Although NMFS never provided any reason for keeping the 2025
season open despite such a massive payback requirement, rumors from generally
reliable sources suggested that the cause didn’t arise within NMFS, but higher
up in the Department of Commerce hierarchy, where someone apparently convinced
an influential bureaucrat that recreational fishermen needed something to fish
for, the amberjack population wasn’t in bad shape (although the
most recent stock assessment found it to still be overfished), and that the
season could remain open without doing serious harm.
As noted in my recent piece, the Gulf Fishery Management
Council disagreed, and wrote a letter to NMFS decrying its failure to enforce
the provisions of the management plan.
That letter, and other public comment in favor of closing the season,
apparently convinced the agency (or someone higher up in the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration or Commerce) to at least close the season early.
Most states are conforming their seasons to the federal
action, and shutting down as well. Florida recently shut down its season by
executive order, and will keep its season closed through August 31, 2026.
“NOAA is closing the federal waters of the Gulf of America to
Greater Amberjack recreational harvest at 12:01 a.m., local time, Saturday
September 27, 2025.
“NOAA states that the 2024/2025 Gulf greater amberjack
recreational landings data indicate 882,451 lb were harvested, 478,451 lb greater
than the 2024/2025 annual catch limit of 404,000 lb.
“Recreational harvest of Greater Amberjack in Louisiana state
waters (out to 9 nautical miles) will remain open until October 31.
“’Prior to state management of Red Snapper, anglers were
faced with shortened seasons and reduced access. This untimely closure of federal waters for
Greater Amberjack is another prime example of the need for state management using
state data programs,’ said [Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries]
Secretary Tyler Bosworth.
“Governor Jeff Landry and Louisiana Department of Wildlife
and Fisheries (LDWF) Secretary Tyler Bosworth sent a letter to NOAA Fisheries
earlier this month, requesting that management of Greater Amberjack be
transferred to the state level. Seasonal
landings at the state management level would be conducted through LDFW’s more
precise recreational saltwater landings data collection program, LA Creel. The use of LA Creel has been crucial in
developing state management of Louisiana’s recreational Red Snapper
season. The near real-time data provides
Louisiana the ability to set flexible fishing seasons that allow anglers to
take full advantage of available fishery resources. State management of Greater Amberjack would
provide more flexibility in setting seasons and regulations, allowing greater
ability to tailor state-specific management.
[emphasis in original]”
Anyone reading that, who can also recall the red snapper
debates of a dozen or so years ago, can only think, “Here we go again.”
The red snapper situation was similar in many respects.
Anglers were grossly overfishing their annual catch limit (a
meaningful annual catch target had not yet been put in place). Paybacks were an annual occurrence—although
red snapper overages never exceeded a year’s ACL—and seasons were shortened in
an effort to keep the recreational landings within the catch limit.
Anglers weren’t happy with the situation, and convinced
state fisheries managers to ignore the federal red snapper season and allow
longer seasons in state waters, where federal recreational regulations did not
apply to anyone except federally permitted party and charter boats. So when
federal waters closed, anglers could still land red snapper that were allegedly
caught within state waters (although it was an open secret that plenty of
anglers, knowing that federal law enforcement resources were stretched very
thin, often ventured out past the state line).
The longer state seasons assured that recreational fishermen
would chronically exceed their annual catch limit. And because Gulf red snapper—just like Gulf greater
amberjack—are managed on a Gulf-wide basis, with a single catch limit in force
from southwest Florida around to the Rio Grande, if more red snapper were being
caught in state waters, the federal season would have to be shortened in order
to compensate for those higher landings.
At one point, the federal season only lasted three days.
And that might have been fine, as far as it went, if
everyone was honest and aboveboard about what the problem was and why it
existed. But that would be asking too
much, as the various recreational fishing industry and angling rights
organizations put their own spin on the situation. Instead of placing the blame where it belonged,
on the state fishery managers who decided to take their states out of
compliance with the federal red snapper regulations—and on themselves, who encouraged
the state managers to do so—they blamed federal fisheries managers and the
federal management system for imposing unnecessarily short seasons, while
holding up the state managers, and the longer state seasons, as paragons of the
management system, who could provide more “access”—their euphemism for more
dead fish in anglers’ coolers—for the recreational sector.
