The problem is over fishing and the fact that is takes so long for these fish to grow to maturity. One of those yellow eye ( red snapper) that weighs 10 pounds may be 75 years old. The charter boats will come in with a boat load of them day after day.
Much of the Inside Passage thru BC is closed to rock fish and has been for many years because the commercial fisherman switched over to catching them when the salmon fishing slowed down. I don't expect it to be open ever again in my lifetime.
In Washington state most bottom fish have been closed for many years because of over fishing.
It is pretty refreshing for me to read these common sense answers in response to this rockfish situation.
It seems in public policy we look for some derivative to the mostly likely answer to the decline in wild fish populations. It is the dams or the farms or rec boaters dumping their sewage when instead it seems so obvious that there are too many of us eating too many of these wild fish.
It makes absolutely no mathematical sense to me that the number of human inhabitants on this planet can still expect to feed themselves on these wild fisheries. They are just not up to that level of productivity.
If we are going to eat fish, we will need to farm them in some safe and sustainable way in my view. As in meat or even plant based foods, the level of production that is normal in nature could never sustain current populations. Only modern farming systems can do that.
It always amuses me when driving up the Columbia River with a city dweller who is explaining how the dams are annihilating the salmon populations while driving by the net buoys that span the entire river.
The rockfish are gone, the lingcod are gone and the halibut are gone and they do not use the rivers.
I think they are gone because we ate them......just like the salmon. To be clear, I doubt that rec fishing has a very big impact on this. It would take a pretty massive number of rec fisherman to equal even a single commercial boat I expect.
..Ken
