Governing the recreational dimension of global fisheries

Abstract

Fisheries provide food. In industrialized nations, the overwhelming portion of seafood comes from a small number of commercial fishers and increasingly aquaculture (1). Fisheries also contribute to leisure and recreation. In developed nations, 1 in 10 people fishes for pleasure, amounting to at least 220 million recreational fishers worldwide (2, 3)—more than 5 times the number of commercial capture fishers (1). This means that the vast majority of people fishing today do so recreationally (Fig. 1). For too long, the considerable importance and impacts of recreational fisheries have been ignored. Image credit: Florian Mollers (photographer). And yet, for too long, the considerable importance and impacts of recreational fisheries have been ignored. Policymakers and managers need to acknowledge and address the recreational fisheries sector, rethink management objectives and schemes, involve recreational fishers in decision-making processes, incentivize sustainable angler behavior, and improve data collection and monitoring. Recreational fisheries deserve to be considered on equal footing with commercial fisheries, particularly in mixed coastal fisheries. Although commercial capture fisheries globally harvest about 8 times the fish biomass caught by recreational fisheries (4), in many localities recreational landings now rival or even exceed the biomass removals by commercial fisheries. In inland waters in the temperate zone, recreational anglers are now the predominant users of wild fish stocks (5), and recreational fishers have become prevalent in many coastal and marine fisheries (6, 7). Globally, recreational fishers catch about 47 billion individual fish per year, of which more than half are released alive (4), either because of harvest regulations or in response to personal ethics (8). Despite high release rates, fishing for food is a strong motive and justification for recreational fisheries (9). Beyond nutritional benefits, recreational fisheries provide a range of psychological, social, educational, and economic benefits to fishers and society that are … [↵][1]2To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: arlinghaus{at}igb-berlin.de. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1