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If groupers had lungs, they'd sigh in relief

Some fishers aren't so happy. The government, citing new quotas, closed commercial gulf fishing for deep-water grouper for the season.

By PAUL SWIDER
Published June 24, 2005

Grouper lovers can still enjoy a fillet or sandwich, but the first fisheries domino fell Thursday, and it could lead to a shortage later this year.

The National Marine Fisheries Service closed the commercial deep-water grouper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico, setting in motion events that could close all gulf grouper fishing before the end of the year. The full closure could come earlier than last year, when fresh grouper from the gulf were unavailable for the last six weeks of 2004.

"They fished very hard early in the year," said Chris Smith, spokesman for the Fisheries Service in St. Petersburg. Fishermen caught the entire million-pound annual quota of deep-water grouper - misty grouper, snowy grouper, yellow edge grouper, warsaw grouper and speckled hind - faster than expected. This year's deep-water closure came about three weeks earlier than last year's.

While restaurants typically serve shallow-water species like red grouper, the closure of the deeps will drive fishermen to catch more of those species and reach the shallow-water quota sooner.

"It's like a snowball going downhill," said Bob Speath, the owner of Madeira Beach Seafood Co., a major processing facility. "Now all the fishermen will come down from Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi and help us catch our quota down here."

The quota for shallow-water grouper is 8.8-million pounds per year, Smith said, but reaching that is also driven by the quota for red grouper, the most popular species for eating. When fishers catch 5.3-million pounds of red grouper, the whole shallow-water grouper fishery will be closed, regardless of the larger quota.

"Red grouper is the poster child of the species," Smith said. "It's an indicator. We don't want that one to be overfished."

As of the end of May, fishers had caught only 38 percent of the year's overall shallow-water quota but 43 percent of the red grouper quota. At that time, fishers had caught only 78 percent of the deep-water quota, though they made up the remainder in the past three weeks.

"Fisheries management is a big mess in this country," Speath said of the closing, which he said he thinks is based on inconclusive scientific estimates of the health of deep-water species. "There's no reason for that quota to be that small."

Speath said commercial fishermen have started to institute their own limits to smooth out fishing and business. Fishermen are curbing their catches, he said, to stave off reaching quotas and keep demand steady.

"We're trying to keep the fisheries open and keep people eating grouper," Speath said. The industry needs a steady flow of fishing to remain viable as a business, he said. "How are you going to keep people employed and keep a crew if we shut down two months out of every year?"

Recreational fishermen are unlikely to be affected by the deep-water grouper closure, Smith said, because the deep-water species are typically caught in 800 feet of water in the middle grounds of the Gulf of Mexico, an area that starts about 60 miles west of Tarpon Springs.

The Fisheries Service started the quota system in 2004.

[Last modified June 24, 2005, 00:45:09]