Red snapper might be off the hook

The red snapper is a mouth-watering entree. Its feisty deepwater fight leaves anglers grinning. Fishermen say they catch more than they used to.

That might be coming to a screeching halt.

The federal government is poised to shut down the harvest of the fish in the South Atlantic, commercially and recreationally, and close down miles of the offshore to bottom fishing — maybe year-round. The snapper, regulators say, is in trouble, despite a few good spawning years that led to the recent jump in catches.

The harvest shutdown is tough enough: it's one of the most popular fish to bring home. The combined effect of a shutdown and closing could pull the drain plug on much of the recreational, charter and commercial fishing offshore, costing millions in tourism and business revenue and a sea of fun. It could make other delicacies, such as as fresh local grouper, harder to find.

The U.S. Congress dropped the hammer.

After decades of federal agency restrictions on the catch and size of deepwater fish — regulations that nearly everyone agreed weren't working — Congress in 2006 reauthorized the law that says fish stocks must be managed to assure a sustainable catch. The law included a mandate: Within one year of finding that a species is overfished, the fisheries management councils in each region must stop the overfishing.

Researchers agree the Atlantic fishery overall is being depleted. The councils are reviewing species one by one and passing some of the strictest rules that the long-restricted fishing industry has ever seen. In September, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council voted to shut down the harvest of gag grouper and vermilion snapper during a four-month spawning season and tighten catch limits among other restrictions. Those new rules are pending National Marine Fisheries Service approval.

"Congress really made it pretty tough. The economic and social impacts (of passing regulations) took a back seat, which they haven't in the past. But then, we haven't done a very good job in the past," said Duane Harris, the South Atlantic council chairman. The council regulates South Carolina waters.

Recreational, charter and commercial anglers have battled the rules, saying the snapper depletion isn't as dire as the solution.

"We're livid. We're irate. And there's nothing we can do about it. We've gone to their meetings for years, jumped up and down and told them their science is wrong, and it doesn't make any difference," said Marcus Harold, of James Island, who owns a 27-foot fishing boat.

"It's going to do severe damage to the people who make their living fishing, and a lot of damage to people's freedom to fish. I'll probably sell my boat," he said.

"The way they're going to close it down is a big ugly thing. I think it's a wrong approach. I think it's wrong science. Do we catch snapper in droves like we used to? No. Do we have to totally destroy an industry to protect these fish? No," said Mark Marhefka, a Mount Pleasant commercial fisherman who supplies local restaurants.

Pity Gregg Waugh. The South Atlantic council's deputy executive director is the man in the middle of four states of angry anglers, a skeptical council and the researchers who determine the health of a fish stock. The complaint is always bad science, he said.

Could better research be done if the money were there? "No doubt," he said. But the data from surveys of fishermen and its own surveys were good enough to predict the plentiful red snapper catch the past few years, based on good spawning in the late 1990s. Overall the red snapper is in a state of what one researcher described as stable collapse.

The bio-mass, or the estimated tonnage of fish out there, "is the worst of any species we have fully assessed," Waugh said. "Will the stock go extinct if we don't do any more than we do now? Probably not. But it's nowhere near as productive as it could be."

Catch limits on red snapper haven't been enough to restore the species because it's a deepwater fish; the pressure change bringing a snapper to the surface kills an estimated half or more or the fish thrown back. The council has little choice but to say, you just can't fish where it can be caught, Waugh said.

Harvesting red snapper is almost certain to be outlawed when the rules are finalized and take effect January 2010. Two alternatives for closing huge swaths of the bottom were proposed that would end most of the productive fishing offshore from near Wilmington, N.C., to Melbourne, Fla. The council shook its collective head at both and told researchers to come back with options to selectively close off smaller bottom areas, leaving others open to fishing.

"Nobody on council wants to end fishing. Nobody wants to put anybody out of business," Harris said. Staff will come back with the new options in 2009. Whether those bottoms will be closed year-round or seasonally depends on those options.

Red snapper won't come off the table. The fish can still be caught in the Gulf of Mexico, and there are always imports. With a sustainable seafood movement under way, vermilion snapper has already been substituted for the red in many area restaurants.

But each closing of an offshore fishery "is going to make it tougher. Pricing goes up to the sky, and we try to be an inexpensive restaurant," said Nico Romo, executive chef for Fish, one of the area restaurants that has begun serving vermilion snapper instead. Mark Marhefka supplies it.

"I think people come for fresh fish," Romo said. "If you don't let Mark get fresh for me, we don't get fresh fish."