Fishermen: Throw Back Big Ole' Fat Mamas!

Removing the best breeders from fish populations may be changing those species into harder to catch, less desirable to eat seafood.
-- a conversation with Larry Crowder

(Ann Kellan)
Ask any fisherman for the rules on what to throw back and what to keep.

(Fisherman)
Pinkies got to be 14 inches and the b-liners, they're red fish, they gotta be 12 inches.

(Ann Kellan)
You throw back the little ones and keep the big ones.

(Fisherman)
Yea, that's right.

(Ann Kellan)
But what if this kills-off the Big Old Fat Mamma fish that produce the best offspring? Larry Crowder, a marine biologist at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, says new research indicates it may be a bad idea for fishermen, seafood lovers and the billion people worldwide who depend on fish to survive.

(Larry Crowder)
The new results suggest that these old fish not only produce more eggs, because they're bigger, they produce eggs of higher quality. They put more fat in their eggs, they put more growth hormones in their eggs so their larvae do better. The Big Old Fat Mammas may be carrying most of the fish populations that are out there.

(Ann Kellan)
So harvesting the big fish may be shrinking their populations and accelerating evolution of the species.

(Larry Crowder)
If by fishing size selectively, you remove the ones that get big, that reproduce late, that grow fast, then what remains are fish that reproduce early, that don't have as high a growth capacity, that have a lower ability to produce fish for us to harvest.

(Ann Kellan)
Our favorite seafood may be rapidly evolving into species that are harder to catch and less desirable to eat! But fishermen may not be willing to give up immediate gain for long-term abundance.

(Fisherman)
Those big ones help make the paycheck, so we can't afford to throw them back.

(Ann Kellan)
Fishermen may soon have no choice as science uncovers more & more species on this evolutionary fast track. Before you go keeping the next big fish you catch, remember the Big Ole Fat Mammas, and put Earth File dot O-R-G in your web browser. I'm Ann Kellan and that's another one for the Earth File.

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