Posted by John M. on February 18, 2004 at 07:57:17:
In Reply to: CDFG Marine Management News - February 2004 posted by Chris on February 17, 2004 at 11:58:38:
Did you notice the section on the new boat limits?
DFG actually went ahead this year and instituted BOAT LIMITS for recreational catch. This means that an individual fisherman is no longer limited in his daily catch by whatever the sportfishing regs say he's allowed to catch. As long as there's someone on the boat who hasn't caught their limit yet, fishermen who are limited out can keep catching and just give their over-limit fish to someone on the boat who's under-limit. This has the potential to dramatically increase catch.
Here's a ridiculous example: Let's say that there are 30 recreational fishermen out on a fishing boat. And let's further say that 29 of these fishermen are pretty new to fishing and just really bad at catching lingcod... for whatever reason 29 of them are catching nothing but kelp bass and couldn't catch a lingcod to save their lives. But 1 guy is a real old salt and is really good at catching lingcod. (Remember, I said that it was a ridiculous example.) Under the old rules with personal limits, that 1 guy could catch 2 lingcod and then he'd have to stop catching them (or throw them back). Under the new rules, that 1 guy can keep catching lingcod all day, up to 60 of them, and simply give everyone else on the boat 2 lingcod to claim as their own.
Yesterday's front-page San Diego Union-Tribune article was about how the second major national report on the state of our oceans is about to come out and will agree with the first one last year: things are really bad. Meanwhile, our DFG instituted boat limits this year.
Is this wise management?
U-T article: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/tue/news/news_1n17oceans.html
US Commission on Ocean Policy: http://oceancommission.gov/ (the federal report due out soon)
Pew Oceans Commission: http://www.pewoceans.org/ (last year's national report)