I'm sure they have some use. The RFA certainly doesn't seem to represent the views of it's members regarding marine parks.

BTW, what percentage of fishermen does the RFA claim to represent?

I'm not sure. I'm sure if you asked them they would tell you about all the great stuff they do. Maybe they teach children to fish, or hold cake stalls. There would be plenty of issues for which the recreational fishing community is far closer to a consensus, so there is no doubt some useful political role for them.

Environmentalists want the Federal Government to declare up to 25% of Western Australia's southern waters as sanctuaries.

Will they claim Mare Australe next?

Yadda wrote on Feb 24^th, 2009 at 1:40pm:


They (marine sanctuaries) would never have got this far if they weren't a superficially appealing idea. However if the idea is to sutainable use the marine resource then the jury is out as to whether they are any better than traditional methods of quotas, limits on the no of commercial licenses, trip limits, closed season etc. If you look at the field evidence then the countries with the most sustainable fisheries have got there by relying on the latter - not marine sanctuaries.

Then there are all the problems with marine reserves. There is a huge socio-economic fall out on coastal towns affected by them. The angling experience is degraded by the loss of most of the good fishing spots, overcrowing of those remaining, difficulty in complying (trying to keep track of lines drawn in the water), heavy fines or worse for usually innocent errors. People have bought houses by the beach with the idea of throwing a line only to have fishing banned there when a marine park was declared!     

Yadda, most of the scientists involved agree with you, based on observations so far. Also, some of the traditional management techniques that get 'knee-jerk support' from fishermen, merely because they are more familiar, have serious problems in terms of sustainability of catches.

http://www.ozpolitic.com/fish/marine-parks-fisheries-management-tool.html

pjb05 wrote on Feb 25^th, 2009 at 10:08am:




".....When WW II prevented fishing in the North Sea, fish stocks increased exponentially -- and there was a short-lived harvest bonanza in 1945-47. So what is this surprising and "astounding success"? Something unexpected?"
http://depts.washington.edu/mpanews/MPA13.htm




".....spillover of larger organisms and dispersal of larvae to areas outside reserves can lead to reserves sustaining or even increasing local fisheries.
.......The role of a marine protected area in enhancing local fisheries, through the emigration or spillover of exploitable fishes, was studied in a coral reef park (Mombasa Marine Park, Kenya) and fishery over a seven-year period during a time when the park's border changed and pull seines were eliminated. We measured catches before and after the park's establishment and during the management changes and compared these catches with the unmanaged side of the park. Additionally, we placed baited traps on both sides of the park over a full tidal cycle which allowed us to measure the spillover from the park compared to the deeper, rougher, and less fished reef edge. The total wet mass of catches per trap, the mean size of the trapped fish, and the number of fish species caught per trap declined as a function of the distance away from the park edge on both the southern and northern sides.
......It is hypothesized that marine reserves will help to sustain fisheries external to them by becoming net exporters of adults (the ‘‘spillover effect’’) and net exporters of propagules (the ‘‘recruitment effect’’). Local fishery benefits from spillover will likely generate support from fishing communities for marine reserves. We used underwater visual census to show that biomass of Acanthuridae (surgeonfish) and Carangidae (jacks), two families of reef fish that account for 40–75% of the fishery yield from Apo Island, Philippines, tripled in a well-protected no-take reserve over 18 years (1983–2001). Biomass of these families did not change significantly over the same period at a site open to fishing."
http://www.dfg.ca.gov/MLPA/science2.asp


Google,
"no take area" fish stocks "north sea"
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=%22no+take+area%22+fish+stocks+%22north+...

"no take area" fish stocks atlantic
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=%22no+take+area%22+fish+stocks+atlantic&...

PJ your whole argument seems to revolve around a vast conspiracy involving the scientific community deliberately misleading the public. Sometimes you just have to accept the facts.