Regional management of red snapper just won’t work. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act under which snapper management is conducted simply won’t allow for it. Nope. Won’t work. Can’t do it. Won’t do it.
That’s pretty much what we’ve heard from the folks over at the National Marine Fisheries Management Service since the idea of allowing Gulf states to set seasons and limits off their coasts by allotting each state a portion of the annual total allowable catch to do with as they please.
Texas has pretty much ignored federal officials for some time, with its enforcement agents not enforcing federal regulations within its state waters extending 10 miles off the coast.
And this year, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission decided that years of arguing with NMFS officials had accomplished nothing, so it 1) made a tenuous claim of authority, for fisheries management purposes, over Gulf waters extending to 10.357 miles and 2) set a weekend-only state red snapper season stretching from the weekend before Easter through September that allows three fish per angler instead of the federally mandated two-fish creel.
Florida quickly followed suit, setting its own extended season.
All the while NMFS’ Roy Crabtree warned that it was just impossible to manage the fishery in state regions.
Amazingly, however, Crabtree seems to have blinked after Alabama and Mississippi joined the fight for regional management. It came in the form of a warning in early April, when federal officials threatened to punish non-compliant states with shortened federal seasons.
If the threat is enacted, the federal fishing season off Louisiana would end a mere nine days after opening next month. At the same time, Texas would have only a 12-day federal season and Florida would enjoy 21 days.
That’s an odd stance for NMFS managers to take because setting seasons on a state-by-state basis is, well, regional management.
Predictably, the feds want it both ways. They won’t allow states to manage fisheries off their own coasts, but at the same time reserve the right to set different seasons for each state.
It’s obvious at this point that Crabtree’s office is more worried about WHO manages a fishery than HOW a fishery is managed. That’s just nonsense; we should have the best possible managers overseeing the fisheries, no matter if that be the federal government or the state.
And it’s clear that federal management — based on what even they recognize is flawed science — just isn’t working.
So the feds should step aside and let the states manage their own fisheries.
That would be best for the species — based on decades of effective state management of a wide variety of fish and wildlife — and it would be best for the anglers in those states.
