Quote:
Originally Posted by MathGeek
We are our own worst enemies if we insist on managing wildlife with anecdotal opinions of anglers rather than comprehensive and sound scientific data and valid stock assessments.
Human pressure on spotted seatrout has increased, but pressure from all other natural predators on seatrout has decreased substantially. Most prey species tend to move to areas where there is more food and less threat from predators. The expansion of oil platforms in the Gulf provides more open water habitat than ever, and the nutrient loading from the Mississippi river has increased the biomass of their prey between four and sixfold. Combined with the decrease in sharks in open water and the increase in anglers inshore suggest that significant fractions of the seatrout populations are simply spending more time in the open Gulf where there are fewer predators and more prey.
The spotted seatrout is much more flexible than other inshore species with respect to acceptable habitat, and it is unlikely that human harvest provide the most significant life history bottleneck. Habitat use does not necessarily imply habitat dependence. Concluding that a wildife population is threatened because they are not in the same place where they used to be has been proven to be bad science time and again. Whitetail deer populations have shifted over the decades from wild woodlands to prefer farmland and suburbia. Red Snapper have shifted their population from the eastern Gulf of Mexico to the northern and western Gulf of Mexico. Spotted seatrout may have simply learned to avoid the inshore predators in favor of safer habitat with more abundant food.
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I always look forward to your posts on these topics MathGeek. Emotional and personal opinions have no weight in proper mangement of a fisheries. Most here feel that there are problems facing the future of trout fishing. To address this issue we must gather any and all information to make sound judgements towards solutions based on scientific data and studies geared towards the trout species....and no, I don't think it is just a matter of fishing pressure but rather multiple issues involving habitat destruction, errosion and loss of coastal estuaries along with the technological advances made recently in fishing gear (electronics).