January 22, 2021 — No one should have any difficulty buying fresh Gulf of Mexico red snapper for dinner anytime in the foreseeable future.
“It’s what they call a ‘harvest fishery’ – you go out there, they bite. They’re not hard to find,” Steve Rash, who owns Water Street Seafood in Apalachicola, Florida, said.
December 30, 2020 — No one should have any difficulty buying fresh Gulf of Mexico red snapper for dinner anytime in the foreseeable future.
“It’s what they call a ‘harvest fishery’ — you go out there, they bite. They’re not hard to find,” said Steve Rash, who owns Water Street Seafood in Apalachicola, Fla.
That assessment was confirmed by the recent Great Red Snapper Count — a two-year scientific study conducted by Texas A&M’s Harte Research Institute. Researchers reported to Congress in October that there are up to three times as many red snapper living in the gulf as scientists previously estimated.
Rash says the dozen or so boats operating out of his fish house catch red snapper on nearly every trip, whether it is the target species or as bycatch in the grouper, amberjack, or other reef fisheries. He says dock prices are in the $5 to $5.50-per-pound range, with fishermen who are leasing quota netting about $2 per pound.
As of just before Thanksgiving, gulf fishermen had landed about 5.6 million pounds, or 82 percent of the annual quota of 7 million pounds. Rash said sales to restaurants were slow from last winter to early spring as a result of covid-19-related shutdowns.
June 26, 2020 — The darkest days are seemingly in the past for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.
A restoration of the fishery, decades in the making, has blossomed into one of the most recent success stories in conservation.
“We have more snapper now than in anyone’s lifetime,” said Greg Stunz, director of the Harte Research Institute’s Sportfish Center at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
“And they’re big snapper.”
A federal plan to rebuild the fishery by 2032 is well ahead of schedule.
The goal is to increase the spawning potential to 26 percent, which means the stock would produce about a quarter of the eggs that an unfished population would. The estimated spawning biomass of red snapper in the Gulf is currently about 20 percent, a long climb from the sub-2 percent low mark of 1990.
July 19, 2019 — According to scientists, sharks are quickly increasing in numbers along the Texas coast.
“With the work that the government is putting in, we’re definitely seeing a lot more sharks,” said local fisherman Cris Southers. “A lot healthier sharks [too].”
Throughout the last few weeks, multiple fishermen have received media attention after catching large sharks along Texas beaches.
“If you’re in the water, you’re likely near a shark,” said Dr. Greg Stunz, a professor of marine biology.
According to Dr. Stunz, the shark population along the Texas coast is larger than it has been in years. The professor credits the increase in shark numbers to new U.S. government regulations, and education.
“They’ve really rebounded, due to stricter regulations,” said Dr. Stunz.
The professor works alongside the Harte Research Institute, an organization the tracks and studies the movement of sharks.