Interesting reading...I've been fishing LJ for over 20 years, and there is truth in the fact that some years are better than others, and some years the kelp is thicker.
However, I can recall about 8 yrs ago, I was on a buddy's boat, and he caught a 42 lb WSB, and we had people waiting at Dana Landing just to see the fish. Now, with the excellent progress of the hatcheries, we are seeing more WSB, and the planted ones when they first started are only estimated to be in the 30 lb range, yet we are getting much bigger ones than that showing...survival of the fittest?
And it seems that not only are they progressing on the WSB, now they are in the process of redefining the technique to apply to other members of our oceans resources as well.
The trend it seems is to cultivate the species, produce in better numbers than the wild can keep up with, for supply and demand purposes.
That will be our future, and in my opinion, as long as we can keep the longliners and the dredgers out of our picture, wherever we fish, that will not only benefit us, as fishermen and women, with our next step controlling the poachers, which created the decline of too numerous species, such as abalone.
Rambling on, it will ultimately get to the point our oceans will resemble stocked lakes - planted fish introduced into the wild.
On grand terms, the ratio of fish caught that are potential breeders cannot keep up with the survival of the young, hence our hatcheries, which produce an abundance of young to offset the balance of nature. This is our reality...there were plenty of fish to be had until the GP was informed that fish was good for you, coupled with the anti-fishers such as PETA, who would rather we not fish at all.
I can see the studies reasoning, but I seriously doubt they factored in the progress of hatchery programs and the progress that resulted in the studies of what it would take to succeed, to replenish our dwindling fish supply. We now have grow out pens to beef up the BFT for the Asian markets because of the high $ they command, it's only a matter of time that we will see more grow out pens for a variety of pelagics, then we will argue over new world records because these same fish were grown to full size and beyond, and released, such as is the current debate on farm raised trout vs. natural stock lake records.
To put this in a much broader picture, articles such as these are viewed and considered by many who eat fish; while only 15%, at best, of the population actually catch their dinner. My thoughts are, that if these same studies sway some of the population, they have served their purpose. The reality? We will look to further our studies and meet the supply and demand with the progress that we have already made to fill that void to include different species hatchery raised.
Hamburger and steak are still cheaper than a nice fillet, obviously they figured out how to raise more farm animals to meet the demand, the same will be done with fish.
Who knows, maybe soon we could be eating sea lion meat....
