Recreational Fisheries Management

Abstract

This sport has a high economic value and is of considerable importance in the entire fisheries industry (commercial and recreational). Fisheries management plans require knowledge of total harvest from fish stocks, yet management plans were based only upon the commercial catch figures available from government agencies until comparatively recently. Commercial catch figures are incomplete without recreational fisheries catch records. Recreational catch records, by reason of the very nature of recreational fisheries, are diffuse, difficult, and expensive to collect; and, because of this, recreational catches for many years were omitted in fisheries management programs and underestimations of total catches resulted. Such catches may be as much as 13 times greater than the commercial catch. In some areas, catches of king mackerel may be 15 times greater. Both commercial and recreational catches must be available and used for fish management equations to be effective.