3-day snapper season just doesn’t add up
Texas’ long-suffering offshore anglers will suffer even more this year as they see their opportunity to catch and keep red snapper, traditionally the most popular target of recreational anglers fishing the Gulf of Mexico, from federally controlled waters shrink to a mere three days.
Last week, federal fisheries officials announced the 2017 recreational red snapper fishing season for anglers in private boats on federally controlled waters of the Gulf would last 72 hours — from 12:01 a.m. June 1 until 12:01 a.m. June 4. It will be the briefest federal-waters snapper season privateboat anglers have faced, down from the nine- to 11-day seasons they have endured the last couple of years and more that six months shorter than the 194-day season they saw just a decade ago.
The federal edict is the latest in a decades-long, congressionally mandated program to rebuild the Gulf ’s red snapper stock after decades of unrestricted commercial and recreational fishing combined with losses of juvenile snapper attributed to shrimp trawl by-catch that saw the snapper population tumble. The population hit its nadir in 1988 and has been expanding under a combination of regulations that include setting annual catch quotas for commercial and recreation fishers, conservative limits on recreational anglers’ harvest of snapper and imposing open/closed seasons for recreation take of the fish. State anglers hit hard
A case can be made that those regulations have had a disproportional effect on Texas offshore anglers.
Until barely 20 years ago, Texas’ offshore anglers annually accounted for one of every four or five red snapper landed by recreational fishers dropping their lines off the five states bordering the Gulf of Mexico.
This year, they will be lucky to land one of every 20.
Since 1995, the percentage of the annual catch of red snapper from Gulf states taken by Texas recreational anglers has plummeted from 20 to 25 percent to 10 percent or less. Last year, Texas recreational anglers landed about 3 percent of snapper boxed by folks fishing from privately owned vessels, according to data used to estimate gulfwide snapper catches. No other state saw fewer red snapper taken.
It is not that red snapper living in Gulf waters off Texas have remained depressed over the last two decades. Just the opposite. Red snapper in the western Gulf of Mexico — the reach between the mouth of the Mississippi River and the U.S./Mexico border — have boomed. Estimates from the most recent assessment of the gulfwide red snapper stock indicates the biomass — the total weight — of snapper swimming in the western Gulf is nearly three times what it was in 1997. Gulfwide, the biomass of red snapper in 2013 was triple what it was in 1997 and the highest since 1968. Two-thirds of those fish are in the western Gulf.
But the Gulf ’s red snapper are managed as a single stock under the Magnuson-Stevens Act — a federal law that created regional fisheries management councils charged with developing plans and regulations that would prevent over-fishing and rebuild depleted fish stocks. And that has worked to Texas’ disadvantage.
The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, made up of 17 members that include the directors of each Gulf states’ fisheries agency, 11 private citizens appointed by their governors and picked to represent commercial and recreation fishing interests, and the regional administrator of the NOAA Fisheries service, develop those management plans and recommend regulations. The federal fisheries service has final authority over adoption of the proposals and ultimately sets fishing regulations, including seasons and bag limits.
Under federal rules, the red snapper fishery is managed under an annual quota system designed to limit harvest of red snapper to a level where the fishery can continue to rebuild at a rate data indicate it will reach a target population. That annual quota is divided between commercial and recreational fishers, with commercials allocated 51 percent of the quota and 49 percent to recreational. Charters affect the mix
The recreational quota has been further divided between anglers fishing from private boats and those fishing from for-hire vessels operated under federal permits allowing them to take customers fishing for federally regulated species. The tens of thousands of private-boat anglers fishing the Gulf are allocated at 57.7 percent of the annual recreational quota, with the 1,200 for-hire charter vessels holding federal permits allocated at 42.3 percent of the quota.
Federal fisheries officials set the recreational season length based on how many days data indicate it will take anglers to land the annual quota.
It also takes into account any fish landed by anglers fishing in state waters where state regulations allow landing of red snapper outside the federal season. And that is a big reason this year’s federal-water snapper season is just three days.
As federal regulators squeezed the recreational season length, Gulf states began opening their state waters to red snapper fishing outside the federal season.
Texas always has allowed year-round snapper fishing in its state waters, which extend 9 nautical miles offshore. But the snapper fishery in these “state waters” is very limited. Red snapper are a deep-water fish, and most of Texas’ waters are too shallow to hold anything but modest numbers of the fish. The number of red snapper caught from Texas state waters is small.
That is not the case in some other Gulf states where deep water is closer to shore. Over the last few years, other Gulf states have opened snapper seasons in waters under their jurisdiction outside the federal season. This year, every Gulf state has a statewater snapper season, with seasons length ranging from 67 days to Texas’ 365 days.
Federal fisheries officials estimated that 81 percent of the 2017 recreational quota of red snapper will be caught from state waters. And that annual quota is less this year than in 2016 because, according to the data used to gauge harvest, recreational anglers exceeded their annual quota during 2016’s 11-day season. That “overage” — estimated at almost 130,000 pounds — has been subtracted from this year’s allowable catch.
The result is the annual gulfwide quota for private anglers set at a little more than 3 million pounds. Anglers fishing on for-hire vessels — charter boats — have a quota of 2.278 million pounds. Factoring in the predicted snapper catches from state waters, federal officials figured it would take just three days of fishing in federal waters to reach that private-boat quota. The for-hire sector will have a 49-day season — June 1 through July 19, which is three days more than in 2016.
Most of those snapper will be caught somewhere other than off Texas. Texas catches dwindle
Two decades ago, recreational snapper landings were evenly divided between the eastern and western halves of the Gulf. That has dramatically changed. Over the last few years, about 80 percent of the recreational snapper landings have come from two states in the eastern Gulf — Florida and Alabama. Last year, according to harvest data used by NOAA, private anglers in those two states landed 3.7 million pounds of snapper. Private-boat anglers in Texas landed only about 166,000 pounds. Mississippi’s private-boat anglers landed twice that amount.
Despite the western Gulf holding two-thirds of the snapper, recreational anglers there took just 20 percent of the annual catch, with most of that off Louisiana.
Is it any wonder Texas’ offshore anglers — all Gulf recreational anglers and almost all Gulf state’s fisheries managers, really — are frustrated or downright furious at what they see as an illogical, byzantine system that denies them access to a public resource that is healthy and certainly could be better utilized?
There are pushes to revamp the snapper management system.
Managing snapper stocks in the eastern and western Gulf as separate, distinct populations is one thought. Another is to let each Gulf state manage the snapper fishery off its coast. Both would take, quite literally, an act of Congress to accomplish. And legislators from Gulf states have introduced such proposals and held hearings decrying the complete Gordian knot that red snapper management has become. Decision hard to take
But nothing is going to change in time to save Texas’ recreational anglers from the latest crippling blow of a three-day, federalwaters snapper season.
“This is terribly unfortunate news for the Texas coast and its local communities and economies, much less the thousands of passionate recreational fishermen who have demonstrated steadfast support and financial contributions for fisheries management and conservation over the years,” Carter Smith, executive director of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said of NOAA’s decision on the 2017 recreational snapper season.
“If anglers are outraged, they should be,” Smith said in a statement. “It remains impossible to fathom, much less to explain, how we could continue to have record-high stock assessments of red snapper, yet couple that with recordlow opportunities for anglers to fish in Gulf waters. Candidly, there is no more blood left in the turnip to take from the recreational fishermen within the current management structure of the Gulf Council.”