juvenile red snapper optimal yield question?

[1st_rate_mate]

i have research indicating that the incidence of shrimp trawl juvenile red snapper bycatch is approximately 3.3:1 greater in mud/sand zones 10 to 30 meters deep.

can anyone confirm this?

jb

i am also curious to know at what depth best quality shrimp are obtained?
it would seem at present LA can't meet demands of big companies like Red Lobster who buy foreign imports due to specification issues.

[Boboe]

Import shrimp are very cheap. Domestic shrimpers basically cannot compete with them. Most shrimp boats are tied up and rusting/rotting away. Butterfly shrimpers are moderately competitive because they don't have to use much fuel to get shrimp. I know 3 captains in the oilfield who sold their boats because it ceased to be profitable. All 3 have said that they did not get all of their payment for their boats, and don't care. They're just happy to be out of the business and don't want the boats back.

Red Lobster is getting import shrimp because they're cheap. If import shrimp did not exist (let's assume there was a huge duty on imported shrimp), then domestic production could cover the demand (I'll assume) because more boats would be fishing because price would be higher.

As for the juvenile red snapper bycatch, I'm torn on this. I've heard the numbers, and I want to believe them, but I have a hard time with it. Every retired shrimper I've talked to says that they just don't catch red snapper. Red Snapper, as we know, live on hard bottom, which tears up shrimp nets. Shrimpers want to be over mud where the shrimp live and the nets are safe. But....BUT!!! I've seen shrimpers working hard bottom areas, and seen what their huge bycatch was, which were not "soft bottom" species.

[awesum]

Originally Posted by Boboe

As for the juvenile red snapper bycatch, I'm torn on this. I've heard the numbers, and I want to believe them, but I have a hard time with it. Every retired shrimper I've talked to says that they just don't catch red snapper. Red Snapper, as we know, live on hard bottom, which tears up shrimp nets. Shrimpers want to be over mud where the shrimp live and the nets are safe. But....BUT!!! I've seen shrimpers working hard bottom areas, and seen what their huge bycatch was, which were not "soft bottom" species.

I guess it could be said that there are shrimpers that work areas that do not contain Red Snappers and therefore can say that they do not catch them. However, the blanket statement that shrimpers just don't catch Red Snapper is not true.

In many years of stopping at shrimpers for cull I don't recall ever getting a garbage can full that didn't have anywhere from "some" to "many" juvenile Red Snappers in it.

[1st_rate_mate]

food chain between juvenile snap & mud shrimp?
how long/what size until snap migrate to structure or is that just ongoing?
hard bottom by-catch snapper yields are greater than soft? Why?
thanks

[Levelwind]

Mate,
The scholarly paper you linked to on another post stated that in the life cycle of the red snapper they congregate around structure when they get to be about a foot long. I wonder if bycatch (poundage) is greater over hard bottom because the fish are larger.

[etan]

I have never seen a 1 ft snapper in shrimper cull. They are always smaller.

[Prawn Broker]

I believe what you are referring to is data showing that some prime juvenile habitat being from 10-30 FATHOMS, not meters. In the northwestern gulf, this 10-30 zone is a considerable amount of bottom, which also represents some of the most productive fishing grounds for shrimp. This area was specifically included in combined Reefish27/Shrimp14 amendments of their respective fishing management plans. In the Shrimp FMP, it called for a 74% reduction of effort in the 10-30 fa zone from Brownsville to Cape San Blas, Florida against the base line average of effort from 2001-2003. In 2008, it appears to have been an 82% reduction, so the Shrimp fishery is meeting this requirement.

What is interesting is with the fall off in effort of the shrimp fishery, that there has been marked increase in abundance of the major finfish that trawls interact with according to SEAMAP trawls. Long spine porgies are trending up and Atlantic croaker are exploding in populations. These two species represents over 65% of bycatch in trawls, while snapper less than .15%. Juvenile Snapper on the other hand, have been trending flat with a little downward movement in the last two years in abundance during these mapping trawls.

