Well, Happy Holidays!
Always good to see a state agency like our Department of Wildlife and Fisheries play the role of Mr. Scrooge.
Auditions for that role have been held during the past several months, and it looks like the guys in the Marine Fisheries Section stole the show.
First reading came in the quizzical perimeters these folks put on the proposed speckled trout minimum size and daily creel limits.
On Thursday, this organization issued its latest redfish assessment in state waters.
It’s not good: it appears we're headed towards tighter catch regulations for that popular recreational species, too.
While our state biologists said they believe our spawning redfish stock is above a biologically acceptable limit, the number of spawning redfish is declining to the point “... that requires management changes.”
During Thursday’s Wildlife and Fisheries Commission meeting, Marine Fisheries Section point man Jason Adriance continued with how our biologists study this long-lived fish.
Here’s a summary: The staff studies two redfish age groups, the first, the “juvenile” stock tops out at age 5 and most times measures less that 27 inches long. The second group are the older fish.
The juveniles live in our inside waters and are estimated to make up as much as 97% of the recreational take in a regulation limiting “keeper” reds to a minimum 16 inches long. (The daily creel is five with only one “keeper” allowed to measure longer than 27 inches.)
Because most of our redfish reach spawning maturity at 5 years old, it’s these young fish that need to “escape” into the breeding stock at a greater rate than what our biologists are finding in their collections.
Those gathering the data are finding an “escapement” rate slightly above 20% of the juvenile stock into the spawning stock, when the “... established escapement rate limit for management is 30%.” And, the data shows this decline from “healthy” stocks has been happening since 2005.
To understand the spawning cycle, one has to know that breeding-sized redfish move to off-coast and offshore waters, there is a ban on taking all redfish from federal waters some 9 miles off our state’s coast and that redfish are among the longest living fish we have in our waters, some living near 40 years.
The point made clear is more young fish need to get larger to join the breeding stock.
After delivering this information, Wildlife and Fisheries staff outlined the next steps to include public comment through email and online surveys and probable public hearings.
Another point made clear is that redfish were named the state’s only saltwater gamefish in 1988 and that take has been exclusive to the recreational fishing sector.
And, from here, that’s the rub in this discussion, and this is not to denigrate the work these men and women do, nor to balk at the numbers their work produces.
But, to lay this downturn squarely at the feet of tens of thousands of recreational fishermen brushes past many other factors which, clearly, point to this decline.
Between 1986 and 1988, the state legislature held hearings about redfish after a commercial calamity that left hundreds of thousands of dead redfish in Breton Sound. Redfish became a hot commodity across our country after Paul Prudomme came up with his blackened redfish dish.
What marine biologists found in that tragedy was Louisiana’s redfish “escapable” stock was staggeringly low, down below 5% (refer to aforementioned the 20% and 30% levels). It didn’t take long to reduce the daily take to five.
It was during those years LSU professor Richard Condry testified that the stock could be rebuilt rapidly with creel reductions. By the mid 1990s, he was right.
It was what Condry said later in his testimony that is ringing true now. It a nutshell, he said if subsidence continued at what was then the current rate, and marshes were not rebuilt, all fish species in Louisiana’s fish-rich waters would collapse, that it was the “edge effect” in our marshes that made our coastal area so productive. Now, is his forecast coming true?
While our Wildlife and Fisheries Commission likely will take action to reduce the recreational take, any move to increase redfish stocks — and speckled trout, black drum, flounder, sheepshead, etc. — will have to come with the commission’s more active look at, and endorsement of, reestablishing our marshes through sediment diversions and other marsh-producing projects.
And, the commission will have to get past protecting the activity of taking millions upon millions of pounds of menhaden from our shallow coastal waters in the places where menhaden nets invade spawning areas for redfish and speckled trout.
The commission will have to acknowledge these nets and that activity, in fact, cause damage to shallow water spawning and feeding areas for these popular species. There’s enough video evidence to support the moves by conservation groups to push the menhaden take farther into Gulf waters, as far as one mile from our coastline.
And, as for the Wildlife and Fisheries-proposed speckled trout rules — 13.5-inch minimum size and 15-a-day creel limit — there is enough evidence from other marine biologists to suggest a 12-inch minimum size and, possibly, something less than 15 per day would achieve the same results faster than the current proposal to rebuild speckled trout stocks.
Yet, with a vote on that new regulation approaching, it appears our seven-member commission has swallowed the agency’s suggested move hook, line and sinker.
The good news
Effective Jan. 1, Louisiana’s recreational offshore fishermen can catch more red snapper than any time in 20 years.
National fisheries managers approved the final rule that will increase to an 881,686-pound allocation in 2023, more than 70,000 pounds than this year’s allotment.
Maybe Louisiana’s offshore guys and gals could have a four-snapper-per-day take in those weekend-only seasons beginning with 2023’s Memorial Day weekend.