Commercial fishers have filed suit to stop upcoming expanded recreational red snapper seasons in three U.S. states – Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina – which they claim were authorized illegally.
The lawsuit is the latest development in the ongoing battle over recreational fishing for red snapper in the South Atlantic. Official government figures show the stock was subject to overfishing in 2021, and regulators have limited recreational fishers to just two days of fishing annually in recent years to help the population recover. Anglers, however, insist that red snapper are far more abundant than official estimates, and sportfishing groups, state officials, and lawmakers in U.S. Congress have pressured the federal government to allow more recreational fishing.
Last year, officials asked NOAA Fisheries to issue exempted fishing permits (EFPs) to the states of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina that would authorize the states to manage recreational fishing for red snapper in federal waters and run much longer seasons. In May of this year, Trump granted their wish, authorizing all four EFPs.
The victory would be short-lived, however, as a lawsuit filed by commercial fishing industry advocacy group Southeastern Fisheries Association quickly derailed the plan for lengthened recreational seasons. The group argued that the expanded seasons would increase fishing pressure on the stock, endangering their recovery and risking future commercial harvests. A judge paused the recreational seasons while considering the case, and with the case unlikely to be resolved before the end of the summer, the four states canceled the summer seasons.
Three of them – South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida – attempted to address the issues raised by the Southeastern Fisheries Association and applied for new EFPs for two-week fall recreational seasons; last month, the Trump administration granted them once again.
Nevertheless, the extended seasons could again be halted before they even start.
A group of six commercial fishers and fishing businesses have filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to declare the EFPs illegal. According to the commercial fishers, the EFPs throw aside the years of limited trips and shorter seasons they’ve suffered in support of the rebuilding plan. Moreover, while the government has quintupled the recreational harvest level, the commercial harvest level remains unchanged. That effectively changes the allocation ratio between recreational and commercial fishers established through the regulatory process without acknowledging it has done so, they argued.
“We have followed the rules on red snapper for a long time, and we have done it for the health of the resource and the fishing industry,” said Jeff Oden, a commercial fisher and the owner of Slash Creek Waterworks. “What the agency did here was take the rules off the table for a season, for the benefit of only one sector, without going through any of the steps that normally apply. If there are more fish available, that is good news for the whole fishery, and the law says how they are supposed to be shared. The agency skipped that part.”
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The lawsuit also raises several issues with the assumptions and math used by the states to justify the higher harvest limit. Many of those issues would have been debated through the usual fishery management process, which was completely evaded through the EFPs.
“There is a system for every decision the agency made here,” Ariel Seafoods President David Krebs said in a release. “Allocation goes through the council. Converting units goes through the stock assessment. Changing the catch limit goes through a plan amendment with public comment. Each of those processes exists so that decisions about our fisheries are made carefully and in the open. NMFS went around all of them at once, and the court already told the agency in May that exempted fishing permits are not an escape hatch from the law.”
The recreational seasons are set to start 9 October.
