The author has worked as a consultant for SOFA for the past 7 years and is a member of various advisory panels for the gulf council.


Where have your snapper gone?

Grouper fishermen, who have been around the fishery for at least 10 years or more, certainly have heard the terms IFQ or ITQ a time or two. A decade or so ago when the concept of individual fishing quotas popped up, I have to admit, it sounded like an interesting concept, albeit a bit too socialistic for my liking. Like it or not, IQ's are an issue front and center in our fishery we have to deal with. First it was red snapper, and the Gulf Council under direction from the Secretary of Commerce is currently underway, developing a similar plan for the grouper fishery.

Many grouper fishermen in the panhandle and along the west coast of Florida which hold red snapper permits (class 1 and class 2) received their early Christmas presents from the good folks at National Marine Fisheries Service in the form of a registered letter informing fishers of what their allocation of the red snapper pie would be. Shocking wasn't it? Insulting? Not worth the paperwork to land your 37 or 94 or 114 pounds of red snapper if you had a class 2 permit? Wasn't long after that initial letter from NMFS that you also started receiving letters from folks wanting to buy up those shares and take them off your hands.

Oh, IFQ's (individual fishing quotas) are going to be the panacea which saves the fishery. There won't be any more derby fishery. The dockside price of fish will sky rocket. Coastal communities will prosper. Yeah, and the fish will always bite, the tide won't ever run into the wind again, cats and dogs are going to start cohabitating, and the checks in the mail.

Over the coming months, grouper fishermen will hear a lot of talk about the possibility of an IFQ program coming to their fishery. You see, it's the newest tool in the tool box for the "managers" on the Gulf Council. They have mismanaged the grouper fishery since 1990 and now with the closures of the shallow water grouper (SWG) fishery in 2004 and 2005, they are scrambling around trying to find a Band-Aid to fix things.

Here are a few things grouper fishermen should watch for and really research on their own in order to make an informed decision about IFQ's.

  1. IFQ's are no longer called IFQ's. With the reauthorization of the Magnuson Act, they have now been re-named, the kinder, gentler name of LAPP's. (limited access privilege permits) So, this is a new acronym which we should all become familiar with. I'm suggesting bumper stickers, NO NOAA LAPPDOGS.
  2. Grouper allocation under a LAPP system. Allocation for the red snapper fishery was based on a single species fishery. What are we going to do when it comes to allocating IQ shares for the grouper fishery? Allocation coupons for each species such as gag, black, red, yellowedge, snowy, scamp, warsaw? And a pet peeve of mine, Kitty Mitchell. Kitty's are managed as a grouper but they are actually a hind, NOT a grouper.
  3. 3. If we don't issue individual allocation shares for each species and base it on the SWG or DWG (deepwater grouper) allocation will again raise other serious issues. Based on the years of allocation, say a fisherman fished shallow water because it was a good red grouper year and didn't go offshore, he loses out on deepwater grouper allocation. In years where the red grouper cycle is down and he has to fish offshore, he will be forced to purchase deepwater grouper shares if they are available on the market to be sold or traded. Remember, the deepwater grouper quota is 1 million pounds from Brownsville Texas to Key West Florida.
  4. 4. The Council is now also considering moving tilefish into the grouper LAPP program because they are caught in deepwater along with some grouper. In their ultimate wisdom, the Council in 2001 voted to create a tilefish quota based on the average of three years landings of 440,000 pounds and lumped gray and golden tilefish together. Wonderful management decision folks, my hats off to ya!
  5. 5. COSTS. Now it's time for the dirty little secrets. You know those 3,000.00 VMS units you are being forced to have installed on your reef fish permitted boats? The idea came from the red snapper IFQ program. The Council decided that the best way to manage the IFQ fishery for red snapper was VMS and after discussion at a few meetings, with the concept of a grouper IFQ in the works, the 17 members which represent the powers that be, affecting YOUR livelihood, decided to move forward and make it mandatory for all vessels with reef fish permits. Isn't that nice????
  6. 6. MORE COSTS. Have any of you non shark fishing, grouper boats been asked to take observers? Well get used to that more and more in a grouper IFQ program. In May at a grouper IFQ meeting, the grouper IFQ panel listened to reports from a fishery manager from British Columbia which spoke about how the fishermen HAD TO PAY to take observers at 330.00 a day (Canadian) and then had to pay ANOTHER observer to come to the docks during unloading the verify the observer's observations. Thought the price of fuel increase was bad; add a mandatory observer cost at 200.00 a day for 12 days. Think your boat is too small for taking an observer? Think again. Video recording devices, to the tune of almost 8,000.00, installed at your expense will take care of not having that additional bunk for the observer.
  7. 7. DID I MENTION ANOTHER COST? Every time you unload and draw down on you allocation of grouper, you will be charged a 3% fee for the transaction. The government needs to cover their costs of administering the program. Nice of them to charge us for something we don't want.
  8. 8. AND ANOTHER COST? Ooops, I did mention the government was going to be charging 3% for the administration of this program to cover the costs but I guess I also forgot to mention another dirty little secret. It's called set asides. Set asides are where the government takes a percentage of everyone's allocation away from all the qualified participants and creates a pool of allocation shares. The government then rents out those shares to fishermen who want to buy them in case they need extra shares to fish the entire year. I'll make this simple. NMFS will take some fish away from everyone to create a pool from which people can lease extra shares in order to fish for a year (AT YOUR EXPENSE) The proceeds will go to NMFS in order to fund research! Basically, you are giving up fish to the government, so they can sell your fish to fund themselves. NMFS will now be selling fish. BRILLIANT!

IFQ's, ITQ's, LAPP's, whatever acronym the government types want to put on these programs, they are all the same. They are not going to change the situations we face here in the Gulf of Mexico. They are not going to change a potentially bad stock assessment in gag, or red or yellowedge grouper. If you hold a class 2 red snapper permit, look at your allocation. It is 50% of what you should have received because of the ongoing situation with red snapper. Grouper fishermen along the west coast of Florida who didn't qualify for the initial class 1 red snapper permit, have seen the recovery over the past 15 years and yet, don't get to benefit in the stocks rebound. NMFS staff has told me personally that when the red snapper IFQ filters out, they expect there to be 30-40 boats left out of the entire 400+ class 1 and 2 permits out there right now. IQ and LAPP programs are nothing more than major consolidation programs with the government getting another slice of the pie.

As of the last Gulf Council meeting, (week of January 22 2007) The Council is considering the possibility of closing the recreational and charter fishery for 2 years to the red snapper fishery. This should scare the hell out of anyone who fishes for a living. The gag grouper stock assessment is on the table in the coming months and a possible 50% reduction might be required according to the government folks. In a single species management IQ program, a 50% reduction would mean your allocation would be reduced by 50%. If you average 30,000 pounds of shallow water grouper a year, your allocation would be 15,000. If you weren't happy with your red snapper allocation, you won't be happy with a grouper allocation if the Council moves forward. You should write or call the Gulf Council RIGHT now and tell them to STOP developing an IFQ system for the grouper fishery and address the real issues facing our fishery.

Tight lines and full boxes
ER

Written and contributed by Eric Schmidt

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