Posted by John M. on February 19, 2004 at 08:27:10:
In Reply to: another viewpoint posted by Chris on February 18, 2004 at 22:50:14:
Chris,
From my perspective, we need to be a bit more creative than we used to be. The condition of our ocean doesn't allow us to accept the easy answers... and that's what this is.
This is saying, "hey, we know that boat limits will be bad for fish populations, but we also know that many of you have been doing this all along and it's hard to enforce, so we'll just make it all OK." In our current environment, that's just irresponsible.
For your example: you can't predict what you'll catch and some species don't fare really well with catch and release... so why waste the fish? In our current environment, the wasteful answer is to say, "yeah, sure, if you're overlimit just pass it to a friend and keep fishing." A more conservative answer would be to say something like:
- pass the overlimit fish to a friend and you're done fishing for the day -- regardless of where you are on other limits
- keep the overlimit fish, but you're done fishing for the day -- regardless of where you are on other limits
I'm sure that there are other good, creative and responsible ways to both not waste the already caught fish and to not further damage our marine populations.
John