MAGICAL THINKING: SOUTH ATLANTIC RED SNAPPER EFPS

 

Managing the red snapper fishery, and particularly the recreational red snapper fishery, in the South Atlantic has proved to be one of the most intransigent challenges for East Coast fisheries managers.

It’s not because the fish are scarce.

While that was a problem once, with the stock declining to just three percent of its spawning potential in 2009, subsequent efforts have rebuilt it to the point where it is no longer overfished, and no longer experiencing overfishing. 

But that didn’t solve the biggest problem facing red snapper managers.  Red snapper have become abundant enough that a lot of them are being caught by anglers fishing for other varieties of bottom fish when the red snapper season is closed, and those snapper are being caught in waters deep enough to make barotrauma a real problem.  As a result, scientists believe that many of the red snapper that are caught during the closed season and returned to the water by anglers die after being released.

To compensate, the recreational red snapper fishery in the South Atlantic has been burdened with a very short open season, which has ranged from just one to ninc days, with recent seasons at the shortest end of that spectrum.  Even that hasn’t been enough to fully constrain anglers to their annual catch limit.  As a result, a group of commercial fishermen have sued, asking a court to compel the National Marine Fisheries Service to get the recreational kill under control.  In late 2024 NMFS, recognizing the merit of the commercial fishermen’s arguments, entered into a settlement agreement to adopt regulations that would end recreational overfishing by June 6, 2025.

On January 14, 2025, NMFS came up with a proposed regulation, Amendment 59 to the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery in the South Atlantic, that would not only have gotten overfishing under control, but would also, because of decreased dead discards, have nearly triple recreational and commercial red snapper landings.  However, it would also have required a section of ocean off northern Florida to be closed to all bottom fishing, from December 1 through the end of February.

The recreational fishing community found the proposal completely unacceptable.  They wanted to be able to land more red snapper, but didn’t want to reduce their high dead discard rate, if that meant closing the bottom fishing season off northern Florida for three months during the winter.

That might sound selfish, irresponsible, and wasteful; the sort of thing that you might expect from a spoiled child rather than a group of supposedly rational adults.  Yet, as it turned out, the recreational representatives were able to make their arguments to the only people who might think that such a juvenile response made sense—the incoming administration in Washington.

Thus, under the new administration, the final version of Amendment 59 did not include the three-month bottom fishing closure; but it did revise the definition of overfishing, the definition of an overfished stock, the acceptable biological catch, and the annual catch limits (including sector catch limits) for South Atlantic red snapper, which allowed it to declare that overfishing was no longer occurring.  As if someone waved a magical wand, NMFS’ concerns about recreational overfishing just seemed to disappear.

The commercial folks apparently didn’t believe in magic, though, because they’re suing NMFS again, arguing that Amendment 59 will allow recreational overfishing to continue, and harm commercial fishermen as a result. 

But even with those changes, the recreational fishermen weren’t all that satisfied with Amendment 59.  While it let them keep pouring out dead, discarded red snapper during the closed snapper season, it didn’t let them kill more fish to take home.  So like a child who wheedles another piece of cake out of Grandma after their parents say “No,” organizations affiliated with the recreational fishing industry pushed to have state agencies manage red snapper, knowing that the states would allow anglers to land the snapper denied them by both good science and federal law.

And so, just a few days ago, NMFS announced that

“NOAA Fisheries Issues Exempted fishing Permits Authorizing State Management of Recreational Harvested [sic] Red Snapper in the South Atlantic in 2026.”

Apparently, state management of the South Atlantic red snapper stock, under the recently approved exempted fishing permits, is going to bring us another magical moment.  For if you recall, under federal fisheries management, the 2025 recreational red snapper season in the South Atlantic lasted only two days, and at that was twice as long as the season set for 2024.

Yet, now that state fisheries managers have been allowed to wave their sorcerers’ wands, Florida anglers will be able to enjoy a 39-day season, broken up into 30 days in May/June and three three-day periods in October, while Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina anglers will be allowed to fish for 62 consecutive days in July and August.

It’s nothing short of miraculous that just switching over from federal to state management will lead to seasons that are 20 to 30 times as long as those previously permitted by NMFS, presumably all without overfishing or doing any harm to the stock at all.

But, as was the case with Amendment 59, there are some people out there who just don’t believe in magic. 

The Ocean Conservancy deemed the exempted fishing permits and the move to state management

"An end run around sustainable management,"

while observing that

“Just last year, NOAA’s own analysis showed that a two-day recreational fishing season was needed to prevent overfishing.  There is no doubt that these exemptions to allow months-long fishing seasons will lead to overfishing, while new, unproven data collection measures mean we likely won’t even realize the fish are declining until the damage is done.”

The organization’s press release goes on to say,

“Ocean Conservancy has used available data to estimate the amount of fish that could be caught with exempted permits.  The annual catch limit for the recreational sector is 22,797 fish.  A recent two-day red snapper fishing season in Florida alone resulted in 24,885 landed fish, which exceeds that limit.  A simple expansion using this Florida landings rate, and ignoring the contribution from other states which will have even longer fishing seasons, suggests that as many as 485,000 fish could be landed in a 39-day season.  This is over 20 times the annual catch limit—a clear violation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.”

The Environmental Defense Fund expressed similar sentiments, while also noting that

“Recreational fishing is an American pastime, and responsible innovation is critical to managing fisheries for the future.  But NOAA’s decision allows states to sidestep core federal safeguards that exist to prevent overfishing at a time when South Atlantic red snapper remains overfished [sic] and under a rebuilding plan.  These permits go well beyond the limited, pilot-scale purpose of exempted fishing permits and instead function as an alternative system without enforceable catch limits or accountability measures required by law.”

