Shrinking seasons? Fishermen, scientists split on closures

PANAMA CITY BEACH — On any given day, charter boat captain Jeff Lassiter and his customers will catch dozens of gray triggerfish.

Then they’ll toss them back in the water.

“They’re dang near a nuisance,” Lassiter said, pulling up a photo of a monstrous fish a customer had thrown back the week before. “There’s plenty of them.”

A few years ago, Lassiter most likely could have kept the triggerfish. And, if everything had gone as planned, he would have been able to keep the “40 or so” triggerfish he caught the previous week.

But just two weeks before the scheduled Aug. 1 reopening date, national and state fishing officials changed their minds. Because of overfishing, NOAA Fisheries decided not to reopen triggerfish in federal waters this year, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) elected to follow suit. Officials said anglers already had met the allowable catch quota for the year, and to keep going would jeopardize the overall sustainability of the stock.

NOAA also opted to not reopen amberjack for the same reasons, which means head boats and charter boat captains, which all have federal permits, will not be able to take customers out to fish for either species.

To the local charter boat industry it’s a blow, particularly the loss of the amberjack season, which also closed early last year.

“We’ve lost three 10-hour trips already,” said Lassiter, who owns Top Deck Charters and knows other captains who have lost trips. “People want to come to catch big fish. ... The amberjack is what’s going to hurt us.”

Down the dock, Brent Trevathan with the Lady Rose said his crew has lost some of its longer charter trips as well, saying this is reminiscent of last fall. Capt. Bob Zales II, who owns the Zodiac Charter Fleet, said he is expecting to lose trips, noting amberjack’s popularity when red snapper, another species under tight regulations, is out of season.

In state waters, FWC tentatively has reopened amberjack to recreational anglers, with plans to reassess the situation during their September meeting.

“We’re looking at (potentially) doing the same” as NOAA, FWC spokesman Amanda Nalley said.

History of regulations

Triggerfish and amberjack — which are both predominately fished for by recreational, not commercial, fisherman — were listed among the eight stocks NOAA reported to be overfished in 2015. And they both have a long history of problems, dating back to the 1980s, according to Roy Crabtree, the southeast regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries.

“There weren’t a lot of restraints back then,” he said.

In the 1980s, before firm rules were set on how to regulate and prevent domestic overfishing, the stocks suffered their most dramatic decline, but problems never really went away, Crabtree said. With the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act in the mid-2000s, the rules become tighter and brought lingering issue to the forefront. The legislation required every stock to have a catch limit and set requirements to end overfishing.

That was about the time closures became more common, especially for species such as triggerfish that “haven’t responded as well as we would like” to regulations, Crabtree said. Triggerfish, like red snapper, have seen low levels of juvenile recruitment, meaning NOAA believes there are not enough young fish to support the population.

Many fishermen, however, don’t buy it. Some believe the new regulations are driven by political corruption. Angler Paul Nickens is one of them.

“I will be selling by boat this fall and buying golf clubs,” Nickens wrote in response to a News Herald Facebook post asking for opinions. “Political lobbyist(s) can’t tell me what golf course I can play.”

Others like Zales and Pam Anderson, the operations director at Capt. Anderson’s Marina, believe regulations are a sign the NOAA is planning to move toward catch share management for charter and head boats. Catch shares, when anglers are given a certain portion of the fishery they then “own,” currently are used to regulate much of the commercial industry. Commercial fishermen say the practice is unfair and sets up winners and losers.

Then there are those, like Lassiter, who simply believe NOAA is using bad data. One popular theory about triggerfish is that a new rule mandating fishermen use circle hooks instead of J hooks is leading to fewer triggerfish being caught and counted, skewing the data.

When it comes to amberjack, Lassiter said he could see it makes “a little more sense,” as they are not as prevalent as triggerfish.

“They upped the size limit to 34 inches, and they seem to be giving them time to grow and recoup,” he said. “It hurts a little, but I’m not as opposed. But if they take amberjack, they should give us trigger.”

NOAA is considering other measures, such as lowering the bag limit and tweaking size limits for both species, in the hopes they will not have to close the fishery in the future.

“To rebuild fishery and rebuild the stock, there had to be cuts and limits, and they do have an economic effect,” Crabtree said. “But the belief of the Magnuson-Stevens Act is that rebuilding the stocks and having healthier stocks in the long term is a greater benefit.”

Both gray triggerfish and amberjack currently are set to reopen Jan. 1, 2017. In the meantime, anglers still can target king mackerel, Spanish mackerel, vermillion snapper, mangrove snapper and gag grouper, to name a few. Those species, according to NOAA data, are far less likely to have cuts — vermillion snapper and Spanish mackerel have never had a closure, and king mackerel hasn’t has one since the 1990s — and still make for good eating.

“There’s still plenty of fish to catch,” Lassiter said.