These were fish as stated that were chased(played) to exhaustion,in a controlled environment,to the point that they were captured by hand prior to being deprived of water for 30-60s....apples to oranges compared to real world angling conditions.
Fish that are played quickly,landed swiftly,handled properly with minimum amount of removal from water do just fine.....being C&Rd is nothing more then a slight inconvenience and disruption to their daily routine.This is a big part of why I advocate the use of fish friendly landing nets vs. no net. Generally speaking,I can land and handle fish much more quickly and efficiently with a net vs. no net where one often has to excessively tire the fish out to handle it.
As mentioned,the science is often skewed(in any field of study) to show the desired results.For every "CnR is bad" study such as this,I can show you 3 more that show mortality rates between 1-5%, or others with 99-100% survival rates when fish are handled properly by experienced anglers.
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