James, yes, our tax dollars do support the fishery management. I also agree that they need to uphold their obligation to do the best they can. The reality, however, is that fisheries science is woefully underfunded as are all of our sciences in the U.S. To say that they have the tech systems for data recording simply isn't true. Yes, we have a lot of technology now, but the deployment of that technology is far from perfect nor is it always successful. For example, a friend of mine who is a boat captain was recently working with NOAA to estimate baitfish school sizes using cameras deployed from his boat. After an entire day of using drones and ROV cameras, they came up empty handed. Also, just estimating fish numbers and/or sizes is not enough. Here are just a few of the pieces of information that are needed to effectively manage fish stocks for the long term: 1) female size classes (egg # is a function of the cube root of the gut size of females), 2) egg survivorship rates, 3) larval recruitment rates, 4) juvenile growth rates, 5) size at sexual maturity, 6) adult site fidelity (do adults stay on one reef or move between them or migrate long distances?) 7) annual reproductive rate, 8) sex classes (many marine species change sex at different size classes), 8) habitat requirements, and 9) survivorship at each age/size class. There are actually quite a few other pieces of necessary information as well. If fisheries managers have accurate data on all these things, they can actually develop rather good models to regulate catch rates. Unfortunately, many of the things I listed are aspects of basic biology. As amazing as it sounds, we still don't have a good handle on many these aspects of basic biology for our marine fishes. For example, you can't just throw larval amberjack in a tank, manipulate their density, and measure their growth rate. I've done exactly these kinds of studies with some small freshwater fish; unfortunately the life history of many larger marine species just make these kinds of studies unfeasible. So yes, the managers certainly do some guessing, but they are simply doing the best job they can with relatively limited data.
Best,
Ryan