Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 1019 is a conversation with Andy Strelcheck, the NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Administrator, about why the South Atlantic red snapper season did not open this year, what an exempted fishing permit actually is, how a court injunction on May 21 stopped those permits one day before Florida's season, why discards drive red snapper management more than abundance does, and what new science — including close-kin mark recapture and two new stock assessments — is about to tell us.
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Andy Strelcheck is the Regional Administrator for NOAA Fisheries in the Southeast. Under the Magnuson-Stevens Act he is a designated member of three fishery management councils: the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, the Gulf Fishery Management Council, and the Caribbean Fishery Management Council. His work covers federal fisheries from Brownsville, Texas to North Carolina and the U.S. Caribbean, and he started his career with the state of Florida.
The states of Florida through North Carolina submitted exempted fishing permits to NOAA in November. The permits were resubmitted in January, went out for public comment in February and March, and were issued around May 1. Shortly afterward, organizations sued the agency out of concern the permits would lead to overfishing. A court ordered an injunction on May 21 that halted the permits from going into effect. Florida's season was scheduled to open May 22. Andy is limited in what he can say about the case itself, and he walks through everything he can on the timeline in the episode.
An exempted fishing permit, or EFP, is a tool NOAA uses to allow activity that current regulations would otherwise prohibit, usually to test new management measures or to conduct research. A simple EFP might let an aquarium collect a species that is closed to harvest. The South Atlantic red snapper EFPs were more complex: they were built to test state management of the fishery and to test new data collection methods, including the state reef fish survey in Florida and an angler smartphone app in Georgia through North Carolina.
Andy says NOAA Fisheries does not question that the population is doing well, that it is healthy and large, and that it is rebuilding. The management challenge is not abundance. As the population has rebuilt, anglers encounter and release far more fish, and those discards have led to fish dying at young ages, which pushes the overall rate of removal higher than a long-term sustainable population can support.
Close-kin mark recapture is a genetic technique that estimates population size by measuring how genetically similar parents are to offspring across a sampled population. The more similar the genetics, the smaller the population; the more divergent, the larger it is. Congress authorized an independent study called the South Atlantic Red Snapper Research Program, run by a group of academic institutions. Its habitat-based abundance estimate was highly uncertain because habitat is not well mapped in the South Atlantic. Its close-kin mark recapture estimate came back very similar to NOAA's own stock assessment estimates.
Gulf gag grouper seasons had fallen to about two weeks. Last year's 15-day season did not exceed the catch level once the landings and monitoring data came back, which allowed the season to be increased to 30 days this year. The South Atlantic gag season is also slowly getting longer as that population rebuilds. Gulf red grouper had a very positive assessment, and emergency action last year raised catch levels by close to double, which extended the recreational season from roughly six months to year-round.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 1019 with Andy Strelcheck is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. Press play in the player above to listen right now, or watch the conversation — the video version is embedded at the top of this page.
I have fished the Keys my whole adult life and I have watched seasons open and close without ever really understanding who decides, or how. When Andy and I talked a year ago, he was the first person who explained the machinery to me in a way I could repeat to somebody at the dock. This time I had a list of questions that were not mine — they came from people who wrote in, angry and confused about the red snapper season, and a lot of them had never heard the backstory at all. Andy took the red snapper question first, with a good attitude, knowing exactly what he was walking into.
Listen to the whole conversation in his own words.
Most people I talk to know the season closed. Almost nobody knows why. Andy lays out the timeline — when the states submitted, when the permits were issued, who sued, and the day the injunction landed. The part that gets me is the calendar: the injunction came down on May 21 and Florida was scheduled to open on May 22. He is restricted in what he can say about the litigation itself, and he still gets further into it than I expected. Listen to that section of the episode.
Discards are the whole ballgame for snapper and grouper, and they are the hardest thing to count, because they mostly come from a tired angler at a dock trying to remember a day on the water. Andy walks through what NOAA is doing about that — observers riding along on for-hire boats, camera systems, catch cards a fisherman marks throughout the day. He also explains how a released fish gets scored on a scale of one to five, and where descending devices fit into a number that decides your season. Worth hearing in his own words.
This is the question I got asked more than any other, and I put it to Andy plainly: why should a guy who sees red snapper everywhere hand over information that feels like it only gets used against him? Andy has been surveyed himself, at the end of a long day, and he understands the reflex. His answer runs the other direction from what most people expect, and it has to do with error bars and what happens when the uncertainty grows. Listen to the full answer in the episode.
