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Abstract
There is continual pressure from parts of the recreational
sector to close commercial fisheries. This
pressure is based on the belief that recreational
fisheries are inherently more environmentally benign
and ‘worth’ more than commercial fisheries,
and that recreational fishing benefits are maximised
with sole access to fisheries resources. This
pressure obscures the question of whether recreational
fisheries are sustainable, and whether the
structures and processes are in place to ensure
continual improvement in environmental performance
of this sector. In this paper, we briefly review
information on the environmental and economic
impacts of commercial and recreational fisheries.
We conclude that recreational fishing lobbyists underestimate
the environmental impacts of recreational
fishing, and that most economic studies
purporting that significant economic benefit will accrue
from allocating sole access to the recreational
fishing sector are based on incorrect notions of
economic valuation. We demonstrate that the solution
to putting recreational fishing on the path to
sustainability is not through attempting to take fisheries
resources from another sector, but is through
the recreational fishing sector adopting Environmental
Management Systems (EMS) to continually
improve environmental performance. We present
briefly the appropriate economic method for valuing
commercial and recreational fisheries for the purposes
of resource allocation.