This is DFO managing again by perception. Faith Based Science in action - they don't provide any analysis to support their claim that the recreational fishery is out of control - no numbers, no catch data, no comparative analysis to show the commercial catch has been severely impacted by an increasing rec catch. Nothing.
What DFO won't tell you is that in the 1990's they created the problem. They allowed a 300% increase in the number of commercial prawn licenses. They created the over-capacity. Moreover, they allowed a highly mobile fleet to develop with no control over how fast the fleet can move from place to place. So in season, the fast boats can be moved great distances to hit even more areas in a gold rush fishery. No longer are the local prawn fishers encouraged to tend the garden and not over-fish their area. DFO long ago should have put in place area licenses to restrict movement from place to place. Only then would fishers not fish down the prawn population until it was wiped out.
Prawns don't move around, so once you fish out an area it will take a long time for them to come back. These new boats that move around quickly allow a fisher to move very quickly from place to place once they clean out an area with little consequence or skin in the game to properly tend the garden.
So what is happening here is the Commercial catch is crashing due to the Commercial over-capacity, and the only way for DFO to manage their way out of the bed they crapped in, is to take away the rec catch and fill the gap. Its a false economy, and left alone DFO and the Commercial fleet will manage to zero. Only then will we see a fleet rationalization to reduce effort/capacity.
East coast cod fishery is a lesson not learned.