So how did we get to this point, where someone within NMFS or its parent, the Department of Commerce, seems to have contradicted NMFS’ findings from a year ago, and has suddenly decided that a season 20 times as long as last year’s won’t lead to overfishing—even though last year’s two-day season did?

We might find part of the answer in the cover letter that Roger Young, the Executive Director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, sent to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on January 23, 2026, along with Florida’s state management proposal.  After two introductory paragraphs, Mr. Young got down to business:

“First, we want to reinforce our appreciation for your unwavering commitment to rein in bureaucracy and return the power of fisheries management and conservation to the states where it belongs.  Unfortunately, based on an initial review of the commentary and questions within NOAA’s response letter, it appears that NOAA intends to delay the success of our shared goals.  To ensure that this is not the case, we determined that directly responding to you, rather than through NOAA, was crucial to our shared success.  To that end, to mutually maintain the momentum that our teams have built over the past year, it is abundantly clear that direct involvement from our offices is crucial.  If not, based on precedent, career NOAA staff will inevitably create a bureaucratic blockade at the behest of status-quo defending adversarial interests to prevent Florida’s EFP from going into effect in May 2026.  Given the social, economic, and cultural importance of recreational fishing in Florida, we greatly appreciate your leadership in seeing Florida’s application through to approval so Floridians can enjoy their God-given rights to recreate, and enjoy, our natural resources.

“Under President Trump’s leadership in 2017, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross blazed a trail in the Gulf of America to state management in recreational Red Snapper fishing.  Bureaucratic intransigence and inertia at NOAA were guiding anglers to the dead end of federal regulators’ overreach.  By 2018, all five states in the Gulf of America were firmly in control of their destiny and managing this public fishery for the benefit of the public.  The number of days of fishing proposed Gulf of America-wide by NOAA Fisheries in 2017: three days.  The number of fishing days announced by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in 2025: 127 days.

“Based on Florida’s experience in seeking assignment of state management authority in the Gulf of America, much of NOAA’s response appears to potentially delay action under the guise of ‘data’ collection—the same tactics that led Congress to force NOAA to accept and approve state EFP’s [sic] in the Gulf of America given the weaponization of NOAA under President Obama…  [emphasis in original]”

The letter provided a master class in ass-kissing, emphasizing everything—“rein in bureaucracy,” “bureaucratic blockade,” “status-quo defending,” favorable mention of Trump’s first term, and even “weaponization” of a federal agency by “President Obama” (although “Barak Hussein Obama” might have been worth a few extra points)—that was likely to hit administration hot buttons.

Of course, Roger Young’s letter missed a couple of important points.  When he argued that

“there is nothing in [the] Magnuson-Stevens [Fishery Conservation and Management] Act (MSA) that dictates an EFP’s harvest be included in annual catch limits,”

he not only ignored National Standard 1, which states that

“Conservation and management measures shall prevent overfishing…”

but seemingly implied that it was acceptable for an annual recreational catch limit of 22,797 fish to be overfished roughly twentyfold—by more than 450,000 fish, if the Ocean Conservancy’s calculations are correct (which they may not be, as in the real world, such an extreme leve of removals would probably lower abundance and catchability to the point that the 2025 fishing mortality rate, achieved over a 2-day season, could not be maintained for the full duration of the 39- or 62-day seasons planned for 2026)—so long as that overfishing occurred pursuant to an exempted fishing permit.

The letter was also quick to criticize the 3-day federal waters red snapper season in the Gulf of Mexico in 2017, while failing to mention that such short season was adopted in order to offset the excessively long state waters seasons allowed by state fisheries managers in that year.

But given Roger Young’s intended audience, it is highly unlikely that such omissions were ever noted or, even if someone had noticed them, that they would have had any influence on the outcome.  The entire purpose of his letter was to move the decision making on the exempted fishing permits away from the scientists and subject matter experts at NMFS, and put it in the hands of people who couldn’t tell a red snapper from a red herring on their best day.

Thus, the South Atlantic states’ exempted fishing permit requests received an enthusiastic response; on May 1, 2026, President Donald Trump himself declared, in a social media post,

“WE JUST DELIVERED A HUGE WIN for our Great Fishermen and Anglers in FLORIDA, GEORGIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, and NORTH CAROLINA!  We have just officially approved ALL STATE PERMITS for the 2026 Red Snapper recreational season.  For years, our GREAT FISHERMEN have been punished with VERY short Federal fishing seasons despite RECORD HIGH fish populations and the States begging to oversee these permits.  The incompetent Biden Administration tried to SHUT DOWN THE OCEANS to our Fishermen, entirely.  We love and respect our Fishermen and, unlike the Democrats, will only do good for them.  To all those who fish ‘Red Snapper’—TRUMP and NOAA are delivering for you.   ENJOY!!  President DONAND J. TRUMP.”

And there you have it.

In 2025, anglers in the four South Atlantic states managed to harvest an estimated 38,048 red snapper—15,251 fish over the annual catch limit—even though the federal red snapper season only lasted for two days.  In 2026, that catch limit will remain unchanged, but even with state management extending the red snapper season to 39 days in Florida and 62 days in the three other South Atlantic states, South Atlantic red snapper landings are expected to remain at sustainable levels.

Maybe those folks who believe that there is something magical about state-level fisheries management are onto something.