[THEFERMANATOR]

Originally Posted by Destroyer

Which means (of course) that the biomass is probably better than it's been in the last 100 years but the "experts" think they need "protecting"

What has happened is since this has been such a large sport fish industry where catch and release has been practiced heavily without alot of landings, they are now basing teh allowed catch limits off of there new numbers of total fishermen on the water(ANYBODY with a boat regardless of what type is counted) and how many are landed. Since the landings are so low they have come to the conclusion that they MUST be undergoing overfishing and be protected. Welcome to modern fisheries science. If you cathc them you get penalized for getting to many, if you release them you get penalized for not bringing in enough. If you are surveyed at the ramp and refuse to cooperate they will mark you down as having limits of everything, nothing, or that you're poachers, if you cooperate they will spin it and say the limits are too high and too many are coming in or if you don't have all your targeted species limited it is because the biomass is too low and the limits need to be reduced. We as fishermen have sat by too long, and now I'm afraid anybody who goes out and brings home a decent catch(not wiping out a reef but simply a night or two's meals) will be targeted as a poacher.