Quote:
Originally Posted by Rockfish9
it's simple economics... a 25" fish still has a chance to be eaten by Seals, tuna and other sea going fish eaters... a 39" fish is getting up there in size... good chance it wont be eaten by a seal or tuna.. also a good chance that it will live until it dies of old age or is eaten or mis handled by a fisherman...and to top it off the small ones are better eating with less waste when processed.
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I see this as an arguement to leave the little fish alone...bottom line is that the little fish are roughly 75 % males that do get hammerred by seals etc (the percentage is debateable but it is definatey way aboe half male to half female)...to get the year class numbers over the past dozen years we have needed this ratio of males to females
This slot will kill a lot of those little fish and the seals etc will still eat what they eat rducing the mumbers even further. If the little fish are devastated so will the ratio of males to females causing future year classes to drop even mor without spawning...I don't state this...fisheries scientists state this
The speculation and guess work science being thrown around this board is the same that was done to Bob Pond when all the so called "high liners" were laughing at him and he was preaching the use of science.
Good science is not why SF is going to the legislature...the fact is they just can't get their junk by ASMFC.
For the record and because I am the only one on this board that actually has been attending the recent ASMFC Striped Bass meetings, there are multiple concerns with the SB stock and the scientists are at the end process of the analysis of certain problems as we..science based solutions that look like they will work work will be enacted as is written in the managment plan.
We need to set limits according to science and not guess work no matter how good pounding our chest makes any of us feel. Its nice to pound your chest and demand this or that but they did that with the slot limit in Maine and now a few years later they have no fish left. They kill all the bait and all the little fish on their coast and wonder what happenned. Sure let's blamit on ASMFC...Maine chose to harvest baby stripers not ASMFC.
If you really want to help then donate and support the organizations doing the real work at the places the work is really done