WHAT IT COULD BE

It is very difficult to judge the potential value of bass angling in Ireland as no other such fishery exists in Europe. However we can look to the United States where a very similar species, the striped bass, is now managed mainly for recreational purposes.

By far the most successful restoration ever, of a depleted marine fishery resource in North America, is that of the striped bass. Stocks were over exploited through the 1970's until draconian protective measures were introduced. A five year moratorium on all fishing activity for striped bass, followed by a highly restrictive range of management measures, resulted in stocks rebuilding. By 1996 stocks were deemed to be fully restored. During the restoration period between 1982 and 1996, the number of angling trips directed at striped bass was directly correlated to the level of striped bass stocks and the inflation adjusted angler expenditures on striped bass trips increased from $85 million to $560 million, a 35% annual growth rate in revenue.




Now 28 years later recreational fishing is worth 2.3 billion dollars a year to the US economy and directly employs 65,000 people. If this doesn't convince you that the best way to manage our bass stocks is to reserve them for recreational fishing then read on:


Southwick Associates, a natural resource consultancy, published a report in 2006 for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. It was called, The Relative Economic Contribution of US Recreational and Commercial Fishing. The report concludes recreational fishing generates $34 billion in total economic activity whilst the equivalent figure for commercial fishing is $9.9 billion. The number of jobs each sector provides is 360,000 and 126,477 respectively.

In the US there is still some very limited and strictly controlled commercial fishing for striped bass but each fish killed by an angler is worth fifteen times more to the economy than one caught by a commercial fisherman