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We have taken out own personal steps as recreational anglers to be better stewards of the ocean. We practice C&R, we are more careful handling fish in the process, and we report issues to the authorities that directly affect the fisheries.
What has me concerned is that if nothing is done on the commercial side of the coin, meaning the by-catch kill rate by netters, then our efforts will be worthless. It's been reported that recreational anglers kill more fish than the commercial anglers. True, but those numbers do not include the commercial kill from netters which would probably change the results in our favor.
Of course that would also mean that the reports had been wrong and our environmental efforts were only supplying the netters with more fish to kill.
Heck, I didn't start fishing for stripers until the 90's (voluntarily) and I've been slowly shifting my interest back to freshwater due to a continued decline in the quality of the fishery.
Keep in mind that if every shore angler were to pledge to give up stripers for just one year it would make no difference at all. Even if we gave it up for 5 years it would yield the same results.
Why?
Because our fish would then be given to the commercial guys and would be used to downplay the bycatch kill numbers.
Here are words to keep in mind, and they may soon be used for stripers as well: Remember when we used to be able to use live herring as bait?
Remember when we used to be able to catch/keep stripers?
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