"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...

NOYB wrote:


I don't think that everybody whould catch his/her own fish. But curbs
need
to be imposed on commercial fishing.

The commercial guys take 89% of the grouper out of the Gulf...yet they
keep
reducing the limits for recreational anglers.


That makes no sense.

I would agree that the two facts you present don't seem to make sense
when isolated.

The missing brick in the logic wall would have to be, "What has
happened to the commercial fish limit?" Is it the same as ever, is it
increasing while the recreational fishermen are being cut back, or are
the commercial fishermen experiencing a reduced limit along with the
recreationals? I certainly don't know the answer, but it could be that
a scarce resource is still being distributed about like it always has
been.


The recreational limits were set using suspect data. They polled people at
boat ramps for the first half of 2004, and then extrapolated for the rest of
the year. We had three hurricanes practically back-to-back-to-back right
after the surveys were completed, and nobody went fishing for those three
months.

The data is wrong for 2004.


Additionally, the commercials kill about 80% of their by-catch.
Recreational kills about 20%. The quotas don't account for that either.

Most of the depletion is due to the by-catch...not the actual take.