I hear you. Either way you can't deny overfishing will always be a problem. Whether it be commercial, native, or sportfishing. I have never been on a commercial boat but I can tell you that I have personally witnessed the latter two taking large amounts of fish. Literally wiping out the school of fish in the small pool waiting for the next school to show up. So unlike others I can truly say that it is not soley the commercial guys to blame and your probably right about the high number of decline due to loss of habitat.

I do agree that most ppl blame overfishing and don't even think twice about habitat destruction. Capilano river stocks would be a prime example. Used to be a prime river full of wild salmon, steelhead and trout. Then the dam went up and development started and now not one single wild fish is left. All hatchery raised fish. That to me is a huge loss to us and the future generatons.

Most of what you might read in the papers focus on overfishing but published research articles that I have read claim that over 90% of the current decline and extinctions are caused by habitat alteration and desctruction. That is part of why I get so worked up about it because the focus is always on the commercial fishing industry even though the fleet has been decimated over the years. River temperatures appear to be a big problem too, and dare I say it... native fishing. I wasn't about to put too much effort in digging up research because jbazzett wasn't about to listen.