Saving Seafood

FLORIDA: Local fishermen give catch to hungry families

January 22, 2021 — A half-dozen people spent a few hours this week unloading the “Miss Rebecca” on the dock behind Wild Seafood Company. The flurry of activity continued for hours. Erin Grebenev only put her calculator down for a few moments to answer questions about how special the process made her feel.

“This has been an amazing opportunity,” she said. “It’s so cool to watch a boat offload.”

This has been the scene at John’s Pass since October. Jason Delacruz, the owner of Wild Seafood, sends out one of his fishing vessels and it will return with thousands of pounds of fish. They are tagged, separated by client, and then a portion is placed in a box to the side to feed hungry families in Tampa Bay.

“We are at a need level that we have never seen,” said Delacruz, who has been operating Wild Seafood since 2012.

Hundreds of pounds of freshly caught red snapper were loaded into a box marked ‘Catch Together’ this week. The label represents the name of the program designed to support local fishermen and feed families in need.

Delacruz, who had to stop running boats for a brief period last spring when the pandemic began to ramp up, got a grant from Catch Together this year in the $200,000 range to offset the price of the fish caught by his crews. That money paid for the donated food, which was sent up the road to the St. Pete Free Clinic.

Read the full story at WTSP

While still rebuilding, red snapper fishermen are seeing good returns

December 5, 2018 —  “It’s been another productive year for sure,” said Buddy Guindon, a fisherman and owner of Katie’s Seafood in Galveston, Texas.

Although technically still in a “rebuilding” status, the gulf red snapper population has come a long way since stock lows in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

“We’re seeing more and more snapper in the eastern gulf, more than in the past 15 years,” said Jason DeLaCruz, a fisherman and owner of Wild Seafood Co. in Madeira Beach, Fla. “Our catches are doing a flip. They used to be so grouper-heavy and now they’re snapper-heavy,” he said.

For at least the past several years, gulf vessels on both coasts have brought to dock nearly 100 percent of quota.

According to numbers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the average ex-vessel price for red snapper in 2018 in the state was $3.94.

But both Guindon on the west Gulf Coast and DeLaCruz on the east say red snapper in their area has fetched $5 or more a pound for several years.

“I think we got up to an ex-vessel price of about $5 a pound about four or five years ago, and since then it has crept up to anywhere from $5.20 to $6,” said Guindon.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Gulf fishing and seafood industry support Congressman Jolly’s Gulf Red Snapper Data Improvement Act

September 21, 2015 — Read the full story from the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance:

Commercial fishermen, charter fishermen, and seafood restauranteurs came together to support a piece of legislation introduced by Congressman David Jolly (FL-13) that proposes to designate $10 million annually in federal grants for important data collection on red snapper and other reef fish species in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf Red Snapper Data Improvement Act (H.R.3521) will fund third-party data collection through grants managed by the Southeast Regional Office of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Read the full release from the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance

Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council Decision to Reallocate Red Snapper Hurts American Consumers and Provides False Hope to Recreational Anglers

August 13, 2015 — The following was released by Share the Gulf:

Today the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Gulf Council) voted to reallocate several hundred-thousand pounds of red snapper away from the commercial fishing sector to the purely recreational sector. Share the Gulf is coalition of more than 44,000 chefs, restaurateurs, conservationists, seafood suppliers, commercial fishermen and consumers that has opposed the proposal.

“The vast majority of Americans do not own an offshore boat; they access the fishery through their favorite restaurants and grocery stores. This vote erodes their right to this shared American resource and hurts the businesses that provide it to them. Thankfully thousands of chefs, fishermen and seafood lovers made their voice heard or this could have been much worse,” said Stan Harris, CEO of the Louisiana Restaurant Association.

The proposal, known as Amendment 28, has gone through numerous iterations as it has been under consideration by the Gulf Council for years. Currently the red snapper fishery is divided almost 50-50 between the commercial and recreational sectors. Some alternatives considered in Amendment 28 could have shifted millions of pounds of fish and done untold damage to commercial fishermen, the seafood supply chain, restaurants and grocery stores.

“I voted against this because it takes millions of consumer meals off the market while not even providing a full extra day of fishing for recreational anglers. Some on the council were trying to shift millions of pounds of red snapper, so this could have been worse had people not stood up and fought for their right to access the fishery even if they don’t own a boat,” said David Walker, a commercial fisherman from Alabama who also sits on the Gulf Council.

“This was a poor decision by the Gulf Council because it hurts consumers and local businesses while not actually helping fisherman. Recreational management is so broken that this will not give them more than one extra day of fishing. Hopefully, now that this distraction is finished, we can focus on fixing the management system to give private anglers the fishing opportunities they deserve,” said Jason DeLaCruz, owner of Wild Seafood Company in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Read the release from Share the Gulf