Weekend fishing trips may be contributing to one-quarter of the catch of threatened marine fish, a new study finds.

U.S. Fisheries managers previously thought that recreational fishers caught just 2% of all fish taken from the sea. They based this conclusion on an online database compiled by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

But a rise in the popularity of angling, combined with gaps in the data, led Felicia Coleman of Florida State University and her colleagues to take a second look at the impact of part-time anglers.

With the addition of regional information, their results, published in the journal Science, implicate recreational fishing in 4% of the total marine catch. For already overfished species, however, the number is more like 23%. And for specialty fish such as red drum, popular in Cajun cuisine, recreational fishing is responsible for nearly 95% of the catch.

Coleman says the results suggest tighter restrictions are necessary for sportfishing, which is typically regulated only by quotas. To counter the free-fall in fish stocks, scientists propose establishing marine reserves off-limits to both commercial and recreational fishing.

Source: AMWA