FISHERMEN/FISHERIES MISMANAGMENT

[Broad Bill]

U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) includes spending by recreational fishermen because the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) tracks the outdoor recreation economy as part of its GDP calculations, with value added from activities like recreational fishing measured in the Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account. These expenditures on fishing trips, equipment, and related services are considered economic activity that adds to the national GDP through value-added contributions, jobs, and income.

Here's the simplest way of breaking down fisheries management. Recreational fishing is managed based on spend, commercial fishing is managed based on catch. The problem starts at the top with the Department of Commerce and their report card of GDP every month. They could care less if recreational anglers catch one fish as long as we spend. Commercial, on the other hand, adds value by catch which is why more decisions than not favor commercial catch quotas.

Waste of any kind doesn't help fisheries but waste in recreational is driven mostly by ridiculous regulations. Waste in commercial fishing carries an almost 90% mortality rate and is driven by by-catch and smaller sizes of the targeted species that are tossed back dead because they bring lesser catch values. They're both problematic but as less and less fish are available to the recreational sector, what are owner operators or recreational anglers supposed to do. Do commercial operators vent their discards, of course they don't as they're almost all entirely dead by the time they hit the deck and even if they weren't, they just sweep them overboard like trash so the chances of anything caught in the nets surviving are slim to none. No amount of recreational waste will come close to the carnage commercial fishing has on stocks and critical habitat.