Why aren't simple Quantity, Size, Season limits enough?

spangler

Everyone's making their case for more data.  I think any reasonable person would argue that, the more data the better.  Given.

Are Quantity, Size and Season limits not working? 

Soda Popinski

More Data is an excuse to ignore the truth.   They can't interpret properly the data they have right now on red snapper, and who knows what data they are really looking at.   It's a dog and pony show IMO. 

Rich M

I think it could be area specific. 

I primarily fish the Canaveral National Seashore area - been fishing this area for 22 years.  Know where fish should be.  Might be able to argue about water quality as much as angler density.

There are a lot of folks on the water every day and it appears to have resulted in a lowering of the legal size trout and overall redfish population.  I can point at angler pressure here. 

Other places I have no idea.  I've fished some spots on the west coast in the past 2 years where we caught 30-100+ trout per day.  One place had 16-18 inch fish, the other 14-15 inch fish.  Exceptional fishing - the boating/fishing traffic did not seem to be as heavy as on the east coast.  Still had weed beds, etc.

Offshore I have no idea - we always caught red snapper whenever we have gone - before and after the closures.

Tom Hilton

Spangler,

The system got hijacked 12 years ago when The Environmental Defense Fund got their agenda put into law with the reauthorization of Magnuson in 2006.  That was when they first introduced a "market approach" to our fisheries management; Catch Shares.  That's when the NMFS began micromanaging the rec fishery nearly out of existence using knowingly flawed, bogus data.  The end game behind ALL of their regulations is to convert our Public Trust Resources into privately owned commodities - daily bag limits and season days don't provide that capability.

Now, we have the commercial IFQ Shareholders intruding into the recreational charter industry with their Commercial Catch Share Experience Trips, where they market them as "free", with no daily bag limits or seasons.  They take recreational fishermen out to catch the fish using the same boats, rods/reels, tackle, as they do on recreational charters - they are NOT using bandit rigs like they do on ACTUAL commercial trips, because these are "charters that cannot be called charters".   How can a legit charter operation compete with "free" trips with no daily bag limits or seasons?  They can't, as it is a mafia-style coercion method to accept their terms or be rubbed out (of business).  They want to create a whole new market for their commercial catch where they are charging the rec fishermen up to $20/pound for red snapper whole weight.  Strange, since anyone can walk into Katie's seafood and buy the same snapper at $8/pound retail.  They are adding on the "charter" fee on the backside, when the fish house pays the commercial captain.  It's a scam to the highest degree and I can't understand how it could be considered legal.  Next move is to go to intersector trading where the Commercial IFQ Shareholders "lease" their quota to charter operators at whatever price the market will bear.

https://www.katiesseafoodmarket.com/collections/galveston-fishing-charter-trips/products/catch-share-trip

The Plan is to give ownership of the fish to the for-hire corporations via IFQs or PFQs, and require private recs to use fish tags - this is from 9 years ago but is still in progress today;  http://walker-foundation.org/Files/walker/2009/GulfofMXupdate.doc

Rich M

I had heard that - thought it was conspiracy theory.  Selling the fish to foreign countries, etc.

lemaymiami

The moment any fish is allowed to be bought and sold... you provide all the incentive needed for folks "in the business" to start referring to fish as "product" and begin figuring out ways to make the most money possible - while doing their best to cut down the competition (any competition....) to as small a sector as possible.

That's just one of the reasons that game fish status for some of our state's species was so important.  Removing redfish from commercial status, for instance, was the only thing that saved them from being fished into oblivion.... and that exactly what was happening after net boats started slaughtering the big breeders to feed the market for the blackened redfish craze that restaurants found profitable way back when.... 

From my own years involved in conservation issues I can tell you with certainty that the fisheries regulations and on-going research to make them better are head and shoulders better than they were back in the "bad old days" of the seventies when we watched fishery after fishery go into decline and collapse along our coasts.  When I first got into the fight we lost every battle - without exception... All of that was before the FWC came along.  Do we still have problems - you bet (and Tom Hilton is exactly right about what's happened in the world of commercial fishing...).  Hopefully we'll turn that around...  Thank heavens for outfits like the CCA, and the newer Captains for Clean Water... Everyone ought to belong to one or the other - better yet both of them...

