Is anyone interested in finding out why we have a 611,000 pound Total Allowable Catch for Red Snapper this year and are only allowed to keep less than 100,000 pounds? Does that mean the SAFMC is allocating over 500,000 pounds of Red Snapper to dead discards? Are you willing to support simple solutions or even consider ideas that would allow us to harvest almost all of the Red Snapper TAC? Some of the same solutions could be used to avoid closing traditional fishing grounds to ALL fishermen. If you fish offshore, you need to get involved NOW. Even if you only target pelagic species, this is important if you want to keep fishing areas like the Georgetown Hole. Please reply if you have the slightest interest in learning more.
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Originally posted by freefish7Is anyone interested in finding out why we have a 611,000 pound Total Allowable Catch for Red Snapper this year and are only allowed to keep less than 100,000 pounds? Does that mean the SAFMC is allocating over 500,000 pounds of Red Snapper to dead discards? Are you willing to support simple solutions or even consider ideas that would allow us to harvest almost all of the Red Snapper TAC? Some of the same solutions could be used to avoid closing traditional fishing grounds to ALL fishermen. If you fish offshore, you need to get involved NOW. Even if you only target pelagic species, this is important if you want to keep fishing areas like the Georgetown Hole. Please reply if you have the slightest interest in learning more.
You know we all want to help. Well, really we all want you or someone else to do the work while we sort of support you. You see, I have 3 kids, 2 jobs, 2 dogs and a wife. I fish for fun. I have sold a fish or two but… that doesn’t really matter.
Both of my current businesses are in the fishing/recreation industry. I now spend my time fishing elsewhere. I go fishing in other places. My money spent close to home is half of what it was. I travel more to places known for fishing or places to target specific fish.
The SAFMC is on a path that I and most on this board do not have the energy to fight. I helped years ago organize the buses to D.C. for the RFA rally. I have spoken at many SAFMC meeting and made comments on record.
What I have seen is back alley handshakes, winks and nods. The game is being played and we are on the field but the puppet masters are pulling the strings and watching unscathed from a safe distance.
You will find all the support you can handle on CF.com. Just be sure to lay out your TRUE intentions and we will give
Thank you Courtland. I believe your comments reflect the feelings of most fishermen. Look for a post on here by tomorrow morning laying out some solutions and easy ways for busy people to support them. The key to any success like we had beating VMS is for enough people to publicly support or oppose something.
+1 Courtland
fish today work tomorrow
when is the next meeting in charleston to discuss this? i watched a commercial boat throw ARS and b liners overboard just yanked off their hooks with no venting or anything in water too deep for them to survive last week. the commercial boat anchored up pretty much on top of us at a spot we had been at for an hour- there are sooo many problems with our current system
Thanks for your interest guys. During the April Marine Resource Education Program last April I asked John Carmichael about ways we can increase quotas. He agreed they could be increased by decreasing the number of discards and discard mortality rates. The other way is by enhancing our fisheries with new Artificial Reef habitat. Since then, I pressed the council to give me the number of dead discards being deducted from our quotas. Here is what I got.
Black Grouper: 136,232 lbs
Black Sea Bass: 45,000 lbs
Gag Grouper: 81,000 lbs with another 27,218 pounds of dead discards added this year as they plan on shutting the fishery down even earlier due to their gross mismanagement of the quota.
Greater Amberjack: 15,000 fish
Red Grouper: 52,000 lbs
Red Porgy: 25,000 lbs
Red Snapper: 86,000 to 611,000 lbs. They had not decided how much over the quota to waste at the time I received the list. It appears they settled on allocating around 500,000 pounds to dead discards.
Vermilion Snapper: 56,000 lbs
Yellowtail Snapper: 43,900 lbs
This adds up to about a MILLION pounds of wasted seafood from only 9 of the 70+ species the SAFMC “manages”.
Here are a few solutions that would reduce Regulatory Discards and Discard Mortality Rates.
- Revert back to science-based size limits that are no longer than required for a species to breed once. Every time a size limit is arbitrarily increased, Regulatory Discards also increase.
