In general, stocking programmes aim at supporting commercial fisheries.
I’m a little confused by this, since it seems hugely economically inefficient to go to all the effort of raising fish, only to release them and then recapture them. Am I missing something, or is this basically a make-work program for the fishing industry?
In some cases, fish are released when they are small in size, and then recaptured when they are bigger (this is called sea ranching). This can be economically viable because it’s expensive to grow big fish in farms and their mortality rate in the wild is low compared to juveniles. In other cases, they try to augment or (re)create self-sustaining populations which increases the catch in the long term.
I’m a little confused by this, since it seems hugely economically inefficient to go to all the effort of raising fish, only to release them and then recapture them. Am I missing something, or is this basically a make-work program for the fishing industry?
In some cases, fish are released when they are small in size, and then recaptured when they are bigger (this is called sea ranching). This can be economically viable because it’s expensive to grow big fish in farms and their mortality rate in the wild is low compared to juveniles. In other cases, they try to augment or (re)create self-sustaining populations which increases the catch in the long term.