ARE THE GREAT WHATEVER COUNTS AS GREAT AS FOLKS PROMISE?

 

In recent years, “great” fish counts have become all the rage, particularly in the southeast, where the fishing tackle industry, boating industry, and anglers’ rights groups have been trying to use them as a way to challenge the peer-reviewed stock assessments and increase recreational landings.

The so-called “Great Red Snapper Count,” which was completed a few years ago, was the first such effort, but they all follow the same basic pattern.  First, the industry groups donate enough money to their local congressmen to get their attention.  Then, they convince one or two of those congressmen—and, depending on how big the contributions were, it might not take much convincing—to attach a rider to an appropriations bill, which will provide funding for a comprehensive study of the species in question, performed by academic researchers, that the industry believes will discredit the federal stock assessments and prove that federal fisheries regulations are too restrictive.

The resulting federal appropriation is typically large enough to fund a team of very competent scientists, and provide them with the support they need to conduct an intensive count of whatever the target species is, perhaps even letting them look for fish in places where no one has ever looked before.  

Given the intensity of the search, there is a very good chance that more fish are going to be found.

When more fish are found, the industry then argues that there should be a one-to-one correspondence between population size and recreational landings, and insists that recreational regulations be relaxed.

But things aren’t that cut-and-dried.

The pioneering Great Red Snapper Count provides a perfect example of that.

As noted in Gulf Coast Fisherman, the newsletter of the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant program, the Great Red Snapper Count found that there were about three times as many red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico than previously believed, with about two-thirds of those fish widely scattered over open, low-profile bottom.  As the newsletter explained,

“The difference noted above was driven primarily by the Great Red Snapper Count team’s ability to survey large portions of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico not surveyed by NOAA given limited resources.  These regions are known as unclassified bottom and consist of vast expanses of sand and mud, along with features like extensive, partially buried oil and gas pipelines that hadn’t been studied by fisheries scientists.  When the Great Red Snapper Count team tallied the red snapper residing over unclassified bottom, they learned that these areas actually contain a massive ‘cryptic biomass’ of red snapper estimated at 68 million fish!  This was most apparent in the Florida region, where unclassified bottom supports about 31 million, or nearly two-thirds, of the region’s 48 million red snapper.”

Yet that simple finding didn’t mean that landings could automatically be tripled, nor did it mean that previous estimates of red snapper abundance were categorically wrong.  As the National Marine Fisheries Service observed,

“The abundance estimates for high relief natural and artificial structures, where most fishing occurs, are similar to that of the 2018 assessment.

“The Great Red Snapper count confirmed previous estimates of the biomass on the habitats associated with the fishery, high relief areas such as reefs and ledges.  This previously unknown biomass associated with low relief, sand and mud bottom habitat is a welcome revelation of this research.  The discovery of additional biomass is good news which may help ease some management restrictions.  [emphasis added]”

Thus, the previous federal red snapper surveys were accurate as far as they went, but NMFS simply lacked the resources to search every nook and cranny of the Gulf of Mexico just in case red snapper happened to be there.  So they looked at the places where people fished, and got a fairly accurate count of the snapper that lived there.  But they missed the greater biomass of fish that lived where no one had previously looked, and few people ever fished.

Still, concentrating survey efforts in places where people fish might make some sort of sense, for the same article in Gulf Coast Fisherman also informs us that

“One of the four main methods used during the Great Red Snapper Count was a Gulf-wide high-reward tagging study.  Doing this study, scientists tagged and released thousands of red snapper across the U.S. Gulf of Mexico at artificial reefs and natural habitats and relied on fishermen to report the capture of tagged fish.  The results of the tagging study was surprising—approximately 30% of tagged red snapper were recaptured!  To put this quantity into context, scientists consider a recapture rate of 10% to be excellent, and anything higher is very unusual.  The 30% tag return rate signifies impressive fishermen involvement in the Great Red Snapper Count, but it also illustrates high fishing effort for red snapper at artificial and natural habitats.  [emphasis added]”

That immediately raises the question of whether the 68 million red snapper that the Great Red Snapper Count found on unclassified structure are even relevant to the recreational fishery, or to recreational fishery management.  After all, if anglers are only interacting with the fish on high-profile structure, and the fish on unclassified structure don’t move onto the ledges and reefs—and we have no idea whether they do or not—it is only the fish on the high-profile structure that need to be managed.

