Snowball Fight: The Constant Battle for Snowy Grouper
The June meeting of the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council is this week – final approval of preferred actions on Snowy Grouper Amendment 51 are on the agenda for Wednesday. The latest stock assessment for Snowy indicates the stock is overfished and undergoing overfishing….still after 16 years of rebuilding. 16 years of sacrifices from the commercial side. 16 years of hoping the next stock assessment will go our way. 16 years of hoping the council will wake up and control recreational harvest so Snowies will finally have the chance to recover.
But 2022 is not the year, the Council is yet again “developing management measures to end overfishing and continue to rebuild the [Snowy Grouper] stock.” Proposed is a 43% reduction in harvest, sector reallocations, and reductions to the current 200-pound gutted weight commercial trip limit. So once again the blame goes on the commercial side despite our rigorous dual-sided accountability system. Commercial fishermen have been on this meager Snowy rebuilding plan since 2006 and our sacrifices continue to be wasted. This council’s inability to monitor their recreational anglers has ruined this fishery – not just for my dad’s generation but for mine too. It doesn’t feel like it will ever be rebuilt at this rate. Recreational anglers are constantly rewarded with more and more unmonitored quota while generational commercial fishermen are forced out of the fishery.
In 2019, there were 543 Snapper-Grouper commercial permits renewed in the South Atlantic (NC, SC, GA, FL). Out of those 543, 163 vessels caught snowy grouper totaling 1,187 trips – or about 7 trips each for the entire year. We know all this data because every commercial fishing trip and harvest is monitored through logbooks on the fishermen side and trip ticket reporting on the dealer side. From Virginia to Florida there are 65,000,000 residents and only 163 boats are permitted to harvest and sell snowy grouper in the South Atlantic. The reductions cannot come from the commercial side – that is unacceptable, we have to start protecting access for the non-angling consumer!
Commercial permit numbers are so low because we have been on limited entry for 20 years – NOAA calls it 2-for-1. If you want to purchase a commercial snapper-grouper permit you must find two and retire one, this alone costs around $120,000 – $160,000. So participation has been declining every year since 2005 because what young commercial fisherman can afford two permits plus a seaworthy boat?
But if you want to start a charter business targeting bottom fish just go online and fill out the application. This side is open-access, there is no limit on how many for-hire and private anglers can target the Snapper-Grouper Complex. Just in Hatteras Village, there are about 60 charter boats who bottom fish at least a few times per month and most a few per week. This is compared to the three active commercial snapper-grouper boats on the island.
The decline of mahi and tuna over the past decade has really put recreational pressure on our local bottom-fish and it shows. Personal boats are more popular than ever – outboard engine retail sales rose for the ninth consecutive year in 2020 to a total of 330,000 units. This is the highest annual sales volume in 20 years and up 18% compared to 2019. According to the National Marine Manufactures Association, things are just getting started –
“The heightened interest in boating amid the COVID-19 pandemic helped to propel outboard engine sales to historic levels last year as more Americans took to the water, whether on a new boat or repowering a pre-owned boat with a new engine,” noted Vicky Yu, National Marine Manufactures Association director of business intelligence. “With boating participation on the rise, boat sales expected to remain steady, and engine manufacturers catching up to meet demand, we should continue to see healthy levels in outboard engine sales into 2021.”
Recreational anglers were never put on a limited entry system despite a control date being considered by the council in 2007. They could have changed the entire fate of Snowy rebuilding with just one vote. The truth of it is – recreational fishing effort is impossible to gauge because there is no accountability. Anyone in the world can launch an outboard and harvest Snowy Grouper in the South Atlantic and tens of millions of anglers do. They are never asked about their catch because their fish is supposedly not sold, bartered or traded so they are exempt from reporting requirements.
This is the part that really hurts because no recreationally landed fish are reported so we have absolutely no idea what damage has been and is being done. A formula was developed by NOAA to estimate recreational fishing effort – Marine Recreational Informational Program – this is the data used for recreational allocation. Conversely, I have federal logs of every single fish F/V Prowler ever harvested in its 30 years of operation in my office and I could present the data with 48 hours as could most commercial vessels. Can a private angler back up their sentiments of sustainability? Not like we can.