- Allow a minimum of one fish and up to 10% of a catch to be undersized or over the possession limit.
- MANAGE quotas with appropriate possession limits to avoid multiple extended closures that result in excessive Regulatory Discards.
- Require the use of gear like a Seaqualizer to release fish with barotrauma.
These solutions would allow us to keep much more of our Total Allowable Catch limits. The council removed the size limit on Red Snapper, but still claims a very high Discard Mortality Rate. The use of a Seaqualizer type device would dramatically reduce the number of fish d
Freefish- Your knowledge of the subject leads me to believe there is/was some commercial/charter history in your background. Not sure if we really have the same view as to the “best use” of the resource. I will admit that the positions you lay out are intelligent and well spoken. A little clearer picture of who gets the “newly” distributed poundage may be needed. Here are a few of the basic issues you will find with the average fisherman on this site, myself included:
-If we need to know about dead discards, TAC, ACL’s and allotments to help you- You will be on your own.
-If we have to go to more than one meeting- You will be on your own.
-If I have to miss work- You will be on your own.
-If I have to miss my favorite TV show, kids baseball practice or pasta night- You will be on your own, because Momma don’t want to hear it.
I will:
-Donate money
-Send and email. If you format it and all I have to do is click and paste(although Windows8 is making that more difficult)
-Banter on the internet while wasting my employers money at work
-Make suggestion that benefit me for the 10 days a year that I fish offshore drifting over a published artificial wreck hoping to catch a grouper.
Anyone that fishes for money will have a different opinion, rightfully so…
Courtland, I worked for over a decade on a charter boat while commercial fishing in the winter. I love spending days at a time on the water and worked my way up to owning my own commercial snapper/grouper fishing business. My background does not preclude me from supporting recreational fishermen. We need to work together or we will all lose our freedom to fish.
Your summary of what most people will or will not do is spot on and understandably so.
Recreational and commercial quotas are percentages of each species? Total Allowable Catch based on past catch histories. Recreational fishermen get a higher percentage of some quotas while commercial fishermen get higher percentages of others. Any future allocations would be split based on those percentages already in place. I do not expect most people to know all the details, acronyms, and nuisances of fishery management. I am willing to attend the council meetings and workshops to learn these things. The Marine Resource Education Program I attended in April and plan to attend the second part in September is “intended” to bring more fishermen into the management process. Those putting this workshop on say they want participants to be like ambassadors to share what we learn and get other fishermen involved. That is exactly what I am trying to do even though I think they really just want to pacify us as they implement their agenda.
I have learned enough over the years to know that the problems with our fisheries have been CREATED to advance other agendas like area closures and catch shares. The key to our success is not to just say no, but to offer our own solutions while getting enough people to publicly support them that our public servants have no choice but to implement them. We need to focus on short-term solutions rather than only pushing for goals like changes to the MSA that will take years to achieve as the fishery managers and their eco-charity puppet masters implement their agenda.
Here are some simple ways you and others can help.
- Plan on
I will buy or consign your calendars and place them in my tackle shop for sale. 100% of the proceeds going to support your fuel, time and tires. I can start with that. Just let me know how to get my hands on them.
Keep it simple and we will follow the right message.
Thanks Courtland. I would be happy to stop by your shop as I go to the scoping meetings.
Everyone really needs to go to the SAFMC FB page and read the latest conversation I am having with them. It looks like there is a MAJOR flaw in their Red Snapper numbers. They are claiming our Annual Catch Limit is 96,000 pounds when it is actually 96,000 fish! The average size of landed fish is around 6 pounds. That means we should have six times more quota than they are giving us.
I just posted on their FB page about that little “oops” and the fact that I will be at the meeting to support fisherman managing the fishery instead of politicians.
I talked with a guy that attends the SEDAR workshops, he says the council knows what they are doing and is allocating half a MILLION pounds of our Red Snapper Total Allowable Catch to dead discards. The premeditated waste of our seafood is worse than a mistake in my opinion. I also talked with a commercial fisherman out of central Florida who says the Red Snapper have taken over everything and it is hard to catch anything else in many areas.
