`Snapper ... was again classified as overfished," he said. ``Commercial and recreational catches of snapper remain low by historical standards "
I don't know about commercial catches, but certainly recreational catches are lower than historical standards. ?
My theory is... historically, there were no bag limits years ago so fishers were catching 20 or more Snapper in a session. Now, we have a 4 in possession bag limit, so if the records show average catch per angler in 1980 was 20 and in 2011/12 it was 4.... that to me, does NOT say the catch records are low.
We also have many more fishers catching Snapper, so we need to assess the tonnage / numbers caught by rec fishers now and then to get an idea of the " fishery " and if it is actually " over-fished ".
Historically how was the rec fisher take accounted for... guess work ? I do believe there were kreel surveys and phone surveys, but do these methods translate into real figures for data input and calculation ?
The commercial catch can be qualified with accurate ( mostly, except for the kgs going into the black market / cash sales ) figures, but again is the data collected as a numbers per fisher, over-all tonnage over a period ( year or more ) or quota compilant kgs.
I have spoken to few people with more than a passing interest in this and they tell me even very significant things like climate ( floods and drought ) were not used as tools or data when making assumptions about Snapper stocks. There are definate corrolations between drought and floods and seasonal catch rates. Also not taken into account is the population desities and habitat destruction.
Hope Minister McVeigh takes more interest in the fishery than he has in his first 15 months in the job. Been a poor response from him and his department in regard to anything to do with Recreational Fishing and also, I am lead to believe, the LNP have dismantled the Recreational Fishing Department ......... WTF !
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