Alabama Anglers, Fishery Managers Optimistic at Reevaluation of Red Snapper Stock

David Rainer
Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
from The Fishing Wire

Editor’s Note: Today’s report on the implications of a new stock assessment of red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico from our friend and contributor, David Rainer of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Red snapper on lure

Whether that changes the parameters of the 2015 red snapper recreational season has yet to be determined.

At the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council meeting held last week at the Grand Hotel in Point Clear, Ala., the new red snapper stock assessment was discussed, as well as a number of other items that could impact anglers off the Alabama Gulf Coast.

“With the stock assessment they just completed, it looks like there could be up to a 2.9-million pound increase in the annual catch limit,” said Chris Blankenship, Alabama Marine Resources Director. “Council members asked for some clarification from the Scientific and Statistical Committee about the stock assessment. What happened was the committee didn’t have the complete landings data from 2014, so they used 2013 data like it was the same exact data as 2014. But the landings were less in 2014, so they’re waiting on the final landings numbers to put into the assessment and have that at the March Council meeting. The March meeting in Biloxi (Miss.) is when they will set the 2015 season.”

One of the reasons the stock assessment indicated higher numbers of red snapper is because of the new survey system MRIP (Marine Recreational Information Program), which was implemented for the 2013 season. When NOAA Fisheries (aka National Marine Fisheries Service) looked at the new MRIP data compared to previous years’ data, it decided to adjust the older data.

In an ironic twist, because the previous data underestimated the red snapper catch, the adjusted data was justification for raising the annual catch limit.

“When they recalibrated the landings from previous years, it showed that more fish were caught than they had previously estimated,” Blankenship said. “It’s interesting how the model works. When it showed more fish were caught in the past, they looked at how the stock is still doing with those increased removals, which shows that the stock is healthier.”

That was one reason the allowable catch limit was raised; the other had to do with fishing choices, mainly the size of the fish anglers landed.

“They also added selectivity into the model,” Blankenship said. “Essentially that means that people are purposely choosing to bring in larger fish. Instead of a 16-inch fish, people are bringing in 8-, 10- or 15-pound fish. When you only get two fish in not many days, people are choosing larger fish. When you add that selectivity in, it caused the increase in the limit.”

To more accurately assess the number of red snapper landed in Alabama, Marine Resources implemented the Red Snapper Reporting System, which required that anglers who landed red snapper in Alabama fill out a form available at the boat landing or report the catches via Smartphone app or online at www.outdooralabama.com. NOAA estimated Alabama’s 2014 red snapper catch at just over 1 million pounds. The Alabama Red Snapper Reporting System indicated Alabama anglers landed about 418,000 pounds.

“It was not used in the stock assessment they just completed,” he said of Alabama’s reporting program. “We’re still working with NOAA to figure out how they can use that data, like for quota monitoring or something like that.

“One of the biggest things we were able to accomplish at this meeting, we are looking to change the spawning potential ratio (SPR) they use to manage this fishery. The lower that number, the more fish you can catch now. We’re arguing that this stock is rebuilding much faster than anticipated, so we should be able to catch more fish now instead of waiting until 2032 to increase the quota and the length of the season. What we were able to do at this meeting was to get NOAA to start working on analyzing the spawning potential ratios so by later in the year we could select a different spawning potential ratio, which could theoretically give us a large increase in the number of pounds for 2016 and the next few years.”

Red snapper school

Blankenship said Alabama Conservation Commissioner N. Gunter Guy Jr. attended the reef fish committee meetings last week and had productive meetings with the Coastal Conservation Association, the charter boat industry and fisheries representatives from the other four Gulf states. The Commissioner also met with Dr. Roy Crabtree, Southeast Regional Manager for NOAA Fisheries, and Sam Rauch, Acting Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries, about regional management.

One discussion at the Council meeting centered on changing the minimum size on amberjack from the current 30 inches to 34 or 36 inches, which would increase the length of the season considerably, according to Blankenship.

“What they would like to do is increase the minimum size and keep the closure for June and July (during red snapper season) and theoretically open it up for the rest of the year,” he said. The Council asked for more analysis and no action was taken. Final action on this issue should be taken at the March meeting.

There was also no action taken on Amendment 40, which separates the charter boat industry from the private recreational anglers. Amendment 40 was passed at the previous Council meeting, but the details of how that separation would work have not been decided.

