The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is giving anglers the opportunity to directly provide data and improve the management of red snapper in the South Atlantic Ocean.
With an exempted fishing permit, you can fish for red snapper and keep them outside of the 1-day federal season. But here’s the catch, only a limited number of anglers can get one.
The FWC recognizes that a 24-hour Atlantic Red Snapper season is disappointing. That’s why they want to recruit recreational anglers to collect better data on snapper fishery. Up to 200 people will be selected by lottery every 3 months for the opportunity.
FWC Federal Fisheries Section Leader CJ Sweetman said about 1,600 exempted fishing permits will be issued to anglers this year. Locally, 800 of those permits will be awarded to the “Hot Spot Fleet” which stretches from the Florida-Georgia line south to Cape Canaveral.
“The most recent federal stock assessment for Atlantic red snapper classified as undergoing overfishing. But the stock assessment also showed that there’s near record abundance of red snapper, which is kind of what everyone sees on the water,” Sweetman said.
EFPs allow harvest for certain fish and wildlife prohibited under current federal regulation, like red snapper.
Having this permit, will allow anglers to give better data to FWC so that FWC can take that to the council and hopefully get it to open back up a longer season.
The three EFP projects are happening simultaneously over the next 12 months from August 2024 through July 2025. They will be broken up into four, three-month quarters.
• Quarter 1: August 2024 to October 2024
• Quarter 2: November 2024 to January 2025
• Quarter 3: February 2025 to April 2025
• Quarter 4: May 2025 to July 2025
Each quarter’s application period will open the month before.
To apply for an EFP, log in or create an account with Go Outdoors Florida and select the project you want to collaborate with the FWC on. In Northeast Florida, you’ll want to select the “Hot Spot Fleet.”
You don’t have to own a boat to apply for an exempted fishing permit.