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Full Version: Where or where has my tackle gone?
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Meandering through some regular, non-fishing news site, a headline on fishing caught my eye. The article is too long to post in its entirety on this site, but, here is enough to get the general idea.

[cool]California's coastal waters a dump for fishing gear
[ul][li] 17:54 22 October 2009 by Shanta Barley [/li][/ul]
For the first time, scientists have used a submersible to investigate the debris piling up in deep-water canyons off the coast of California. To their surprise, they found that recreational fishing gear accounted for 93 per cent of the underwater trash.
"Sometimes we had to change the path of the submersible to avoid becoming entangled with recreational fishing lines and nets," says Dianna Watters of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service in Santa Cruz, California.
"This is a really surprising result," says Anthony Jensen, who studies fisheries and artificial reefs at the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton, UK, and was not involved in the survey. "Who would have thought that recreational fishers would account for more rubbish in a deep-sea ecosystem than the commercial fishing industry?"[shocked]

Having been aware of the magnitude of the problem, I am looking for similar studies. Here are some potentials:

"Power companies report significant income from the resale of lures, hook, sinkers and rewound line recovered from ..."

"Recent medical studies have shown an abnormally high incidence of minor to middling ER treatments of arborists wounded by their efforts to remove fishing tackle from trees they were..."

I do not think the fishing supply business will ever go broke!
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The same situation exists in stretches of the snake river where they fish for sturgeon. I am also sure it looks like that in many other heavily fished areas.
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Seems there might be an opportunity here to recover debris which should include a lot of resaleable tackle. Maybe a portion of the license fees should go to cleanup. Just musings.
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heck yeah that would benefit everyone! Cheap tackle for fishermen and more money for the fish commission to do whatever they do lol.
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Stats are always interesting.. They say 93% of the trash is 'recreational' fishing gear, but they never get around to saying just how much total trash there is..
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Hey guys, I am a fresh water fisherman and have only been out in the big water a few times, but I thought it was only commercial fisherman who used nets. The article mentions "recreational fishing lines and nets" and it seems kind of suspect to me. I know there is a real problem in the Puget Sound with abandoned commercial fish nets harming the fish. So much so that you can be in trouble deep if your net is found and you did not report it lost.

Unless they are talking about nets used to boat the fish...I do not know, but I am suspect.

And as far as the statistics go we all know that 65% of all statistics are made up on the spot (tee hee).
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