Feds Revised Plan Derails Snapper Management

Only two years after letting the Gulf states create their own recreational-data collection systems to better manage red snapper, and certifying those state programs, NOAA Fisheries intends to force the states to go back to using the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP), the flawed federal data system that caused significant turmoil for years.

In recent communications to the states, NOAA Fisheries indicated that it will adjust state harvest data to be more in line with the MRIP, and show that Texas, Alabama and Mississippi have overfished their quotas by significant margins. As a result, private-boat recreational anglers in Alabama would likely not have a red snapper season in federal waters for the next one to two years, and Mississippi anglers would be shut down for the next three years.

Meanwhile, Texas, which sent data to the feds 39 times over the past two and a half years, was notified that NOAA Fisheries, by applying a different length-toweight conversion than the one Texas uses, had determined Texas was overfishing its quota. Instead of working through the new formula going forward, the agency announced its intent to take the overage out of future seasons, causing Texas anglers to face a 2021 season lasting just a couple of days.

More than a dozen Gulf Coast congressmen signed a letter urging U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to prevent any action on the calibration of state harvest data at least until the Great Red Snapper Count— an intensive two-year stock assessment authorized and funded by Congress—is completed. The letter also asks Ross to use his authority to declare the data from the Gulf states as the best available science for future management decisions.