The Role of Recreational Fishermen in the Conservation and Rebuilding of West Coast Groundfish Stocks

Recreational fishermen have long proclaimed ourselves to be the original conservation advocates for fisheries, claiming a link that goes back to Izaac Walton.  In today’s world that advocacy can be seen in several bottoms up initiatives coming from the recreational fishing sector.  One of those initiatives relates to the use of “re-compression devices” to discard rockfish species back at depth to overcome the otherwise lethal effects of barotrauma.   It has been the recreational sector that first experimented with these devices, that has supported scientific research into the biology of the effects, and that has explored the effectiveness of various re-compression devices.  It has been the recreational sector that has brought the issue to the attention of national fisheries managers, and into the regulatory arena.  And today we are focused on getting the message and techniques accepted throughout the general fishing public.  All of this has been in response to the need to rebuild selected west coast groundfish species (and other regionally important species), and the desire to sooner-rather-than-later expand our fishing opportunities into areas that are now closed to us, while ensuring future generations of fishermen have healthy stocks to sustain our passion.