Why cant we just strengthen the conservation measures?
Every year since the striped bass started to recover the commercial fishermen have pushed for larger and larger catches. Since the fisheries managers deal predominately with commercial fisheries in their daily jobs, they have a natural tendency and in fact are usually under political pressure to accommodate commercial fishermans desires. The arguments of personal use harvest, recreationally based industry, and quality angling are really lost on most of these individuals. They are used to thinking of the landed value of the catch as the only real measure of economic value from fishing.
