JUST ONE BIT OF DATA IN THE RED SNAPPER'S SEA

When it comes to fisheries issues, data always makes a difference, although that difference may not be the one that people expect.

For example, when the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Marine Recreational Information Program changed the way it estimated recreational effort, and so recreational catch and landings, from the venerable Coastal Household Telephone Survey to the mail-based Fishing Effort Survey, the new methodology revealed that anglers, and particularly shore-based anglers, were catching many more fish than managers had previously believed.

That revelation initially caused some panic in the angling community, with one near-hysterical for-hire captain writing

“We’re About To Go WAY Over Quota In Almost Every Fishery (according to soon-worsening catch data)

I Anticipate Many Recreational Fisheries Will See Closures.

I Promise: An EMERGENCY is brewing in our recreational catch estimates.

NOAA’s MRIP recreational catch estimates are about to increase many-fold.  They call it ‘re-calibration.’

If you are a For-Hire operator anywhere from Maine to Texas,

I believe your business model is about to implode.

If you own or work at a saltwater-oriented tackle shop or marina, sales may get mighty slim.

If you own a salt-water capable boat, you may soon question the wisdom of all those maintenance, insurance, license & marina fees—all the monies paid regardless of whether you ever go fishing.

If you are simply a recreational angler, I believe your seasons & bag limits are about to become incredibly smaller, your size limits larger: You May Not Be Allowed To Fish At ALL For Some Species…

If ‘Re-calibration takes effect,

these last few years of regulatory battles

will seem a cakewalk…

We’ll soon be so over quota, in every fishery, that our rod-racks will become wall-mounted spider farms well before we’re allowed to fish again...”

Of course, none of that ever happened.

The new recreational effort, catch, and landings data were incorporated into each species’ stock assessment.  Without exception, so far as I am aware, that resulted in estimates of greater biomass for recreationally-fished stocks, and usually also resulted in an increase in the biomass target—the amount of fish needed to produce maximum sustainable yield—and in commercial and recreational quotas.

The impacts on important northeastern/mid-Atlantic fisheries were mixed. 

The new data was enough to find striped bass and bluefish to be overfished, a finding that was probably inevitable, given the steadily decreasing abundance of both species even if MRIP hadn’t changed, and led to more restrictive regulations. 

On the other hand, the new MRIP estimates, coupled with new biological data related to the productivity of the stock, caused scientists to find that the summer flounder was not doing as badly as some fishermen had thought.  Faced with that finding, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup, and Black Sea Bass Management Board approved a bigger annual catch limit and relaxed regulations for both the recreational and commercial sectors.

In the case of black sea bass, the new MRIP data resulted in a higher biomass estimate and an increase in  commercial and recreational catch limits of more than 50%.  It also revealed that anglers were exceeding even such higher limit, but the Mid-Atlantic Council and Management Board have, so far, looked the other way and allowed recreational overages to continue.  For black sea bass anglers, the new data made no practical difference at all.

Thus, while the new data affected the management of every stock, the impact was not necessarily what fishermen might intuitively expect, and certainly didn’t result in the sort of marine Gotterdammerung that the above-quoted party boat captain predicted.

Down in the Gulf of Mexico, we’re now seeing the same kind of premature predictions going on in the case of red snapper, and the data produced by what people are calling the Great Red Snapper Count, although the would-be prophets down there aren’t predicting an angling Armageddon, but instead, a sort of piscine Paradise, at least as far as red snapper are concerned.

As I’ve noted in earlier posts, the Great Red Snapper Count estimated that there are about 118 million adult (age 2+) red snapper in the U.S. portion of the Gulf of Mexico, a number more than three-times higher than the 36 million fish estimated in the last stock assessment.  The Count was able to arrive at that number because its participating scientists were granted a level of funding that Congress has long denied their counterparts at the National Marine Fisheries Service and, with such greater resources at their disposal, were able to search for snapper in areas not surveyed before.  That wider search led to their findings that about two-thirds of the red snapper stock was located on relatively featureless, low-profile bottom, and not on the natural and artificial structure that was previously surveyed, and where nearly all of the fishing effort is focused.

