I am not having a go at you champ, infact I agree with most of what you have said. But the simple fact is most (law abiding) rec fishers want to distance themselves from all of the issues associated with the undersize fish that are taken by various groups around the country and put them in a different box. They don't fit in another box they are rec fishers and they have can impact on the fishery.
No offence taken, but in all honesty I'm not sure why you keep implying law abiding fishers want to distance theselves from the the non-law abiding fishers
. The fishing groups I'm involved with are quite aware that there are fisher people who do the wrong thing, whether through anti-social behaviour, littering or taking undersized fish.... no different to any group.... such as car enthusiast, not hoons, hunters, not rednecks, social drinkers, not drunks. But generally these are the minority, and not the majority, so it's kind of condescending to suggest we're distancing ourselves, or in denial, or are naive - I think you need to give us a bit more credit.
I can only comment on what is / has happened in SA, but the rest of your points simply support exactly what I said initially - why introduce more marine parks, which require more management, when the management being done now, whether state or federal based, simply isn't working? Point in case, by your own admission you said, QUOTE -
"They catch and kill everything. And yes I book em, but still they come " ..... so why is that Jason? Lack of resources, lack of education, or the penalities simply not stiff enough? Whatever the reason it obviously needs changing, and perhaps if it was working you wouldn't be constantly booking the re-offenders, the fish stocks would improve (if you believe this was the cause), and tax payers would be better off generally because the government wouldn't be throwing billions (not millions) introducing marine parks and paying compensation to those industries out of pocket.
Going back specifically to SA, we have bag and size limits that have, over the years, changed such that the number of fish a person can take per day has significantly reduced, and the size limits of ""keeper fish increased also. Year on year the number of rec fisherman actively participating in fishing is actually reducing, not increasing. In SA the total commercial catch of target species such as whiting, snapper and calamari is a significantly greater proportion, than the total recreational take. Yet the state governement initially proposed that 44% of our waters should be marine parks, and of that (from memory) 11% no take zones. Most people who wouldn't know better would say that 11% of the ocean being allocated as no take zones seems fair, but it just happens that the majority of the no-take zones just happen to be in the best fishing locations (reefy areas, bombies etc). We thanked the government for giving us the remaining 89% of ocean to fish, but it's not real fun fishing on flat sandy sea floors - the fish don't like living in these areas either!
So in SA the recs take vastly less than the commecial fisherman, we have regularly had our allowable daily catch limit reduced whilst the size of fish that can be kept has increased, and the number of people participating in recreational fishing is reducing....... so why is there so much fear mongering that we are raping and pillaging the seas and causing the bulk of the destruction? There is study after study that has been done in SA that shows that stormwater run off and pollution has done significant damage to the local marine environment and killed off hundreds of square km's of sea grass and scallops beds, where whiting breed and snapper feed. I agree that recreational fishers probably contribute along the way to pollution and taking undersized fish, but it pales into insignificance when you look at what is being dumped into the sea by big industries, desalination plants, whilst prawn trawlers and other styles of commercial fishing kill off tons of undersized fish as a result of by catch everytime they bring in their nets.
Maybe it's different in the Eastern states, but to say in SA the recreational fisherman is causing the bulk or a reasonable proportion of the destruction to the the marine environment is simply wrong, and not supported by any science. Again, if the government was serious about caring for the marine environment, they would be addressing very different issues rather than chasing recreational fisherman.
