Better to Toss Big Fish Back, New Study Says
From Times Wire Reports
Most fishermen like to catch and keep the big ones and throw the little guys back, but a new study suggests that it’s better for the fish species to do exactly the opposite.
In a study in the journal Science, researchers at Stony Brook University in New York conducted a four-generation laboratory study of fish and found that when the bigger fish are allowed to live, eventually the species may double in size and number.
The study, led by David O. Conover, a professor at the Marine Sciences Research Center at Stony Brook, experimented with a species called the Atlantic silverside but said this principle should apply to most free-swimming harvested fish.