Our most pressing problems aren't in the area of regulation since our water management and water quality issues are absolutely killing us (after the long long party - the bill is coming due...).  That's where all of my efforts will be headed until I'm no longer able to stand up....

Enyar

lemaymiami said:

Our most pressing problems aren't in the area of regulation since our water management and water quality issues are absolutely killing us (after the long long party - the bill is coming due...).  That's where all of my efforts will be headed until I'm no longer able to stand up....

Thanks for your hard work

red_snapperdata

spangler said:

Everyone's making their case for more data.  I think any reasonable person would argue that, the more data the better.  Given.

Are Quantity, Size and Season limits not working? 

The MSA is driven by pounds of fish caught. On the commercial side harvested fish are weighed. Their catch is known and documented. This is why they get smaller fish, more TAC and I disagree with IFQ's, but if the commercial side asks for it they typically get what they want(more triggerfish per trip). While the recreational side gets less, why because we are the unknown, we scream for better data but then balk at reporting our catches.

The fishery managers want better data about what is out there covered by water and how much bycatch we kill yearly, if we had smaller sizes and longer seasons we might just get lower bycatch and get poaching under control. There is no way to know what is out there, but thanks to Furuno, Garmin, Simrad, etc.. todays angler are much better at harvesting fish and we can tell them how good fishing is today. Recreational anglers do not believe the harvest data that continues to increase size limits, lower creel limits and shortened seasons. If we believed the data we would be OK with the current Quantity, Size and Seasons, We don't need more just better data, after all we being held to the 7.1 million lbs of red snapper in the Gulf of  Mexico. In our research we have found that .005 % of the recreational anglers fish get weighed, the rest is left to their data?

The phone Apps out there right now are getting better data, but they fall short when it comes to pounds harvested, we know how fisherman estimate weight. Recreational anglers should kill all talk about a tag system that is what they have on the Atlantic side just without the tags. The math would be for every license holder to get one(1) red snapper tag, license sells would go up and so would the selling of tags.


The most interesting thing is that now we could start weighing our fish and the fishery managers do not believe in weighing fish. although he MSA has been since beginning driven by pounds harvested. So is it that  we catch our quota or they do not want egg on their face? We believe they have set recreational anglers a goal now let us weigh our fish and fish till meet our quota.

ANUMBER1

lemaymiami said:

The moment any fish is allowed to be bought and sold... you provide all the incentive needed for folks "in the business" to start referring to fish as "product" and begin figuring out ways to make the most money possible - while doing their best to cut down the competition (any competition....) to as small a sector as possible.

That's just one of the reasons that game fish status for some of our state's species was so important.  Removing redfish from commercial status, for instance, was the only thing that saved them from being fished into oblivion.... and that exactly what was happening after net boats started slaughtering the big breeders to feed the market for the blackened redfish craze that restaurants found profitable way back when.... 

From my own years involved in conservation issues I can tell you with certainty that the fisheries regulations and on-going research to make them better are head and shoulders better than they were back in the "bad old days" of the seventies when we watched fishery after fishery go into decline and collapse along our coasts.  When I first got into the fight we lost every battle - without exception... All of that was before the FWC came along.  Do we still have problems - you bet (and Tom Hilton is exactly right about what's happened in the world of commercial fishing...).  Hopefully we'll turn that around...  Thank heavens for outfits like the CCA, and the newer Captains for Clean Water... Everyone ought to belong to one or the other - better yet both of them...

Our most pressing problems aren't in the area of regulation since our water management and water quality issues are absolutely killing us (after the long long party - the bill is coming due...).  That's where all of my efforts will be headed until I'm no longer able to stand up....

true for some but not all.
Trout, while still a commercial fishery is 95% rec to 5% commercial, pretty much the same slant (not %) with mahi, cobia, gag grouper and many other food fish (notice i don't include bait)..

