Last month, happy days were here again for recreational anglers on the Atlantic coast of the southern United States.
Even though it was short lived, there was a red snapper season for two weekends in August. The South Atlantic Marine Fisheries Council (SAMFC) and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) control fisheries in South Atlantic federal waters. In 2010, they shut down the harvest of red snapper based on a 2008 population assessment that determined red snapper were overfished and undergoing overfishing.
Since 2010, there have been three other short seasons and a limited-harvest season for anglers to keep red snapper. The seasons consisted of three-day weekends for about 40 days total of red snapper fishing since 2010.
So how did it go this season? Well, if you judge it by the fact that tackle shops were running out of tackle, bait and ice; that boat ramps were over-crowded with anglers; that local charters were booked solid, well the answer to the question is: the season went very well. There is a huge positive economic impact when red snapper harvest is allowed. In Florida alone, the total economic impact of recreational fishing exceeds 8 billion dollars a year.
So, how do we get a longer season for the South Atlantic? The length of a season is based on the amount of fish available to be caught while leaving enough to sustain populations in the future. It’s based on stock assessments. One of the problems with stock assessments is getting accurate data. One solution could be to charge an additional license fee to anglers who want to fish for offshore reef fish. Give them a Reef Fish endorsement on their regular fishing license. This would give the SAMFC and NOAA more accurate data from a pool of anglers who actually fish for red snapper.
Red Snapper Limit and Other Ideas
Here are a couple of other ideas that have been circulating.
1) Distribute tags to reef fish-permitted anglers. Catch a fish, tag that fish and keep it. When an angler runs out of tags, he’s done keeping red snapper for the season. This option would spread angling effort over a longer season and relieve the rodeo aspect of a short season.
2) Have a slot size for red snapper. It’s worked for redfish and snook, so why not for red snapper? An angler could only keep fish within a determined slot size. Fish longer or shorter than that slot would be released immediately. The red snapper limit could be one fish per day, per angler. Small fish would remain in the population to grow into the slot, and larger fish would be protected to make more small fish. This option would keep anglers on the water year-round. Think of the economic impact.
This years’ red snapper season on the east coast was wonderful! There were boats full of anglers everywhere. Some caught big fish. Others caught small fish. Some, well they had a great time trying. If all those boats and anglers ever band together, that’s when fishing for red snapper will truly return.
By Roger Walker