Opinion: Governing the recreational dimension of global fisheries

Fisheries provide food. In industrialized nations, the overwhelming portion of seafood comes from a small number of commercial fishers and increasingly aquaculture (1). Fisheries also contribute to leisure and recreation. In developed nations, 1 in 10 people fishes for pleasure, amounting to at least 220 million recreational fishers worldwide (2, 3)—more than 5 times the number of commercial capture fishers (1). This means that the vast majority of people fishing today do so recreationally (Fig. 1).This work was supported by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) under funding received from the National Science Foundation (Grant DBI-1052875), the European Union through the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund, and the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany) (Grant MV-I.18-LM-004, B 730117000069); the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Grants 01LC1826E and 033W046A), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Genome British Columbia (BC), and the BC Freshwater Fisheries Society