Congress funded an independent look at South Atlantic red snapper, and academic teams went out to assess the population without NOAA in the middle of it. One method leaned on habitat. The other used genetics — comparing parents to offspring to estimate how many fish are out there. I had never heard of close-kin mark recapture before this conversation, and I asked Andy to explain how anybody figured that out. What the results said about NOAA's own numbers is the part worth sitting with.
Fish float everywhere, and I have always wondered how anyone puts a number on that. Andy explains that a red tide is treated as a natural mortality event, estimated by magnitude and extent, then built into the model with the uncertainty carried along. The honest part of his answer is when you actually find out how bad it was — years later, when the young fish either show up or they do not. He walks through the same logic for a hard inshore cold kill. Listen to that section of the episode.
Not all of this is bad news, and I wanted him to say the good parts out loud. Gulf gag went from a 15-day season to 30 days because the data came back clean. Gulf red grouper got an emergency action and went from about six months to year round. Yellowtail, mutton, and lane snapper are all doing well down in my neck of the woods, and their range appears to be expanding. Andy explains what has to be true in the science for a season to grow. Worth hearing.
Listen to the full conversation: Apple Podcasts · Spotify
What I keep thinking about after yesterday's conversation is the gap between what fishermen see on the water and what the model sees. Andy is not arguing with what you see. He said it plainly — NOAA does not question that this population is healthy and large. The fight is over how fish die, not how many are out there.
The other thing I take from this is that the door is open wider than people think. The councils are looking for advisory panel members. There are cooperative research programs where scientists ride on fishermen's boats and use their methods. I would rather be at that table than yelling about it from the dock.
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NOAA Fisheries · NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Office · South Atlantic Fishery Management Council · Gulf Fishery Management Council · Caribbean Fishery Management Council · Magnuson-Stevens Act · Florida State Reef Fish Survey · South Atlantic Red Snapper Research Program · Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission · Sean Meehan · John Carlson · University of Florida · red snapper · gag grouper · red grouper · scamp grouper · Goliath grouper · Warsaw grouper · yellowtail snapper · mutton snapper · lane snapper
Andy Strelcheck is the Regional Administrator for NOAA Fisheries in the Southeast, where he oversees federal fisheries management from Brownsville, Texas to North Carolina and throughout the U.S. Caribbean. Under the Magnuson-Stevens Act he serves as a designated member of the South Atlantic, Gulf, and Caribbean fishery management councils, which meet four to five times a year and devote roughly half of their agendas to snapper and grouper management. He began his career with the state of Florida, where he worked on shark feeding issues more than two decades ago, and he now leads the agency's work on stock assessments, catch levels, recreational data collection, and exempted fishing permits across the Southeast.
Andy Strelcheck: Hey, this is Andy Strelcheck from NOAA. This is the Tom Rowland Podcast.
Tom Rowland: Okay, perfect. All right, here we go. Andy, how are ya? I'm doing very well. Very well. Thanks for joining us.
Andy Strelcheck: Doing great. How about yourself? Appreciate you having me again.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. So, there's been a lot of things going on lately with well number one, the red snapper season I think is probably what people are the most interested in and I know there are some lawsuits or litigation or something going on, so I know you're restricted on some of the things that you could say, but could you just give us an overview of kind of what happened this year on on the Red Snapper season?
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, you're tossing out the softball questions right away for me, aren't you? no, yeah, yeah, I appreciate you saying that about the litigation. So obviously I'm not able to kind of speak directly about the case itself, but what I can share is kind of what we were trying to do, what kind of ultimately transpired. so I don't know if your listeners know much about exempted fishing permits, but it's a tool we have for managing fisheries that allows us to test new
Tom Rowland: Yeah.
