Answer to Red Snapper Issue Already Exists
Chris Horton
from The Fishing Wire

I recently read an editorial that suggested recreational anglers should look to the North American Wildlife Conservation Model (North American Model) for answers to the red snapper management debacle in the Gulf of Mexico. While I’m grateful to see this highly successful and epochal model referenced in this unfortunately contentious debate over one of the South’s most iconic saltwater fish species, it became clear that the author, and probably most Americans, are not familiar with the “model” he referenced. Ironically, suggesting recreational anglers look to this model is perhaps the best argument yet for state-based management of our nation’s red snapper fishery, as well as all of our important marine recreational fisheries. States, in cooperation and with the support of recreational anglers and the sport fishing industry, have used this model to successfully manage our nation’s inland fish and wildlife resources for the benefit of all American’s for the last century.

The whole concept of the North American Model is built on the premise that all fish and wildlife are held in public trust and belong to the people – not designated individuals for personal gain. That is actually the first tenant in the North American Model, which has seven principal tenants in all.

However, it is in the second tenant where we find the most defining disparity between federal fisheries management and the North American Model. It states, “Prohibition on Commerce of Dead Wildlife – Commercial hunting and the sale of wildlife is prohibited to ensure the sustainability of wildlife populations.” Of course, that suggests that there be no commercial fishing, period. The model realizes that all you need to do to decimate fish and wildlife populations is provide an open market on what you can harvest from the wild, which is why market hunting was rendered illegal more than 100 years ago. Incidentally, inland game fish, with very few exceptions in certain waterbodies of the country, are prohibited from commercial sale as well. Perhaps that is why you never hear of an inland fishery being “overfished” as defined in the Magnuson-Stevens Act, and lends credence to Theodore Roosevelt’s quote, “In a civilized and cultivated country wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen.”

Although ending commercial fishing would do more for the sustainability of our marine fisheries resources than the Magnuson-Stevens Act has ever done, the majority of recreational anglers are not advocating for the elimination of commercial fishing, despite many in that industry attempting to muddy the water with claims to the contrary. We simply want a system of management that provides appropriate access to the resource.

Finally, in the same article, habitat restoration was also advised as something recreational anglers should pursue for the long-term sustainability of marine fish stocks. Fortunately, recreational anglers stepped up to carry that burden long ago, not the commercial fishermen or the environmental community. In addition to the license we buy just to go fishing, every time we purchase a package of hooks, a fishing rod, reel, lure, tackle box, depth finder, trolling motor, fuel for our fishing boat, etc., we gladly pay an excise tax that goes into a fund called the Sport Fishing and Boating Trust Fund. The majority of those funds go back to the states for fisheries conservation, angling and boating access and boating safety. However, 18.5% of that fund is dedicated to a program called the Coastal Wetlands Program. In 2015 alone, that 18.5% equates to around $112 million going to on the ground projects to conserve and restore coastal habitats. It’s part of the American System of Conservation Funding – paid for solely by anglers and boaters – and it’s the lifeblood of the North American Model.

Recreational anglers have indeed looked to the North American Model for answers. We helped develop it, we vigorously defend it and we gladly fund it – not just for today, but for generations of American’s to come. It is not recreational anglers who need to look to the North American Model for direction, but our federal fisheries managers.

Chris Horton
Midwestern States Director
Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation

Time for State Management of Red Snapper Fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico

Bob Shipp, PhD
from The Fishing Wire

Nice red snapper

In all likelihood there have never been as many Gulf Red Snapper in recorded history as there are today. In spite of these soaring populations, a broken system of federal management is precluding what would otherwise be a robust and sustainable economic driver to a regional economy in desperate need of a break.

Last year the recreational season was limited to 9 days in federal waters and this year’s season is 10 days. Just 10 days – with only a single weekend — for anglers in their own boats to catch perhaps the most popular offshore fish in the Gulf.

Conversely, the commercial sector can fish year-round and, under a similar plan approved by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council this year, the charter/for-hire sector will have a 44-day season in 2015.

The glaring inequity of those regulations has rankled everyone from regular anglers to congressmen, yet a solution has remained elusive. The road to this point is roughly 30 years in the making, and there is now virtually no escape from it under federal management.

I served on the Gulf Council for 18 years and encountered countless elected officials in Washington, D.C., and in the Gulf states wrestling mightily over the red snapper conundrum, but all ran into insurmountable roadblocks under the federal system. This year, recognizing that a system that produces results like what we are seeing today is unacceptable, the state fishery management agencies from all five Gulf states did something extraordinary – they came together to produce a viable way out of this mess.