 

It’s far too early to make that decision right now.  But the fact that most of the fish in the eastern Gulf off Florida were found on unclassified structure—meaning that the local population there is far larger than previously believed—yet Florida charter boat captains have already started complaining that red snapper size and abundance have been steadily declining even under current regulations, suggests that the fish living on open bottom might not be having too much of an impact on the recreational red snapper fishery.

The Gulf Coast Fisherman summed up the situation very well.

“The Great Red Snapper Count results reveal that there may be roughly three times more red snapper in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico than we once thought.  This is great news!  Moreover, the impressive number of red snapper residing over unclassified bottom represents an important discovery.  It’s possible that these fish may help to replenish the reef aggregations so that those areas of natural and artificial structure can continue to sustain high levels of harvest.  Future studies will likely investigate the ecological roles of the red snapper inhabiting unclassified bottom, as well as their specific contributions to the Gulf of Mexico red snapper stock.

“The findings from this project may fundamentally change the way the Gulf of Mexico red snapper stock is assessed by federal and state officials…The results of the Great Red Snapper Count are clearly impressive, but exactly how these results will impact commercial and recreational fishermen is less apparent.  In particular, it’s unlikely that quotas or bag limits will be tripled.  Since Gulf of Mexico red snapper are still under a rebuilding plan, and harvest from natural and artificial habitats is very high as confirmed by the Great Red Snapper Count team, more red snapper doesn’t necessarily mean more harvest.  One thing is for certain:  fisheries managers responsible for making decisions about Gulf of Mexico red snapper will move forward cautiously to ensure that the results of decades of diligent rebuilding are preserved.  [emphasis added]”

That’s just what happened.

NMFS advised that

“Results of the Great Red Snapper Count and [an] interim analysis are expected to be reviewed by independent experts.  The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee will also review the results…We will continue to work with our partners on the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and its Scientific and Statistical Committee to peer-review the assessment and adjust red snapper management as appropriate.”

And as things turned out, the subsequent peer review of the latest Gulf of Mexico red snapper stock assessment raised some questions about the Great Red Snapper Count data.  A summary of one peer review meeting noted that

“The overall conclusion of the group was that the presented stock assessment model was not suitable to proceed to an Operational Assessment and that instead a Benchmark Assessment and another full review should be conducted.”

While all of the criticism did not revolve around Great Red Snapper Count data, with much addressing how the Gulf should be divided up into separate areas, how to incorporate the Great Red Snapper Count data was also an issue, with the meeting summary saying

“the SSC thought it prudent to create a topical working group to explore how to better include information gathered from the [Great Red Snapper Count] in the stock assessment process.  The SSC recommended that some of the principal investigators, or other available contributors from the GRSC could participate in the workgroup.  The results of these deliberations would be made available, so that documentation of how or when GRSC data is integrated could be reported out.”

While such cautious approach might seem prudent, it outraged the tackle industry/boating industry/anglers’ rights crowd threw the expected hissy fit when NMFS didn’t immediately allow a larger recreational harvest.  The Coastal Conservation Association put out a press release whining about how

“it would have been reasonable to expect the results of the GRSC simply become the new benchmark.  NOAA insisted that those findings would have to be calibrated and synched up with the data streams and techniques it had used in the past.  The same data streams and techniques that the GRSC had shown to be inaccurate by a factor of at least three.”

