Fishing

About: Fishing is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 26543 publications have been published within this topic receiving 455552 citations. The topic is also known as: angling.

Nursery habitat availability limits adult stock sizes of predatory coastal fish

Abstract: Habitat protection is a strategy often proposed in fisheries management to help maintain viable populations of exploited species. Yet, quantifying the importance of habitat availability for population sizes is difficult, as the precise distribution of essential habitats is poorly known. To quantify the contribution from coastal nursery habitats to exploited fish population sizes, we related adult density to the amount of nursery habitat available for 12 populations of the two dominant predatory fish species in a 40 000-km2 archipelago area of the Baltic Sea. Habitat distribution was mapped using three conceptually different techniques, Maxent, generalized additive models, and random forest, using spawning and 0-group point samples. Adult densities were estimated from gillnet surveys. Regressions demonstrated no evident effect from fishing, whereas habitat availability had a positive effect, explaining almost half of the variation in population sizes of both species. This result shows that a substantial proportion of the potential production of adult fish can be estimated by mapping essential nursery habitats distribution. Responses were non-linear, indicating that habitat protection has largest effects where there is little available habitat. By demonstrating the importance of habitat limitation of two exploited fish species, we provide quantitative support to the benefits of habitat protection for fisheries.

A comparison of methods for estimating activity costs of wild fish populations: more active fish observed to grow slower

Abstract: Activity costs can account for a major proportion of fish energy budgets and may trade off against observed growth rates in wild fish populations. Recent approaches to estimating activity costs in ...

Tangled Webs of History: Indians and the Law in Canada's Pacific Coast Fisheries

Abstract: Fishing rights are one of the major areas of dispute for aboriginals in Canada today. Dianne Newell explores this controversial issue and looks at the ways government regulatory policy and the law have affected Indian participation in the Pacific Coast fisheries.For centuries, the economies of Pacific Coast Indians were based on their fisheries. Marine resources, mainly salmon, were used for barter, trade, ceremony, and personal consumption. This pattern persisted after the arrival of European and Asian immigrants, even during the first phases of the non-Indian commercial fishing industry when Indian families were depended upon for their labour and expertise. But as the industrial fishery grew, changes in labour supply, markets, and technology rendered Pacific Coast Indians less central to the enterprise and the aboriginal fishery became legally defined as food fishing. By the late 1960s, rigid new licence limitation policies were introduced and regulations transformed the processing sector. The result was reduced participation for fishermen and shoreworkers and the opportunities for Indian men and women declined dramatically. Government programs to increase or even stabilize Indian participation ultimately failed. Newell concludes that the governments of Canada and BC have historically regarded the aboriginal fishery narrowly and unjustly as a privilege, not a right, and have in fact moved against any changes which might put Indians into competition with non-Indians. Recently, BC Indians won a Supreme Court victory in Sparrow (1990) that will make it easier to change federal fisheries policies but aboriginal fishing rights remain before the courts and under federal government investigation.Awarded the Canadian Historical Association's British Columbia and Yukon Certificate of Merit Award for 'Professor Newell's courageous critique of a history of mismanagement and misunderstanding in one of the region's key sectors should provide pause for thought to anyone with an interest in the workings of the modern state.'

Response of benthic fauna to experimental bottom fishing: A global meta‐analysis

Abstract: Bottom‐contact fishing gears are globally the most widespread anthropogenic sources of direct disturbance to the seabed and associated biota. Managing these fishing disturbances requires quantification of gear impacts on biota and the rate of recovery following disturbance. We undertook a systematic review and meta‐analysis of 122 experiments on the effects‐of‐bottom fishing to quantify the removal of benthos in the path of the fishing gear and to estimate rates of recovery following disturbance. A gear pass reduced benthic invertebrate abundance by 26% and species richness by 19%. The effect was strongly gear‐specific, with gears that penetrate deeper into the sediment having a significantly larger impact than those that penetrate less. Sediment composition (% mud and presence of biogenic habitat) and the history of fishing disturbance prior to an experimental fishing event were also important predictors of depletion, with communities in areas that were not previously fished, predominantly muddy or biogenic habitats being more strongly affected by fishing. Sessile and low mobility biota with longer life‐spans such as sponges, soft corals and bivalves took much longer to recover after fishing (>3 year) than mobile biota with shorter life‐spans such as polychaetes and malacostracans (<1 year). This meta‐analysis provides insights into the dynamics of recovery. Our estimates of depletion along with estimates of recovery rates and large‐scale, high‐resolution maps of fishing frequency and habitat will support more rigorous assessment of the environmental impacts of bottom‐contact gears, thus supporting better informed choices in trade‐offs between environmental impacts and fish production.