Saving Seafood

FLORIDA: Florida’s spiny lobster season closes April 1, reopens Aug. 6

March 31, 2026 — Florida’s recreational and commercial spiny lobster harvest seasons in both state and federal waters will close April 1, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The season will reopen Aug. 6, while the annual two-day recreational sport season is scheduled for July 29 and 30, which falls on the last Wednesday and Thursday of July this year.

The special sport season allows both residents and visitors to harvest spiny lobster before the regular season begins, but state wildlife officials remind boaters and divers that bag limits and restrictions vary depending on where they are harvesting.

FLORIDA: Florida’s space industry is confronting very earthly worries

February 19, 2026 — Development is booming in Florida’s Space Coast, the heart of America’s space industry. But environmental groups and commercial fishers say ecosystems and fishing businesses are suffering amid the nation’s astral ambitions.

The number of annual launches in Florida has more than tripled in the last five years, and the space industry’s biggest players are expected to increase their launch cadence. More rockets launching from Kennedy Space Center in central Florida may also mean more noise, port closures, air and water pollution, ocean acidification, and falling space debris — repercussions space companies and some Florida GOP lawmakers are asking locals to accept as a part of life on the Space Coast.

“Everybody thinks, ‘OK, we’re going to Mars, we’re going to the moon,’” said Bob Zales, executive director of the Southeastern Fisheries Association. “They don’t really think about the impact to the environment and to the people that live and work over there.”

At Kennedy Space Center, the environmental stakes are high. The complex sits inside of Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and is sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian River Lagoon system. The region is an eco-tourism hot spot and houses some of Florida’s most treasured species, including manatees, dolphins, whales, sea turtles and shorebirds.

Read the full article at E&E News

FLORIDA: Florida pushes for longest recreational red snapper season in 15 years

February 18, 2026 — Florida’s Atlantic Coast could see its longest red snapper season in more than 15 years if federal regulators approve a proposal to shift management of the fishery to the state.

According to a Feb. 12 article by Action News JAX, Florida and three other Southern states have petitioned the federal government to test state-led management of Atlantic red snapper. If approved, Florida’s plan would establish a 30-day season beginning in May, followed by three additional three-day openings in the fall. This would be a significant expansion compared to the short, highly restricted season anglers have faced for nearly two decades.

Charter captain Adam Petnuch of Reel Dream Fishing Charter in St. Augustine told Action News he has fished the South Atlantic for more than a decade and have never seen a full-length red snapper season.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

States could net control of red snapper season

February 17, 2026 — The Trump administration is taking steps toward shifting regulatory authority over red snapper in Atlantic Ocean federal waters to states, a move that some state leaders have argued is necessary to sustain their sportfishing economies.

NOAA Fisheries announced Wednesday it would open a 25-day comment period on “exempted fishing permits” for Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

The permits would allow the states to “test new data collection methods and strategies for state-led management of the recreational red snapper fishery,” the agency said.

Read the full article at E&E News

Debate grows over NOAA plan to expand snapper access

February 13, 2026 — Today, NOAA Fisheries announced that they are accepting public comments on applications for Exempted Fishing Permits (EFPs) from Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

These permits propose to extend recreational fishing seasons for vulnerable red snapper in the South Atlantic. Overfishing drove the red snapper population to just 11 percent of its historical abundance; in response, seasons were reduced as part of a rebuilding plan set to last through 2044.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

FLORIDA: ‘It’s our resource’: Florida’s East Coast could see longest Red Snapper season since 2009 in 2026

February 13, 2026 — Florida’s Atlantic Coast could see the longest Red Snapper season since 2009 this year, if the federal government signs off on a plan to shift management of the fishery over to the state.

Charter Fishing Captain Adam Petnuch with Reel Dream Fishing Charters in St. Augustine has been fishing the Southern Atlantic for more than a decade, and not once in that span of time has he had the chance to see a full-length Red Snapper season.

“It’s a very good eating fish and the thing about it is the abundance. It is such an abundant source of fish for us over here,” Petnuch said.

Read the full article at Action News Jax

NOAA leaps forward on collaborative approach for red snapper

February 11, 2026 — NOAA Fisheries announced today a major collaborative step toward boosting red snapper recreational fishing opportunities in the South Atlantic. The agency invites public comments on applications for Exempted Fishing Permits (EFPs) from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. The EFPs are designed to test new data collection methods and strategies for state-led management of the recreational red snapper fishery.

This 25-day public comment period marks an important step in NOAA’s review and consideration of management strategies for the recreational harvest of red snapper, which will balance sustainability and economic benefits. These actions are also expected to increase opportunities for American recreational fishermen.