What some believe, and what this seems to be shedding light on is that Snapper are habitat dependant, and such habitat limited, especially the juveniles, and that they seem to be overly sensitive to compensatory mortality, when compared to other species such as Atlantic croaker, which spawn at an earlier age, thus giving them a higher reproductive rate. Basically, as older year classes are rebounding, the increase in the number of older fish is putting pressure on the limited habitat available to place those fish coming up in the population. Compare this to a town with 100 hotel rooms and there is an occupancy rate of 85% and through the next 5 years you pick up 5% in demand with out expanding the number of rooms, pretty soon you run out of rooms. In the juvenile range you have a kind of perfect storm developing, where not only are you fighting your species, but also the increase in abundance of species competing for that same habitat and may find you as being a nice food source.

“Etan” and “Levelwind” commented on “1 foot long” snapper. If you get your hands on different papers showing bycatch categorization and abundances of different species, you will find that by everyone’s account that snapper outside of the 2yr class are not caught with frequency. This is due to those fish moving off the “flats” to hard substrate. One size that was caught with great regularity in the fishery is the highly reproductive “Sows” that move back on to the flats later in life. This phenomenon came to an end in 1989 with the adoption of the TED. If you look at one long enough, you will see that it should do a pretty good job of getting rid of fish of any size. The really frustrating thing about TEDs, and this is point the directed fishery folks should also raise, is that the Shrimp fishery never received any credit in the modeling schemes employed by NMFS in regards of snapper bycatch reduction due to TEDs, which in my mind would definitely change some of the outcomes in their results. This coupled with the completely asinine reliance on an 80% mortality rate of all snapper year classes due to bycatch as the Holy Grail for so long by NMFS in its rebuilding plans have crippled the management of the directed fishery. It does not take a rocket scientist see that putting so much emphasis on a segment of the fish population that has a natural mortality rate of well over 98%(0-2 year class) to increase the overall abundance of the population is flawed at best, and in my opinion it is blatant negligence.

[Swells]

I don't understand why people are so concerned with shrimpers, as they are a dying breed. Brown shrimp caught off Texas (the largest market) went from nearly 30 thousand metric tons in the year 2000 to 17 thousand in 2008, a decline of 43 percent. That's nearly half. In addition, over that time period we had by-catch reduction devices, so in theory there would be less finfish such as juvenile red snapper in the nets.

At the same time, ex-vessel shrimp prices such as for 26/30 count headless were nearly $5.00 a pound in 2000, which has dropped to about $2.35 today. Nowdays, we import about 80 percent of our shrimp from overseas, largely due to foreign governments subsidizing their trade. Many US shrimpers simply gave up and walked away from their boats, although I do not have good boat numbers handy for the major Texas shrimping ports such as Brownsville and Port Isabel. Diesel prices are a main culprit, which used to be 60 to 80 cents a gallon, which rose to nearly $5.00 in June, 2008, and now are running a little over $2.00. Naturally, the hurricanes of 2007 and 2008 had a dramatic effect on less Gulf shrimping pressure. I don't know if the Sabine-Port Arthur area even has a shrimp fleet anymore, which used to be about 150 boats there.

So all the data seems to indicate that shrimping in the northern Gulf will continue to contract, meaning less pressure on juvenile red snapper on the flats (data for 2009 isn't in yet). You're pointing your gun at the wrong place if you think shrimpers are the chief problem today - although I admit the by-catch was very high in the 1990s especially before BRDs were required. Personally, I think the big snapper are so aggressive they're eating all their young.

[hilton]

Originally Posted by Prawn Broker

I believe what you are referring to is data showing that some prime juvenile habitat being from 10-30 FATHOMS, not meters. In the northwestern gulf, this 10-30 zone is a considerable amount of bottom, which also represents some of the most productive fishing grounds for shrimp. This area was specifically included in combined Reefish27/Shrimp14 amendments of their respective fishing management plans. In the Shrimp FMP, it called for a 74% reduction of effort in the 10-30 fa zone from Brownsville to Cape San Blas, Florida against the base line average of effort from 2001-2003. In 2008, it appears to have been an 82% reduction, so the Shrimp fishery is meeting this requirement.

