Red Snapper Mess

Recent reports say that recreational fishermen once again surpassed their annual quota for red snapper. As a result next year's season may be even shorter and the hoped for fall season is out of the question.


The recovery of red snapper to its current state is a great success story but the management bureaucracy is not equipped to deal with its own good work. Among the many problems here are two that are causing the disconnect between managers and fishermen:
1. The stock assessment process is slow and always behind what is really happening with the the red snapper population. This was true when the population was declining (things got worse because the assessments were not only poor but behind the times) and is true now when the population is increasing. The population is way ahead of the assessment  because not only is the official assessment a couple of years old now but the data used in the assessment is even older. A stock assessment takes the available data up to a certain point in time and then a lot of time is spent analyzing the data and going through the Council process. By the time the Council takes action the assessment is already old news. Here is a small example. Bycatch of red snapper by shrimp nets is one of many important factors in the assessment model. During the last assessment it was well known that shrimping effort had declined due to Katrina and economic conditions in the industry but the latest data showing that decline and the subsequent reduction in bycatch) were not put in the assessment because the information came after that certain point in time. As a result the model projects a recovery rate lower than reality. There are many other examples of untimely data.
2. There is the problem of numbers of fish and pounds of fish. Recreational fishermen are limited in the number of fish they catch but the quota is in pounds. Because of successful management, the fish keep getting bigger which means it takes fewer fish to reach the weight quota. Weight quotas work well for traditional commercial fisheries but not so good for recreational. But there is a dilemma. While many would argue  that we should be concerned about the numbers of fish (the more the better) the pounds are important when we think about the demographics of the population. Lets imagine that the Gulf can support 25 million pounds of red snapper. If all 25 million pound were concentrated in fish less than 16 inches we anglers would be very unhappy  and so would the managers. A healthy, productive population needs a wide size range of fish. Think of size as a substitute for age. We need a lot of smaller, younger fish to replace larger older fish as they die or are caught. We also need a good number of larger, older fish because they are best producers of younger fish. So neither the number of fish caught nor total weight of fish caught tell us much about the population structure. Managers have been extremely poor in communicating this part of the management problem to fishermen. Instead they let the public focus on the weight quota and leave us to wonder why aren't the number of fish important. Its the population structure that counts.