Fishing for way to save red snapper

A fishing lottery and video cameras keeping watch might be the best that regulators can do to let a few anglers keep bottom fishing offshore and still save the imperiled red snapper. But nobody likes it.

South Atlantic Fishery Management Council members and anglers say they will keep looking for other options as the deadline looms to close most of the ocean bottom in this region. Meanwhile, the council approved putting some protections on thousands of square miles of deep-sea coral formations and sponges offshore.

The protection was opposed by petroleum groups and some deep-sea shellfishing interests.

The new, "lottery" option and the coral protection were among decisions made by the federal council at a grueling, sometimes heated meeting last week that included a 13-hour session wrestling over the red snapper.

The council did not pick a preferred alternative on the closure, the lottery or a number of other options to severely restrict the catch of red snapper, putting off that pivotal decision until its December meeting and allowing two more rounds of public hearings. Under a new federal law, the council must have rules in place by 2010 that would stop overfishing.

No matter what the council decides, fishing or environmental interests can be expected to go to court to overturn it.

"Here we are, we want a sustainable fishery. They just make it harder and harder to survive," said Mark Brown, a Shem Creek charter boat captain who spoke at the meeting. "It's not fair to people who have so much invested in this. People have invested a whole lot of money in their boats."

"The fish are a public resource, and every species fished down has a ripple effect on other species," said Holly Binns, Pew Environment Group project manager.

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.

The lottery option is a costly alternative that limits the catch to only a few anglers who might have to pay to install video and satellite monitoring equipment on their boats. The vast area of the bottom still would be closed overall.

"It does something (to allow fishing). It's not something any of us would like to see. It's still not good, but it may be the best we can do," said Duane Harris, a Georgia charter boat captain who is the council chairman.

"We're going to lose people who have been in this industry for a long time," said Shem Creek commercial snapper-grouper fisherman Mark Marhefka.

Harris said council staff still must determine whether the lottery option is restrictive enough to stop snapper overfishing. "If it doesn't work, we're back to closing off the bottom," he said.

"It's a tough one, and what I think you saw this week is the council struggling to come to terms with how we can best manage this resource," said Robert Boyles, deputy director of the Marine Resources Division for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources and a Fisheries Management Council member.

"Nobody on council was really comfortable (picking a preferred alternative). Is there another way to skin the cat? At the end of the day the council is charged with managing the fishery for the benefit of the country," he said.

The coral protection places some 23,000 square miles beyond the Continental Shelf in the Southeast off limits to most bottom fishing and dredging. The corals could be invaluable as a resource for everything from human medicines to the health of the ocean itself. The protections do not prevent oil and natural gas drilling, but federal restrictions would require drillers to do environmental impact studies and locate sites to avoid the corals.

The remote area is still largely unexplored. The American Petroleum Institute opposed the restrictions as potentially too costly to energy resources, and called for more mapping before restrictions are placed. The U.S. Commerce Department still must to sign off on the council's recommendation.

"The corals may be the largest deep sea complex in the world," Boyles said. "It adds another layer of protection. It won't stop drilling but it means the corals have to be given extra consideration."

Reach Bo Petersen at 937-5744 or bpetersen@postandcourier.com.