Read the full article at NOAA 

FLORIDA: Oysters return to Apalachicola, reviving hope for Florida harvesters

January 30, 2026 — They gather there most mornings around 7 a.m., weather-worn hands picking at plates of hashbrowns and cups of coffee scattered across two shoved-together tables. Many of their families have lived in Eastpoint, just outside Apalachicola on the Florida Panhandle, for four or five generations.

Their conversation flows from grandchildren to deer hunting with an ease conveying their decades of friendship. Then it turns to the topic captivating their community: Apalachicola Bay reopening for oyster harvesting after a five-year hiatus.

“I’ve seen more excitement out of older people this month than I’ve seen in years,” said Owen Golden, 75, his eyes crinkling behind wire-rimmed glasses.

Apalachicola Bay opened Jan. 1 for a brief season lasting through the end of February. It’s the first time the bay has opened for commercial harvesting since 2020, when the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission closed the area due to declining oyster reefs.

Read the full article at WUFT

Rigs-to-Reefs hearing sparks fight over Trump energy plans

January 15, 2026 — A House hearing on a bipartisan bill promoting the use of decommissioned offshore oil rigs as artificial reefs instead devolved into a contentious partisan squabble Tuesday as lawmakers debated the merits of offshore drilling and the Trump administration’s oversight of it.

The Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources hearing was intended to discuss H.R. 5745, the “Marine Fisheries Habitat Protection Act,” sponsored by Rep. Mike Ezell (R-Miss.). The bill would expand the use of old offshore oil platforms as artificial reefs by streamlining a decades-old permitting process for doing so in federal waters along the five Gulf Coast states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

But the hearing detoured into a debate over offshore drilling, and assertions by some Democrats that the proposal amounts to a financial and regulatory giveaway for the oil and gas industry, and is an “extreme waiver of responsibilities” for their infrastructure.

Read the full article at E&E News

FLORIDA: A Florida Oyster Fishery and Its Community Fight for Their Future

January 8, 2026 — On a late afternoon in early November, Xochitl Bervera launches The Roxie Girl from St. George Island into the gentle waters of Florida’s Apalachicola Bay. Almost as soon as the boat gets up to speed, she kills the motor and drifts the final feet toward her destination: a 2.5-acre grid of buoys and bags floating in Rattlesnake Cove. This is her farm, Water Is Life Oysters.

Bervera and her partner, Kung Li, launched the business in 2022, not long after the state implemented a five-year ban on harvesting the bay’s beloved but imperiled wild oysters, leaving the surrounding community without its economic engine and sense of identity.

As the sun sinks toward the horizon, Kung Li hauls in a bag of oysters and samples a mollusk to be sure it meets muster. They pop it open with a twist of an oyster knife and find everything that has made Apalachicola oysters famous for generations: briny liquor surrounding firm, sweet meat. “That,” Kung Li exclaims, “is a good oyster.” They put five bags on ice.

Oysters have been eaten for millennia from this estuary, where freshwater from the Apalachicola River meets the salty Gulf of Mexico to form an ideal breeding ground. In its heyday, the bay supplied 90 percent of Florida’s oysters and 10 percent of the country’s. But after a 2013 fishery failure all but wiped out a $9 million annual harvest that once supported 2,500 jobs, the state officially closed the bay in 2020 for five years.

Since the closure, locally farmed oysters—Crassostrea virginica, the same species as their wild predecessors—are the closest thing anyone’s had to that old familiar flavor. Water Is Life is among a few dozen farms that have attempted to fill the void, hoping to preserve the bay’s oyster culture while the state embarks on a costly reef restoration. Bervera, a former criminal justice organizer, and Kung Li, a former civil rights lawyer, harbor a vision for a revived Apalachicola Bay. They believe a vibrant local food system can once again feed this community and restore dignified jobs that protect the bay’s health rather than diminish it.

“I look around the country and maybe that’s not possible in many places any more,” Bervera says, “but it’s very possible here.”

In a controversial decision, the state reopened the commercial oyster fishery on Jan. 1, leaving this small community on the Forgotten Coast—named for its relative quiet and lack of development—anxious about its economic future. If the oysters come back, so will the industry. If they don’t, roughly 5,000 residents in Apalachicola and its neighbor Eastpoint fear their towns will be overtaken by resort-style development like so much of Florida’s coastline, pushing out both their culture and their communities.

It’s a heavy weight to rest on a 3-inch mollusk.

Read the full article at Civil Beats