April 28, 2015 — The following was released by the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance:
Commercial fishermen throughout the United States have stood up and opposed the plan by the Gulf of Mexico state managers to take over red snapper management and eliminate the commercial quota system.
“It’s incredible the response we’ve gotten,” said Buddy Guindon, Executive Director of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance based in Galveston, TX. “From Alaska to Maine, California to South Carolina, our brother and sister commercial fishermen have united around this issue and see it for what it is – a precedent-setting backdoor means by the recreational lobby to reallocate this fishery, undermine federal laws, and take fish away from seafood consumers.”
Red Snapper. Photo courtesy of NOAA
Forty two commercial fishing organizations, representing thousands of commercial fishermen and tens of millions of pounds of commercially important seafood, signed onto a letter drafted by the Shareholders’ Alliance which states “The implications of such a takeover are far-reaching and set a dangerous precedent for our region and others – over 97% of the more than 300,000 million Americans get their access to fish and shellfish by purchasing it in restaurants, grocery stores, and fish markets that we supply. We cannot support this plan in the Gulf because we would not support it at home.”
“This isn’t just a Gulf issue, it has national implications,” said John Pappalardo, CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance based in Chatham, MA. “We stand with the Gulf fishermen and oppose this dangerous plan that will destroy small American ‘mom and pop’ businesses.”
According to an announcement, representatives from the five Gulf States met in a closed-door off-the-books meeting in New Orleans where they developed a plan to take over management of red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico and eliminate the commercial individual fishing quota (IFQ) system. The management responsibility, currently held by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and National Marine Fisheries Service, would be turned over to a yet-to-be-developed group called the Gulf States Red Snapper Management Authority, and would consist of 5 individuals, one from each Gulf State, that propose to operate outside of U.S. federal fisheries laws and sustainability policies. Each Gulf State would be responsible for management of their own waters out to 200 nautical miles, and would be in charge of creating the science and data to use for their management. Funding for this program would be siphoned from existing federal programs.
Read a letter from a group of commercial fishermen who oppose the gulf states red snapper takeover