| Red Snapper Closure |
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| Written by Georgia |
| Thursday, 17 December 2009 14:42 |
A plan that received initial endorsement Friday from the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council includes a measure to ban bottom fishing in an area off the Florida, Georgia and South Carolina coasts that is notably smaller than some other scenarios. “Our intent is to close the smallest area possible and still get the percent reduction we need in mortality,” the council’s vice chairman, David Cupka, said later. If it were adopted with no more changes, that ban would affect ocean areas between 98 feet and 300 feet deep. Other plans that had been considered included a closure affecting areas as shallow as 66 feet, which would have moved the restricted area dozens of miles nearer to Florida’s shoreline. The decision Friday represents only a starting point for more reviews, with the council still months away from formally proposing long-term restrictions. A number of environmental advocates, led by the Pew Environment Group of the Pew Charitable Trusts, say strong restrictions are needed to prevent red snapper from being harvested nearly to extinction. They say snapper populations may be just 3 percent of what’s needed for the species to breed in sustainable numbers. But many people involved in both commercial and recreational fishing have challenged that, saying government research to support new restrictions was badly flawed. That assertion was a key part of the argument a group called the Recreational Fishing Alliance made this month when it sued in Jacksonville federal court to fight a stopgap six-month ban on all red snapper fishing. The long-term snapper rules are unusually controversial because the fishing closures would prevent fishing for potentially dozens of other bottom fish in the same areas. Backers of the closure say that’s necessary because an exceptionally large number of red snapper caught accidentally will die even if they’re returned to the water, because of the stress of being hauled from a great depth quickly. The leader of Pew’s red snapper campaign said Friday that regulators should make certain whatever rules they adopt are strong enough to be effective. In planning how to preserve the species, “I think they need to make assumptions grounded in reality, showing that this plan has a high likelihood of success,” said Holly Binns, who runs Pew’s campaign against over fishing for the Southeast. “No one wants to come back and take these more dramatic steps a few years down the road,” she said. Separately, the management council adopted plans Friday meant to protect nine other fish species, including Warsaw grouper, snowy grouper and speckled hind. The measure includes rules shutting down fishing for eight species in one stretch of ocean. |