Quote:
Originally Posted by jmac
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"In addition, a
recreational catch adjustment was made excluding the party-charter (PC) component of the
striped bass catch after 2004 because the MRFSS has adopted a specific survey for party-charter
fisheries since 2005."
Now, why are charter/ headboats catches not included in the the figures you reported? Are they quasi commercial? I still believe that that is where the largest piece of the striper pie is going...not to change the subject (but I will), if you do the numbers, COASTWIDE, there are a lot of bass being caught in that fishery, YEARLY. Look at whats going on down south now.
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The commercial percentage is not going up because they are catching more fish, it is going up because the recreational fishermen are catching (and never were) nowhere near the numbers they are being estimated to catch (this is discussed in detail in the expanded section on the flaw in the MRFSS sampling methodology).
The percentage of commercial caught bass does not change...it stays at over 50%......relative to the entire coastwide catch, because the coastwide recreational catch is made up of Recreational (MRFSS measured charter survey + MRFSS estimated non-charter catch) and only the later number is wildly off (70% overestimate x millions of fisherman leads to a huge total overestimate). The accurate charter estimates undoubtably make up a large percentage of the actual 40 % of fish the recreational sector uses.
The number is not of great concern to the ASMFC.....indeed it is comforting to them since it means total fishing pressure is not as high as they assumed.....which translates into there supposedly being more fish that can safely be caught......hence the vote to consider increasing commercial quotas further.
Now this might make sense if the actual numbers of fish were what they like to estimate, but if there are that many fish why are recreational catch NUMBERS (not poundage) plummeting so fast? Maybe the survey is so flawed it can't be trusted....or maybe there are not as many fish as they estimate and the dimishing success of the millions of average anglers coastwide reflects that.
So where do you think this is headed as the millions of average anglers begin to recognize that they are "getting" maybe 20% of the overall quota (commercial 55% per the technical comittee report/Charter say 25%) and that number is dropping fast?
At very least they ought to redraw that annoying graph and pie chart to show what is really happening and people stop using it to support a position it does not support.
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