Political Quotes

“My amendment would give the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, Fisheries the authority to implement management practices better suited to the nature and scope of recreational fishing. I hope we can all agree that commercial and recreational fisheries are fundamentally different activities, with dissimilar harvest data collection systems that can benefit from different management techniques. Commercial fisheries are managed for yield. Commercial landings can usually be counted or weighed in realtime; thus, quotas can be enforced in realtime. This allows managers to close a fishery well before the allowable catch is exceeded. In short, a commercial fishery's catch can be managed in realtime based on data from verified landings. Recreational fisheries are different and should be managed for expectation, as opposed to yield. Anglers fish for a variety of reasons, but a lack of fish will make them go less frequently or stop altogether. Anglers and fishermen need to believe they will have opportunity to encounter fish, with the hopes they may catch some, possibly including some large enough to take home. Instead of yield, abundance and age structure are key elements to recreational fisheries since those factors govern both the rate of encounters and the size of fish caught. Maximizing yield has little meaning in most recreational fisheries.…”