THE trophy fish that anglers dream of landing are crucial for saving fish populations. It means fishery managers should rethink the common policy of chasing the big fish and letting the tiddlers go.
That’s according to Charles Birkeland at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu and Paul Dayton at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, who have reviewed the effects of fishing on populations. Until recently it was thought that all eggs and larvae have the same odds of survival, regardless of their parents’ size. Now studies show that the biggest fish are the most valuable for maintaining the population.…
