Snapper issue full of snags

Looser rules aren't likely in next few years

By SHANNON TOMPKINS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Roy Crabtree pretty much cut to the heart of the situation facing red snapper, anglers who target that highly popular offshore fish, the businesses that depend on the snapper fishery, and the people charged with managing the marine resource.

"Nobody in the Gulf of Mexico is happy. I'm not happy. You're not happy," Crabtree, regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service's southeast region, said to a crowd of about 100 aggravated anglers during a meeting Friday evening at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

"I can understand your frustrations," he said to the group who had come, mostly, to voice their exasperation with increasingly tighter federal regulations on recreational red snapper harvest. "But I need real solutions that are consistent with the science and that will stand up in court."

Click here to read the full article from the Houston Chronicle.

Watch for The Orange Beach Community Website's article on this topic coming out this week.

Snapper season shrinks

(Photo: Capt. Brian Bracknell from the charter boat Crowd Pleezer with large Red Snapper catch. Click here to read the Florida Sportsman article about Red Snapper fishing in Orange Beach.)

From the Mobile Press-Register...

National committee approves reduction of 2008 Gulf recreational window by 72 days

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

By JEFF DUTE AND BEN RAINES

Staff Reporters

New red snapper regulations that cut 72 days from the red snapper season and roughly 700,000 pounds from the recreational catch in the Gulf of Mexico will go into effect Feb. 28.

Instead of the April 21 through Oct. 31 season that fishermen have planned their vacations around for years, the 2008 snapper season will run for 122 days, from June 1 through Sept. 30.

The recreational total allowable catch is now set at 2.45 million pounds, down from 3.15 million last year.

The final rule issued Tuesday by the National Marine Fisheries Service also maintains the two-fish-per-person daily bag limit and the elimination of the captain and crew bag on for-hire vessels that were begun last year as part of an interim rule issued before the 2007 season.

Click here to read the full article from the Mobile Press-Register.