Quote:
Originally Posted by MathGeek
Louisiana has enough fish to go around. Management regulations should be based on the availability of the resource, and increased restrictions should only be put in place when there is sound science showing the resource is endangered by maintaining the status quo.
This deal is yet another case of jealous anglers wanting to place unnecessary restrictions on others without sound science showing a management necessity.
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I have to disagree somewhat with blaming it on jealousy, there is some validity to their anecdotal approach if you take the circumstances and extrapolate what was then vs what is now. I'm talking about number of fisherman, number of guides, number of days booked spread across number of guides, and number of registered boat owners (all 30 years ago vs now).
Reduced coastal land mass and other environmental impacts coupled with more and more charter opportunities have undoubtedly negatively impacted our stocks. It's hard to base everything on such concrete scientific data when 30-40 years ago it probably didn't exist as it does today. Kinda like testing radiation in tuna and blaming the levels on the meltdown in japan when not much data existed before the tsunami (exaggeration for representation).
I fully agree on basing regulations on sound scientific data, but have a hard time believing that increased harvest and decreased stocks don't relate in a linear fashion when plotted over a 40 year graph - I'd bet it would make a nice X.