Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance Archives

Red grouper could be precedent for new Gulf catch reallocations

June 17, 2022 — Gulf of Mexico reef fish fishermen expect to face off in court against the National Marine Fisheries Service later this summer. They’re challenging the agency’s recent reallocation of some of their red grouper Individual Fishing Quota to the recreational sector.

Fishermen have more at stake than the cut in their grouper quota: NMFS and the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council are already forging ahead with serial reallocations of other fisheries. The lawsuit may be their best, if not only, chance to stop them.

“We’re 2 and 0 against the NMFS in the courts,” said Eric Brazer, deputy director of the Galveston, Texas-based Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders Alliance. Other plaintiffs in the suit include A.P. Bell Fish Company, of Cortez, Florida, and the Southern Offshore Fishing Association, a longliner group based in Madeira Beach, Florida.

The courts sided with commercial fishermen in 2014 and 2017 when they challenged the council and NMFS over actions to extend the recreational red snapper season and reallocate more quota to the sector.

“The council took action that harmed the commercial fishermen and rewarded the recreational fishermen. We told them it was not legal, they didn’t believe us. They approved the document, we took them to court, and we won,” said Brazer.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Commercial Fishermen, Other Members of Seafood Industry Challenging NOAA’s Red Grouper Reallocation

May 11, 2022 — Last week SeafoodNews reported on NOAA’s Amendment 53, a new rule in the Federal Register regarding the reef fish fishery of the Gulf of Mexico. The final rule revised the annual catch limits (ACLs) and annual catch targets (ACTs) for both the commercial and recreational sectors, reallocating 20% of the commercial red grouper quota to the recreational sector. The decision had commercial fishermen and others in the industry up in arms. But they’re not just sitting back. A lawsuit has been filed challenging the legality of the decision to reallocate the red grouper quota to recreational fishermen.

The lawsuit was filed late on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by A.P. Bell Fish Company, the Southern Offshore Fishing Association, and the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance.

“This case is about the government’s allocation of fishing privileges for catching red grouper in the Gulf of Mexico between two user groups,” reads the suit. “The challenged agency action takes fish away from the commercial sector, and gives them to the recreational fishing sector. But the recreational sector is wasteful, catching and throwing back millions of red grouper each year, of which hundreds of thousands die. Allocating more fish to the recreational sector will increase this waste, reduce the amount of fish available for consumption, and increase the risk of overfishing the stock. These outcomes are unlawful.”

The Gulf Coast Seafood Alliance (GCSA) made their opinions on NOAA’s decision very clear in an analysis that can be found here. Meanwhile, the recently filed lawsuit can be found here.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Gulf Coast Seafood Alliance Supports Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Red Grouper Quotas

May 9, 2022 — The following was released by the Gulf Coast Seafood Alliance:

Commercial fishermen and members of the Gulf of Mexico seafood industry have filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of a recent decision by NOAA Fisheries to reallocate red grouper quota to recreational fishermen at the expense of the commercial fishery. The Gulf Coast Seafood Alliance (GCSA) supports the efforts by the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, Southern Offshore Fishing Association, and A.P. Bell Fish Company to challenge this decision, in an effort to restore a fair allocation for commercial fishermen.

The lawsuit, filed late on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges recent red grouper allocations approved by NOAA as part of Amendment 53 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico.

The plaintiffs indicated they will seek expedited review.

Amendment 53 drastically reallocates the quota for red grouper. It increases the recreational share of the quota from 24 percent to 40.7 percent, while decreasing the commercial share from 76 percent to 59.3 percent. Simultaneously, the Amendment decreases the overall available red grouper quota in order to account for increased grouper discards from the recreational fishermen.

According to the lawsuit, this allocation “unlawfully benefit[s] the recreational fishing sector, harm[s] the commercial fishing sector and seafood consumers, and jeopardize[s] conservation,” while going against the conservation goals set out in the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the federal law governing U.S. fishery management. It notes that the Amendment is only the latest in a series of decisions showing “unlawful favoritism” to recreational fishermen.

