March 23, 2014 — Misinformation has spread in both traditional and online media about the current proposed Red Snapper allocation change under consideration by the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council.
The Louisiana Restaurant Association, as well as the four other Gulf State restaurant associations, have come under fire for allegedly playing an integral role in lining up against the recreational fishermen in favor of letting commercial fisherman ship “as much as 80 percent of the commercial red snapper harvest out of the country.
The source of the misinformation has yet to be identified, but it has rapidly spread from Louisiana to Florida to Kansas City to Capitol Hill.
According to a spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, fishery trade categories are based on the Harmonized Tariff Schedule for imports and the US Census Bureau ‘Schedule B’ for exports. Currently there is no specific breakout for Red Snapper due to lack of individual trade data because international exports are so small. As a result Red Snapper trade is listed in the ‘other’ category, not separated out.
Where does Gulf Red Snapper Go?
A majority of Gulf Red Snapper ends up on the plates of the more than 56 million residents of the Gulf States, as well as millions more on the East Coast.
“We are on target to buy more than a million pounds, or twenty percent, of the total Gulf Red Snapper harvest,” said Houston based Sysco Louisiana Seafood chairman Jim Gossen, who sits on the board of the Gulf Seafood Institute (GSI). “We sell 99.5 percent of that to our customers within the state of Texas, and none is shipped overseas.”
The percentage of Gulf Red Snapper leaving the country is less than five percent, a majority of that going to Montreal and Toronto, which has a craving for the prized Gulf seafood.
Read the full story at Gulf Seafood News