Andy Strelcheck: Management measures, look at ways to conduct science and research in different ways. And so the states of Florida through North Carolina submitted to the agency exempted fishing permits back in November. There were essentially two main purposes. One was to test state management, similar to what's done in the Gulf for South Atlantic Red Snapper, and the other is to improve data collection through testing of new data collection methods. So you're probably familiar with like the state reef fish survey in Florida. So using that to monitor both landings and discards. And then the states of Georgia through North Carolina were looking at a new angler-based app through the smartphone that could collect data on landed catch and discards during the fishing season. So NOAA working with the states helped to Refined those exempted fishing permits. We ultimately had them resubmitted to us in January, had public comments in February and March, and ultimately issued them around May 1st. And shortly thereafter, some organizations sued the agency out of concerns that these permits would lead to overfishing. And ultimately that was heard by a judge, and the court ordered an injunction which essentially halted those exempted. fishing permits from going into effect. And as you're probably aware, that happened on May 21st. Florida season was scheduled to open May 22nd. So from a timing standpoint, obviously not ideal, but the injunction has essentially prevented us from moving forward with those EFPs at this time.
Tom Rowland: Hm. Very interesting. I'm not sure that people know the backstory of that. You know, some people just got upset because the season was was closed, but they don't know necessarily why. and so is that is that something that can happen for any season? Like I know the exemptive fishing permits in this situation are are one thing, but is it Is there a any sort of a time limit? That could happen up to the second before the season opened in in other circumstances?
Andy Strelcheck: I would say this is very unusual instance where the injunction relief was requested as part of the litigation. It could happen. typically what does happen is we work with the fishery management councils to develop regulations over an extended period of time. It's an open public comment process, the attorneys are involved and Once we take final action and go to rulemaking, we, you know, have hopefully vetted the work that we've done significantly so that there's less legal risk and less potential for litigation. But we can be sued obviously for regulatory actions that we take. Typically they haven't led to an injunction like was seen with South Atlantic Red Snapper, but occasionally that has happened in other circumstances.
Tom Rowland: So in this in this case it was exemptive fishing permits for Red Snapper specifically. but let's let's talk about the exemptive fishing permits, what they are and what what kind of a a decision making process goes into that for any species I guess. and maybe in this case we're we're talking about red snapper, so like maybe if you can comment on, you know, what went into the decision to to issue those, I I'm certainly interested in that.
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, and so exempted fishing permits can take a variety of different forms. I mean, they could be as simplistic as an aquarium would like to go out and harvest fish that are prohibited from being harvested at a certain time of year or certain species, and so they're requesting exemption from the regulations in order to harvest, retain those species, and place them in an aquarium, right? That's kind of the simplistic EFP. You know, the more complex ones, which we worked on over Time are similar to kind of what we were talking about with South Atlantic Red Snapper, where the whole intent of an exempted fishing permit is kind of as described, right? It's exempted from certain regulations that it would otherwise be prohibited. And so for these proposed exempted fishing permits that were issued, we were Exempting the states from certain regulations pertaining, for example, to the fishing season. So rather than opening in the typical July time frame, they were going to open their seasons at different times of the year. And as I mentioned earlier, the whole purpose of exempted fishing permits is really to do things that otherwise would be prohibited, but also to test things out that otherwise maybe you can learn from and benefit from for longer-term management. So that was really our hope and goal is that we could test some of these new data collection methods, we could look at improving some of the data, and then ultimately that could lead to longer-term management approaches that could be considered by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council.
Tom Rowland: Okay. and so when when there l those data collection methods, that's that's interesting. You were you were saying the the reef the reef one that you mentioned. Could you explain what that is? I know a lot of people don't understand what that is.
Andy Strelcheck: Yes, I do. Yes, it maybe to first start with so we have what's called the Marine Resource Information Program. People are probably familiar with that. It's a generalized survey that collects data on both angler catches, so that's what happens when they intercept you at the dock, right? when you come back from a fishing trip, but also they survey you and collect information on your fishing effort through a mail-based survey. Those are generalized surveys that are intended to apply to all species, statewater species that are common to rare event species that are rarely encountered, but
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm.
Andy Strelcheck: We generate estimates for all of those species that are included in that survey. The state reef fish survey, which is conducted by the state of Florida, and other state-based surveys are essentially more specialized surveys, and their intent really is to be more targeted in terms of the sampling they're conducting. And so the Florida State Reef Survey, I believe, includes about 13 species of reef, snapper and grouper, you know, red snapper being one of them, but other Key species like gag and Red Grouper. And they do more targeted sampling at locations where offshore fishermen would return to port. They also survey fishermen that hold this state reef fish survey endorsement or license that you get as part of your permit. And so that helps us to then refine the catch estimates to. better align with the fishing activity of those specialized species that we're trying to sample.
Tom Rowland: And this this counts both you said both what you keep and then also what you discard or release, right?