There is no doubt that the data provided by the Great Red Snapper Count will have an impact on red snapper management.  But if folks choose to be honest, they’ll admit that we don’t yet know what that impact will be.

The Executive Summary of the final report on the Count properly states that

“The primary goal of this initiative was to estimate the absolute abundance of age-2+ Red Snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) in the U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico…study findings offer a unique opportunity for other approaches to be integrated into the assessment framework…a robust understanding of absolute abundance will increase our scientific understanding of the population dynamics of Red Snapper across its range and distribution.  Science is a building process, and the independent estimate of abundance derived from this research is not a replacement or in contention with the official SEDAR Red Snapper Stock Assessment.  It will supplement and enhance ongoing analyses by allowing for validation, calibration, and further refinement of those models, given that absolute abundance has now been estimated independently from the assessment model.  [emphasis added]”
 

In other words, the findings of the Great Red Snapper Count will be combined with everything else that fishery managers know about Gulf red snapper, and until that is done, and assessment models run, no one really knows what the impact of the Count’s data might be.

But, as in the case of that mid-Atlantic for-hire captain erroneously anticipating the impacts of the recalibrated MRIP data on recreational fisheries, there are those along the Gulf who aren’t prepared to wait until the next stock assessment, and want to use stand-alone Count data right now.

And, not unexpectedly, they want to use it to significantly increase the recreational red snapper kill, without first finding out whether such increase is actually warranted.

Jeff Angers, President of the Center for Sportfishing Policy, a coalition of fishing tackle industry, marine manufacturing, and “anglers’ rights” organizations, argued last April that

“Based on The Great Red Snapper Count, Gulf Coast anglers are due an increase in [red snapper] quota,”

even though the Count’s results had not yet been given a thorough scientific review.  While Angers’ prediction was ultimately proven correct—the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, after reviewing the Count’s results, increased the acceptable biological catch by 300,000 pounds at about the same time that he made his statement—the relatively small increase that was approved, compared to the Count’s estimates of red snapper abundance, is a clear signal that there is a lot of work yet to be done before the implications of the Count’s estimates can be fully known.

 Yet the need for more research and understanding as to just what the Count means for red snapper fishermen was also lost on Ted Venker, spokesman for the Coastal Conservation Association, who has claimed that

“the Great Red Snapper Count shows very plainly that the stock isn’t overfished,”

and inaccurately stated that

“NOAA Fisheries can overlook more than 700 million pounds of red snapper [revealed by the Count] in the Gulf,”

(which, in reality, as noted earlier, were acknowledged by the Gulf Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee, which decided, because of associated scientific uncertainty, not to significantly increase commercial or recreational landings until the implications of a larger snapper stock became more clear).

The angling industry’s haste to act on the findings of the Great Red Snapper Count, without first understanding how the new estimate of absolute red snapper abundance will mesh with other available data, stands in stark contrast to the comments of the Count’s lead researcher, Dr. Gregory Stunz, who noted, upon the Count’s completion, that

“This is just the beginning of future assessment meetings and activities with managing agencies, Scientific and Statistical Committees, the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center, and the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council.  These activities will facilitate direct incorporation of these data into the management process.”

What are the sort of things that still need to be figured out, as that the Great Red Snapper Count’s data is incorporated into the next stock assessment, before higher harvest levels could be considered?

The biological reference points will almost certainly be revisited. 

Currently, some of the most important reference points, including the minimum spawning stock threshold, maximum fishing mortality threshold, the fishing mortality level that will produce maximum sustainable yield, the fishing mortality target, and the biomass target, are all tied to the spawning potential ratio of the red snapper stock; more precisely, to a spawning potential that is 26% of the potential of an unfished stock.

