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Old 06-08-2022, 08:55 PM   #55
zackistre
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Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 117
Re: The Collapse of the Gulf of Mexico Grouper Fishery

It's easy to see what's going on. The recreational and charter hook and line guys are catching and discarding the majority of grouper. If just a 3rd die that are kept or discarded YOUR looking at a insane amount of poundage dead every decent day of weather during gag season.
I would estimate on low atleast 5000 boats go for grouper every day of good weather. That's just from say Clearwater to steinhatchee not counting the rest of the gulf. Just think about it every boat ramp is packed and overflowing. Any area offshore with bottom from 15 ft to the middle grounds. You can look around and count 20-50 boats fishing.

Just figure they catch 5 keepers and discard 20 shorts. Let's say that's 12 fish dead per boat. Some will catch more some less etc etc. Average them at 9 pounds per fish.
That's a possible 540,000 pounds of grouper dead on 1 single day of recr hook and line.
Just to be clear the overall yearly gag grouper acl for entire gulf is 3 million pounds. Over 2 million recreational and 980,000 for commercial.

By the way commercial harvest for the entire year has only been right at 600,000 pounds of gag grouper for the last 8 years. That's for the entire gulf from Key west to the tip of Texas. Every single pound of fish commercially harvested in the gulf is accounted and logged thru vms log books noaa fwc etc etc etc. If we don't do the this we can loose our $30k permit and business.

There are too many people fishing in the gulf to just guess what they are catching on a guessed amount. Only way to fix this is every one has to report there catch and by catch mandatory. That is the only way to have true accurate data to keep a great fishery. It may suck but it's the only thing that will work.

Anybody that has grouper fished or spearfished over the past 5,10,or 20 and more years in gulf can see and will tell you the fishery especially gag grouper is in trouble. It's harder and harder every year.

What I can promise you is it is not from commercial guys. We have not even caught our allotted fish in the last 8 years.

Last edited by zackistre; 06-10-2022 at 03:00 PM.
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