We NEED data to better understand every fishery. Even if our total catch number appears trivial we need to better understand the Tuna population dynamics to better protect the species...every piece of information counts. The desire to to hide data from scientists is downright ignorant, and I don't mean that in an insulting way, I mean to say that we have already seen fisheries collapse across the globe because we don't properly understand them.
Is that what you want?
Population modeling for fish species is incredibly difficult, you can't just go count them like a population of deer or mountain goats for example. We need to use Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE - aka. the amount of time/effort that fisherman put into catching the fish and the amount of fish that are caught), the sport fishery is part of that effort. If you think about this way, the CPUE was MUCH higher back in the early 1900s - little effort with a lot of fish, while now we have a lot more effort, much better technique, and likely similar numbers of fish being caught = lower CPUE. This is a primary means of estimating a fish population...unless you want to swim after those tuna and count them (that does sound pretty fun!! hahaha)
However, it's not just about numbers the average size of fish is very important for the health of the population. Bigger females have more eggs, more eggs means more offspring, more offspring means more fish to catch. So keeping record of the size of the fish is very good indicator of population health in many fish species as well.
Data is the key. Trying to hide that won't help anyone in the long run... Let's learn from the mistakes we have made in the past.
Tight lines
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