People have a responsibility to know the regulation. Last year was a typical NOAA boner to put a regulation in place and not have a good process for tracking.  If fishermen were required to annotate their license then the charter captains would see how many halibut they'd caught.  As far as fishermen not knowing - there was plenty of publicity covering the annual charter limit.  Maybe now that people are more familiar - they'll start rallying their representatives to look at NOAAs approach to conservation. Commercial interests are clearly the priority - small sports fishermen that fish charters are getting the shaft - I'm not willing to operate a private boat on Cook Inlet. That's a dangerous body of water and not worth risking lives over halibut.  Good luck catching a halibut under 28 inches - varnish it and play ping-pong.