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News 5
Published: Wed, March 14, 2007 - 7:03 am
With just over a month to go before the start of red snapper season, marinas around the gulf coast are busy getting ready.
"I'm looking for a good year this year I really am."- Charter boat captain Tom Ard has high hopes.- "There's a lot of fish out there right now they've moved back here, the storms blew em away, they'll be back this is where they live."
- But some conservation groups say not enough red snapper live in gulf waters.- It fell to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council to come up with a plan to reverse overfishing trends.- That plan is now on hold for nine months.
-"It's still a little too early to say what is going to happen."- Bobbi Walker is a member of the management council.- "If the national marine fisheries unit and NOAA general counsel interpret this to mean everything will stay in place until you implement a plan that has a better than 50 percent guarantee that it's going to work we will have our season this year of six months and four fish bag limit and 9 point 2 million TAC the problem with that is you have to look out past this year."
-- That may mean bag limits of red snapper are cut to two per customer, something charter boat captains say could put them out of business.
-"We hear so much well it's going to do this it's going to do that we really don't know till the season happens," says Ard.- He remains optimistic.- "This year we're going to have a very good year and if they cut the red snapper back it's going to be hard to catch anything else cause there's so many snapper out there."
According to the Ocean Conservancy the number of adult red snapper big enough to spawn in the gulf is only three percent of what it should be and cuts have to be made to stop overfishing.- Recreational fishermen say the models used to come up with fish populations don't work.
Snapper season starts April 21st.
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