What is a good way to prevent overfishing that won't hurt fishermen?

Question

I need to come up with a solution to include in my paper but I'm drawing a blank. Please help.

Answer 1

70% of the world’s fish species are either fully exploited or depleted thus these fishermen are at risk of collapsing.  

Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing worldwide appears to be increasing as fishermen seek to avoid stricter rules in many places in response to shrinking catches and declining fish stocks.  Although by allowing fishermen to continue fishing the way they are now will allow them to continue to fish and earn money, eventually they will become bankrupt due to increased cost of fishing.  This is because to catch the same amount of fish they have to travel much further or put in much more effort.  Although fishermen say that they have been doing it this way forever and that they don’t agree, in actual fact technology has caused the fishermen to fish unsustainably.  They have become so efficient due to developments in vessel efficiency, net performance, sonar, radar, GPS, refrigeration, satellite mapping (temp anomaly mapping to catch tuna) not to mention the fact that vessels can travel long distances and are able to communicate via mobile/sat phones and the internet.  Now one vessel can catch more fish than ten could 50 years ago.  Every time fishing boats become more efficient at catching either the number of vessels must be reduced or a restriction must be placed on the vessels in terms of catch or effort.

Sustainable fishing requires partnerships by and between governments, fishermen, communities and industry otherwise monitoring of catches so as to ensure quotas are not exceeded will not occur and illegal activity will corrupt the process.

Countries should ratify the Convention on the Law of the Sea and other instruments that promote maritime safety and protect the environment from marine pollution and environmental damage by ships otherwise other pressures will compound the problem of over fishing.

Only a multilateral approach can counterbalance the rate of depletion of the world’s fisheries which has increased more than four times in the past 40 years.

Answer 2

Currently oceans suffer fro "The Law of the Common" where the ocean is no ones property, the fish are taken at the numbers needed to make a profit.

If fishing rights were set up to give ownership of theses rights to individuals, then the individual would fish to insure that the stock was always well maintained, and that profits could be sustained over long periods of time.

Answer 3

there are several ways, all of which were tested to be effective:

- increase efforts to introduce new salt water fish species to aqua farming, and let fishermen own, manage and work in sea fish farms, and in addition, since domesticated fish breed huge mounts of fry, make the farms free a Small percentage of these fry, after they reach a certain size, that will reintroduce and increase wild populations, provide large quantities of sea fish, and keep fishermen working in sea farms.

- create artificial coral reefs, and declare these artificial and many natural reefs nature reserves, where fishing is forbidden, wild fish species multiply very fast in these reefs, and the young fish migrate to open water, where they can be collected by fishermen.

Answer 4

With about 75% of the world's fishing stocks on the brink of decimation, I honestly don't think there is a solution that doesn't involve some form of sweeping fishing ban that won't impact fisherman in a harmful manner.

The one thing that I keep coming back to is that (this would have to be funded at a governmental level) these global fishing communities could refocus their labor on restoring marine ecosystems such as reefs, inlets and banks while the fishing moratorium was in place.  Thus during the time span fishing was halted, you reap two simultaneous benefits -- allowing stocks to have some breathing room to get back to reasonable population levels, while restoring much needed habitat for them.

Answer 5

Well, for starters each lake can impose a size limit that it has to be before you can take it. When you increase the size limit you give the fish longer time to breed before they are taken. Also, I have noticed that allot of places I have fished that the fishing really sucks the following spring/summer when there was allot of ice fishing in the winter. The use of treble hooks can also hurt some fish because of how deep they swallow them sometimes. A treble hook is allot harder to remove than just a regular hook, and sometimes can do enough damage resulting in fish dying. The only other thing that I can think of to prevent overfishing is for DNR to inspect more people leaving with fish that does not meet the length limit & to limit the number of rods used. Increase fines for people that are not following the rules & regulations. & limit the amount of ice fishing in the winter months.

Answer 6

For starters are you talking about Commercial Fishermen, or recreational anglers?

For recreational anglers there are several options which i will list for you;

1) Slot limit

here you choose your breeding stock, and these ones are put back in the lake once caught. In Manitoba on the east side there is a slot limit for walleye of 45 to 70 cm. Anything under can be kept and one over 70cm can be kept. This is quite effective as the slot limit has moved up allowing anglers to keep larger fish. The slot limit  started out aroud 35 cm and moved up to 45 over the years. This is a proactive solution that works for everyone

2) Catch and Release

This solution still allows you to have your fun in the sun fishing, but nothing to take home. Its good for the sport and gets anglers to practice better release methods to fish.

3) Use of Barbless hooks

By using barbless hooks the stress of releasing a fish is reduced allowing it a better chance of recovering ans surviving.

4) reduced limits

Still get to take fish home just not as many on certain lakes.

For Commerical Fisherman solutions would be different as its their livelyhood

1) Reduce quotas

This will allow more fish to reproduce (hopefully) allowing for production of future generations

2)Season dates

allow for a short harvest dates so that fish are stressed out the least. Make sure the season dates are NOT during spawning season.

3) change equipment

Restrict the fishing gear that commercial fisherman use. Use older less effective gear that will allow for better selection of fish. But don't use old gear that is ecolgically unsafe either.

For example on lakes in the winter restricting the gill size will take the smaller ones or the bigger ones depending on your size. This can be effective management tool.

One way to improve fish stocks for both is improve their habitat allowing for a higher population and healthier population.

I hope this information has helped