Thus began the drive to take the authority to manage the
recreational red snapper fishery away from federal
fisheries managers, who were bound by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation
and Management Act to base their decisions on the best available scientific
information, and hand it over to state managers who were able to base their
decisions on whatever political considerations were most important at the time,
regardless of what the scientists advised.
Louisiana’s latest action certainly makes it appear that the
same game will play out with Gulf amberjack.
Although there’s little hard information out there, it’s hard
not to suspect that the same people who drove the effort to take red snapper
away from federal managers are behind the effort to hand amberjack management
to the states. The Louisiana release
even uses similar language to that used by the anglers’ rights crowd the last
time around, talking about the superiority of state recreational data programs
compared to the Marine Recreational Information Program used by NMFS.
But when we look at the red snapper data provided by MRIP,
and compare it to that used by LA Creel, we don’t find a lot of
difference. In
2022, NMFS published regulations intended to calibrate state recreational data
programs so that their estimates could be compared to one another and to
estimates produced by MRIP. It turned
out that the MRIP and LA Creel red snapper estimates were almost identical,
although LA Creel landings estimates were just slightly higher. Thus, Louisiana’s claim that LA Creel is “more
precise” than MRIP lacks objective support.
What LA Creel can do is provide landings estimates somewhat
sooner than MRIP can. But when we
already know that a stock is overfished, and that required paybacks are large
enough to cancel out the entire 2025 fishing season, the speed with which
estimates can be produced is completely irrelevant.
In the end, the only relevant issue is the fact that,
pursuant to the fishery management plan governing greater amberjack in the Gulf
of Mexico, anglers exceeded their annual catch limit so badly in 2024 that they
were required to pay back 478,451 pounds in 2024, an amount well in excess of
their 404,000 pound annual catch target.
Thus, Louisiana is completely unjustified in calling the September
shutdown of the 2025 recreational amberjack season in federal waters an “untimely
closure,” blaming such closure on federal fisheries data, and keeping the state
season open through October 31 when, in reality, the 2025 recreational amberjack
season should never have been opened at all.
The sad reality is that, in keeping its state waters
amberjack season open, Louisiana is setting the stage for the same sort of
debacle that occurred with red snapper a decade ago.
Louisiana anglers will continue to catch amberjack through
October 31, 2025. Since the 2025 annual
catch limit was already landed—in 2024—those Louisiana amberjack will constitute
an overage for the 2025 season, which will have to be paid back in 2026,
resulting in a shortened 2026 Gulf amberjack season. Anglers, almost certainly encouraged by the
various anglers’ rights organizations, will complain that federal managers are
unreasonably shortening—perhaps, if enough Louisiana amberjack are combined
with those landed during the abbreviated 2025 federal season, even completely
closing—the 2026 recreational season, at which point the various organizations
will begin to issue shrill press releases and point their fingers at federal
managers, who were only following the dictates of the fishery management plan,
and blame them for preventing anglers from fishing, while never blaming, and
most likely lauding, the real culprits behind the shortened season, the
Louisiana state managers who, in failing to close the state waters season, caused
the overage to balloon.
At that point, the same angling industry, boating industry,
and anglers’ rights groups that excoriated NMFS over red snapper management will
again bludgeon the agency of its management of Gulf amberjack, thus furthering
their goal of weakening the federal fisheries management system and moving the management
of important recreational species to the states, where politics, rather than
science, governs management outcomes.
Thus, by failing to close its state waters season to prevent
further excess landings, Louisiana has committed a significant act of sabotage
against both federal amberjack management and the federal fishery management
system itself.
It is very hard to believe that Louisiana wasn’t aware of
that fact when it chose not to close its amberjack season.
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