| NOAA Fisheries Service is seeking public comment on a proposed rule that would adjust the commercial and recreational red snapper quotas in the Gulf of Mexico from 3.542 and 3.403 million pounds (MP) to 3.66 and 3.525 MPin 2011, respectively. A recent red snapper assessment update projected overfishing (rate of removal is too high) ended in 2009, and therefore, the total allowable catch can be increased from the existing 6.945 MP to 7.185 MP. This action was evaluated in a regulatory amendment to the Fishery Management Plan for the Reef Fish Resources of the Gulf of Mexico. The proposed rule publishes in the Federal Register on Feb. 22, 2011, with the comment period ending March 24, 2011.
The red snapper management saga is a long and dramatic one. The first Fisheries Management Plan applied to red snapper in the Gulf was completed in 1981; it described rapidly declining commercial and recreational harvests of red snapper. A 13-inch minimum size limit was the first GOM regulation in 1984. Since then, there have been more than 35 amendments to the federal FMP that includes red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico. In 1988, the first red snapper stock assessment showed that the species was both overfished and undergoing overfishing. That designation required action from both the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and NOAA Fisheries to develop a plan to both limit harvest and rebuild the population. The assessment concluded that fishing mortality (commercial and recreational harvest, plus bycatch mortality) needed to be cut by 75 percent in order to recover the species by 2000. The Gulf Council, believing that the impacts to fishers from a 75 percent cut would be too severe, subsequently opted for measures that would reduce mortality by 20 percent, thus postponing additional restrictions to the future while making recovery of the red snapper in a timely fashion much less likely. Nearly two decades after the first restrictions were put in place; this will be the first increase in harvest, if approved.
For additional information concerning red snapper biology and life history, current and past management of the red snapper fishery, reasons for management and who manages the fishery visit the Louisiana Sea Grant Fisheries website at: www.seagrantfish.lsu.edu/faqs/redsnapper/management.htm#when .
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