June 2, 2016 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:
Latest Issue of the South Atlantic Update Newsletter Now Available:
Inside this issue:
Read the full newsletter at the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council
June 2, 2016 — June 1 marks the opening of red snapper season in Gulf of Mexico federal waters (extending beyond 9 nautical miles from land), but our east-coast brethren have to sit this one out. Based on data collected by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, a branch of NOAA Fisheries, too many red snapper were harvested from this region in 2015, so there will be no 2016 recreational or commercial season.
One of eight regional councils created under what is now the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, SAFMC is responsible for conservation and management of fish stocks within the federal 200-mile limit off the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and east Florida to Key West. Red snapper, a historically overfished species, has been one of the council’s top concerns since the 1980s.
May 31, 2016 — Katie’s Seafood Market is a corrugated-metal building on the Galveston waterfront with a wooden ship wheel hanging from its ceiling and an 89-pound snapper mounted near the entrance. A small retail area faces the street, but most of the action happens on the dockside, which opens onto a channel leading to the Gulf of Mexico.
It was there, last November, that William “Bubba” Cochrane could be found supervising the unloading of 11,000 pounds of red snapper from his boat the Chelsea Ann. A beefy man with a gray-flecked beard, Cochrane recorded weights on a clipboard as large blue vats filled with fish. Outside, his twelve-year-old son and deckhand, Conner, moved around the boat in orange bib pants. “Kids in school say, ‘I want to be a video-game designer,’ ” Conner said. “I’m the only one who has ever said, ‘I want to be a fisherman.’ ”
That would have been a ludicrous ambition a decade ago. When Cochrane started fishing for a living in the early nineties, the Gulf population of red snapper—mild and buttery, easy to catch, with pink-orange scales that stand out on market shelves—had bottomed out following a forty-year decline. Potential egg production, a key measure of population health, had fallen to 2.6 percent of its natural level, one tenth of what scientists consider sustainable.
The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Gulf Council) and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), scrambled to find solutions. For years commercial fishing was limited to the first ten days of the month during the spring and fall seasons. This led to a mad race—a “derby” in industry parlance—as every vessel barreled into the Gulf at once. “If it was blowing a gale on the first, you had to go,” Cochrane says. “You’ve got bills to pay and a boat loan.”
Under those conditions, fishermen didn’t have time to find the perfect fishing spot. “If I’ve got to kill two hundred pounds of undersized fish to catch fifty pounds of legal fish, I’ll do it,” he says of the attitude during those years. “A few discards, you try not to think about it.”
Derbies didn’t just stress the fishers; they also failed as a conservation tool. Most years, the commercial sector exceeded its allocation. The stock improved, but not by much.
May 27, 2016 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:
Meeting Location:
Hilton Cocoa Beach Oceanfront
1550 N. Atlantic Avenue
Cocoa Beach FL 32931
Phone: 800-445-8667 or 321-799-0003
Agenda Highlights
Read more about the meeting at the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council
May 26, 2016 — PANAMA CITY, Fla. — Charter boat captains and recreational anglers had a chance to weigh in how they think the recreational red snapper fishery should be managed during a Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council hearing Tuesday night.
For the past few years the council has managed for-hire vessels and recreational anglers differently. For example, this year for-hire boats will have a 46-day season to fish federal waters while the recreational fishermen will have nine days.
It’s worth noting that recreational fishermen will have a 78-day season in state waters this year that for-hire vessels won’t be able to participate in.
The provision that allows the two groups to be managed differently at the federal level is set to expire at the end of 2017. The council offered three options to the few dozen fishermen who showed up for the meeting at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel.
May 24, 2016 — The final rule for Amendment 35 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region (Amendment 35) published on May 23, 2016 (81 FR 32249). Regulations will be effective June 22, 2016.
The final rule will:
May 20, 2016 — Local anglers won’t be allowed to keep red snapper this year after federal fishery regulators announced Thursday they will keep the fish closed to harvesting, part of the government’s years-long and controversial plan to increase the species’ abundance.
The closure applies to red snapper caught in federal waters from Florida to North Carolina, a vast area ranging from 3 to 200 miles offshore where virtually all red snapper in the Atlantic Ocean are caught.
Red snapper have been strictly regulated since 2010 after a study by the federal government found that the species had been overfished for decades to dangerously low levels.
May 20, 2016 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:
NOAA Fisheries announces red snapper will remain closed to commercial and recreational fishing in South Atlantic federal waters in 2016. Red snapper remains closed as the total number of red snapper removed from the population in 2015 exceeded the allowable catch level.
In 2013, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council developed, and NOAA Fisheries implemented, a standardized process that specifies harvest may only occur in a given year if total removals (landings plus dead discards) in the previous year were less than the number allowed for population rebuilding. The total removals allowable for 2015 were 114,000 fish. After evaluating landings and discard information for 2015, NOAA Fisheries determined the estimates of total removals were 276,729 fish; therefore, the fishery remains closed in 2016.
NOAA Fisheries will utilize the same process identified by the South Atlantic Council to determine if the fishery can sustain a 2017 season.
For additional sources of information, including Frequently Asked Questions, details of the standardized process, and the report of 2015 estimates of red snapper total removals in the South Atlantic Region, please go here.
May 11, 2016 — At its April 13 meeting in Jupiter, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) set the 2016 recreational red snapper season in Gulf of Mexico state waters.
The 2016 season is open Saturdays and Sundays in May starting May 7. On May 28, the season will open continuously through July 10. Finally, the season will reopen for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in September and October, and on Labor Day.
This would provide for a 78-day season in Gulf state waters. This season will help maintain fishing opportunities for recreational anglers in state waters and provide additional May and fall weekend fishing days.
May 5, 2016 — Alabama recreational red snapper fishermen could be slapped with a 6- to 9-day season—the shortest snapper season ever in the state—when the season opens in federal waters on June 1.
That would be even shorter than in 2014 and 2015 when fishermen, public officials and state and federal lawmakers were outraged. The snapper season last year was 10 days long, just one day longer from 2014’s record low of nine.
That was the dire warning from U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, of Fairhope.