Yesterday the TRCP tweeted out a link to Dr. Bob Shipp’s The Great Gulf Red Snapper Train Wreck recently published in Sport Fishing; it’s worth a read today when you need to take a step away from the grind of the Monday work day.
Perhaps written with a bit of bias toward the (good) work that Alabama has done targeting the Red Snapper (Shipp is a professor emeritus in the department of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama), this is one of the more rationally written pieces we’ve come across in the last few years detailing what a mess the snapper fishery has been / become in the Gulf, along with specific reports of some under-reported and impressive successes.
Looking at this ongoing debacle, highlighted by an apparent astounding inability to respond nimbly to reported improving stocks and the still raging debate between commercial and recreational allotments, makes one ponder when if ever there will be an equitable peace brokered in the fishery. More assertive efforts by the states does suggest a glimmer of hope in the management process, but there’s still a lot of ground to cover.
The map above is a cut from the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s mapping portal and shows the essential fish habitat for reef fish along the Gulf Coast; more interesting mapping tools are available there.