NMFS knows for sure that in 2019, 2,183 for-hire Snapper-Grouper permits were issued and estimate these charter/headboats totaled 5,509 charter trips targeting Snowy Grouper. There is no permit required for private anglers (people using their own vessel) so we are unsure of how many there really are. The Snowy fishery management plan reports 0 private trips targeted Snowy Grouper, I do not understand why they truly believe 0 private trips were taken in 2019 and 2017? Perhaps none of those anglers were sampled so it was assumed there were none?
Keep in mind, only 5,315 fish are allocated to the recreational side and already 5,509 charter trips in 2019 without any private trips. So I guess it is easier for management if they just go with 0 private/rental trips and assume the charter/headboat fleet lands the entire quota? Just gonna say, Florida alone has over 4 million private recreational anglers – and 0 trips were run in the entire region? Really?
Wake Forest University Department of Sociology taught me that when you conduct a survey, if less than 51% of those sampled do not respond your study is automictically invalid. Why are we not talking about the survey errors here? They had 0 respondents. Why is this poor data accepted and used to make federal law that force families out of business? There are so many issues here – sampling errors, response rate issues, recall bias, prestige bias – hiding flaws in a survey is unethical and NMFS should know that. My professors would have had a field day if I had submitted data so poorly collected!
I have decided to publish my public comments on my website for all the public to read because I know many do not attend these meetings – but that needs to change. It is only with a collective voice we have an opportunity for change. I hope you enjoy my March comments and stay posted for my comments from the current meeting, I will post after the session on Wednesday.
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Good afternoon, I live in Hatteras, NC where my family has a retail store and fishing boat. Off Hatteras there are only a few species left that we target commercially in the snapper-grouper complex, our trifecta being Snowy Grouper, Blueline Tilefish, and Golden Tilefish. These have all traditionally been commercial species; recreational fishermen did not want to hand-crank a fish from 500-800 feet. So, they never took the time to explore the bottom, instead they trolled for mahi or billfish. But as technology advanced, bottom machines and electric reels made bottom fishing a snap for even the green-est fisherman.
Perhaps it is our own fault, we proudly brought a high-quality product to the dock for decades unknowingly creating a following and unfortunately creating massive competition for ourselves. I see it play out every year at my market, customers who have loyally purchased golden tile or snowy grouper for years, show up one summer with an outboard asking for numbers.
They usually come back though – not to buy fish but to try selling it, typically saying they “can’t eat it all and don’t want to waste it.” We kindly give them a free crash course on why it doesn’t work like that and then tell them they do not have to catch every fish; you can throw some back.
It has become a challenging workplace for both fishermen and retailers. As a retailer, I must compete with imports from shops down the street claiming their grouper was caught by my boat and I’m charging so much because I’m greedy! I have since put on display old permits, redacted federal logbooks and dealers’ tickets to prove my fish is really from Hatteras.
I rarely share photos or promote our bottom fish because my boat will be followed the next day. About five years ago, the harassment got to the point where my boat had to plan trips around everyone else – he would leave at midnight so he could fish the early morning, usually avoiding summer weekends and holidays, never going on Memorial Day, July 4th, or Labor Day despite heavy market demand.
So, while commercial fishermen have been on limited entry for twenty years and our participation continues to decline, and therefore our landings declined alongside, we are losing our marketplace. It is unreal to see these high prices but also really sad. So many people are not able to access the public resource that their tax dollars go to managing because they have been priced out. Instead, their purchases go to fund foreign fisheries who have seemingly little to no regulation – they still use gear the US banned decades ago.
Now we are talking about reallocation or basically making it even harder for the average American to access domestic fish. Trip limits and reallocation will not rebuild a species, especially snowy grouper, we need to end open access on the recreational and for-hire sides.
We need an accurate and timely system for tracking recreational landings – blueline tilefish shows that better than any species in recent years. I believe many view recreational accountability the wrong way – it is an opportunity not a restriction! They can plan out their fishing trips according to landings. At my retail market, customers have learned when to visit Hatteras Island based on what kind of seafood they want. Seriously, many make two trips – one in the spring/early summer for grouper and tile and another in September for brown shrimp and tuna.
Please we have taken hits for 15 years and are back to square one. Can you all consider trying something new and see if it helps? These fish are so easily exploited because they never leave their wreck so it is a tragedy when careless anglers find the spots because it will be overfished within a year and never recover. Recreational oversight needs to increase for stocks to increase, overfishing could finally end.
Thank you.
