February 8, 2014 — The management of red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico has been one of the most contentious fisheries issues around, and the problems are not overnight developments. They have been brewing for more than 30 years. In 1979, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council first determined that red snapper stocks were overfished. From 1980 to 1984, a precipitous 87 percent drop in the recreational catch of red snapper prompted the Gulf council to create its Reef Fish Management Plan. The plan called for intense restrictions on commercial and recreational catches, coupled with a new-found realization that a significant portion of juvenile red snapper mortality was caused by shrimp trawls.
Unfortunately for recreational anglers, federal managers used catch history from the mid-1980s, when the stock was at or near its lowest point, to set the allocation between the commercial and recreational sectors at 51 percent commercial/49 percent recreational. And the allocation has stayed there ever since.
Using simple past catch history to determine the allocation of a fishery is perhaps the worst possible method, but using those particular years as the basis for an allocation was, and is, acutely unfair to the recreational angling sector.
Recreational anglers are opportunistic creatures by nature. If the fish are there, we'll catch them; if the fish aren't there, we won't. Conversely, a commercial fisherman looking for a payday will scour the ocean looking for harvest. By using a time period when the stock was historically depressed, and therefore harder to find, you could argue that the 51 percent awarded to the commercial harvesters is the all-time high-water mark for that sector, while 49 percent would be the low-water mark for recreational anglers.
Compounding the flaws associated with the original allocation, NOAA Fisheries implemented a catch share program for the commercial sector in 2007. That program literally gave a public resource – red snapper – to roughly 1,800 commercial boats for free, a gift recently valued by one Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council member at more than $79 million initially. Each boat in the fishery received a specific amount of fish as its own based on that boat's past catch history. Shareholders were allowed to buy and sell shares from other shareholders and today less than 400 commercial boats "own" 51 percent of all the red snapper harvested in the Gulf of Mexico.
David Cresson is CEO of Coastal Conservation Association, Louisiana
Read the full opinion piece at The Times-Picayune