As a follow-up to our March 9 story about how scientists believe "trophy hunting" may lead to smaller fish, a recent study suggests that the shrinking of species due to over-harvesting may be temporary, and that fish can recover their larger sizes faster than thought. Wired magazine reports that while there has been an average 20% drop in animal sizes among human-hunted species, "After being left alone for just twelve generations, a population of experimentally stunted fish regained most of their original size -- suggesting that the real-world dwarfism produced by continually killing the largest specimens may not be permanent." Article by Brandon Keim. (Thanks to reader Nicholas Kingston for this link.)
There's Hope For Big Fish After All
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Fortunately, the paradox of trophy hunting creating smaller species already has a perfect solution: catch and release. When you don't take the larger fish's genes out of the gene pool, it can continue to pass those genes on.
I agree, C & R is one of the solutions to protect fish for next generations letting us to enjoy great fishing in the future
About 2 yrs ago, I happened upon a Texas (state, I think) program encouraging people who caught very large bass (>15lbs, I believe) to bring them, alive, to a certain research center to be used to increase or concentrate the gene pool of very large bass in Texas. They had a link to their details for safe transport of the live fish.
I don't remember if they talked about the male bass (I think they would be smaller?) or just re-stocking lots and lots of offspring from the large females all over Texas.
I guess I will go see if there are any updates.