Saving Seafood

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.”

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

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