Thread: NOAA News: Spanish Mackerel

Originally Posted by midwestexile

The people who can and will catch more and more are the commercials. They can sell it and glut the market, driving down the prices. They can export it out of state. They can build up future consumer demand for spanish. So when the recreational anglers cannot "fully utilize their share", it will only be natural to let there be a shift of some of their "unused" share to the commercials.

Let's remember the purpose of the commercial fisherman. It's the same as any other business - to make as big of a profit as they can using the resource. What they are doing now is lining up buyers all over the country, if not all over the world. THIS is what maximizes their profits! I'm not concerned that the commercial fishermen will drive down the price by flooding the LOCAL market. I'm concerned that they'll CREATE a market elsewhere that will guarantee the depletion of a finite resource.

The difference in catch-methods shows how this will favor the commercial fisherman. The reason pier fishermen typically catch fewer than the present limit has to do with the schooling nature of the fish. They're here, feeding like crazy for a while and then the school moves out of casting distance. A net-boat can locate the school of spanish and scoop up them and the "by-catch" and move on to the next school.

So, like Pier#r was saying -- "How many limits did you catch last season?" That question points to the season on which they based their final decision that the fish stocks could support more than doubling the harvest! It just seems like a very GENEROUS gesture, the generosity being at, what seems to be, the expense of the recreational fisherman, specifically the pier fisherman!