Striped bass; photo via Dave Monti Fisheries management breeds controversy. No matter how badly a management measure is needed, some people will argue against it. Sometimes they challenge the science, and say that a stock is healthier than biologists claim. Sometimes, they allege that the economic harm that a measure may cause outweighs any benefit […]
Top Photo: Atlantic Herring Fisheries management is often viewed as a scientific discipline, but science is only one aspect of the management process. Before biologists can determine how a fishery ought to be managed, they need to understand the politics and policies that determine why management measures are needed. These days, we often think of […]
Last November, I was up in Connecticut, fishing with an old friend. We had fished together since the early 1970s, mostly in Long Island Sound and in the ocean south of Long Island, but sometimes as far away as Alaska, the Caribbean and Belize. Over that time, we’ve caught a lot of fish, of many […]
Striped Bass Photo by John McMurray The 1980s and early 1990s were a bad time for Atlantic Coast fisheries. While the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 had successfully pushed most foreign fishing vessels out of U.S. waters, it failed to protect fish populations from overharvest by the United States’ fleet, while providing domestic […]
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Matthew 6:24 The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) has been maddeningly ineffective when it comes to rebuilding fish stocks […]
Ever since the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) successfully rebuilt the collapsed Atlantic striped bass population in 1995, some segments of the recreational fishing community have used striped bass as an example of how recreational fisheries ought to be managed. Praise for ASMFC’s approach to striped bass management reached a crescendo in the run-up […]
The holiday season is over; the new year is well underway. As days begin to lengthen, anglers begin to look forward to the coming season, which grows closer with every passing day. But for federal fishery managers, things aren’t going anywhere, for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is one of the many agencies that […]
The summer flounder population has been in a decline. Such decline is due, in large part, not to overfishing (although modest overfishing has occurred in one or two recent years), but to at least six consecutive years of below-average recruitment of young fish into the flounder population. Biologists haven’t yet figured out why such low […]
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