On the Conservation Front: Red Snapper Rundown

The real problem at the heart of the Atlantic red snapper fishery and what isn't being done about it.

March 04, 2025 By Ed Killer

Ed Killer is the Managing Editor of Florida Sportsman magazine.

Nothing gets an Atlantic Coast angler’s blood boiling more than red snapper talk. The brightly colored fish inhabits thousands of reefs along the offshore ridges between Fort Pierce and Fernandina Beach. Some are just a couple of pounds in size. Others are as large as 45. These apex predators eagerly take offered baits in depths as shallow as 75 feet or as deep as 200.

For recreational anglers trying to catch any of the myriad of bottom species open for harvest, the red snapper is an omnipresent opportunist gobbling every bait intended for another quarry. Federal regulators view the red snapper as an untouchable conundrum in a struggle to balance fishery resources. Meanwhile, the commercial fishers’ claim to the red snapper commodity is dwindling and they want to put a stop to it.

At stake for essentially half of Florida’s offshore anglers is a decades long battle to retain access to a once thriving fishery. What regulators are doing, how those actions affect the red snapper stock and more importantly, how they affect dedicated anglers aiming to occasionally bring home a red snapper for dinner.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

The first step of any journey is to figure out where exactly you are right this minute. Red snapper abundance is fluid, especially at the federal level. NOAA Fisheries sets regulations for about 68 species of offshore fish in South Atlantic waters.

What is overfishing? It’s when too much fishing activity has depleted a fish stock. As claimed by a recently settled lawsuit, the recreational sector is more to blame for Atlantic red snapper overfishing than the commercial sector. The blame hinges upon dead discards—or red snapper that can’t go in the fishbox, but also never return to their natural habitat to spawn.

Barotrauma is often the culprit. When caught in deeper depths, the swim bladder of the red snapper expands as the fish is being reeled up. Sometimes venting properly can help the fish return to its original shape. Often a descending device helps take the fish back to its school. But many red snapper are taken by sharks or other secondary predators. Others never successfully “deflate” and float off to the horizon dead.

Red snapper on a descending device. — A red snapper about to be released with a descending device. (Photo courtesy of FWC)

Three times since 2021, NOAA Fisheries has been sued to stop overfishing of red snapper. In August 2024, the agency settled a lawsuit with Tilman Gray, owner of Avon Seafood and Slash Creek Waterworks, a Hatteras, N.C., fish house and buyer.

Gray’s complaint compelled the federal agency to end overfishing for red snapper according to the Magnuson-Stevens Act. In other words, the lawsuit demanded the federal government follow its own laws.

“Federal inaction on red snapper is the reason the commercial sector remains restricted under extremely low commercial trip limits,” reads paragraph 19 of the lawsuit. Two paragraphs earlier in the 28-page complaint it explains: “Red snapper is a lucrative and highly sought-after fish, so the current restrictions… directly harm Gray by reducing his income.”

Gray’s logic? If NOAA Fisheries obeyed its own law, the red snapper stock would rebuild more quickly improving commercial catch limits. Gray declined to speak with Florida Sportsman, according to Seth Atkinson of Quillback Consulting, the attorney who argued the case.

NOAA Fisheries announced it will use a “secretarial amendment” to end overfishing—or what the agency says is overfishing—by a deadline of June 6, 2025. That announcement is expected sometime this spring, a NOAA spokesperson said. In-person public hearings on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), the amendment and the proposed rule will follow. The public comment period will likely overlap the Council’s March meeting, a fishery bulletin from the agency said Dec. 5.

One note here: If you’re a recreational angler pinched by strict federal regulations, don’t direct your anger towards Mr. Gray. The estimated number of discards is driving this train. That makes it impossible for anyone to enjoy reasonable regulations for red snapper.

The glaring problem with red snapper management is with the snapper that get released—not just during brief recreational seasons—but during the entire fishing year. To federal managers and scientists, these fish are discards. For all intents and purposes, the statisticians working on stock assessments consider discards as “dead snapper.” In a table of data pumped through some algorithm, that’s millions of red snapper each year. All in these calculations are removed from the possible spawning population. Those potential spawners could exponentially produce hundreds of millions more healthy red snapper.

These discards are released when anglers are fishing for something else like triggerfish, porgies or gray snapper. Maybe there are only two or three fish behind your boat on a given fishing trip. But behind everyone’s boat every trip, well, you see how it can add up.

