The thing that has always stunned me is that a fisherman 'licensed' to catch one type of fish/crab/etc legally MUST discard others, wasting them - oh birds get some of them, thus destroying the fishery long term.

It's just the same as the Govt in the past allowing someone to live on a piece of land, insisting that the vegetation MUST be cleared to a certain amount in a certain time to keep the property, or be fined. Now people are outraged that the Govt wants to make criminals out of them for cutting down growth on their own freehold land.