Posted by Eric Frasco on April 12, 2001 at 16:01:45:
In Reply to: Or justr have Commercial Dock Limits that are sustainable. nt posted by seahunt on April 12, 2001 at 14:50:32:
Not Possible.
There are too many places in California where landings ("docks") take place. DFG could never control it all.
In addition to the big commercial boats, there are guys with commercial licences that fish off kayaks. They may not get as much game as boats with nets, but they concentrate their efforts in and around the kelp canopy, and are very selective in what they take. And with a commercial licence, they can take alot more than recreationals.
In regards to "sustainable", you need to know what a healthy biomass is before you can even begin to talk about "sustainable" yields, and that would take a lot of research before you could get meaningful numbers.
What DFG is going to do is to base the allowable take on "optimum yields" (OY), which would be a fraction of "maximum sustainable yields" (MSY), for example an OY of 0.5MSY.
But guess where the numbers for MSY are going to come from. From the past harvests that have brought us to the point where the fishery is nearing collapse. Using past performance to predict future performance is just bad science.
-Eric-