Different types of fish.
And that cat or dog the little girl is holding is kinda huge too.
Heck - The people even look happier back then.
It kind of depends...
Are you offshore fishing or inshore fishing?
Still, I imagine there probably was some over-fishing going on.
Because of modern creel limits, pics like the first one will never be seen today because nobody is allowed to keep so many fish, and the ones that are caught are often released.
Trust me, this article is a good pictorial showing a then and now representation of typical charter catches. I know, I’m a charter Captain and scuba diving instructor with over 6000 dives into the Gulf. I’ve watched daily from above and below the decline in the amount and size of what hits the docks.
To be fair, just about all the BIG fish in the earlier pictures are Jewfish (goliath grouper for the PC) which are HiGHLY protected these days and illegal to keep. They were once so decimated that they almost went extinct but are now with conservation making a big comeback.
Were the sharks caught in the 1950's the same species as the one on display?
There is a name for those 2007 fish....bait.
This is incontrovertible proof that the big fish have become more intelligent in the past decades and don’t fall for that “bait and hook” scam anymore.
The pictures are misleading. The first 2 pics are jewfish (now the politically correct goliath grouper) an apex predator of the reef that is big and aggressive and easily overfished due to its fearless nature.
The other pics are of smaller species. Yes, fish size on limited reef space diminishes with overfishing. These pictures do not show that.
Begs the question, which is worth more, a picture or a thousand words.