Some no-fishing zones create confusion for anglers
Some no-fishing zones create confusion for anglers
An American Sportfishing Association official told scientists to be prepared to defend proposals to create no-fishing zones.
BY SUSAN COCKING
MiamiHerald
The head of a U.S. recreational fishing trade organization told a gathering of fisheries scientists from around the world to be prepared to defend any proposals to create no-fishing zones as conservation tools.
Mike Nussman, president and CEO of the American Sportfishing Association, told the gathering at the fifth World Recreational Fishing Conference in Dania Beach that recreational anglers are confused with a recent spate of state and federal no-fishing zones in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
''If there's a good reason to close recreational fishing, we support it,'' Nussman said. ``We think there needs to be a damn good reason whey they would ban it.''
Nussman said most marine protected areas, established over the past decade to conserve cultural and natural resources, allow some type of recreational fishing, and ``they are largely not terribly controversial.''
But marine protected areas, he said, have evolved into no-fishing zones, raising angler concerns.
Nussman drew parallels between terrestrial areas designated as wilderness and marine waters designated as reserves, noting that wilderness areas ''where you can't even ride a bicycle but you can recreationally fish'' face larger threats such as mining and overdevelopment.
''The threats aren't nearly as large in a marine system as in a terrestrial system,'' he said.
Before closing off marine waters to fishing, Nussman said, fisheries managers must establish that anglers are causing a conservation problem, that traditional management measures are not working, that closed areas have specific criteria for measuring how well the closure is working, that closed areas are no larger than they need to be and that there's a mechanism for reopening when there's no longer a problem.
Nussman cited research showing that more than nine out of 10 Americans approve of recreational fishing.
''What we're concerned about are [marine protected areas] being looked at as a one-size-fits-all tool,'' Nussman said.
