Great Lakes Fisheries Policy and Management: A Binational Perspective

Great Lakes Recreational Fisheries and Their Role in Fisheries Management and Policy

399 Great Lakes Recreational Fisheries and Their Role in Fisheries Management and Policy Sarah A. Thayer and Andrew J. Loftus Recreational, commercial, and tribal fishing are the three sources of fishing pressure on the Great Lakes. Commercial fishers harvest and sell fish for income; tribal fishers harvest and sell fish for income and/or use them as subsistence. Recreational fishers1 catch fish for pleasure and/or food, both of which include social and economic benefits (Dann and Schroeder 2003). Recreational fishers include a minority who pay to fish on chartered boats and a majority who do not (collectively called recreational fishers, hereafter, unlessspecificallyreferringtocharterornon-charterfishers).RecreationalfishersshareGreatLakesfishing rights with tribal and commercial fishers in some locations (see Brenden et al. 2012); however, recreational fishers are the most numerous fishers in the Great Lakes basin as a whole. In Canada, the Great Lakes attract more freshwater recreational fishers than any other fishing location in Canada (DFO 2008). In the United States, more fishers fish in freshwater, including the Great Lakes, than saltwater, spending eighteen million days in 2006 on Great Lakes fishing activities (USFWS and Census Bureau 2006). Recreational fishing is the latest form of fishing in the historical evolution of Great Lakes fishing. Tribal fishing took place during pre-European settlement and continues today at relatively lower levels (Dann and Schroeder 2003). Today, most tribal rights to Great Lakes fishing are backed by formal agreements between tribes and either the U.S. (e.g., 2000 Consent Decree; U.S. District Court Case No. 2:73 CV 26, U.S. District Court, Western District of Michigan, Southern Division) or Canadian (Canadian Constitution Act of 1982; or see Allain 1996) governments, agreements that reaffirm some of the original tribal fishing rights. Once Europeans settled and industrialized the Great Lakes basin, commercial fishing became the dominant source of fishing mortality from the early part of the nineteenth century (Dann and Schroeder 2003) to the 1960s, when environmental degradation, overfishing, and Sea Lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) significantly reduced fish stocks for both commercial and recreational fisheries (Hartman 1973; Wells and McLain 1973; Keller et al. 1990; Brown et al. 1999). After implementation of Sea Lamprey control programs (reviewed by Smith and Tibbles 1980), fish restoration plans (e.g., LMLTTC 1985), and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1978 (revised in IJC 1989), many fish stocks began to recover (e.g., Ludsin et al. 2001). Public support of commercial fishing decreased, the fishery shifted to a recreational emphasis, and agencies began to focus management efforts on recreational fish species, including, but not limited Thayer and Loftus 400 to, nonindigenous trout and salmon (Tody and Tanner 1966; Panek 1984; Keller et al. 1990; Lange et al. 1995; Crawford 2001). In most Great Lakes locations, as commercial fishing decreased, recreational fishers gradually harvested a greater proportion of total harvest, as shown for Lake Michigan in figure 1. Passages of the U.S. Federal Aid in Sport Fish Restoration Act (popularly known as the Dingell-Johnson Act; Musgrave et al. 1998) and its subsequent amendments (most notably the Wallop-Breaux amendment in 1984) designated U.S. funds for management and research aimed at sport fish restoration. In contrast, a shift in ocean fishery management is occurring at a much slower rate: marine fishery biologists traditionally focused their management on issues related to competing commercial fishers (Anderson 1986) and are now beginning to recognize more significant impacts from recreational fishers (Cooke and Cowx 2006). When the Great Lakes economy prospered in the second half of the twentieth century, U.S. and Canadian citizens purchased more equipment and boats and agencies constructed more access sites (in part, because of the 1984 Wallop-Breaux amendment). The overall number of Great Lakes recreational fishers increased (USFWS and Census Bureau 1991; DFO 1995), and the charter fleet grew from a few hundred in 1975 to more than three thousand by 1988 (Dawson et al. 1989). Despite these upward trends, the overall number of Great Lakes fishers has decreased since the early 1990s (USFWS and Census Bureau 2006; DFO 2008). Recreational fisher behavior either directly or indirectly affects the management and policy of almost every Great Lakes fish species and its ecosystem components. Since recreational fishers have such a ubiquitous effect on the Great Lakes, a review of all species-specific recreational fishing trends across all Great Lakes would be of interest. Such a compilation of data, however, neither exists nor can be easily created (i.e., recreational fishing data collection methodology and reporting protocol differ...