The Impact of United States Recreational Fisheries on Marine Fish Populations

Abstract

We evaluated the commercial and recreational fishery landings over the past 22 years, first at the national level, then for populations of concern (those that are overfished or experiencing overfishing), and finally by region. Recreational landings in 2002 account for 4% of total marine fish landed in the United States. With large industrial fisheries excluded (e.g., menhaden and pollock), the recreational component rises to 10%. Among populations of concern, recreational landings in 2002 account for 23% of the total nationwide, rising to 38% in the South Atlantic and 64% in the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, it affects many of the most-valued overfished species-including red drum, bocaccio, and red snapper-all of which are taken primarily in the recreational fishery.

Rapid Effects of Marine Reserves via Larval Dispersal

“…Mean and median sighting frequencies of predators decreased 2.2-4.0% (r 2 = 0.19, p,0.0001) and 4.1-7.1% (r 2 = 0.37, p,0.0001), respectively, per incremental increase of 100 humans per km 2 . The predator communities exhibited lower richness (r 2 = 0.20, p,0.0001) and Simpson's diversity (r 2 = 0.41, p,0.0001) with increasing density of humans.…”

“…It is well documented that humans have greatly altered predatory fish communities worldwide, especially through industrialized commercial and recreational fisheries [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. These studies have based their conclusions on extensive databases of fisheries-dependent data (i.e., landings statistics), primarily from developed nations.…”

Assessing the impact of spear fishing by using competitions records and underwater visual censuses

“…This sector obtains approximately 12% of the global fish harvest (Cooke and Cowx 2004), rivalling with commercial fisheries in some regions (Coleman et al 2004). It is difficult to understand how, despite the growing social and economic interest of the sector and the increasing conflicts with the commercial fisheries, there are few studies on the fish communities targeted by recreational fisheries (Kearney 2001, Arlinghaus 2006, Pawson et al 2008.…”

Strategy of recreational anglers and estimated eel (Anguilla anguilla) catches in a large European catchment basin, the Loire (France)

“…With the development of the leisure society, for some species recreational fishing is becoming more profitable than commercial and industrial exploitation. The assessment of the impact of anglers on fish stocks is a very controversial issue (Coleman et al, 2004;Arlinghaus et al, 2005;Morales-Nin et al, 2005). Recreational fishing is one of the most popular leisure activities in coastal zones; it involves large numbers of people, and consequently high levels of fishing, which may outweigh commercial fishing.…”

“…So far, there has been little investigation of recreational eel fishing, although this has not prevented the introduction of some management measures. The aim of this study was therefore to contribute to knowledge about the current exploitation of eel by recreational fishing on the scale of the catchment area, and hence to provide essential management data (Coleman et al, 2004;Morales-Nin et al, 2005). In 2005, the eel report card on the Loire catchment area (Baisez and Laffaille, 2005) included centralized assessments of anglers' fishing data, and especially relating to recreational line fishing.…”