Seems by the picture that they went a little over their catch limit according to the standards of managment we have in place here in the south atlantic, but the mid-atlantic has different federal laws even if its in regards to the very same specie of fish that we know must interact.
Snowy groupers have no managment plan that I know of north of the Va. NC state line!
http://www.chesapeake-angler.com/story-kn-varecordsnowy.htm
Here in the South Atlantic the federal limit for snowy grouper is one per boat per day as long as your not fishing deeper than 240 feet of water, which from my experience only a few (usally the smaller ones) are caught!
See new snowy grouper regs notice for SA:
http://www.safmc.net/FishIDandRegs/FishGallery/SnowyGrouper/tabid/328/Default.aspx
Last stock assesment on snowies here in the SA was done in 2004 (only two years after the creation of the very first SEDAR stock assesment) and was doen with a limited amount of recreational data input to help forge new regulations.
Recreational fishermen at that time couldn’t really understand the need for any new regulations that were already in place but excepted them just the same.
Recreational fishermen accepted the change in these catch limits and managment to the snowy grouper without a lot of argument and I believe it was mostly because there really wasn’t but a few fishermen that actually partisapated in this deep water fishery.
At some point shortly there after though the catch limit was reduced again to one fish per boat per day and was done without any new stock assesment or good science to back this up.
It was done purely out of an overcautious approach and was based off of a lot of uncertainites in the status of this stock.
Because of uncertainties which are the main foundations for the decision making process we are now being robbed year after year of access to perfectly healthy fisheries.
