Fairly said Mchale, I agree that old mate may need to qualify the claim that 'tonnes of Marlin were removed within that week', but to be honest we are really discussing is a bigger issue here. In my younger days I actually worked on a comercial boat out of JB on the deck for a while, and with my business 'Bats Boat Works' in Cairns we service the electronics of the majority of the long line fleet, so I have a reasonable idea of what viable catch rates need to be to sustain the industry. I like you have nothing personally against the commercial sector, they are operating within the legal boundaries set for them and they have every right and obligation to those that depend on them to do so. However I am biased towards the recreational sector, and genuinely belive that the return to the community from our minimal impact fishing is vastly greater than the return from the commercial sector. The return from the commercial sector is very limited to those directly involved in the operations of and the supply of goods and services, (which includes me), directly to the industry. The recreational sector onflows much more benifit to a greatly wider % of the community, without taking the huge numbers of the stock needed to support the long liners. Please remember that these boats work the entire coast not just Sth NSW, and are generally run by very competant fishermen and crews who really can catch these fish when they have the opportunity. For years people such as myself, Ross Hunter, GFAA and many others have been directing our concerns to our respective Govt authorities. The implementation of a green zone into area E on the reef being an example, (which however came back and bite us as well as we no longer can fish there either).
Anyway in principal I agree with you that the recreational boys can at times, be very quick to quote fiqures that may be not so accurate, (By the way we can easily have this verified as the boats would have unloaded I assume either at JB or U/D and besides that they would need to have the records available for their quotas).
The trouble here Mchale is that this IS an emotive subject and the people that care about it care about it very much, at the end of the day I believe that the greater common good is served by having millions of dollars world wide spent fishing for Marlin recreationally rather than decimating one of the most wonderfully evolved speacies on the earth to provide cheap protein to the worlds unendng demand. We can farm Tilapia and catfish and all that crap (which they do) to acheive that. The problem is that we dont learn from our mistakes.
However let me say this to the recreational boys.. think yourself lucky that you fish in Australia, where we do have quotas etc. Have a look at David Attenboughs 'Super Fish' DVD - then you can get an idea how many billfish are taken worldwide every year. It simply cant continue.
Sorry to rant on Mchale, but finally I would like to point out to you that Striped Marlin are not a 'By Catch' of the Long Liners, they are a targeted speacies, they fish for them because they cant catch the tuna anymore, not the ones they want to sell for big bucks to O/S anyway.
Regards - Bat