GCSA has previously criticized Amendment 53 in its own analysis. GCSA specifically has criticized the Amendment for the flaws in the process that led to its adoption, the inadequate economic analysis that supported its allocation decision, and the legal precedents that the Amendment violates.

The complaint specifies ten causes of action, demonstrating that Amendment 53 violates:

Magnuson-Stevens Act National Standard Four, which requires that allocations of fishing privileges “shall be…fair and equitable to all such [U.S.] fishermen” and “reasonably calculated to promote conservation.”
Magnuson-Stevens Act National Standard Nine, which requires that “[c]onservation and management measures shall, to the extent practicable, (A) minimize bycatch and (B) to the extent bycatch cannot be avoided, minimize the mortality of such bycatch.”
Magnuson-Stevens Act Section 303(a)(11), which requires that any Fishery Management Plan “establish a standardized reporting methodology to assess the amount and type of bycatch occurring in the fishery, and include conservation and management measures that, to the extent practicable and in the following priority—(A) minimize bycatch; and (B) minimize the mortality of bycatch which cannot be avoided.”
Magnuson-Stevens Act Section 303(a)(15), which requires all Fishery Management Plans to “establish a mechanism for specifying annual catch limits in the plan (including a multiyear plan) implementing regulations, or annual specifications, at a level that overfishing does not occur in the fishery, including measures to ensure accountability.”
Magnuson-Stevens Act National Standard One, which requires that “[c]onservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing while achieving, on a continuing basis, the optimum yield from each fishery for the United States fishing industry.”
Legal requirements regarding the setting and review of optimum yield as specified in Magnuson- Stevens Act Sections 303(a)(3), 303(a)(4)(A), AND 302(h)(5).
Magnuson-Stevens Act National Standard Two, which requires that “conservation and management measures shall be based upon the best scientific information available.”
Magnuson-Stevens Act National Standard Eight, which requires that NOAA must “take into account the importance of fishery resources to fishing communities.”
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance: Statement on Red Grouper Quota Instability

Florida red grouper quota reallocation angers commercial-fishing sector

May 6, 2022 — A reallocation of the Gulf of Mexico red grouper catch limits has angered the region’s commercial fishing sector, which stands to lose a sizeable portion of its share of the catch to recreational anglers.

Amendment 53, which was announced by NOAA on Monday, 2 May, and which will go into effect 1 June, 2022, amends the fishery management plan for reef fish resources in the Gulf of Mexico so that the allocation of the red grouper catch to the commercial sector is lowered from 76 percent to 59.3 percent, while increasing the recreational catch-share from 24 percent to 40.7 percent.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance: Statement on Red Grouper Quota Instability

May 5, 2022 — The following was released by the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance:

On Monday, May 2, 2022, NOAA Fisheries published a Final Rule for Reef Fish Amendment 53, which reduced the commercial sector’s allocation of the red grouper quota from 76% to 59.3%.

Yesterday, on Tuesday, May 3, 2022, NOAA Fisheries published a Proposed Rule to Modify Red Grouper Catch Limits that would, if implemented, slightly increase red grouper catch limits based on a new interim analysis (IA) that indicated a slight improvement in the health status of red grouper since 2019.

While a positive step, this latest action doesn’t fix the damage caused by Amendment 53. In fact, exacerbates it.

Without the reallocation under Amendment 53, commercial fishermen should be receiving 76% of the new proposed 4.96 million pound annual catch limit (ACL) – which would have been an approximately 600,000 pound increase from the 2021 quota. Instead, under the two actions NOAA Fisheries took this week, commercial fishermen will be limited to a 2.94 million pound ACL and 2.79 million pound Annual Catch Target (ACT). This reduction represents a significant loss in commercial fishing access, millions of dollars in lost revenue to commercial fishing families, and hundreds of thousands fewer grouper servings available for the seafood-consuming public.

Furthermore, this new 2.79 million pound quota is still 210,000 pounds less than the quota level commercial fishermen were operating under prior to Amendment 53.

