Cuddlycuttlefsh;184100 said:
The sad thing is ANYONE could possibly get license to harvest wildlife from somewhere, it's like license don't mean anything.
Yes and no.
Anyone can harvest for personal use, as long as they stay true to the set limits. Honestly if you wanted to try and "work" the system and collect as many octopus as possible here in Oregon it would be a full time job that didnt pay. I've been looking for a juvenile while tidepooling here for almost 2 years and this is the first one I have found. A diver would have much more luck I'm sure than I have thus far.
Now as far as being able to collect more than 1 a day, you'll need at bare minimum a commercial fishing license, and with that alone you are restricted to selling only to wholesale fish buyers. So you'd be looking at about $2 a pound if your lucky
BTW, this only applies if your fishing for them in the Ocean.
There is no commercial harvest allowed inside of Oregon coastal bays or withing 200 yards of man made structures that extend into the ocean (jettys). In order to collect anything commercially from the intertidal zone you have to submit a paper that includes every species you intend to collect along with GPS coordinates of every site you intend to collect from. Then they will review what you've submitted and issue permits with designated limits for each species you've submitted.
So yes, anyone can get a license to collect what ever they want. But only someone who is dedicated enough to take the right path will actually do it. Most people wont. You have to do the ground work to know where, what, and when things are there to collect, and then fork out the $$$ for all the permits to collect, transport, house, and then sell them.
The only reason I've been able to do this was because I was already doing most of this just as a hobby.