“The Secretary of Commerce still has not signed off on Amendment 40,” Blankenship said. “If the Secretary signs it, it would go into effect this year. The charter industry has asked for a split season, where they take two-thirds of their quota when the season starts in June. Then they would analyze the catch and if there was any quota left, they would have a fall season.”

On a sour note, the 2015 quota for gray triggerfish in the Gulf has already been reached, prompting the closure of the fishery until the end of the year. The reason for such a quick closure is because catch overruns in previous years left only a little more than 30,000 pounds for the 2015 quota.

“There is a lot of frustration with triggerfish closing,” Blankenship said. “That has to do with recalibration as well. They set the quota using the old landings data, and they managed the quota using the MRIP data. Therefore, the quota is lower than it should be, and it’s being filled faster every year. They have the payback provision, so when they overran the quota in 2013 and 2014, that’s why the season was so short this year. There’s not much we can do until we get another triggerfish assessment, which is next year, I think.

“Like I’ve talked about before, we have so many issues with red snapper, the Gulf Council doesn’t have time to work on other species. If we could get regional management and get red snapper settled, we’d have more time to devote to other fish, like triggerfish.”

On the Rocks-Value of Rocky Habitat

By Alison Verkade, NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office
from The Fishing Wire

Effects on rockx

Marine rocky habitats provide Essential Fish Habitat for many fish species – places where fish can feed, breed and grow. They are places for fish to hide from predators and find food. They are among the most structurally complex habitats in the ocean.

Rocky habitats are three-dimensional, providing both height in the water column and crevices between rocks. These crevices provide fish shelter from predators and strong water currents. Rocky habitats also contain a diversity of sessile (non-mobile) animals and algae that serve as food and cover for young fish.

compare

These habitats include gravel, cobble and boulders. You might expect that a habitat made up of rocks would be rugged enough to withstand a lot of disturbance. That is not always the case. It’s really a matter of how much disturbance occurs. Natural or man-made disturbances that cause sedimentation, turbidity, water quality degradation, or directly contacts rocky substrate can harm or change these habitats.

Natural disturbances from typical storm events are usually not destructive because sessile organisms like barnacles and sea squirts are adapted to high-energy environments. They attach to rock surfaces and can remain upright in the moving current to take advantage of the influx of food and nutrients. However, this adaptation also makes them vulnerable to other disturbances they cannot escape. For instance, beach nourishment projects, where sand is used to restore beaches after major storms, can threaten these important habitats. Some of the sand placed on the beach may run off into the surrounding water. The runoff can cover nearby rocky habitats — filling crevices used by fish, or smothering the animals that live there. Other human activities like undersea gravel mining, construction and navigation dredging can actually scrape away the rocks and animals that live there, resulting in a loss of structural complexity.

Cod like rocks

What do changes to rocky habitats mean for the fish and other marine life that use them? Scientific studies have shown that algal cover and attached marine organisms in rocky habitats are important in the survivorship of commercial and recreational species like juvenile Atlantic cod, and forage fish like blueback herring, alewife and shad.

For centuries, Atlantic cod supported important commercial and recreational fisheries along the New England coast. Today, the Gulf of Maine cod stock is in poor condition. The condition of the Georges Bank cod stock is not much better, with few young fish being born each year. Blueback herring and alewife, collectively known as river herring, and shad are key components of the marine food chain. While the numbers of alewife seem to be increasing in some rivers, both species’ overall populations are much lower than historic levels. Protecting rocky habitats is important to helping all of these species recover.

Rocks shelter cod

How does NOAA Fisheries protect these important habitats?

We make recommendations to other federal agencies that fund or permit beach nourishment, mining or construction projects. We want to help ensure that projects can move forward in a responsible way. The key is to both protect the rocks that make up the habitat and the attached organisms and macroalgae that are essential for fish.

Scientists Track Florida Redfish

redfish

The red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) fishery is one of the largest and most popular in the state of Florida. Whether it consists of one stock or subpopulations more strongly affected by local fishing pressure is a persistent question for resource managers. To begin to address it, there is a need to better understand reproductive behavior, such as the number and spatial distribution of spawning aggregations and movement to and from these aggregations. Of particular interest is whether red drum exhibit spawning site fidelity by returning consistently to some specific location, such as where they were spawned (known as natal homing).