BTW, I still want my redfish that the old MFC promised me at the "Rally in Tally" back in 89 or so...

One more thing Bob, the reason FCA had to resort to a constitutional amendment for the net ban was that the best available science didn't call for one.
Marine Fisheries Commission staff (despite Russell Nelsons shenanigans) didn't see the need for a complete net ban and believed that current bag limits and harvest restriction were sufficent for all stocks to rebound (and they were).
Also Bob, redfish were removed from commercial harvest in state waters 7 years before the net ban except for a very brief time (think 1989) when harvest and sale was restricted to 5 fish per day.

Net ban ballot was nothing more than an emotional ploy with no science behind it...
Just like the bear hunt fiasco in 2016..

sometimes that crap comes back to bite you right in the rear end..

surfman

The reason for the net ban was because commercial gill netting was simply out of control. When the market for mullet roe in Asia was discovered the price on the head of a mullet suddenly jumped from something like $0.25/lb to $3+/lb and more. Everybody and his brother got a gill net and was suddenly fishing for these fish. Every effort was made to try to curb this craziness from weekend closures for netting to reduced net sizes but, the response we got from the fishermen was basically the middle finger. “We are going to do whatever we want and there is nothing you can do about it”. Couple that with the fact that the only resource patrolling this fishery was the Marine Patrol which had something like 5 boats to cover the entire Gulf coast.

It was a free for all. The commercial fishermen will point to things like landings remained the same indicating that there wasn’t a problem but, what they don’t want to talk about was that effort went through the roof. Fish houses didn’t care if you were licensed or not, they had a buyer for your fish. There really was nothing left to do but seek a ban on gill nets.

Art of course will say that I’m full of it and, I get where he is coming from, he wants it to look like it was just a vindictive attack when the plain truth is we were concerned about this fishery and it was heading down a very bad path. I remember when a 15” trout was a lunker in Tampa Bay and the fishery has completely turned around since the net ban. And oh, by the way, commercial mullet fishing is still legal and goes on today and they slam the heck out of them using the allowed gear but, even today there are people busted for using illegal gear. Even though we now have the FWC patrolling the waters (Art hates that too), along with the limited Marine Patrol it is still no where near enough, especially at night when most of this activity goes on.

I guess we could have just waited for the fishery to collapse like red fish did but, CCA prefers not to manage that way.

ANUMBER1

surfman said:

The reason for the net ban was because commercial gill netting was simply out of control. When the market for mullet roe in Asia was discovered the price on the head of a mullet suddenly jumped from something like $0.25/lb to $3+/lb and more. Everybody and his brother got a gill net and was suddenly fishing for these fish. Every effort was made to try to curb this craziness from weekend closures for netting to reduced net sizes but, the response we got from the fishermen was basically the middle finger. “We are going to do whatever we want and there is nothing you can do about it”. Couple that with the fact that the only resource patrolling this fishery was the Marine Patrol which had something like 5 boats to cover the entire Gulf coast.

It was a free for all. The commercial fishermen will point to things like landings remained the same indicating that there wasn’t a problem but, what they don’t want to talk about was that effort went through the roof. Fish houses didn’t care if you were licensed or not, they had a buyer for your fish. There really was nothing left to do but seek a ban on gill nets.

Art of course will say that I’m full of it and, I get where he is coming from, he wants it to look like it was just a vindictive attack when the plain truth is we were concerned about this fishery and it was heading down a very bad path. I remember when a 15” trout was a lunker in Tampa Bay and the fishery has completely turned around since the net ban. And oh, by the way, commercial mullet fishing is still legal and goes on today and they slam the heck out of them using the allowed gear but, even today there are people busted for using illegal gear. Even though we now have the FWC patrolling the waters (Art hates that too), along with the limited Marine Patrol it is still no where near enough, especially at night when most of this activity goes on.

I guess we could have just waited for the fishery to collapse like red fish did but, CCA prefers not to manage that way.

You lie more than a rug,
**** is your god **** problem???

BTW I have a very good working relationship with local and Tallahassee FWC..

surfman

I don't have a problem. I don't doubt you do.