Lobster Limits Show Short-Term Thinking - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

Catch limits down to 1 pound allow lobsters that have not had a chance to reproduce to be taken, a scientist warns. - gwc
Lobster Limits Show Short-Term Thinking - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com:
by Diane Cowan, Lobster Conservancy Senior Scientist

Large lobsters are becoming increasingly rare, and they are critical to long-term sustainability because they have proven survival skills, high reproductive output and a propensity for large-scale movements. Surviving to sizes exceeding 1.5 pounds means that the lobster has lived for more than a decade, escaped predation, shown resistance to disease and weathered various climatological conditions. Large lobsters have higher reproductive output because they carry larger embryos that grow into larger larvae, and they produce larger eggs and are able to protect them. Furthermore, movements of big lobsters make them more likely to be in the “right place” to avoid adverse conditions, including unfavorably warm waters; better able to reseed areas where stocks have been depleted; and better suited to maintaining a strong gene pool.

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Give Big Fish a Chance: Partition the Sea - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com

1939 New York Mayor LaGuardia with a 300 lb halibut

Give Big Fish a Chance: Partition the Sea - Room for Debate - NYTimes.com: 
by Callum Roberts, University of York

Almost 400 years ago, Captain John Smith, the founder of the Jamestown colony, wrote dramatically about the wonderful fishing off the coast of Virginia, in particular the "large-sized fish called Hallibut":
"Some are taken so big that two men have much a doe to hall them into the boate; but there is such plenty, that the fisher men onely eate the heads & fines, and throw away the bodies."
Such a catch would not happen today, because most giant fish are long gone.

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