Red snapper anglers taking part in science
A new tagging program in Florida will soon give local fishermen a chance for hands-on participation in the science of assessing the health of red snapper stocks.
And government researchers are already using another new tool that has the potential to revolutionize stock assessments -- those complex documents that inform management decisions like the ban on keeping red snapper in federal waters that has been in place in the South Atlantic since January 2010.
Now, instead of having stock assessments that solely rely on a computer model crunching numbers generated by fishermen's log books, surveys of anglers, field studies and biological studies that age fish, scientists are adding a new type of data to the equation -- video.
Red snapper have been embroiled in controversy since a 2007 stock assessment indicated just 3 percent of the historic population of red snapper was left in the South Atlantic.
The ensuing debates and compromises between fishermen and fisheries managers contributed to delaying management action for nearly three years as well as calls for changes to the stock assessment.
When an updated assessment was completed in October, new data as well as changes to how data was interpreted led to a slight improvement for the outlook of red snapper. The 2010 assessment indicates red snapper are at 7 percent of their historic levels.
And most importantly to fishermen, the 2010 assessment determined that a 4,800-square-mile closure area off the coast of North Florida for all species of bottom fish was not necessary.
LIFTING THE BAN?
Daytona Beach's Russell Hudson, who has been participating on the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council's red snapper panel as a stakeholder representative of commercial fishermen, said he believes the assessment still has room for significant improvements that could ultimately result in the red snapper ban being lifted.
A new assessment for red snapper is scheduled to be done in 2013. That work has already begun and it is expected that video evidence will be included.
WHAT THE CAMERA SEES
The cameras are being deployed by a program called MARMAP, the Marine Resources Monitoring Assessment and Prediction Program.
Marcel Reichert, a scientist at the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources in Charleston, S.C., and a manager of MARMAP, said the cameras were first deployed in 2008.
The program has 297 traps with video cameras and 567 traps with still cameras that take a photo every 5 seconds, Reichert said.
Todd Kellison, chief of the fisheries ecosystem branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Beaufort, S.C., said the still cameras originally were used to make sure the traps landed on fish-holding habitat and not sand bottom. But that's changing.
Kellison said they are still working out "methodologies" for using the video and still cameras to count fish.
"It is very exciting," Reichert said. "We finally are able to expand our sampling. We can increase the quality of our data."
With the cameras, even if a trap comes up empty, scientists now get a clearer picture of whether or not there are fish on the sea floor than is possible using statistical analysis alone.
"Sometimes the fish are too small for the trap. ... or too large," Reichert said.
And Kellison said any fisherman will tell you that sometimes the fish are there but you can't catch them. In those situations, video could be a game-changer in the data the government is collecting.
No results are available yet, Reichert said. And even video fisheries data has its issues. Reichert said the camera's shortcomings include difficulty identifying species in various visibility conditions and determining the actual size of fish seen in the distance.
And how the camera data will be used in stock assessments is also still to be determined.
TACKLING THE SIZE ISSUE
There will be no question about the size of fish in an upcoming study that will turn local fishermen into virtual lab technicians for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.
"We plan on having seminars to train anglers on how to tag red snapper and release them properly," said Nate Gargasz, a biologist at the institute's Jacksonville field office. "Our first meetings with fishermen will be in the next several months."
Jimmy Hull, the owner of Hull's Seafood in Ormond Beach, said the tagging program was requested last year by the East Coast Fisheries Section of the Southeastern Fisheries Association, a commercial fishing advocacy group formed behind his restaurant in April 2009.
Gargasz said one possibility being considered to recruit fishermen into the study in Volusia County is to send a biologist to distribute tags at a training seminar hosted by the Halifax Sport Fishing Club.
Though it is still illegal to keep red snapper caught in federal waters, this catch-and-release tagging study will allow for the invaluable data yielded by recreational, commercial and charter fishing vessels to continue during the ban.Read More ...
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