Posted by TDI_2 on August 05, 2002 at 09:14:43:
Pole fishing in the ocean from a pier or boat, from what I have seen from underwater, has a minimal if any impact on the ocean population of fish. There arent a lot of fish stupid enough to jump on a baited hook. The fishing poles on the piers are more of a hazard to the seabirds, sea lions, and scuba divers than to the fish.
Spearfishing can have a major impact on a reef if you cluster up a gaggle of spearfisherman, make it into a contest, and send them out to kill everything in Gods green ocean at a particular reef. That is what we call slob hunting. A slob hunter is someone who makes a mess of the natural environment, as well as killing anything and everything that moves.
I dont understand where the mentality to go out in a raiding party and kill a hoard of fish comes from. When I see that, I cringe. It happens all over the state, Northern as well as Central and Southern.
A lone buddy pair of halibut spearfishermen (or women) searching for a single fish each clearly does not have a major impact on the fish population. A halibut lasts about a week in the freezer, if you chowed down on it every day with your family. At most, that fisherman is going to land a dozen halibut during each season, no matter what kind of bragging you hear. Halibut is probably the best tasting ocean fish. They are not a reef fish, they inhabit sandy bottoms. You can find them almost anywhere, and recreational divers dont normally frequent sandy diving sites.
Spearfishing along a rocky reef popular to recreational divers seems like slob hunting to me. There is better reef fish hunting available at sites not so popular with recreational divers.
A good hunter needs to think responsibly about the environment, the long term preservation of the prey, and all the other people in our aquatic society who share the ocean as well. If not, then slob hunting will cause cries for the banning of spearfishing and hunting altogether.
Society is reactionary. It reacts to slob hunters.