Large aggregations of red drum form every fall in nearshore Gulf waters to spawn (Figure 1). Spawning typically starts in mid-September and continues for about two months. Since 2009, biologists with the FWC’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute have used aerial surveys to assess the distribution and number of spawning aggregations, as well as target aggregations for acoustic tagging.

Big Red

make a small, shallow incision between the pectoral fins along the midline of the belly, taking care to avoid the egg-laden ovaries, which lie close to the body cavity wall (Figure 3a).
insert an acoustic tag into the abdomen (Figure 3b) and close the wound with one or two stitches made of absorbable material (Figure 3c).
take length measurements and insert a dart tag behind the dorsal fin before returning the fish to the water.

3a

3b

3c

Figure 4

During the tagging process, biologists take ovarian samples from females to determine whether fish were about to spawn that night or spawned the day before. A catheter (a small tube with a syringe at the end) is used to extract a few eggs. Later in the laboratory, biologists process the samples to make histology slides, which they examine under a microscope.

One of two types of acoustic tags, continuous or coded, is implanted into a fish. Continuous tags are used to follow an aggregation when reflected sun on the water would make an aggregation difficult to see from the air. Continuous tags constantly emit a signal, allowing biologists to immediately follow and track a released fish with a handheld receiver. The goal–dependent on the tagged fish remaining with the aggregation–is to track the aggregation to its spawning location around dusk.

To evaluate longer-term movements, biologists use coded tags that are passively detected by underwater receivers. Depending on research goals, biologists place 20 to 40 receivers at historic and recent aggregation locations off the mouth of Tampa Bay (Figure 4) to determine whether aggregations return to the same sites within the same spawning season and from year to year. Data from these fixed stations indicates site fidelity, while tracking data may reveal spawning locations. Although both tag types provide movement information, they differ in that continuous tags show both movement and direction over the short term (as long as biologists are able to track it), while coded tags show movement over the long term (up to two years of battery life) but without directionality.

Since 2009, biologists have worked on this methodology to test and improve sampling design as well as collect preliminary data. Results indicate that red drum survive the tag implantation, return to previously identified aggregation sites, and can move up to 16 kilometers (10 miles) a day. Using data collected from these pilot studies, researchers are developing larger-scale studies to estimate red drum spawning stock abundance and assess spawning site fidelity and potential mixing along the Florida west coast.

Gulf States Continue to Work Towards Regional Red Snapper Control

By David Rainer
Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
from The Fishing Wire

To borrow from an old song from the holidays that I was forced to endure for six years as a snaggle-toothed youngster, “All I want for Christmas are my two red snapper.”

It’s obviously not going to happen in a couple of weeks, but there is hope the situation will look much better in the near future.

Good catch of red snapper

Congressman Bradley Byrne, Alabama’s U.S. Representative from the First District, and Alabama Marine Resources Director Chris Blankenship think a plan to move red snapper management to regional control could become a reality.

“We’re optimistic going into the new year that we will have a legislative solution in the first half of the year, in time enough to save our red snapper season for next summer,” Congressman Byrne said. “What we did, in committee, is we amended the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the law that governs the fisheries of the United States.

“That language does a couple of things. First is it pushes all Gulf states’ (state waters) borders out to nine miles. Secondly, it relieves the Gulf states, when it comes to reef fish, from having to comply with the quotas established under Magnuson. Thirdly, it puts into the place of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), which currently does the stock assessment, the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission, which is different from the (Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management) Council.”

Congressman Byrne said he and many others he has spoken to believe the data collected by the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission (GSMFC) would be much more reliable than the data currently used by NOAA.

“We would get better science,” he said. “We would no longer use the scientists used by NOAA down in Miami. We would use regional scientists, using Dr. Bob Shipp as an example. I feel confident, as does Chris Blankenship, that we will get accurate science as to the health of the stock, which is very healthy, but also more reliable data on the size of the catch. Chris has good information that NOAA is overestimating the number of snapper we are catching. So if you underestimate the stock and overestimate the catch, that’s going to artificially skew the season to be much smaller than necessary.”

The data from Blankenship that Congressman Byrne referred to came from the Red Snapper Reporting System, which was implemented by Alabama Marine Resources for the 2014 season. NOAA estimated the catch off Alabama during the nine-day federal season at slightly more than 1 million pounds. The data collected through the mandatory Red Snapper Reporting System indicated Alabama anglers landed 418,000 pounds of red snapper.