I am looking forward to seeing you at the meeting sniper7. Please encourage your friends to come as well. We need to make these meetings like the fishermen’s rallies we had in Washington. We need to invite the press and pick a spokesperson to briefly explain what is happening. I would like to meet with everyone before we go into the building to discuss how we can have the most impact.
tell me when and where to meet before hand
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Originally posted by freefish7Thanks Courtland. I would be happy to stop by your shop as I go to the scoping meetings.
Everyone really needs to go to the SAFMC FB page and read the latest conversation I am having with them. It looks like there is a MAJOR flaw in their Red Snapper numbers. They are claiming our Annual Catch Limit is 96,000 pounds when it is actually 96,000 fish! The average size of landed fish is around 6 pounds. That means we should have six times more quota than they are giving us.
Could you post a link to that error so others could review?
The SAFMC mix up was on their FB page. Here is the link they told me to look at after saying the 2013 Red Snapper ABC was 96,000 pounds. http://www.safmc.net/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=eBef5kWKSuQ%3D&tabid=789
I will be at the Charleston scoping meeting place two hours before the comment period to talk with anyone interested.
I seriously doubt that there is a mistake in there that will give us an extra 6x quota. Those numbers have been pounded on over the past couple of years especially by some of the Florida commercial guys.
We need to let the public know the SAFMC is planning ahead to waste over half a MILLION pounds of Red Snapper this year alone. We need to push for a requirement that all discarded fish with barotrauma be released with gear like a SeaQualizer. If we can show 90+% discard survival rates, we can demand 90% of the ABCs as the ACLs. We have to offer positive solutions that solve problems in the short-term while working toward long-term goals like changing the MSA and doing credible stock assessments. I am all for the long-term solutions, but I am not going to sit back and wait as traditional fishing grounds are closed and MILLIONS of pounds of seafood are wasted. We could win now and later IF enough of us coordinated our efforts. The key to our success lies in informing the public about problems while offering common sense solutions and giving them EASY ways to show their support for them. Anyone with half a brain would be appalled to hear about tens of thousands of Red Snapper being discarded to slowly die. Most are willing to do something simple like sign one of the postcard petitions I make. Imagine if half the seafood markets and restaurants as well as tackle shops and charter boats asked their customers to sign a postcard or form petition. We would have enough support before the September meeting to make the council start implementing our solutions.
quote:Woa... You lost me at "SeaQualizer"... Is this a proven product that will guarantee us more fishing time and more allocation?
Originally posted by freefish7We need to push for a requirement that all discarded fish with barotrauma be released with gear like a SeaQualizer.
Full disclosure: Do you have any vested interest in this product?
We don’t need to push for anything unless we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the SAFMC will guarantee higher limits and\more fishing days. I don’t like regulation on a whim… That’s how we got here to begin with.
skinneej, I have no vested interest in SeaQualizer. There was a presentation of it and similar gear at the Marine Resource Education Program I attended last April. The SeaQualizer looked like the best product to me and it has been tested with 90+% survival rates of fish in water as deep as 300 feet. I want to test it in deeper water to see if Warsaw Grouper and Speckled Hind can be released alive to avoid more closures to protect them. While at that meeting, I talked with John Carmichael (stock assessment guy) about how we can increase quotas. He agreed we could keep more of the Acceptable Biological Catch if we could prove a reduction in discard mortality rates. You are exactly right about any requirement of recompression devices being tied to a reduction in dead discard allocations that will result in higher quotas for both sectors. I don’t like regulation on a whim either, but we need to be proactive about solving some of the very real problems with how our fisheries are managed before the eco-corporations and their council pawns solve the problems for us with more MPAs and Catch Shares.
From a practical standpoint, how many commercial or recreational fisherman would actually use a venting tool even if they were required to have one onboard? How would you quantify that? I agree with you (I think) freefish and I’m not criticizing your idea but I wonder if it’s practical. I think a lot of folks on this forum would attempt it, but not sure about the fishing community in general - especially commercial guys. That would slow them down and time is money. Right?