Project: Catch-and-release fishing - an invisible threat to aquatic ecosystems?

More about the project

To manage the negative effects of the increasing sector of recreational fisheries on fish populations across the globe, there is a growing trend towards catch-and-release (CAR) practice where captured fish are unhooked and released back to the water. The success of CAR as a management and conservation strategy has so far been judged upon generally low rates of mortality, suggesting CAR as a highly sustainable method rendering other regulations of recreational fisheries redundant. However, recent findings suggest that intense CAR fishing, despite low direct mortality, may impact the dynamics, viability and productivity of fish populations negatively, but underlying mechanisms remain unknown.

CAR may potentially influence ecological and evolutionary processes through life-history traits and long-term behavioural alterations but these issues have rarely been investigated. The purpose of this research project is to examine the effects of CAR on traits such as long-term growth, reproductive success and migratory behaviour. We make this possible by combining a series of field- and laboratory experiments with state-of-the-art molecular methods using popular target species in recreational fishing, such as northern pike, Atlantic salmon and brown trout, as our model species.

The results will contribute to novel insights about the effects of CAR on fish and advance our understanding regarding implementations of CAR in fisheries management and conservation. This will ultimately contribute to biological and socioeconomically sustainability of recreational fisheries.

The project is part of the research in the research group Fish Ecology and in Linnaeus University Centre for Ecology and Evolution in Microbial model Systems (EEMiS).