In reality, commercial fishermen have lost even more than that. Reallocation to the recreational sector under Amendment 53 increases dead discards and commercial fishermen are forced to fish under a reduced catch limit to cover those discards. So commercial fishermen are penalized twice: first by the reallocation, and second by lower overall catch limits to offset increased recreational discards. In essence, commercial fishermen now have a smaller piece of a smaller pie as a result of Amendment 53. If the allocation remained 76% commercial, fewer red grouper would be thrown overboard dead, and the catch level increase under the IA would be even larger than what is in this Proposed Rule.

Simply put – Amendment 53 is the “gift” that keeps on taking. Commercial fishermen were penalized in Amendment 53 through a reduction in quota and now they are on the hook for subsidizing an even greater amount of recreational dead discards that could undo the progress this stock has made since 2019. The proportional losses through Amendment 53 will carry on in perpetuity as the recreational sector wastes more red grouper by throwing them overboard dead.

The forthcoming slight quota increase, while generally a positive sign for the red grouper population, does not restore the commercial quota to the level it was in recent years and falls far short of what the commercial sector and seafood consumers would have access to without the reallocation from Amendment 53.

To be clear – we will give credit where credit is due, and we want to thank NOAA Fisheries for conducting this rapid IA in response to repeated concerns by commercial fishermen about the years-long process translating the results of a stock assessment into management, and the need for more real-time data collection and science-based decision making.

But this marginal quota increase does nothing to solve the fundamental reallocation and recreational mismanagement problems (dead discards, lack of census-based reporting) that landed us here in the first place.

Red Grouper Reallocation by NOAA Fisheries Punishes Commercial Fishermen and Seafood Consumers, Jeopardizes Red Grouper Sustainability

May 2, 2022 — The following was released by A.P. Bell Fish Company, the Gulf of Mexico Reef Shareholders’ Alliance, and the Southern Offshore Fishing Association:

Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries formally published their decision to take fish from commercial fishing families, the seafood supply chain, and the seafood consumers they serve. The publication of the Final Rule implementing Amendment 53 to the Reef Fish Fishery Management Plan comes despite NOAA Fisheries admitting that doing so will increase recreational discards, put more strain on the recovery of this species, and reduce the amount of red grouper that all fishermen can enjoy in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Red grouper is the foundation of my family’s business that has existed in Florida for more than 80 years,” said Karen Bell, third-generation owner and President of A.P. Bell Fish Company located in Cortez, Florida. “We pride ourselves on catching and serving our customers fresh, wild, sustainably-caught red grouper from the Gulf of Mexico. Now NOAA Fisheries is making it difficult for us to serve our customers and stay in business.”

The ostensible purpose of Amendment 53 is to account for new data from NOAA Fisheries based on the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) Fishing Effort Survey (FES), which indicated the recreational sector catches more red grouper than previously estimated. But instead of using these new data to spark a discussion about better management and more accountability to ensure all fishermen stay within their catch limits, NOAA Fisheries and the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Gulf Council) chose to use these new data to literally “rewrite history” to justify taking 32% of the commercial sector’s quota and giving it to the recreational sector.

“Somehow NOAA Fisheries took this new recreational FES survey, magically revised 35 years of data about what recreational anglers caught in the past, and told us that commercial fishermen need to give up some of our quota so these anglers get more fish to catch in the future,” said Ed Maccini, president of the Southern Offshore Fishing Association (SOFA), based in Madeira Beach, Florida. “But unlike commercial fishermen who report and weigh every pound of fish we land, recreational anglers don’t have to report what they catch or even be accurate in what they choose to report. It’s all basically guesswork by NOAA Fisheries. And now they’re taking our quota away based on these highly uncertain and wildly changing estimates.”

Commercial fishermen remain baffled as to why NOAA Fisheries would make such an anti-conservation decision when the red grouper stock recently reached some of the lowest levels on record. Furthermore, according to the Gulf Council’s own analysis, rewarding the recreational sector with more allocation “is more likely to result in an overfishing or eventual overfished status of red grouper.”

