Environment
What fishing costs, presented with the evidence and the uncertainty rather than as advocacy. Anglers are not exempted: discarded line, lost lead, bait movement and handling mortality are recorded with the same directness as anybody else's impact.
Biosecurity: check, clean, dry
A three-step protocol that anglers, divers and boaters are asked to follow between waters. It is short, it is not onerous, and it addresses the pathway by which recreational water users move invasive organisms.Bycatch and discards
Everything a fishery catches that it did not intend to — and the area where gear design has produced some of the clearest environmental wins available.Climate change and shifting fish distributions
Species distributions are shifting with temperature, and anglers are among the first to notice. What that means for a fishery is more complicated than 'new fish arriving', because the losses are quieter than the gains.Discarded line and lost tackle
Monofilament does not rot, it is nearly invisible in water, and it keeps entangling wildlife for as long as it stays where it fell.Fish stocks and sustainability
A stock is not a species, sustainability is a property of a stock and a fishery together, and both facts are routinely lost in the way this is usually discussed.Habitat damage from bank and shore access
Getting to the water and standing beside it does damage that accumulates invisibly: trampled margins, eroded banks, cleared vegetation and disturbed intertidal ground. It is the harm anglers do most often and discuss least.Invasive species and biosecurity
Anglers move water, mud and organisms between waters more effectively than almost anybody else — and the damage from a single introduction is permanent.Lead in angling
Lead is toxic, angling put a great deal of it into fresh water, and the response is one of the clearest examples of a targeted restriction working.Marine protected areas and spearfishing
Protected areas restrict what may be taken and how, and the restrictions differ so widely between designations that assuming is the main way divers get it wrong.Predator control and its consequences
Removing predators to protect a fishery is intuitive, widely demanded and frequently ineffective, and the reasons it fails are ecological rather than political. It is also one of the most bitterly argued subjects in fishery management.Selectivity and what it is used for
Spearfishing is the most selective way of taking a fish that exists — which is an argument in its favour only if the selection is doing something defensible.Stocking: what it does to a fishery
Adding fish to a water is the most common intervention in fishery management and one of the most contested. It reliably produces catchable fish in the short term, and its longer-term effects on wild populations are frequently negative.
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