‘The Thing About Fisheries Management is, uh, We Were Wrong’

Throw back the lunkers and keep the schoolies. That’s the gist of an in-depth paper from the esteemed journal Nature on fishing’s impact on fish stocks.

Basically, the idea of tossing back the real pigs is the exact opposite of what is happening with the bulk of commercial and recreational angling. Oops.

I think most fly-fishermen practice catch-and-release, but there are a few headhunters out there among us and I respect their rights to take a few for the table.

But what about the non-fly anglers? As the Nature blog points out, limits on harvesting larger fish wouldn’t work because many of the fish tossed back (especially by commercial fishermen) die.

Salty anglers would find this ‘graph interesting from a Reuters dispatch about the report:

Writing in the journal Nature, Sugihara said that current policies that manage according to biomass targets instead of individual fish size can also destabilize the population.

Fluke fishermen in the northeast have been seriously pinched over the last few years because of biomass targets. Maybe it’s time to rethink, um, everything?