it's a simple fact that some species reside in a specific benthos.

Which is a moot point from the perspective of this debate. As I already pointed out, only fish that live near the shore are going to be affected by the proposed shore based fishing zones. If a fish can only be targetted from the shore, why is it a problem if you can't target them from a boat? If they can only be targetted from a boat, then the spillover will only go to boat fishermen and the NTZ will still be just as effective as those designed from a more arbitrary strategy.

Rubbish

Assuming we are talking about species that can be caught and are targetted, most can be caught from both the shore and from a boat. Part of your confusion may stem from the fact that the 'arms race' has made it pointless to target many species from the shore.

Perhaps you should take another loo at the examples:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/fish/marine-park-examples.html

IQ, you are bringing up a technically correct point that the benefit will not be universal. Not all species will be targetted from the shore even with the proposals in place. They won't butter your toast either or save the whales. But that doesn't make them a bad idea. The proposals will benefit shore based anglers, even if they don't start catching orange roughy. Just because I say it will benefit shore based angler without pointing out the obvious - that the effect will be far stronger for some species than for others, does not make me wrong. It just makes your point moot.

My point is not moot because of the very generalised net you cast on your idea that all species of shore catch will improve with shore only fishing areas

I'm not sure why you are having such trouble understanding this. I said no such thing. I just went to some length to explain that the effect will be species dependent.

Perhaps you would like to come up with an example species that is already targetted by shore based anglers and for which this proposal could not benefit shore based anglers.

I will ban you if you keep that up bk.

freediver wrote on Feb 20^th, 2008 at 6:48pm:


I can. Plenty are only lightly or moderately fished and virtually none are overfished. How about groper, salmon, drummer and luderick? They are common close to shore and only receive light fishing pressure.

Any benifit from FD's policy is likely to be negligable and would not outweigh the loss of freedom to boat angers. Please don't ignore me once again FD.

This proposal only, or your generalised assumption that this will work in other places too?

The strategy in general, but if you have an example specific to the examples I put up that would be better.

YF Whiting for one are more effectively targeted from shore than from a boat- banning boat anglers from an area where they are targeting deep water species such as mulloway/kingfish will not provide any benefit for shore anglers.

You can catch mulloway and kingfish from the shore, especially in places where boat fishermen targetting them are close enough to the shore to be effected. This is especially true for mulloway.

I can. Plenty are only lightly or moderately fished and virtually none are overfished. How about groper, salmon, drummer and luderick? They are common close to shore and only receive light fishing pressure.

That doesn't mean there would be no benefit, that means there would be less benefit. They are fished heavily enough to make them relatively difficult to catch from the popular shore based spots.

Because you are missing the point. Even if a species is easier to catch from the shore, that doesn't mean there would be no benefit, just less. Furthermore, preventing boat fishermen from catching represents an equally limited loss in this case, so there is still a net benefit.

Some questions from earlier in this thread you seem to have missed:

PJ, you seem a bit upset about the strategy of selecting sites to protect land based anglers. You seem to dislike my motives, but I can't see how you could rationally oppose the outcome. So lets separate the selection process from the decision of whether to protect any sites or how much to protect. 

Do you think it would be reasonable to close of 20% of accessible land based spots if 20% of each habitat type is closed off? That is, do you think it is unreasonable to try to avoid closing land based spots? 

Do you think it is unreasonable to place a NTZ near an easily accessible land based fishing spot so that shore based anglers get the most benefit from it? If boat fishermen are going to be from from one spot to another, doesn't it make sense to move them away from land based anglers rather than towards them?