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Texas, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, United in Conservation |
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Capitol Ideas
Talking Red Snapper
By Ted Venker TIDE Jan/Feb 2010
Dr. Bob Shipp has taught at the University of South Alabama since 1972, where he is presently chairman of the Department of Marine Sciences, director of the Alabama Center for Estuarine Studies, and heads the Alabama Oyster Restoration program. He was associate director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab for 10 years and edited the marine journal Northeast Gulf Science (now Gulf of Mexico Science) for 20 years. For four years was editor of Systematic Zoology, a premier international journal devoted to evolutionary theory. He was appointed to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council in 1991, served as its chairman during 1996-97 and again from 1999-2000. He was reappointed to the Council in 2005, elected vice-chairman in 2007, and chairman in 2009. He recently took time out of his busy schedule to discuss the always difficult issue of Gulf red snapper.
Q. How do you explain the discrepancy between Gulf red snapper assessments and what anglers on the water are seeing?
A. I think everyone agrees the populations are stronger now than they have been in decades. My own personal belief is they are the strongest they have ever been in history because of the habitat we have created, both the oil rigs and the artificial reefs. But even those who discount that, everyone agrees the stocks are improving. The problem is that the models are dependent on fishery dependent data, and that information comes from recreational and commercial fishermen. There is a built-in bias there. Let me give you an example – the commercial guys testified at a recent Council meeting that they are targeting the smaller snapper – 2- to 4-pound snapper – because they get a higher price for it. Well, when that information goes into the model, it is interpreted to mean there aren’t that many big fish out there. So the model is left with the conclusion that we don’t have a population of big, old, nice fish out there and therefore the stock must be overfished. That is the problem. The modelers know that. They would love to not have to rely on fishery dependent data. They want fishery independent data which sample the entire snapper population; not just the part of it that is being fished. An example of fishery independent data are plankton surveys like SEAMAP (Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program) is conducting in the western and central Gulf. Another example would be the longline surveys being conducted by NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) that began in the last few years. When that information is incorporated into the model, we will get a much more realistic view of the population. As long as we are depending on those fishery dependent inputs, we are going to get a skewed stock assessment.
Q. There have been rumors over the years that snapper on artificial structure like oil rigs were not counted in the assessments – what is the real story?
A. Indirectly, they do get counted and the way that they are is from the catch information from fishermen who fish natural structure and man-made structure as well. So when MRFSS (Marine Recreational Fisheries Statistical Survey) people are interviewing or the commercial catch is being analyzed, it doesn’t matter if it was taken off natural structure or artificial structure. Where that rumor started was some of the fishery independent video analyses that the State of Alabama did, have not been included in the models, so there is a dataset there from artificial structure that has not been included. But the catches from there are included in the assessment.
Q. If you were the “Snapper Czar,” what would you do with this fishery?
A. If I were the snapper czar, I’d start by analyzing what the problem is. The problem is we are killing way too many fish. We’re killing them because there are a lot of fish out there. Even if they are targeting something else, the fishermen are catching them and having to throw them back. The commercial guys are killing them off west Florida because they don’t have quota to land those fish. Problem number one is, we are killing way too many fish. Problem number two is we need to protect the stock. Is there a way to address both problems? I think there is. The way to do it is an areal closure. Snapper live in depths from 5 to 100 fathoms and they are abundant at all those depths when you have the right kind of structure on the bottom. If we conduct the fishery in, let’s say, 20 fathoms or less, you are protecting a huge percentage of the stock. The portion of the stock that lives from 20 to 100 fathoms would not be fished at all, but if you fish just that portion in 20 fathoms or less, you could get a little more liberal on bag limits, size limits and seasons, like from April 1 to October 30 with a three-fish bag limit and a 16-inch minimum size. All those would be safeguards. Then you would pretty much eliminate the terrible waste of bycatch. Don’t misinterpret – this is not a permanent fix. This is not an MPA (marine protected area). This is a temporary, areal closure until NMFS could develop the fishery independent indices we need to come up with a better stock assessment. The devil is in the details, though. What do you do about the commercial guys? Exactly what portion of the stock would you be saving? You’d have to go through some analyses and determine what percentage of the stock you were protecting – you may have to go to 15 fathoms, not 20, I don’t know, but the principle is fish the shallows where there is an abundance of fish. Fishing in shallower water lets you liberalize the season and limits, and your release mortality is much, much lower. If you had a 16-inch size limit you would pretty much guarantee every year there would be a fair amount of stock, and when you throw back those 12- to 14-inch fish in 70 feet of water, you won’t have much bycatch mortality at all.
Q. The idea of splitting the Gulf and managing red snapper as separate stocks in the east and west has been discussed for years. Is there any evidence to support the theory that splitting the Gulf into eastern and western stocks may be a better way to manage this fishery?
A. Two things about that. The initial information that I am getting from the stock assessment, which should be to the Council by February, is that the western Gulf is in better shape than the eastern Gulf. Although the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) says you need, to the extent possible, to manage the stock as a single unit, there is precedent in other fisheries for splitting this up. Now, what is important is where the dividing line is – a lot of people assume it is the mouth of the river and it’s not. The dividing line is really Mobile Bay. The habitat west of Mobile Bay is predominantly mud bottom with high nutrient levels and to the east it is sand bottom and lower nutrient levels. So that would be the break between east and west Gulf. This is a tough issue when start talking about breaking the Gulf but it is certainly something that is receiving a lot of attention recently and it is conceivable we could move in that direction.
