Yesterday, a temporary six-month ban on Red Snapper fishing went into effect off the coasts of NC, SC, GA, and Eastern FL. This closure, requested by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council and instituted by NOAA's Fisheries Department (National Marine Fisheries Service) is in response to a 2008 report that shows that Red Snapper are being overfished at about 8 times the sustainable rate. The NMFS estimates that the Red Snapper population is only at 3% of what it was 60 years ago. Another study found that 80% of what we buy as Red Snapper is mislabeled and is actually other fish, probably because Red Snapper has become so popular that it is overfished. This temporary closure is a stop gap until the SAFMC can institute more permanent rules to rebuild the Red Snapper population and create a long term financially viable and sustainable fishery.
Of course there has been a hubbub raised by local recreational sport fisherman who claim that the fish are not overfished. (See NPR article for more info)
Personally I am so happy to hear that the government is taking steps to save these fisheries. This isn't really a environmental move per se, but more of a financial move. Through the course of human history we have been depleted one fish stock after another, valuing short term profits over long term sustinable fishing. The most glaring of these fishery collapses is the Northern Cod fishery in the Canada/US. For 500 years, the Northern Cod fishery sustained generations of fisherman. Then greed and mismanagement took over and fisherman decimated the populations of cod. In 1992, cod populations plummeted to about 5% of what they had been decades before. Even after a fishing moratorium of 18 years, cod stocks in this fishery have failed to rebound, possibly due to a ecological shift in which Capelin, once one of cod's main prey, have become a dominant species and now feed on juvenile cod. This tale has been repeated over and over again, with humans exploiting a fishery to the point of collapse or near collapse... with Orange Roughy, California Abalone, Long Island Clams, and many more. Without government regulation, more fisheries will collapse. In fact some foresee that all fisheries worldwide will collapse by 2048, unless we do something about it.
Oh and for all those fisherman who constantly claim that their fisheries have not collapsed, here's a quote from a fisheries scientist, "There is always disagreement between fishermen and government scientists... Imagine an overfished area of the sea in the shape of a hockey field with nets at either end. The few fish left therein would gather around the goals because fish like structured habitats. Scientists would survey the entire field, make lots of unsuccessful hauls, and conclude that it contains few fish. The fishermen would make a beeline to the goals, catch the fish around them,and say the scientists do not know what they are talking about. The subjective impression the fishermen get is always that there's lots of fish - because they only go to places that still have them... fisheries scientists survey and compare entire areas, not only the productive fishing spots."
Red Snapper are a reef fish found in the Gulf of Mexico and in the South Atlantic. The one I drew is smiling because he is happy that the ban is taking effect.
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