Congressman Byrne invited fellow Congressman Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) on a red snapper fishing trip this past summer to give the new House Whip an idea of how outstanding the fishing is off the Alabama Gulf Coast.

“That was a great opportunity for Congressman Scalise to go out and see just how plentiful the stock is,” Congressman Byrne said. “That’s important because I will be on the Natural Resources Committee next year, so I can drive it through committee. But getting it up on the House floor for a vote is another thing. To have the Whip as an ardent advocate for it really does help. That’s one of the reasons I’m optimistic.

“You may not have your two red snapper for this Christmas, but you may have it for next Christmas. That’s what we’re working on. That’s our goal.”

Blankenship was invited by Congressman Byrne to testify before the House’s Natural Resources Committee recently in Washington.

“I’m glad Congressman Byrne and the Natural Resources Committee asked me to come to Washington to talk about what we’re doing in Alabama and what we’re doing on red snapper,” Blankenship said. “I think it went very well. We talked about our Red Snapper Reporting System and what we’re doing with the University of South Alabama to get information that goes into the stock assessment

“I think it was really eye-opening for some of the congressmen on that committee to see what a small state like Alabama is doing when the federal government is getting all this money to manage the fishery and doing such a poor job of it. I think it was very well-received.”

During those committee hearings, Congressman Byrne grilled Samuel Rauch from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) about the enormous NMFS budget of almost $900 million and how that expenditure failed to produce reliable fisheries data.

“The three things I stressed in my testimony started with what a great red snapper fishery we have off Alabama because of all the work we’ve done over several decades to build artificial reefs,” Blankenship said. “That laid the foundation on why that fishery is so economically important to our state.

“The second thing is we had to implement our own Red Snapper Reporting System because the information gathered by the federal government through its program we felt was incorrect.

“The third thing we talked about was the stock assessment and how NOAA, in their sampling protocol, basically excludes artificial reefs. So we talked about the work we’re doing off Alabama, that we’re paying for out of our own pockets, because NOAA is excluding the artificial reef zones.”

The obviously defensive Rauch said that some of the artificial-reef data has been used in the last stock assessment, although he admitted it was not a large factor.

Blankenship said that is exactly the problem.

Catching red snapper

“What NOAA did was down-weighted our information because, in their opinion, it wasn’t as valuable as the data they collected,” Blankenship said. “They didn’t use our information at the same level or with the same importance in the model. So we’re really striving in the next red snapper stock assessment that our work will be used the way it should be in the model.

“And I have to commend Congressman Byrne. He was very well-prepared. He’s been down several times to go out on the boat when the University of South Alabama puts the cameras down to see what’s on the bottom around the reefs. He was prepared to ask those hard questions and be able to show the fallacies in the red snapper management where we are now. I have no doubt that he will continue to bird-dog this issue in the next Congress in January.”

Blankenship said he fielded several questions during the hearing and meetings with congressmen after the hearings on how Alabama could manage the fishery.

“The things we are doing in Alabama show that we can manage this fishery regionally,” he said. “We don’t need to have it managed by the federal government. Some changes to federal law would give us the flexibility and opportunity to manage the fishery. We can handle it here in Alabama. I think it meant a lot for them to see that the states are willing to do that.”

A regional management plan is still working through the Gulf Council process as well. The next Gulf Council meeting is scheduled for Jan. 26-30, 2015, at the Grand Hotel in Point Clear, Ala.

Blankenship said he’s not sure snapper fishermen will see relief in 2015, but he does think 2016 holds a great deal of promise.

“If they start using our red snapper data and get an update on the stock assessment, I hope to see the season back up to between 30 and 60 days in 2016,” Blankenship said. “The stock is required to be rebuilt by 2032, and we’re meeting those goals much quicker than that.

“It’s not a stock that’s in trouble. The federal management has just not kept up with the growth of the stock. We need to break that paradigm and get us off this merry-go-round we’re on at the federal level.”

PHOTOS: (ADCNR) Rep. Bradley Byrne, right, of Alabama’s First District and Rep. Steve Scalise from Louisiana show off the red snapper catch after a trip out of Orange Beach this past summer. The Congressmen are working on legislation that would give the Gulf states regional control of the red snapper fishery and extend the boundary for state waters of each of the Gulf states to 9 miles.