Posted by Melvin on January 27, 2004 at 09:29:34:
In Reply to: MPA's pro or con? posted by professionalcon on January 26, 2004 at 21:45:17:
I support MPAs along with restrictions on the commercial and sport fishing industries in general. Currently commercial and sport fishing are operating, IMHO, at a pace that is decimating the fish population. Bottom line, we are over fishing.
I would like to see MPAs large enough to support a healthy population, but where SCUBA Diving of the look but don't touch variety could be done. By large I mean several square miles in size. Perhaps like they have done up in Monterey.
The MPAs need to be laid out in a sensible manner that everyone can understand where the boarders lie. Either take all of one island, or all of the one side, but make it easily definable by the public so they can easily tell where the boundaries are. Some of the proposals had such a mess on the maps who could ever understand it.
There should be places where we can hunt and where commercial fisheries can operate but we should also set aside places for the fish population to survive in.
Currently, I find it interesting the number of commercial operators who set up operations just outside of the existing MPAs because the fishing is better there. MAPs must be working.
Just my $0.02,