Potential Environmental Impacts of Recreational Fishing on Marine Fish Stocks and Ecosystems

AbstractMarine recreational fishing (MRF) is a popular activity that involves millions of people worldwide. While the impacts of recreational fishing on freshwater ecosystems received increasing attention in recent decades, the consequences of MRF takes place mainly on marine fish and ecosystems are largely unstudied. MRF takes mainly in coastal areas where most of its impacts concentrate. This review identified and ranked the activities and potential risks associated with MRF using a risk assessment matrix based on ecological and fisheries-related literature. The majority of the impacts were rated to be of minor importance (impacts that occur locally, are reversible, and comparably easy to manage on local scales). Three impacts were ranked as high-risk impacts (severe impacts that are difficult to reverse and to manage, and that may require management measures on a broad spatial scale): (1) the direct and indirect impacts of high and selective fishing mortality (truncation of the natural age and size str...