February 20, 2015 — The Red Snapper Regulatory Reform Act is back on the table in the U.S. Congress.
Its sponsor, U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne (AL-01) and long-time observers of management of the popular reef fish in the Gulf of Mexico say its passage is necessary to open the fishery to alternatives to the current restrictive quota system as created under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.
This act is the umbrella under which all fisheries within federal water are managed. The act's authorization expired in 2013 and congress took up its reauthorization last year.
"I have made it a top priority to give more control to Gulf states and provide real relief to our red snapper fishermen," Byrne said. "The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service has failed to adequately account for the size and health of the red snapper stock in the Gulf of Mexico. They have continued to use outdated and ineffective methods to both sample for Red Snapper and measure how many fish are being caught once the season begins, and they have frankly lost all credibility.
"On the other side, individual Gulf states and public universities, like the University of South Alabama, have used new, innovative methods to track the size of the red snapper stock, and they are more than capable of handling the stock assessment and data collection responsibilities themselves.
Byrne introduced a similar bill last fall that passed out of the House Natural Resources Committee. The bill's language was then added into Magnuson-Stevens Act draft reauthorization language approved by the House.
The 113th Congress ended before the act was taken up by the full Senate, requiring Byrne to reintroduce his bill.