“This is a lose-lose-lose situation: our businesses are taking a hit, seafood consumers are taking a hit, and the health of the red grouper stock is taking a hit,” said Jason DeLaCruz, owner of Wild Seafood Co. in John’s Pass, Florida. “The commercial sector is stuck with getting a smaller slice of a smaller pie, yet the recreational sector is allowed to throw back more than 3.7 million red grouper every year, and a few years back they threw back more than 6 million red grouper – that’s more fish than commercial fishermen are allowed to land. Amendment 53 reduces everyone’s quotas so that the recreational sector can discard more fish. It’s such a waste.”

The public opposition to Amendment 53 has been overwhelming – all told, more than 99.3% of all testimony recently submitted to NOAA Fisheries opposed Amendment 53. This opposition came from a wide range of industries and sectors including:

Commercial fishermen
Commercial fishing organizations (in the Gulf of Mexico and throughout the country)
Federal commercial fishing coalitions (representing commercial fishermen from Alaska to California to Maine to the Gulf of Mexico)
The restaurant industry
The seafood supply chain
Charter/for-hire fishermen and fishing organizations
Scientists
Economists
Environmental organizations
Lawyers/legal advisors, and
Seafood consumers (literally thousands of them)

“Amendment 53 is illegal. Period,” said Buddy Guindon, Executive Director of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, based in Galveston, Texas. “It maximizes discards, unfairly penalizes commercial fishermen by taking away their quota to cover dead discards by recreational anglers, and increases the risk of overfishing. This is opposite of what Congress intended when it adopted the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.”

Gulf of Mexico commercial fisherman upset at red grouper allocation

July 12, 2021 — Commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico said they were shocked to see their share of the red grouper quota cut by 600,000 pounds.

A statement released Tuesday, 29, June by the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance said the reallocation to recreational fishermen means a loss of about USD 3 million (EUR 2.5 million), a significant loss for “fishing families.” They also fear it could lead to overfishing of the species.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Recreational quota grab sets dangerous precedent, gulf fleet warns

July 1, 2021 — On Friday, June 25, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council took final action on Amendment 53: Red Grouper Recalibration and Reallocation.

If implemented by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, this amendment would reduce the commercial quota share from 76 percent to 59.3 percent, or about 600,000 pounds, starting in 2022.

“Taking 600,000 pounds of red grouper quota not only directly hurts hard-working American fishermen who rely on grouper for the businesses, but it also takes fish away from the American consumer who, through the covid-19 pandemic, proved that they are looking for more seafood and more domestic seafood,” said Bubba Cochrane, president of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, an industry trade group based in Galveston, Texas.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

FLORIDA: Group donates 13,000 pounds of fresh grouper, red snapper to Second Harvest

March 18, 2021 — A special delivery arrived at Second Harvest Wednesday morning. A truck dropped off 13,000 pounds of Red Snapper and Grouper fillets at the food bank.

The donation is worth about $20,000. It’s all thanks to North Florida fishermen and members of the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance.

It started after the group signed up for a grant through “Catch Together.” Their goal is to help put fishermen back on the water while also feeding those in need. Second Harvest said they’re grateful to soon be able to offer more variety to people.

Read the full story at WTXL

FLORIDA: Tampa Bay fishermen donate their catch to families struggling during the pandemic

November 19, 2020 — Fishermen from the Tampa Bay area are stepping up to help families in need during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance is partnering with the St. Petersburg Free Clinic to bring 20,000 pounds of fresh fish to families who are facing economic hardship because of the pandemic.

Over the next few months, commercial fishermen in Madeira Beach will donate red grouper and red snapper to St. Petersburg Free Clinic for distribution to the people and community it serves. The clinic is a multi-service, independent, human services agency that helps locals who are in need of food, shelter and health care.

“Since the onset of the pandemic, we’ve been serving at times up to triple the amount of families we typically support,” said Jennifer Yeagley, CEO of St. Petersburg Free Clinic. “Half of these households have never had to visit a food pantry prior to COVID-19. So, we are very grateful to the local fishing captains and these businesses all working together to provide sustainable, local seafood to our neighbors in need.”

Read the full story WTSP