Of course, the last sentence of that quote wasn’t quite true, as the Great Red Snapper Count confirmed the accuracy of federal mangers’ estimates of red snapper populations on high-profile structure; NMFS may never have looked on the unclassified bottom because it lacked the resources to do so, but that has little or nothing to do with the accuracy of its data or techniques.

But the CCA just needed to throw a tantrum, when it didn’t get the result that it had been more-or-less guaranteeing its members since sometime around 2017.

For them, the Great Red Snapper Count wasn’t really “great” at all, even though it did significantly expand or knowledge about red snapper distribution in the Gulf of Mexico.

Still, that didn’t stop the CCA and fellow travelers from working to spend more taxpayer dollars trying to expand the “great fish count” approach to other species and other places.

Their next approach was a simple riff on the first, the so-called “Great South Atlantic Red Snapper Count.”  It followed the established format, in which friendly lawmakers had Congress appropriate cash for a study of red snapper abundance, that would hopefully (from the industry/anglers’ rights standpoint) prove that there were more fish around than NMFS believed.

As described by the ever-reactionary Blair Wickstrom, in the pages of Florida Sportsman,

“As it stands today, the current stock assessment, which indicates we’re overfishing red snapper, is set in stone until 2028.  However, we have hope that the independent 30-month study dubbed the Great South Atlantic Red Snapper Count will provide much-needed clarity on the true stock assessment.”

It’s just not clear what Wickstrom, and the rest of the industry/anglers’ rights cabal, expect the “true” stock assessment to say, and how they expect it to help them.

Nobody disagrees that the South Atlantic red snapper stock is responding well to management measures.  Although the stock was badly overfished as recently as 2010, when spawning stock biomass was only 9% of the target level and the fishing mortality rate was more than four times the fishing mortality target, things have improved since then.  In June 2005, NMFS found that the stock was neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing.

So, red snapper abundance, per se, isn’t really the problem.

Yes, a bigger estimate of spawning stock biomass might lead to a somewhat larger annual catch limit, but the recreational sector already enjoys a reasonably high annual catch limit right now.  In 2025, the annual catch limit amounted to 509,000 red snapper, which should have been enough to keep most recreational fishermen happy, even if the commercial sector gets to land about 28% of the fish.

A low annual catch limit isn’t the problem.

The problem is that out of that 509,000-fish limit, about 475,000 are caught by recreational fishermen, then tossed back over the side of the boat to die, and never end up in fishermen’s coolers.

The recreational and commercial fishermen are forced to share only the remaining 34,000 red snapper that don’t get fed to the sharks and the crabs.

So the anglers complain that they only get to enjoy a 1- or 2-day red snapper season, at the same time that they’re killing most of their red snapper when that season is closed.  At the same time, they’re fighting to prevent NMFS from closing the season for all South Atlantic snapper-grouper for a few months each year, and so cutting back on the current, unconscionable waste.

In doing so, they also find themselves firmly impaled on the horns of a dilemma.  On one hand, they want to argue that the ocean is filled with red snapper, so that they can enjoy longer seasons and perhaps a bigger bag.  But on the other hand, they can’t admit that high red snapper abundance means that anglers can’t avoid catching—and inadvertently killing—loads of red snapper during the closed season, in numbers high enough to justify setting more than 90% of the annual catch limit aside to cover dead recreational discards.

They’re caught in a lose/lose situation, one that the Great South Atlantic Red Snapper Count won’t be very great at resolving, even if and when it is incorporated into the next stock assessment.  A count is the wrong tool for the problem at hand.

And that brings us up to today, when the results of what folks are calling “Great Amberjack Count” are being trumpeted in the outdoor media.

Once again, we’re looking at a situation where a coalition of industry and anglers’ rights groups prevailed on local congressmen—those political action committees are certainly useful things—to allocate $10 million to study the abundance of greater amberjack in the waters stretching from North Carolina to the Rio Grande.