Now that the Count has estimated absolute red snapper abundance to be about 300% higher than previously believed, biologists will have to find answers to a number of questions:  What would an unfished stock look like, both in absolute numbers, and in spawning potential?  Would the values be greater than those currently used?  And once they figure that out, what is the current spawning potential of the red snapper stock?

If the current spawning potential is greater than 26%, does that mean that the stock is fully recovered, and management measures need to be relaxed?  

Or, does the Count’s current estimate of red snapper abundance mean that the reference points need to be changed, because the ones currently used underestimate the spawning potential needed to maintain the stock at sustainable levels, and overestimate the fishing mortality level that will produce maximum sustainable yield?

In the last stock assessment, biologists noted that there was no strong relationship between the size of the spawning stock and the number of young red snapper recruited into the population.  Is that truly the case?  Or could the newly discovered red snapper explain why good recruitment could occur when spawning stock biomass on high-profile structure had previously appeared to be low?  The report from the Great Red Snapper Count notes,

“A large percentage of Red Snapper occurred over the uncharacterized bottom habitat type, which may represent a pool of cryptic biomass not previously accounted for in Red Snapper stock assessments.  A high abundance of Red Snapper occurring over these areas that are largely unexploited by the fishery may also explain the weak stock-recruit relationship consistently observed in this fishery.  [emphasis added]”

 In other words, maintaining the spawning potential of the newly discovered red snapper could be an important aspect of maintaining a sustainable red snapper stock.  Determining whether that’s the case is just one more thing that scientists need to do before the impacts of the Great Red Snapper Count’s findings can be understood.

If the fish discovered over low-profile bottom are needed to maintain the health of the stock, other unknowns arise.  The most important of those may be the relationship between the newly-discovered fish and those that congregate around high-profile natural and artificial structure.

While the anglers’ rights crowd is quick to point to the Count’s findings of high absolute red snapper abundance, one thing that they are, not surprisingly, more reluctant to discuss is the high level of red snapper removals.  

The Great Red Snapper Count tagged about 4,000 fish, and offered a $250 to $500 reward to best assure that fishermen would report any tagged fish that were recaptured.  It turned out that 31% of all tagged fish were eventually caught again; such high recapture rate suggests that nearly one-third of all adult red snapper present on high-profile structure are also being caught.  Although some of those fish are undoubtedly being released, fishing mortality of red snapper utilizing such structure is probably very high.

If the angling industry and anglers’ rights groups get their way, fishing mortality would become higher still.

The Great Red Snapper Count report makes it clear that the fish living over low-profile bottom are, on average, of larger size than those found on high-profile structure, at least in the eastern Gulf (similar data for the western Gulf is not available).  The mean length of fish on low-profile bottom was 761 millimeters (30 inches), substantially larger than the mean 499 millimeter (19.5 inches) length of fish caught on natural structures or the mean 453 millimeter (18 inches) length of fish caught on artificial reefs.

Does that size difference suggest that, at some point in their lives, fish move off high-profile bottom to scatter across the mud and gravel expanses of the Gulf?  

If that is the case and, given that the larger female red snapper produce far more eggs each year than the smaller ones do, if the number of such large, fecund fish on open bottom has an impact on red snapper recruitment, then increasing the already high number of red snapper removed from high-profile structure could negatively impact the health of the stock.

Of course, we don’t know whether either of those “ifs” are really true, but that’s exactly the point—until scientists integrate the results of the Great Red Snapper Count into a formal stock assessment, no one really knows whether increasing landings would do long term harm to the stock.

When that integration takes place, maybe there really will be a fairy tale ending, where landings are increased by 200% or more, bag limits are upped, the season runs for at least six months, and everyone lives happily ever after.

But fairy tales aren’t real.  Science is.  And until the scientists tell us that the Great Red Snapper Count’s data justifies substantially higher landings, no one should be expecting their own happy endings, and acting prematurely as a result.

Good science takes time.  After so many years of debate over red snapper management, it makes sense for everyone to just sit back and wait a little bit longer, to better assure that, this time, the Gulf Council gets everything right.