“The stock assessment shows that red snapper are at all time high abundance. But more fish equals more encounters and thus more discards. When there aren’t a lot of fish, it doesn’t matter what the regulations are because nobody is catching them,” said John Carmichael, executive Executive director Director of the SAFMC during the 2019 Red Snapper Stock Assessment webinar. “When there are a lot of fish, there are a lot of encounters, and things can get out of control in a hurry.”

Carmichael admitted during his presentation that red snapper discards are a challenge for the Council and NOAA Fisheries.

“Discards could jeopardize rebuilding efforts,” he said.

One question that remains unanswered by the scientific community is how many discards actually die? Is it 100 percent? Or much lower like 50, or even 10?

An alarming note in the 2019 assessment is that rebuilding the stock beyond fishery managers’ preferred spawning levels could take as long as 2044! That’s when managers think red snapper stocks could finally exceed maximum sustainable yield in the Atlantic.

WHAT THE DATA SAYS

Here is where red snapper management gets a little fishy. The numbers in the 2019 stock assessment are head-scratching, if they are accurate.

The first set of numbers comes from a SEDAR 73 report, "Recreational Effort, Catch and Biological Sampling in Florida During the 2019 South Atlantic Red Snapper Season." That year, there was a five-day recreational season, and scientists determined through surveys and data collected dockside that about 37,750 red snapper were harvested give or take 6,200. However, they figure that 56,648 were discarded, give or take 10,000.

In another part of the report, SEDAR73 "General Recreational Survey Data for Red Snapper in the South Atlantic," the number of annual landings and discards are eye-popping. The report draws from Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) estimates stating that during the 2019 fishing year, about 41,000 red snapper were landed, but 1.8 million were estimated as discards. For the 2016 fishing year, the data is inconceivable. Just in Florida, the table says there were only 77 red snapper harvested (since there was no recreational fishing season for red snapper that year) yet MRIP estimated 2.3 million discards.

Could these numbers be true? In 2023, NOAA Fisheries admitted it knew there was a bias with the MRIP data. Harvest and discard estimates could be off by as much as 40 percent in a November 2024 article on the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation website. Regardless, until adjustments are made to the statistics, it is the best available science.

A new stock assessment is underway in SEDAR 90 incorporating science from a combined effort of university sea grant programs, state fishery managers, independent researchers and federal agency statisticans as well. Perhaps when the new assessment comes out in early 2026, there will be a much improved scientific error in the catch and discard data.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING

The secretarial amendment is coming soon, NOAA says. Until then, pro-recreational fishing organizations are speaking out on their frustration with the process.

“Additional restrictions to further promote rebuilding of South Atlantic red snapper are unnecessary and would cause further economic and social damage to the recreational fishing industry and communities that rely upon it,” said Martha Guyas, Policy Director of the American Sportfishing Association. Guyas went on to say that NOAA Fisheries rush to make its June 6 legal deadline could result in the agency overlooking several key studies and programs underway to help red snapper management decisions. Programs that could be affected include The South Atlantic Great Red Snapper Count, SAFMC’s red snapper management strategy evaluation, NOAA’s Fish Effort Survey redesign and FWC’s Exempted Fishing Permit program, among others.

No that long ago ASA warned South Atlantic anglers that NOAA considered sweeping area and time closures of all bottom fishing for 55 species solely to reduce red snapper discards.

“Discard data is perhaps the most unreliable data in the entire system, relying totally on angler recall—it’s the only data completely unvalidated,” said Trip Aukeman, advocacy director of Coastal Conservation Association Florida.

Aukeman explained that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s State Reef Fish Survey shows a discard rate close to four times lower, but federal managers aren’t choosing to use that data.

There will be a lot of news coming throughout 2025 regarding red snapper in Atlantic waters. With any luck, some of these problems will be solved before access to the entire fishery is shut down to everyone.

Red Snapper Feedback

What if red snapper regulations for NE Florida anglers became more reasonable and didn’t hurt the fishery? At Florida Sportsman we propose recreational anglers be allowed to keep up to two red snapper per day, no size limit, for an extended fishing season—perhaps as long as 10 months. It’s only a suggestion at this point, but limiting access to bottom fishing is certainly not an answer that makes sense. Let us hear what you think. Send FS Managing Editor Ed Killer an email at ed.killer@outdoorsg.com.