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, and so discards obviously are self-reported with these survey methodologies when you get back to the dock. that's been a criticism a lot of our science and data just because they aren't as well estimated. They are based on recall of, you know, an angler's experience on the water. And so we've been spending a lot of time, energy, effort trying to improve how we estimate both discards and fishing effort. For the recreational sector. And so, for example, we've increased observer coverage in our for-hire fleet so that we actually have physical observers that are going out on boats to collect information about fish that are being caught and discarded. So they physically see those fish rather than someone self-reporting it. We have a number of studies in the Gulf right now that are looking at camera technology onboard boats that kind of replace observers. As well as having kind of a study fleet of anglers that will take a discard or catch card out with them on the trip. And as they catch and release fish, they can mark that throughout the day and then they turn that in at the end of their fishing trip. All this is intended to improve our estimates of discards, which represent a large portion of mortality for a lot of these snapper grouper species.
Tom Rowland: How do you how do you kind of attribute the mortality w with different r release methods? Like for example, if if they're using a descending device or they're venting the fish or they're just releasing the fish, are there notes that you're making on that that maybe one is has a higher mortality rate than the others or how do you how do you do that? Like say there's a observer on the boat and he they're they're marking down, you know, they released this many fish and all of them were descended. What would that look like?
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, so it's a variety of different methods. it'll depend in part by the species. I mean, a lot of the like a direct observed catch, they'll categorize the fish that's being released, you know, on a scale of one to five from swam down immediately to dead at the surface, you know, and everything in between. So that gives us an indication of the likelihood of survival. but there's a lot of research studies that actively conduct research on discards, so they'll go out and bring up a fish to the surface. surface put it put in a tag into that fish, whether it's a physical tag or a tag that we can actually track that fish's movement after we've released it. And then we can look at over a period of days, weeks, months, the survival rate of those fish and determine the overall Release mortality. In addition, you mentioned descending devices. So, descending devices, similarly, they'll use those methods and they can compare fish that are caught and released with a descending device or released without a descending device to look at the difference, and that helps us to generate release mortality rates for those various species based on the methods that are being used. The biggest kind of uncertainty right now is we require descending devices to be rigged. Ready and available. We don't necessarily require their use on boats, and so how often people are using them, the choices they're making to descend fish versus maybe vent a fish affects obviously our ability to overall estimate the release mortality rates because it's dependent on usage of those devices.
Tom Rowland: Mm. And then the tags that you mentioned, that are put in the fish in those situations, is that a tag that has to that you have to re catch that fish to to determine the mortality or is are there other tag po tags available?
Andy Strelcheck: So there's physical tags that you'd have to recapture that fish, but then there's also tags that have transponders in them. So they can go out and then sample the locations where those fish were released periodically to determine is that fish still alive, is it still swimming in the area? It could leave the area and not have obviously died, but what they typically look at is short periods of time following the release event to determine if in fact there was a mortality or not. But that gives them ability to monitor the fish without having to physically catch it again.
Tom Rowland: Right. Is that one of the listening tags where you put the something in the water and it and it it receives a ping from the from the tag, like I know they do that with bonefish and other other things. If the fish swims a certain distance from that, it'll ping that. Is
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, I'm not up to speed on the latest technology they use, but yes, something similar along those lines where we're able to obviously detect
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's been some really cool things that happened there where where a fish just swims away and it doesn't ping there, but it pings in another area and then you get this this, you know, travel information about how far that fish moved in a certain amount of time, which is also quite interesting, certainly for the people that fish for them, to to get that kind of information back of you know, this fish was caught here but then it pinged way up the coast or something. That's that's kinda cool.
Andy Strelcheck: And there's an array of monitoring systems that are throughout the coast. There's obviously also huge gaps between those arrays, depending on where the research is conducting, but you're exactly right. We c can often detect fish in one area, it leaves, and then days, weeks, months, even years later it might show up in another array somewhere else in the Gulf or South Atlantic.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Are those type of tags expensive? Can you put a lot of them out? Right, that's what I was wondering. Right. And that observer program, people might be interested in in participating in that. Is there like a course that you go through to to be an observer on on one of these offshore boats?
