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NOAA Fisheries released Amendment 59 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery

NOAA Fisheries released Amendment 59 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic last week, and among other things, the Amendment would prohibit bottom fishing for 55 species, including red snapper, off much of the Florida Atlantic coast for three months of the year. This proposed Secretarial Amendment was prepared by NOAA Fisheries as part of a legal settlement that requires the agency to take action to end supposed overfishing of red snapper in the South Atlantic primarily by recreational discards.

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council has long been frustrated by the lack of reliable information both on recreational fishing effort and on the present status of the red snapper population in the South Atlantic (read more at Feds Poised to Close Door on Bottom Angling in the South Atlantic). NOAA has essentially asked anglers and the Council to accept dramatic management action for a wildly expanding red snapper population based on information that managers know to be incorrect and/or highly uncertain. NOAA has now published a secretarial amendment that circumvents the fishery management process entirely and uses information from a stock assessment update that the Council has not even seen, much less reviewed.

South Atlantic red snapper has evolved into one of the most frustrating and exasperating fishery management debacles in the country. Regardless of what is in the Secretarial Amendment, the fact that it has come to this is a very telling statement on the state of federal fisheries management. It is failing. If NOAA has to resort to an end-run around the Council because rational people can’t bring themselves to make decisions on the information NOAA is providing, the system is failing. If managers can’t get basic stock assessment information in a timely fashion, the system is failing. If there is no trust between anglers and the federal management system, the system is failing.

The following are some of the proposals in the Secretarial Amendment (Amendment 59):

Raising the Recreational Annual Catch Limit
For many years, the recreational annual catch limit has been 29,656 red snapper. NOAA has apparently completed a remarkably fast, remarkably stealth update assessment – SEDAR 73 – with information through 2024 that would raise the recreational annual catch limit to 85,000 fish. The South Atlantic Council has been asking for this exact type of assessment update for years to no avail and it will be interesting to learn how NOAA was able to finally produce it in time to support its secretarial amendment.

Change in the fishing season

The current fishing year for South Atlantic red snapper is January 1 through December 31. The proposed rule would change the recreational and commercial fishing season to May 1 through April 30. The current recreational season has been weekends only, with weekends defined as Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The proposed rule redefines weekends to just Saturday and Sunday. For the 2025-2026 fishing year, this proposed rule would change the start of the recreational fishing season to begin on the second Saturday in July.

Snapper-Grouper Discard Reduction Season

From December 1 through the end of February, private recreational or for-hire fisherman “would not be allowed to fish for, harvest, or possess a species in the South Atlantic snapper-grouper fishery management unit (FMU) from the South Atlantic EEZ that were harvested with hook-and-line fishing gear.” There are 55 species in the snapper-grouper management complex and so this is in effect a three-month bottom closure. It would be in place during that time and from the Florida/Georgia state border to Cape Canaveral, Florida. NOAA estimates this would reduce recreational discards by 24 percent.

Season Length

NOAA projects that these measures would increase the recreational fishing season length from 1-2 days to 5-9 days.

Amendment 59 was posted to the Federal Register on Friday, Jan. 10 and the public has 60 days to provide comment. We are hopeful that the State of Florida will engage on this matter, and perhaps the new Administration as well. We will keep everyone as informed as possible.

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