the health of the oceans," reports Duke University fishery biologist Larry Crowder, a co-author and visiting professor at FSU during the study.

In the most dramatic example cited, the researchers found that recreational anglers landed 87% of the total Pacific coast bocaccio that year. But that can be misleading, say Schwaab and others.

"The recreational catch (of bocaccio) has been fairly modest and steady for decades," reports Schwaab, now with the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.

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"Twenty years ago, that might have represented a small fraction of overall landings but the stock became overfished so management agencies have curtailed commercial landings dramatically in recent years.

"Today, the same poundage caught by sportfishermen represents a very high percentage of the total," he points out. "So the snapshot approach they used is extremely misleading."

In an effort to set the record straight, Schwaab's association joined 19 organizations led by the American Sportfishing Association in signing a letter to the editors of Science that point out the inconsistencies they see in the Coleman report.

The letter notes out that in the case of the "poster fish" for supposed recreational fishing excesses, the authors failed to note that in the prior two decades before restraints on the industry, commercial bocaccio catch exceeded 85% of the total. The letter goes on to point out that saltwater anglers are highly regulated by state, interstate and federal rules that set fishing seasons, size restrictions and bag limits for most species.

Destined to be far more controversial than the debated catch statistics are two remedies proposed by Coleman and her colleagues to curb the 20% growth in saltwater sportfishing over the past decade: nationwide saltwater sportfishing licenses and the creation of more no-fishing zones.

While the cumulative impact of commercial fishing is constrained by limits on how much fish can be caught, there are no controls on the aggregate impact of sportfishing, claims Coleman, who served three years on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council.

"Current management focuses primarily on individual fishermen, setting limits on the number and size of fish one can bring in, without restricting the number of people allowed to fish," Coleman says.

While that kind of "limited entry" approach has been used on the commercial side for years, it's not likely to land many proponents in the recreational fishing community. Freshwater fishing nationwide has faired quite well for decades using seasons, size and bag limits without a lid on the number of anglers, Schwaab notes.

"Controlling the absolute number of anglers is, frankly, irrelevant," he says. "Landings, or harvest, is one component of total mortality, which means the number removed from the fishery."

Bycatch, that is, fish caught unintentionally, and natural mortality are the other components in total mortality, Schwaab says.