Q. Just a few years ago it was widely thought that the western Gulf was in worse shape than the eastern. What changed?
A. Part of it is that shrimping effort is way, way down – down about 80 percent. Although there is a question now as to whether bycatch from shrimping was that terribly harmful because some of the ecosystem people are saying that shrimp bycatch killed a lot of the predators that ate red snapper. It may not have been quite as negative as we once believed.
Q. Is there a need to reallocate this fishery, in your opinion?
A. Russell Nelson (CCA Gulf Fisheries Consultant) provided the Council with the Wade-Griffin study out of Texas A&M University which indicates that about 82 percent of the economic value of the Gulf red snapper fishery is in the recreational sector. However, with the way the Council is balanced right now, it is really, really difficult to change allocations. We have a balance on the Council of commercials and recreationals and a few others and it is a monumental task to reallocate. Every time someone comes up with a study to favor one group, you can find an economist on the other side to favor a different group. We do have a generic reallocation amendment, but it has vacillated back and forth and I don’t see it going anywhere soon. MSA has to be changed, though – that’s the problem. The draconian set of regulations and mandates that have come down are just killing the fishery, and not just in the Gulf. The South Atlantic and the East Coast have all been impacted, especially all the bottom fisheries. It is just totally unrealistic to think you can stop overfishing in two years on these stocks that are important to all stakeholders.
Q. There was talk several years ago of physically separating recreational anglers and commercial fishermen in the red snapper fishery – a position that was promoted by CCA – in order to prevent the near-shore structure from being fished out by commercial fishers before the recreational season even opened. The Council did not adopt that proposal, but could that be an answer to some of the problems we are seeing in the Gulf?
A. It might. The problem there is, since the commercial guys are targeting the smaller fish because they get a higher price for them, they are probably going to fish in shallower water and would scream bloody murder. I don’t see us going anywhere with that.
Q. When, if ever, do you believe the red snapper season is going to get back to the levels that anglers remember in better days? A six-month season and four-fish bag seems pretty luxurious now. Will we ever see those days again?
A. It is totally dependent on the stock assessment being conducted now, but it seems like the indices are all improving and my gut feeling is in about three years we will start to see some relaxation. The problem is that quotas are assigned in pounds, not numbers of fish, and so as the fishery improves and the fish get bigger, we’ve got this conundrum. We may not have caught any more snapper in terms of numbers this year than last year, but they are so much bigger that that’s why we exceeded the quota by such a large amount. So even if the quotas get relaxed – right now it is a total of about 5 million pounds – and it doubled to 10 million pounds, we are not ever going to see those 10 months seasons and six fish bag limits again because the fish are so big and there are so many of them. Those old models would have a seven-fish bag and on average a guy was going to catch three or four and not the full seven. Now, you have a seven-fish bag, everyone who goes out there will catch seven fish…for a while. That is the paradox of this whole thing. That is why my czar solution is the one to go with, although no one will ever buy it. It’s just too radical. It just makes too much sense.
Q. What is your philosophy with regard to the job of a fishery management council? How do you approach this very difficult job?
A. There is a lot of misinformation about it, really. The Council really doesn’t have a whole lot of latitude. The science drives the system, NMFS drives the science and NMFS has developed the guidelines to interpret MSA. About all we on the Council can do is modify seasons and bag limits and that sort of thing within really tight constraints. It is frustrating to be a Council member because we get blamed for a lot of stuff and every once in a while we get a little credit. King mackerel, for example, seem to be really healthy and doing a lot better these days. But the latitude the Council has is really pretty limited. We have 10 National Standards that guide what we do, but National Standard 1 has to do with the health of the stock and that trumps everything else. Yes, you can talk about fishing communities and socioeconomic impacts and bycatch reductions and all those things that are covered under other National Standards, but that one about building to maximum sustainable yield in all these stocks trumps them all.
ACTION ITEM We will be able to accept comments and questions on this issue until Feb 1, and selected comments may be posted below. Thank you.
Ted Venker Two offshore trips I went on with some friends out of Galveston, Texas, will stick in my mind forever after seeing bycatch from Gulf shrimpers. We were 25 to 35 miles out and ran towards 3 different shrimp boats on these two trips and when we were 1-1/2 to 2 miles from them we would start seeing their cull. Wanting some chum we'd shut the boat down and all we saw were thousands or dead snapper and croaker about 2-3 inches long. There were many other shrimp boats in the area that we did not run to, I'm sure their cull line looked the same. I don't see how you can sustain a fishery if you are fishing for the mature fish (egg producers) and the Gulf shrimpers are killing the fingerlings that live on the sand flats with the shrimp until they become juvenile's and move to structure. We have gone to the docks in Galveston Bay to get chum for offshore trips and have always had to weed through fingerling flounder and redfish so that we do not have gamefish in our chum. From what I can tell the BRD's (bycatch reduction devices) are not doing enough to reduce bycatch of gamefish. Mike E. Well done. It's great to see the ideas from Shipp. He really is a great asset. Grey C.
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