Leave the fish alone and harvest the sea vegetables instead. Humans would be healthier for it. Sea vegetables are the healthiest foods available because the sea contains 98% of the nutrients leached from the Earth's soil over eons of time. It's only a matter of educating the masses to change their diet.

Yes, fisheries management at this scale is a messy business. We don't have to look outside Australia to realize that the current fishery management is entirely driven by the industries and conservation is politically ignored. I just sailed a yacht from Mexico to Vanuatu and the amount of drifting fishing gear, both controlled and lost is impressive. In the Northern Cooks illegal fishery is common. In Australia we are blinded by politicians with double agenda hence no progress. Just have a look at the South Australian fisheries where assessments are controlled by the industries through the government funding system. I can't see that change without a revolution!

There are many ways of catching or killing fish at all parts of their life cycle, from eggs, juveniles in nursery groups to the various life stages before breeding, depending on the species of fish, mollusc, crustacean etc. Fishing to feed people and the bycatch of those fisheries need to be compared to these other sources of mortality -natural and human induced - and each species, scientifically, should be referenced to specific research tio determine the affect of specific fisheries - using a control.

It is understandable that people wish to act to 'protect fish' without that research - but dangerous for the 'fish' (including other aquatic species eaten and killed by people).

It is clear and common sense that the normal mortality of fish to predators, mammals, birds, other fish etc. The human induced mortality includes draining and polluting nursery grounds - stopping 'mega billions fro living at all. The denial of fish passage with wiers and dams stop many more mega billions of fish from ever living when access to freshwater for is essentuial for the life cycle of the fish to be completed.

I am sure the reader can determine many other sources of human induced mortality. Industrial/agricultural chemicals are particularly dangerous to all fish species, even in parts per million - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXAb0nzKDeI.

So why the emphasis on mortality due to fishing? Firstly because it is part of genuine concern from both the public and scientists and secondly it is a concern amplified by others to achieve there desired management of fisheries - but the trading of the rights to catch alone - preferably from a corporately owned fleet. This later desire is entirely valid but the advocates of catch management and the privatisation of fisheries are also in the business of creating massive fisheries management bureaucracies and can , at times, exploit natural concerns of the public by only talking of, writing of and researching commercial fisheries.

So who is threatened by commercial fisheries? Unfortunately the oil and gas industry were not properly regulated by government in the past and massive oil slicks have seen multi billion dollar court cases from fishermen (including women). From being seen as the biggest threat to the 'oceans' the oil industry has watched as commercial fisheries have become the biggest threat and have been so diminished in many areas that even after massive spills the oil industry is neither sued no fined - as happened in Australian waters after the Montara oil slick off NW WA. Though we have no significant fisheries in this vast region we spend a significant portion of the over $1 billion northern waters enforcement budghet keeping Indonesian fishfolk out - arresting hundreds, burning their boats and putting their lives at risk to protect waters from artisinal fishing on their former fishing grounds. The privatisation of fish has made such territorial disputes very dangerous for fishfolk.

Better to look after the land and rivers, and the original vegetation that remains in the catchments perhaps and take the protein from the sea. Even the much demonised small boat (less thean 100 foot 30m) trawers impact on the seabed is little when compared to agriculture which requires the land to be cleared, the entire fauna and flora often removed and for the vast bulk of it - the use of fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides that impact human and animal health.

To many of the 'solutions' posed for fisheries have their origins from those who also want to exploit fisheries - but not for consumption. In Bass Strait MPAs seismic testing is allowed - but not dredging for scallops. In 2010 scallop fishermen cam back to drag a bed on sand of 70 sqk already sampled and found not only the scallops but all the shellfish and crabs dead and sick. Though curiously ascribed to 'overfishing' by siome scientists interviews i have conducted with both fishermen who were there and pathologists make the impact of gas gun blasts 1-40 every 10 seconds 24 hours per day for 7 days or more at least a likely candidate for this mortality - and it was NOT for the oil or gas industry but in a later abandoned attempt to find a place to 'store' CO2 in a liquid form - sort of like lemonade.

There are tens of thousands of different types of fisheries across the world that feed a billion people or more and have been doing so for thousands of years. It is the low tech fisheries and small boat fisheries that employ lots of people and land fresh fish that other wish to convert to more 'economically efficient' operations where their 'sustainability' is measured by the volume only of the fish caught and how few people are employed to catch them - which is probably why few people read the 'fine print' when we all raged against 'overfishing' wile the economists and others privatised fisheries too bring the world's second biggest trawler 0- measuring it 'ecological sustainability' by its catch alone - not the inevitable bycatch of fish from other nearly closed or closed fisheries, the dumping of tonnes of already dead fish as happens under quota systems worldwide,not the catches of seals and dolphins that come with corporately run bigger boats with no connection reiance on a given fishing ground, port town or community and likely designed to employ cheap foreign labour in a floating factory designed for distant water fisheries but used to avoid land based labour laws.

Menakhem Ben Yami is a wise sage of fisheries management who gently decontructs the Pew Foundation - preserving and praising what is good and gently showing what is missing http://www.benyami.org/CallofPEWmby.html.

Restoring fisheries also restores streamflows, marine life, vegetation in catchments, freshwater and intertidal lagoons and estuaries - and grows millions of shellfish and carbon storing invertebrates from diatoms to corals and it gives Pacific and other island nations economic independence.

Currently we have a management system that has so compromised marine biologists that the largest source of fish turtle and dugong mortality in Australia - if not the world - around the developing ports from Gladstone to Townsville continues with little comment and no action - highlighting the need for all of us to take responsibility for the bit of the stream we pollute when we flush the loo or empty the sink, the farm needed to grow our food and the industrial facilities and ports for the industry that makes the metals and fuel we use or pays royalties for our taxes - a no fault claims bonus - as the insurers say is a good start. Collating figures from a vast area that some how indicates 'a matter of dire concern' and targeting fisheries alone is completely disempowering- in contrast and in my opinion. Working together to restore habitat and increase local fish production sets templates that offer hope and massive carbon storage potential to the future.