Good lord, I don’t see how some of you guys have time for all these posts…I’ll wade in one more time (with my waders on).
Review:
The original post referred to a short blurb about a highly focused research study that investigated how much stress individual bonefish encounter when caught and released. Remember almost all the bonefishermen are catch and release anglers. The study’s result could help to inform the bonefish angling community so that they can maximize their use of the bonefish resource. The purpose of the original post was to provide FAOL readers with a short summary of a current research topic in the conservation field. Hopefully, some of the data collected in the study would be of use to you as you make your own decisions regarding how you catch and release.
My position: I think that every personal decision like participating voluntarily in catch and release should be an informed decision–backed with data if possible. One would expect those decisions to change as new data comes in. For example, in my youth my grandfather explained that you’ll never fish out a pond. At the time we belonged to a fishing club with three ponds where our family were pretty much the only ones fishing for largemouth bass (central KS). We were addicts, fishing 3-4 times a week. We kept all of the “keepers” to eat and watched as over the next 3 years our catch got smaller and less numerous. When the ponds were drained for rehab we all expected to find the smart and uncatchable “Big Berthas” but we actually found very few bass left and they were all very small. We had had a devastating impact on the ponds. The data spoke louder than my grandfather and I started changing how I fished for bass in small ponds. Eventually, I came real close to becoming a fisheries researcher.
More importantly, I think that every agency or public decision needs to be informed by the data. We are the public and those agencies work for us. They certainly mess things up–especially when they don’t pay attention to the data or when they look for an expedient way around “inconvenient data”
Where does the data come from—from the studies that have been so flogged in this thread. Progress in fisheries management, bee keeping, climate prediction, bear managment, Toyota pickups, flyrods, fishing flies, fish hooks etc. is incremental but generally in a positive direction because of the nature of scientific studies. Remember, they put their work out for critique and I can tell you from personal experience finding data that goes against your favorite hypothesis is not always fun but it is always productive.
I do have the study from the first post now if anyone really wants to know the gory details. One line of discussion on this thread has tried to look at financing. Here’s the acknowlegements from the study:
“This project was supported by grants from Bonefish and Tarpon Unlimited (in
particular, we thank Aaron Adams, Jim Trice, Tom Davidson,
and Russ Fisher) and the Charles A. and Anne Morrow
Lindbergh Foundation. …”
As you can see it was primarily funded from B and T Unlimited and the Lindbergh foundation with minor institutional support that I’ve left out. Actually, when looking at the validity of any claim to knowledge I look at the history of the researcher–his/her papers and work and their support but the support is usually the last thing I consider unless the study is making a claim that is really not supported or counter to the prevailing ideas in the field. Remember, I said these folks are lucky because they get to do what they love for a job–they generally do it very well.
So to wrap this up. My plea is to not dimiss a study or an agency decision out of hand, use the data reported to critique the conclusions or the methods but use the data. As is often said in science:
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts–let the data speak.
BW
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