Under a plan unveiled in March, the states have offered to take over management of the red snapper fishery and have outlined exactly how such management would be carried out. Their plan recognizes that there are regional populations of snapper that are fished differently according to local tradition and practice, and would have the flexibility to manage them in different ways.

For example, off Alabama our research indicates we could have a six-month season with a two-snapper bag limit without making a dent in the population. This is due to our extensive artificial reef program. Such flexibility is impossible under federal management, which tends to treat red snapper as one stock, fished one way.

The state fishery management agencies all have seats on the Gulf Council and know that snapper management is at a dead-end under the current system. Responsible for commercial and recreational fisheries in their state waters, they know there are far more efficient and equitable ways to manage this fishery. The system has the same goals as federal management, but the means to reach those ends recognize that one size does not fit all.

The individual Gulf states all know how to provide access to their citizens while managing for conservation of wildlife resources, but rarely do they all agree on anything. The significance of their cooperation here cannot be over-estimated.

Faced with an untenable situation, they have come together to offer the one path out of the manufactured mess of federal management. I encourage Congress to take it.

West Coast Sardine Decline: Science vs. Politics

Sardine baitfish and food fish

By D.B. Pleschner, Guest commentary
from The Fishing Wire

The federal Pacific Fishery Management Council has shut down the remainder of the current sardine season and has canceled the 2015-16 fishing season altogether. Fishermen supported this action.

Why the closure? According to environmental groups like Oceana, it was to stop overfishing and save starving sea lions deprived of essential sardines.

Neither reason is true, but many in the media have trumpeted this hyperbole put forth by groups whose political agenda is to shut down fishing completely.

The scientific facts present a different picture: the sardine population is not overfished. And sea lion mortality has not been caused by overfishing sardines.

As Dr. Ray Hilborn, professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington and one of the most respected experts on marine fishery population dynamics in the world, recently noted, “Even if there had been no fishing, the decline in California’s sardines would have been almost exactly the same.” Dr. Richard Parrish, another esteemed scientist with deep knowledge of sardines and ocean cycles, outlined how natural mortality and predation consume five times more sardines than the fishery harvests.

The truth is that the marine environment plays the major role in determining the size of the sardine stock and its effect on the ecosystem.

Dr. Kevin Hill, a fisheries scientist with the Southwest Fisheries Science Center who leads West Coast sardine stock assessments noted that, “Pacific sardines are known for wide swings in their population: the small, highly productive species multiplies quickly in good conditions and can decline sharply at other times, even in the absence of fishing. You can have the best harvest controls in the world, but you’re not going to prevent the population from declining when ocean conditions change in an unfavorable way.”

That’s why the sardine harvest control rule — developed in part by Parrish for the management plan in place since 2000 — automatically regulates the sardine fishery both by reducing the fishing quota and reducing the harvest rate as the stock declines. And it shuts down the fishery if the biomass falls below 150,000 metric tons.

The 2015 sardine population is estimated to be 97,000 metric tons, a worst-case projection, and the control rule did exactly what it was designed to do — it closed the fishery after a series of poor recruitment years.

The sardine fishery would have been shut down regardless of the frenetic lobbying of groups like Oceana. The goal of the policy is to keep at least 75 percent of the sardine population in the ocean.

Regarding the sea lion problem, the El Niño cycle that we’re experiencing is a major reason for increased pup mortality, not the lack of sardines. Sardines comprise a minor portion of sea lions’ diet. According to NMFS scientist Mark Lowry, who has studied sea lion scat for 30 years, sardines number eighth on the list of typical sea lion dietary preferences.

The sea lion population has increased 5 percent a year even without sardines.

Pup counts dipped during the 2003 El Niño also, and we’re experiencing another El Niño event now. Yet the sea lion population has grown by 600 percent since the mid-1970s; they now hog docks and sink boats from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest.

Hardworking fishermen take pride in the precautionary fishery management that’s been in place for more than a decade, and they resent groups who demonize them for “overfishing.” It’s an unjust and erroneous accusation leveled at people trying to make an honest living, provide a service to the public and do the right thing for the environment.

The fact is that sardines are critically important to California’s historic fishing industry as well as to the Golden State. The “wetfish” industry fishes on a complex of coastal pelagic species also including mackerels, anchovy and market squid, but sardines are an important part of this complex. The industry produces on average 80 percent of total fishery landings statewide and close to 40 percent of dockside value.

Thankfully the Pacific Fishery Management Council recognized the need to maintain a small harvest of sardines caught incidentally in other CPS fisheries. A total prohibition on sardine fishing would curtail California’s wetfish industry and seriously harm numerous harbors, including Monterey, as well as the state’s fishing economy.

D.B. Pleschner is executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, a nonprofit dedicated to research and to promote sustainable Wetfish resources.

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.”