What is interesting is with the fall off in effort of the shrimp fishery, that there has been marked increase in abundance of the major finfish that trawls interact with according to SEAMAP trawls. Long spine porgies are trending up and Atlantic croaker are exploding in populations. These two species represents over 65% of bycatch in trawls, while snapper less than .15%. Juvenile Snapper on the other hand, have been trending flat with a little downward movement in the last two years in abundance during these mapping trawls.

What some believe, and what this seems to be shedding light on is that Snapper are habitat dependant, and such habitat limited, especially the juveniles, and that they seem to be overly sensitive to compensatory mortality, when compared to other species such as Atlantic croaker, which spawn at an earlier age, thus giving them a higher reproductive rate. Basically, as older year classes are rebounding, the increase in the number of older fish is putting pressure on the limited habitat available to place those fish coming up in the population. Compare this to a town with 100 hotel rooms and there is an occupancy rate of 85% and through the next 5 years you pick up 5% in demand with out expanding the number of rooms, pretty soon you run out of rooms. In the juvenile range you have a kind of perfect storm developing, where not only are you fighting your species, but also the increase in abundance of species competing for that same habitat and may find you as being a nice food source.

“Etan” and “Levelwind” commented on “1 foot long” snapper. If you get your hands on different papers showing bycatch categorization and abundances of different species, you will find that by everyone’s account that snapper outside of the 2yr class are not caught with frequency. This is due to those fish moving off the “flats” to hard substrate. One size that was caught with great regularity in the fishery is the highly reproductive “Sows” that move back on to the flats later in life. This phenomenon came to an end in 1989 with the adoption of the TED. If you look at one long enough, you will see that it should do a pretty good job of getting rid of fish of any size. The really frustrating thing about TEDs, and this is point the directed fishery folks should also raise, is that the Shrimp fishery never received any credit in the modeling schemes employed by NMFS in regards of snapper bycatch reduction due to TEDs, which in my mind would definitely change some of the outcomes in their results. This coupled with the completely asinine reliance on an 80% mortality rate of all snapper year classes due to bycatch as the Holy Grail for so long by NMFS in its rebuilding plans have crippled the management of the directed fishery. It does not take a rocket scientist see that putting so much emphasis on a segment of the fish population that has a natural mortality rate of well over 98%(0-2 year class) to increase the overall abundance of the population is flawed at best, and in my opinion it is blatant negligence.

AWESOME POST.

The only things I would add is 1) that the 82% reduction of effort was due to natural and economic issues and was NOT brought about by the FMP requirement or the bogus CCA lawsuit, and 2) if the regulators are truly interested in helping the habitat-limited snapper, they need to increase the amount of habitat through the introduction of artificial reefs on a broad scale.

All the best,
Tom

[Prawn Broker]

Tom,

One thing is for certain, if NMFS had set out 10 years ago and started a rationalization program for the Shrimp fishery, they would be calling it an unqualified success and giving each other major awards for their accomplishments.

What has happened as far as the contraction in the number of vessels involved in the fishery is required for the overall industry to continue to exist. The business model has surely changed and is continuing to evolve as we speak. By the time things get settled out, there may only be 600-700 boats participating in Gulf fishery as a whole.

This is staggering to think of when as of late as 2000-01 thee where over 5000 active vessels in the offshore fishery. On the individual vessel level, it use to be that a person that had average skill in producing in the fishery could make very good money in it as it was traditionally a low volume, high value product that had a relatively low cost of input to get produced. Now, as a low value, higher volume product with very high costs of inputs, only those that are the best financial managers will survive.

To compare CPUE (catch per unit effort) from today to 10 years ago, in 2000 an average mid sized vessel owner in Texas would have been elated to have produced 50,000 pounds large tails for a calendar year. This would have represented a gross of around $400,000. Today, that same amount of shrimp is now being produced in the first 6 weeks after the Texas season opens, but only amounting to $150,000 to the boat. You can see how the overall production game has changed.