This is just DUMB DUMB DUMB. As I've said previously, I'd be 100% IN FAVOR of paying these if they were buyouts on their commercial fishing rights--to remove their impacts from the ecosystem, or to trade them to the sporties.

But paying people, who essentially depleted a natural resource, to wait around and see if that resource returns so they can deplete it again, is mind-numbingly stupid.
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The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope. -John Buchan