snapper tags for sale??
CCA proposes to auction red snapper, reef fish tags
By Michael Cary
Wednesday, May 13, 2009 4:12 PM CDT
Area charter fishing guides have taken notice of a proposal by the Coastal Conservation Association to issue individual, non-reusable tags for red snapper and to auction them to the highest bidder.
The proposal is said to have been proposed by CCA consultant Russell Nelson to the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council in mid-April to counter increasing pressure to reduce harvests and bycatch mortality which results in shortened seasons and reduced bag limits.
According to the proposal, obtained from the council by Texas Recreational Fishing Alliance chairman Jim Smarr of Fulton and forwarded to Mike Nugent of the Port Aransas Boatmen, suggests placing red snapper tags, "clumped into variable units of 10 to 100, up for public auction every year.
"Let anyone who desires to place their best bid and distribute to highest bidders - bidders could be individuals, states or organizations," the document reads.
The proposal continues to suggest that "those who buy tags can use them any way they desire - take the fish home and eat it, give them as Christmas presents, sell them, take their fish to a market and sell them."
A tag would remain on the fish until it is cooked and consumed, either in a residence or at a restaurant.
Proceeds from the auction could be used to raise between $3 million and $15 million to support modernized fish population estimates.
The tags would be auctioned quarterly, and once a market price is established for the tags, they could be sold at that price through state agencies, fishing clubs, tackle shops, fishing organizations and seafood dealers.
The paper continues to say that the tag auction system "would set a precedent for the future of managing mixed recreational/commercial fisheries. This approach could be applied to Gulf grouper and South Atlantic reef fish as well."
It is acknowledged that a tag auction method for red snapper might draw objections "to having to pay for accessing a common property resource - even if this gives them the ability to control the access to numbers of fish and when they want to fish. Stressing that the goal of this approach is for effective, fair and equitable conservation would help to convince people to support this approach," the document states.
Although the document is not signed by Nelson or any other CCA official, the Gulf Council voted to invite Nelson of the CCA to its next reef fish committee meeting to give a presentation, "Is there a better way to manage U.S. shared commercial and recreational fisheries?"
The title of Nelson's invited presentation is the title of the proposal reported here.
Nugent, the proprietor of South Bay Bait and Charters (and Wrecklamation Charters) on the Redfish Bay Causeway, said one problem with the proposal is that it does not set an amount of red snapper tags to issue.
He also said that with a highest bid method for distributing the tags, only "the elite will have the opportunity to catch the fish."
Nugent also said that organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals could purchase huge numbers of tags to prevent recreational fishing for red snapper.
"What's to keep them from buying a quota and not doing anything with it? There are lots of things wrong with this plan," Nugent said.
Nugent, like other area charter fishing boat captains, contends that the National Marine Fishery Service is using bad science to count red snapper populations, and that there are more red snapper in the western part of the Gulf than any time in the past.
"It's just killing us, literally," he said.
Mary Ann Heiman, proprietor of Crab Man Marina and the charter boat, Adventurer, agreed.
"We have more structure and more favorable conditions that red snapper like," Heiman said.
She also said red snapper bycatch is being counted against the charter operators.
"They are still counting bycatch from shrimp boats that don't exist. They're counting that against us. I think they're taking it to an extreme," she said.
Smarr, the Texas RFA chairman, said the proposal to auction tags is "abject stupidity.
"This is an ill-thought-out proposal. It takes a public resource and puts it in private hands. First of all, CCA has pushed for individual fishing quotas with the commercial sector, now they want to push it for all fisheries," Smarr said.
Smarr, who is not a charter fishing operator, said the snapper population is healthy in the Gulf of Mexico.
"What we will see if these plans go through, a total crash of the recreational for hire structure. It will lock out people who are coming to the coast without a boat who access the fishery via a for-hire vessel simply because the for-hire vessel will disappear and are disappearing on a daily basis," Smarr said.
"Behind the scenes, CCA has been working for years to get rid of the recreational for-hire business in bays and in the Gulf, they consider them commercial fishermen," he said.
"The RFA considers them a vital taxi service for fishermen who don't own a boat or who can't afford one," Smarr said.
Jim Hutchison Jr., managing director of the RFA, headquartered in New Gretna, New Jersey, said his organization is "absolutely opposed to a program like that.
"It's got to be a violation of the public trust doctrine. Combine an idea like that with marine reserves and you will completely eliminate public fishing in America. I hope the Gulf Council squashes the idea. Instead of looking at other ways of managing the fishery, an idea like this gets floated out," Hutchison said.
Hutchison said the RFA was established in 1996 to support recreational anglers and to ensure the long-term sustainability of saltwater fishing, and has spent a lot of time in Washington D.C., protecting fishermen rights.
"We've always been out there protecting anglers. We want to figure out ways to keep anglers fishing. We're out to protect charter operations and bait shops. We're totally opposed to the privatization of fishing," Hutchison said.
The Texas RFA has sent out a call to action letter to Texas anglers, urging them to forward it to U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Senator John Cornyn and to Gov. Rick Perry, asking them to help get flexibility into federal regulations concerning fishing restrictions.
"Red snapper is an extremely valuable Texas natural resource and the lifeblood of the Gulf of Mexico recreational and charter fishing industry. Its importance to you as an angler and to Texas coastal communities' tourism, boating and related industries is estimated to exceed $1.7 billion annually. Unreasonable restrictions which the National Marine Fisheries has placed on this fishery (and even more unreasonable restrictions they are proposing) are having a devastating impact on coastal fishing and coastal economies," the letter reads.
"A very real danger exists that hundreds of thousands of Texans will be effectively excluded from our offshore fishing resources due to these unreasonable regulations and efforts by NMFS to force Texas to adopt these same regulations," it continues.
"The crisis we face is the result of two factors; anti-fishing environmental groups and elitist fishing organizations pursuing a policy that would sharply limit many Texans' access to marine fisheries, and an inflexible national fisheries law that penalizes anglers even when good rebuilding progress is being made," the letter reads.
An attempt was made to contact the CCA for comment on the subject of auctioning tags for red snapper, but CCA did not respond.
Editor's Note: As of Thursday, May 7, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service announced that the recreational fishery for red snapper in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico will open at 12:01 a.m. Monday, June 1, and will close effective 12:01 a.m. local time on Saturday, Aug. 15. It will reopen on June 1, 2010.
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