The motivation remains the same, impeaching the stock assessments relied upon by federal fisheries managers, so anglers can put more dead fish on ice.  While that wasn’t much of an issue in the South Atlantic, where amberjack supply pretty well satisfies angler demand, an article that appeared in the July 25 edition of The Outdoor Wire noted that

“it is a completely different story in the Gulf of [Mexico].  Currently, no greater amberjack season has been set for 2026, and the previous seasons were set so that anglers would have something to catch when for-hire (charters) red snapper season is closed.  The [Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo], which is held on the third full weekend of July each year, hasn’t had an amberjack category in more than 15 years.”

Once again, we’re looking at a comprehensive study that was conducted by a big team of very competent and capable scientists; I recognize a lot of their names, and have spoken to a few of them over the years about different species.  I’m not going to get into the fine details of the entire, 600-page report, but its Executive Summary provided some relevant findings:

“The overall and regional estimates…were within the scale of the most recent stock assessments of Greater Amberjack.  For the South Atlantic, the estimate derived from underwater cameras was 3.08 million with a percent coefficient of variation [a measure of uncertainty]…of 35%.  The estimate derived from using acoustics was similar, 3.09 million, with a higher CV of 41.5 %.  For scale of comparison, the terminal year (2018) of the latest South Atlantic Greater Amberjack Stock Assessment was 2.64 million.  While a CV around the stock assessment estimate is not reported, annual estimates over the past 20 years of the stock assessment (1999-2018) ranged from 1.7 to 3.9 million age 1+ Greater Amberjack.”

So, the study does not conflict with the findings of the last stock assessment, with respect to amberjack in the South Atlantic.

When it comes to amberjack in the Gulf of Mexico, the Executive Summary informs us that

“Our point-estimate for the camera-only Gulf of [Mexico] population size is higher than that from the terminal year (2018) of the latest Gulf of [Mexico] Greater Amberjack Stock Assessment (4.34 million in our study vs. 1.39 million from SEDAR 39).  However, the CV from the camera-only estimate is quite large, at 46.4%...For comparison the last 20-year range for SEDAR 59 is 1.39 to 3.50 million…The acoustic estimate derived by this study for the Gulf of [Mexico] region was 1.45 million with a CV of 21%. 

The [principal investigators] recommend the video-based methodology for any comparisons.  Among the reasons for this choice is that the length frequency distributions can be derived.  These length frequencies indicated differences in size composition between the three major areas (W. Gulf, E. Gulf, and SA).”

The Executive Summary also included a warning.

“The [principal investigators] also express caution with any direct comparisons of our results to the stock assessment results.  We list the range of population size estimates derived from the stock assessment purely to inform the reader of the scale of our estimates compared to past management assumptions.  While there is some overlap—for example, camera-based fishery independent surveys are used in the stock assessment and used in our estimation—the methodology used in the stock assessment is fundamentally different than adopted in our study.  Further, our study is intended to be a point estimate in time (2023) and successful management requires estimating rates of exploitation on an annual basis…  [emphasis added]”

Predictably, the angling press failed to heed that warning, and began blasting out reader—and advertiser—pleasing headlines such as

“Study Finds Twice as Many Amberjack Than The Federal Authorities Reported,”

and

“Great Amberjack Count Estimates Far More AJs in the Gulf,”

which suggest that the results of the Great Amberjack Count and the Gulf of Mexico stock assessment are directly comparable, when the report makes it very clear that is not the case.

Hopefully, the data that the Count developed will not be rushed into the stock assessment as a result of that sort of hype.  Hopefully, it will instead be given all necessary consideration so that, like the data from the Great Red Snapper Count, it is only included into the stock assessments after thorough and appropriate scientific review.

The Great Amberjack Count, like the other counts described earlier, was certainly a good thing, because it finally gave top fisheries scientists enough funding to do meaningful and needed research into an economically and recreationally important, and heavily exploited, species.  That, in itself, is a sort of greatness.

But it and the other studies can only truly be great if they expand our understanding of, and improve the sustainability of, marine fish stocks.

Just putting more dead fish in anglers’ coolers doesn’t make them great at all.