Sport Fisheries and Stock Enhancement
From Coastal Sarasota Watersheds Wiki
Title: Sustaining Florida’s Sport Fisheries: Setting Policy for the New Millennium
Discussion Group Leader: Ken Leber
- Focus on marine sport fishing: economics, demographics, examples from the area, management of bay sport fisheries, policy implications.
- Seagrass and macroalgae are necessary habitat for juvenile fish.
- Florida and Tourism
- Largest state for tourism, 76.8 million visitors a year
- Sport fishing receives $7.5 billion/year
- Florida is the third fastest growing state. How is our growth going to impact our management of sport fisheries?
- Manage fisheries by:
- Controlling fishing effort
- Protecting and restoring essential habitat
- Increasing the number of young fish through stocking
- Marine stock enhancement needs to occur responsibly and fit within current fisheries management plans. Potential outcomes should be modeled.
- We need to ensure that fitness of fish is maintained by using wild fish as parents and through genetic management.
- Pilot studies are important in ensuring the habitat can handle increased fish populations and in evaluating the impact and effectiveness of the project.
- Microhabitat can have a large impact on survival, so species habitat use must be studied and understood prior to stock enhancements.
- Stocking is not an attempt to change the ecosystem, it is an attempt to give the species a head start.
- What was the impact of the net ban on fish?
- Less spawners were taken, which leads to increased recruitment, less bycatch. More offshore fishing. Hard to say exactly the impact because there was a simultaneous stock enhancement and a decrease in red tide at the same time.
- When it comes to habitat policy, we need to determine essential habitat for all life stages. Although we tend to overlook the subadults, they play an important role and also need to be protected. For traveling fish, we need to ensure habitat connectivity.
- There’s a missing link in our studies regarding prey. While we know what species are in the same area, we don’t know what’s going on with them.
- We need stakeholder support to do stock enhancement. In this area we stock snook; we can also stock red fish, spotted sea trout, scallops and shellfish.
