ANGLERS are legendary for telling tall tales about the size of their catches. But these small lies, along with the temptation to cheat a bit by keeping small fish they ought to throw back, can send struggling fisheries into total collapse.
The problem is that the fewer fish there are, the more anglers tend to lie about numbers and break the rules, according to a Canadian fisheries biologist who has measured these all too human failings. That not only prevents managers from identifying any decline in stocks, it also accelerates the fishes’ demise.
Biologists often estimate fish populations by counting…
