CCA Florida and recreational anglers are skeptical of the MRFSS numbers, especially because of the four hurricanes that kept thousands of anglers at home.

“Our belief is that MRFFS tends to overestimate recreational catch,” said CCA Florida Executive Director Ted Forsgren. “Texas does not have this survey, and that’s because the state found through their own surveys that the federal estimations were much higher.”

Currently, NMFS quantifies commercial catch from trip tickets. Recreational landings are harder to pin down, because the fleet fishes in so many places and in so many ways. Fisheries managers use surveys and extrapolated statistics to estimate recreational fishing effort.

Two data-collecting strategies are employed: “Intercept interviews” are conducted by trained interviewers at fishing access sites, generally boat ramps; and cold-call telephone surveys of households are made in coastal counties. The surveys are conducted separately, and data from the phone survey provides NMFS with fishing-effort estimates while the intercept surveys provide them with their catch estimates. Through complicated equations, the catch numbers and hours are combined and stratified.

“NMFS is supposed to use the numbers to examine trends. The problem comes when managers look at MRFSS numbers as hard numbers,” said Forsgren.

Indeed, at least one other burdensome closure has come about due to dubious MRFFS data, and MRFSS has been reviewed and debated many times since.

In 1992, NMFS decided that the recreational quota for Gulf of Mexico king mackerel had been met, after MRFSS number crunchers estimated that 124,802 king mackerel had been caught from shore. The agency’s insistence on using that absurd data created strong doubts about NMFS accuracy.

The National Academy of Sciences is conducting an independent analysis of MRFSS, and will come back with recommendations sometime next year.

“Collection of recreational data has been insufficient ever since they started to use MRFSS,” said Capt. George Geiger, Vice President of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy (USCOP), may push for a federal fishing license through the re-authorization of Magnuson-Stevens next year, and that may help NMFS better count recreational anglers. Meanwhile, recreational anglers have an opportunity to get a more balanced allotment for red grouper. The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council is working on a regulatory amendment to deal with both sectors. The first public comment period occurred in August.

“The allocations are based on history; we should be looking ahead,” said Geiger. “The system is arcane. When allocating public resources, we must determine the best economic uses of those fisheries in individual states.”

What About Gags?

The temporary Gulf grouper closure also pertains to gag grouper—which NMFS indicates are not overfished. In effect, closing November and December on the basis of protecting red grouper stocks prohibits recreational fishermen from enjoying the plentiful gag resource.

Worse, among small-boat anglers, those two months are traditionally among the best for chasing gag grouper, as the fish move closer to shore and seem to feed more as water temps cool. Reds are generally far from shore.

The good news is that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was poised to keep state waters (out to 9 miles offshore) open for grouper fishing. The FWC was prepared to reduce the red grouper limit in concert with the federal plan, but not the closure or overall aggregate limit in state waters.

Four-to-One

Keep that ratio in mind when November 1 rolls around.

That’s the approximate ratio of annual commercial allocation to recreation allocation of Gulf red grouper: 5.31 million pounds to 1.25 million pounds, to be exact.

“The major problem in Gulf red grouper management has been, and still is, the commercial fishery, which takes more than 80 percent of the total landings,” said Ted Forsgren of CCA Florida. “The federal management scheme allocates more red grouper to 25 commercial longline boats than the amount allocated to all the recreational fishers in the entire Gulf of Mexico.”

FS