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Baldwin,
Maybe an example will help, lets say that the current commercial quota is 1,000,000 pounds of stripers and the current bycatch is 20,000 pounds. So now we are killing 1,020,000 pounds of bass, since bycatch is not landed and doesn't count against the quota.
Now lets assume that somehow, someway, the bycatch is made legal and is allowed to be landed (this really has nothing to do with opening the EEZ). Total commercial landings will still be 1,000,000 and bycatch will be zero.
To put it into your own words "If the quota is 1,000,000 and bycatch counts toward it, the quota will still be 1,000,000. Same number, not raised, not reduced. Just taken from different areas." that is ture what you are missing is that the bycatch is now counted in the quota so was are only killing the 1,000,000 where before we were killing 1,000,000 plus the bycatch. Get it?
As far as you argument about removing the larger fish resulting in a small population, I am vary familiar wiht the "science behind that assertion, are you? The science was an experiment where they put 100 spearing in a tank and allowed them to breed. After each spawn they would remove a dozen of the biggest fish. They kept doing thsi for a number of breeding cycles and found that the resulting offspring 20 or so cycles later were, on average, smaller than they ones they started off with. How you can extrapolate that to millions of not billions of striped bass living and spawning in the wild is completely beyond me.
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