With 10′s of millions more red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico than previously thought, federal fisheries managers are going to . . . lower the allowable catch for Alabama and other Gulf states?
This seemingly illogical conclusion is being leaned toward and probably will be confirmed at a Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council meeting this week. According to federal fishery managers, since Gulf anglers exceeded the harvest they had set for 2019 by a slim margin—in large part because of the amazing number of fish available--the allotted number of fishing days and/or limits might be reduced.
While that has been pretty much S.O.P. for federal management for many years, always erring on the side of caution to assure there’s never a collapse of managed species, this time around the feds appear to be ignoring some very important new data.
The Council now has available to it a $10 million study put together by over 20 of the top fisheries scientists in the nation, with a funding boost from Alabama senior Senator Richard Shelby, that shows there are three to four times more 2-year-old and older red snapper in the Gulf than the federal agencies had previously estimated and based their rules on.
“The study was designed to look objectively at the red snapper abundance in the Gulf,” said Scott Bannon, director of the Alabama Marine Resources Division. “It counted fish that are two years and older. The scientists developed a plan that utilized cameras, acoustic arrays and a robust tagging program. They actually identify fish. They see them, count them and get size estimates with lasers on the camera equipment.”
The scientists surveyed natural bottom, artificial reefs and uncharacterized bottom. The uncharacterized bottom had no structures or vertical relief. Surprisingly, the surveys found far more snapper on uncharacterized bottom than expected. Anglers rarely target these areas because the fish are concentrated on hard structure, but apparently there are millions of the snapper on the continental shelf that extends out up to 100 miles from shore in much of the Gulf.
The count they study came up with was 110 million fish. The count that NOAA Fisheries had been operating on was 36 million fish. Both can’t be right, but unfortunately for fishermen and those who make their living from selling red snapper in markets and restaurants, the feds have the say-so. A reduction in limits also has an impact on motels and other businesses on the Gulf Coast because many families time their annual vacations to coincide with the red snapper season.
Federal fishery managers are also talking about a “calibration” process that would merge their population estimate into the new population estimate. The merging is sure to result in a reduced final estimate, which could very well result in an undesirable result for fishermen, at least short term.
“Our goal is to avoid calibration,” Bannon said. “With calibration, Alabama and Mississippi allocations would be cut in half.”
Under calibration alternatives, Alabama’s quota for red snapper could go from 1.12 million pounds in 2020 to 547,298 pounds in 2021.
“Naturally we didn’t agree with that,” Bannon said. “NOAA Fisheries said that was going to be required because the fishery may have met the overfishing limit in 2019. The catch for 2019 barely exceeded the 15.5 million-pound limit by 150,000 pounds. That is Gulf-wide in all sectors, including private anglers, for-hire and commercial, but with the new Great Red Snapper Count data, whether there was overfishing at all in 2019 is in question.
“Our goal at the upcoming Gulf Council meeting is to postpone any calibration until the Great Red Snapper Count is fully integrated into the stock assessment so that Alabama and Mississippi would fish at the same level we’ve fished for the previous couple of years under the EFP (Exempted Fishing Permit) and state management, which is around a million pounds.”
The MRIP surveys have considerably overestimated red snapper catches compared to Alabama’s Red Snapper Reporting System, known as Snapper Check.
“We say we landed about a million pounds, but the MRIP survey says we landed about 2.5 million pounds,” Bannon said. “We have a monitoring program that we feel is accurate, and we are harvesting at a sustainable level.”
Bannon also reminds anglers or concerned citizens that the Gulf Council meetings always allocate a time for public comment on Wednesdays, which will be from 1-4:30 p.m. on April 14 for the next meeting.
See details of the meeting here: https://gulfcouncil.org/press/2021/gulf-council-to-meet-by-webinar-april-12-15-2021.
(Thanks to Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources writer David Rainer for the information used in this report.)
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April 11, 2021 at 02:05PM
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Red snapper allowance could be reduced despite abundance of fish - AL.com
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