Stop the Hypocrisy!!

[broadbill-pro]

I just scanned the last couple pages of comments and realized the the PLL proponents have done a heck of a job moving the issue away from the actual argument. The issue at hand is not whether we should be rid of commercial swordfishing or whether coms or recs kill more marlin and sails but rather whether tended gear or untended gear has a higher mortality rate in released shorts/bycatch in the commercial fishery. I don't think that it takes a PhD to know that tended gear results in less release mortality. I'm not here trying to say that we can catch enough fish without PLL at the moment but it is clear to me that the offshore fisheries would benefit by slowly reducing the PLL fleet in favor of tended gear.

Actually, the topic of this thread is "hypocrisy". The anti-PLL proponents in typical fashion altered the focus in an attempt to keep their hands clean.

Your theory in regard to tended and untended gear make sense until we include gear efficiency because numbers count when we are speaking about release mortality. Could it be that a dead drifting squid or mackeral produces an equal number of marlin as a $90 state of the art lure trolled in front of a ballyhoo? My point is only that there are many factors to include and that all hooks deployed are not created equal. I have already demonstrated why most marlin interactions with PLL result in live fish being released not unlike recreational fishing.

Too late for a slow reducing of the US domestic fleet, that happened over a decade ago and it was fast.

Fact is we all kill fish and anyone who continues to publish anti-commercial propaganda while doing so is a hypocrite. If the term includes me for pointing a finger so be it, I'm in good company.

[Fishin Blue Water]

To say that tended commercial gear results in less release mortality than untended commercial gear is a fact, not hypocracy. The argument is against PLLs not against commercial fishing.

We all do kill fish that we would prefer we didn't. We can debate about who kills more until we are blue in the face and we still are not going to get anywhere. We also all killed fish at a higher rate in the past than we do today. C&R combined with a reduction in the PLL fleet has led to a rebound in billfish populations. The point is that the question is whether your sector has embraced the least harmful method of catching the fish not which sector kills more. The rec sector has moved almost all of their efforts to the less harmful practice of C&R (vs. boating the fish). At the same time the com sector is trying to preserve the more destructive PLL (vs. tended gear).

[broadbill-pro]

I never made this about who kills more, that was bestowed on me when a few people implyed my sins are greater than theirs.

As mentioned before, releasing bycatch while in the act of fishing for harvest is unavoidable. Do we draw the line when 60 kingfish are released to catch a few sailfish? Suppose that is when it becomes a moral issue??