All fished out?

The mood in the room was almost resigned. Anglers kept tossing out suggestions to forestall closing bottom fishing offshore. But only about a dozen spoke. A few more listened and then walked away.

At one of the last public hearings before the drastic step is voted on to protect the red snapper, there was a sense that this one was going to get away.

"We know it's probably going to happen. We want to hopefully get the severity of it down as much as possible, and to validate the science (behind the decision on closure)," said Mike Able, a Coastal Conservation Association of South Carolina member, who owns Haddrell's Point Tackle & Supply in Mount Pleasant.

"We've come to find out (arguing against it) has taken us nowhere. We're trying to work with the council," said Wayne Mershon, of Kenyon's Seafood in Murrells Inlet.

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council held the hearing Monday in North Charleston, one of a series along the coast of four Southeastern states. The meetings came after the council did not make a decision on whether to close most of the offshore bottom at a grueling, sometimes heated meeting in September.

New alternatives offered at that meeting required new hearings. The decision now has to be made at the council's December meeting. Under a new, stricter federal law, the council must have rules in place by 2010 that would stop overfishing of the snapper.

"Our situation is pretty frustrating," said council member Tom Swatzel, a Murrells Inlet deep-sea charter fisherman.

A bottom closure could virtually remove local catches of the sought-after grouper from the hook, restaurant plates and seafood stores because the grouper is a bottom fish like the snapper. A closure would put commercial captains all but out of business, they say, and curtail recreational fishing. That would disrupt saltwater fishing that is championed as a $600 million-per-year industry in South Carolina alone.

"I know you're mandated to do this. But there are ways to do it without putting fishermen out of business," said Kerry O'Malley Marhefka. Her husband, Mark Marhefka, catches for Charleston restaurants and retailers, she said, producing some 6,000 servings per year, adding what she estimated is $1.7 million to the local economy.

"It's ludicrous to think what's been proposed can be enforced and will work" with the limited number of law enforcement officers and equipment available to watch what would be wide swaths of the ocean off at least three states, said Eric Heiden, a Georgetown charter fisherman.

The council already is considering options like a lottery to allow a few boats to keep fishing. Anglers offered suggestions like stricter catch or trip limits, fishing gear changes or moving the closed areas into somewhat deeper water to leave more close-to-shore fishing.

"To think that I can't go to the Charleston 60 reef, put a squid on my rig and drop it down is ridiculous to me," said Fowler DelPorto of James Island. "If you're losing the support of the middle-of-the-road, conservation-minded recreational anglers like me, you really ... have lost the battle."

Even council members have little idea what the vote will be, or mean. A temporary, emergency stop to snapper fishing was barely approved earlier this year by a 7-6 vote and has yet to be approved by the U.S. Commerce Department. Meanwhile, angler groups are pushing for a bill now in the U.S, House of Representatives, co-sponsored by Rep. Henry Brown, R-S.C., that would prohibit the closures until a new population survey can be conducted.

The bill "would certainly spin whatever we're doing, which may not be a bad thing. I acknowledge the snapper fishery has been overfished, but it's been overfished for a long time," Swatzel said. Waiting two more years for better science won't destroy the fishery and might result in better regulations anglers can live with.

Closing the bottom long enough to see whether it helps the snapper won't help older anglers like Charles Mims, who moved to Edisto Island when he retired so he could fish offshore, Mims said. He has maybe two or three good years left to do that.

"I understand the purpose behind (the closure). I understand why it's being done," he said. "I just hope something isn't done to where us old folks can't go fishing anymore."