Fisheries Management

Charles E. Cichra

Nicholas Fisch, Angela Collins, and Edward V. Camp

Whether you’re an angler, diver, conservationist, or just interested in fisheries, you’ve likely heard the term “stock assessment” before. What are stock assessments? How do they work? How do they inform management decisions? This publication provides information to the public and people serving in natural resource management agencies and working in outreach and Extension to show how fisheries management decisions are made.

Edward V. Camp, Rick Stout, Nick Trippel, Jon Fury, Stasey Whichel, and Kai Lorenzen

Edward V. Camp, Robert N. M. Ahrens, Angela B. Collins, and Kai Lorenzen

Charles Adams, Joy Hazell, Lisa Krimsky, Bryan Fluech, Elizabeth Staugler, John Stevely, and Robert Botta

A UF/IFAS numbered Fact Sheet. in support of UF/IFAS Extension program: Environmental Literacy and Sustainability

Edward Camp, Micheal S. Allen, Thomas T. Ankersen, Savanna Barry, and Mark W. Clark

Recreational fishing is especially important to Florida’s economy and ecosystems. One of the most important metrics of recreational fisheries is “effort”—defined as the number of trips taken during a time and place. Effort is so important because it directly affects fish population sustainability, economic value and market activity. But what determines fishing effort? This publication describes the mechanisms that drive fishing effort. It specifically details the processes by which management actions can directly and indirectly affect fishing effort, and how feedbacks between these actions can change effort. The information in this document is critical for people involved with management decisions, like agency personnel and their stakeholders; those wanting to explain it to others, like extension agents; directly affected stakeholders like recreational fishers and guides; or simply the general public who want to know more about recreational fisheries in Florida.

Elizabeth A. Staugler, Holly Abeels, Angela B. Collins, Shelly L. Krueger, yKai Lorenzen

A UF/IFAS numbered peer reviewed Fact Sheet. Published by Environmental Literacy and Sustainability. If you catch a fish you are not going to keep, help it survive and get back to the deep! Throwing back your unwanted catch is good practice because healthy released fish can live to grow and reproduce, which benefits the fish population and the future of fisheries. But deepwater fish can have trouble getting back where they came from without a little assist from the angler. This fact sheet describes barotrauma, a problem that, if left untreated, will kill otherwise perfectly healthy fish, and explains a few quick and simple methods to relieve fish suffering from barotrauma and help them get back home healthy and strong.

Edward Camp, Zachary Siders, Andrew Ropicki, and Frank Asche

Managing recreational fisheries requires balancing sustainability against allowing as much access and harvest as possible. Maintaining sustainability is made harder by discard mortality where any fishing activity, even catch and release, risks fish dying from injuries, predation, or other causes. This is especially a problem for Florida reef fish species that live at depths and habitats where barotrauma increases mortality and depredation by larger fish, sharks, or marine mammals increases it further. Harvest (or trip) tags could reduce overharvest, lower discard mortality, and allow anglers more freedom to choose when to fish. Harvest tags would limit the total fish harvested, but could eliminate one of the least popular current management restrictions, harvest seasons. This publication describes harvest tag approaches, discussing how they are already used in fishing and hunting and describing some of the potential benefits and costs if they were applied in Florida.

Gabrielle Love, Anna Braswell, Angela B. Collins, yEdward V. Camp

Recruitment is a very important life stage for fish which has direct impacts on size of the whole fish population. During this phase, the mortality juvenile fish experience is affected by their density because of competition for the available resources. How much fish density affects mortality in recruitment is itself affected by many factors, but one of the most important is the structural habitat available to juvenile fish. Structurally complex habitats like oyster reefs are thought to have a particularly strong influence on the recruitment process of certain species. Here we describe the ways that habitat can alter recruitment success. We focus on how oyster reefs affect recruitment of fish in Florida and the particular issues related to management of this important habitat.

Edward V. Camp, Robert N.M. Ahrens, Angela B. Collins, and Kai Lorenzen

A good understanding of stock recruit relationships is essential for accurate stock assessment and good fisheries management. But the concept is complicated and can be difficult to understand. This publication uses a recent Florida spotted seatrout stock assessment as an example to show how the stock-recruit relationship allows managers to determine whether or not a given fish population is overfished.

Edward Camp, Micheal S. Allen, Thomas T. Ankersen, Savanna Barry, and Mark W. Clark

Recreational fishing, crucially important to Florida’s economy and ecosystems, can be affected by management decisions. Decisions that change the allowable harvest or the type of access to certain fishing areas are often expected to have strong effects on fishing effort, but the outcome of these actions is not always obvious. To provide greater insight into what may happen to fishing effort after management decisions, we describe case studies from the North American fisheries literature, some Florida-specific. These illustrate that the same or similar management actions (e.g., a more restrictive harvest policy) can have opposite effects on total fishing effort depending on the specifics of the case. We use this information as well as additional fisheries theory to explore a specific case study—what might happen if special harvest or access regulations were applied to a popular but ecologically and environmentally sensitive habitat—Florida's St. Martins Marsh Aquatic Preserve.

Razieh Farzad

This Ask IFAS document is the third in the Seafood Guide series and provides information to the seafood industry on how to develop a seafood HACCP plan effectively. Written by Razieh Farzad, and published by the UF/IFAS Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, February 2025.