In the USA how do we know how many fish are harvested.....?

Question

Be it charter boats,family or prof Harvesters??????

Answer 1

Unknown due to lies & false reports,welcome to man kind.

Answer 2

Thats a toughie.

I think it is....

ALOT!

Answer 3

I regret this is an unknowable statistic.

Depending on your bias and the phase of the moon, you could have a wide variation in harvest size.  

I have personally seen people bring in hundreds of pounds of Rockfish (Striped Bass) that goes from the water to the kitchen.  But, because it is illegal, they won't answer honestly on DNR surveys.

I have seen people raise fish, blue crabs, oysters, and clams only to toss them into the water by the ton.  There is nothing like picking off the proceeds of a good trout line in the Chesapeake Bay in July (a trout line is how we catch blue crabs).

Answer 4

Granted, this is a tough one. As it turns out you can get annual statistics from both the Dept. of Commerce and Dept. of agriculture on the commercial harvest of all seafood caught by commercial fishing vessels registered in the U.S.A. Individual states have ways of getting suprisingly accurate estimates of fish and game takes in their respective states each year. That info. is then in turn passed on to the Dept. of Ag. Some illeagally taken fish will obviously slip through the cracks, but I believe it to be a negligable number.Good question!