Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

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Recreational fisheries management Issues and options

Transcript of Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Page 1: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Recreational fisheries management

Issues and options

Page 2: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Recreational fisheries are IMPORTANT

• According to NMFS, the total landed value of US commercial fisheries in 2009 was $2.29 billion (FAO says $31 billion, not clear why since doesn’t agree with tonnage reported to FAO)

• US marine recreational fisheries were valued at of $12 billion, almost 1/3 Florida

Page 3: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Characteristics of recreational fisheries

• Most often “open access”, no effort limitation• Very high economic value to small communities,

rural areas (shift leisure spending from urban activities)

• Typically take over from commercial fisheries when in competition (strong political voice, lots of voters)

• Rarely cause biological overfishing (effort responds strongly to reduced abundance)

• Create severe quantity-quality tradeoff problem

Page 4: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Vulnerability exchange process typically limits catch per effort

Invulnerable fish vulnerable fish cpue

Smart, inactive, resident in safer places (eg deep)

Stupid, active, resident in places where gear works and access is best, typically <10% of total fish

Page 5: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

CPUE typically very sensitive to fishing effort

• CPUE often 5-10x higher at low efforts, because first increments in effort enjoy high catch rates, deplete vulnerable pool (foraging arena equation effect)

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Fishing effort

Page 6: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Effort responses prevent increases in cpue

• Typical response is nearly linear

• Linear increase predicted if vulnerable density held roughly constant:c=co/(1+qE) E=1/q(co/c-1)(co=cpue at zero effort, c=cpue at equilibrium)

Total Fish Abundance

Fis

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Page 7: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Approaches to recreational fisheries regulation

• Size and bag limits (almost universal)

• Seasonal closures (common)

• Production side, hatcheries (common, do not increase cpue)

• Spatial closures, MPAs (uncommon so far)

• Limited entry--access management, license lotteries, etc. (very uncommon)

Page 8: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

This will not be an

objective presentation; my interest is

in insuring that Junior and I can

keep doing this

Page 9: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Growing recreational impact, even with restrictive bag and size limits, as for gag grouper in the Gulf of Mexico

Page 10: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Growing recreational impact often simply replaces commercial impact

Pompano, West Florida Coast

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Page 11: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

So we are going to face progressively more severe restrictions as demand for

both fishing and conservation grow

• Open access fisheries lead to a syndrome of “success breeds failure”: effort expands until quality of fishing declines

• There are two basic ways to restrict fishing mortality in open-access fisheries:

– Reduce effective effort through bag limits, size limits, closed seasons

– Spatial closures (protected areas)

• Spatial and seasonal closures lead to concentration of fishing near closed area boundaries and at season openings

Page 12: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

The quality-quantity tradeoff:Most of us end up getting screwed,

most of the time

Quality(cpue, size)

Quantity

(angling effort)

LOW COST HIGH COSTUnguided Guided

Cedar Key (10 min.) Suwanee (60 min.)Vancouver (2 hr travel) Chilcotin (7 hr travel)Public access Private

Page 13: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Most of us hate the very idea of spatial closures; I certainly do

• But then I got to thinking about why I can still catch lots of spotted sea trout and red drum in my back yard in Cedar Key, Florida: most of the time, most of those fish are not in spots where people can catch them, i.e. the fish are in natual “marine protected areas”

• And I started connecting that thinking with the stock assessment and modeling work that I do when I replace my fishing hat with my scientist hat (which thankfully isn’t too often anymore).

Page 14: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Mindless combination of size and bag limits can even cause worse

conservation problems

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Size Limit

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In this grouper example, green represents healthy recruitment levels, and red is severe overfishing. For low bag limits, increasing the size limit actually causes recruitment to decrease (move from green to yellow zone).

Combining these regulations is kind of like taking Viagra and Valium at the same time: it might work, but…

Page 15: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Recent models for predicting redistribution of fish and fishing when areas are protected (MPAs) indicate that sustainable sport effort

should often increase as closed area is increased

0% Area closed to fishing 100%

Total sport fishing effort sustained Not

enough fish

Not enough fishing ground

Page 16: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

EDOM model predictions of Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishing effort

EDOM random MPA siting algorithmGulf of Mexico red snapper

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Page 17: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

For the red snapper example, MPAs might result in widely higher efforts, not just at MPA boundaries

Gulf of Mexico red snapper EDOM prediction

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No MPAs Optimum MPA design

Page 18: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

A promising alternative: rotating closures (fallow rotation)

• Advantages– Increased total yield

when discard mortality is high

– Larger average fish size if used with size limits

– Increased cpue and number of fish kept

– Assures meeting Federal fishing mortality rate limits

• Disadvantages– Effort concentration,

competition– Low cpue late in

openings– Encourages cheating

(enforcement issue)

Page 19: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Rotating closures for West Florida grouper management

2008, 2012, …

2009, 2013, …

2010, 2014, …

2011, 2015, …

OPENINGS:

Strips as shown are 0.1 degree (6 nm, 10 km) north-south; larger strips would be safer, but would more seriously limit local access to good grounds

Page 20: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Predicted gag grouper performanceCATCH

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But catch per effort could be depressed

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Gag grouper policy options and performance tradeoffs

Policy Yield (mt)Catch

(1000 fish)Trophy Catch

(1000 fish)Egg

productionWaste

(1000 fish)MSY (Current policy, 51 cm size) 2281 622 133 15.33 264Rotating, 51 cm min size 2455 574 169 15.06 234Rotating, no min size 2369 1485 129 13.63 0

Page 22: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Even if we permanently solve conservation problems by using closed areas (MPAs, rotating

openings), this problem will remain:Most of us end up getting screwed,

most of the time

LOW COST HIGH COSTUnguided Guided

Cedar Key (10 min.) Suwanee (60 min.)Vancouver (2 hr travel) Chilcotin (7 hr travel)Public access Private

Quality(cpue, size)

Quantity

(angling effort)

Page 23: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

Should it be public policy that you only get what you pay for?

• Attempts to improve quality in open-access public fisheries just result in increased fishing pressure, until quality declines to where it was.

• The only way to stop this is to deliberately restrict effort.

• One “fair” way to restrict effort is through a lottery system of some kind (like drawing permits for big game hunting).

Page 24: Recreational fisheries management Issues and options.

So how do we keep the rest of you buggers out of my back yard?

• Boat ramp quotas• Resident-only open

areas (in my dreams)• Fishing club TURFS

(like trout in Austria)• Misinformation to

sports writers• Any other ideas???