June 26, 2020 — The darkest days are seemingly in the past for red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.
A restoration of the fishery, decades in the making, has blossomed into one of the most recent success stories in conservation.
“We have more snapper now than in anyone’s lifetime,” said Greg Stunz, director of the Harte Research Institute’s Sportfish Center at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.
“And they’re big snapper.”
A federal plan to rebuild the fishery by 2032 is well ahead of schedule.
The goal is to increase the spawning potential to 26 percent, which means the stock would produce about a quarter of the eggs that an unfished population would. The estimated spawning biomass of red snapper in the Gulf is currently about 20 percent, a long climb from the sub-2 percent low mark of 1990.