Andy Strelcheck: Yes, they're expensive so you can't put a lot of them out. So that's one of the major challenges. I don't believe there's a course. we have contracted with both the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission and the various states to provide funding for observers. I'm not familiar with how all of them select participants for those for-hire observer studies, but certainly can follow up with you on that.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah, that's that'd be that'd be kinda cool. and then so w what we were s first scheduled to talk about was just kind of an overall fisheries management of how NOAA NOAA kind of manages the fisheries. Of course the the red snapper season this year is what everybody wants answers on about like what what actually happened and I feel like you've given some really good ones there. The other thing that I see that is in the forefront of the news right now is certainly the Sharks. and then the shark diving, the the possibility that that might be illegal and that could be I'm not sure but it could be more of an FWC kind of state of Florida thing. But does NOAA how does NOAA weigh in on on that shark diving being legal or illegal? do does NOAA weigh in on that at all?
Andy Strelcheck: So kind of a teaser for a future podcast, I think you're gonna have some of our shark experts coming on talking to you about that. I'm not familiar with that issue. I worked on some shark feeding about 22, 25 years ago when I was initially with the state of Florida. I believe that most of the activity does occur in state waters, but in terms of our role and how we're engaging that, I'm not familiar with that.
Tom Rowland: Okay. certainly certainly i is an issue that that splits a lot of a lot of people. just w where where that lands. But what about shark commercial fishing for sharks or seasons for sharks? Where does NOAA weigh in there?
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, so my authority as a regional administrator is working with the fishery management councils in the southeast. it does not include highly migratory species, which include is inclusive of sharks. so people like Carol Brewster guys who gonna talk to you in I think the coming months, as well as John Carlson that works on shark stock assessments, will be much better suited to actually answer those questions about sharks. So sorry I can't answer your questions.
Tom Rowland: that's okay. That's fine. I appreciate you answering what you can. So w in your world and what you're doing on a daily basis, what what occupies most of your your time and focus now? Is there a certain species that you're that you work more on than others or certain issues that you're working on more than others?
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, so I'm as part of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which is our authority to manage federal fisheries, I'm a designated to be a member of three fishery management councils in the Southeast. So I serve on the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, the Gulf Fishery Management Council, and the Caribbean Fishery Management Council. So that is pretty much what drives my work on a day-to-day basis, balancing activities from Brownsville, Texas to North Carolina. And including the U.S. Caribbean. Most of the work that's happening in the South Atlantic and Gulf right now is all related to snapper grouper species, right? So we meet in the South Atlantic four times a year. We meet in the Gulf five times a year. The agendas typically 50% or more are talking about snapper grouper management issues ranging from red snapper to grouper to yellowtail snapper and mutton snapper. Right, so we have a lot of things that are occupying our time right now. our science center provides us, for example, stock assessments to determine the health and status of our fish species, and then we react to that and we respond to that by implementing management regulations. In some instances, it's very positive. So for example, we have a really positive red grouper assessment in the Gulf that we just recently took action on. We're working on increasing catch levels for red grouper, and then other instances. It's negative or it not as good, and that we have to address a stock that's overfished. So species like Scamp Grouper that is highly desirable, really good to eat, but determined to be overfished. And so we had to put in measures to reduce fishing mortality and protect that species in the South Atlantic recently. So that occupies a lot of my time. Obviously, we've been working a lot with the states recently on these South Atlantic Red Snapper exempted fishing permits. We'll continue to obviously explore. Those in light of obviously the court decision and how that might be addressed given the court's decision.
Tom Rowland: So an exemptive permit on a on a red snapper, is that gonna be considered because the population is on on the increase and and you're you're seeing that maybe that's a that that could be an allowable thing or or w what where where do you see the the state of the of the red snapper in the South Atlantic, the Gulf and the Caribbean?
Andy Strelcheck: so In terms of your first question about the EFPs, it's not necessarily tied to the health and status of the population, right? Sometimes we have species that have prohibited harvest, like Warsaw Grouper or the Goliath Grouper, where we want to conduct activities to learn more about those species. And so those are important species to then issue exempted fishing permits for because the seasons are closed, harvest is prohibited, without being able to retain or do research on those species. You wouldn't gain new information, right? So the red snapper exempted fishing permits aren't necessarily tied to the health and status of the population. What we've been focusing on really since 2024 with the state of Florida, but now it's expanding obviously to other states, is we have a population that's been rebuilding, which is what we expected, right? We reduced fishing mortality, we had a shortened seasons, the stock was very depleted, but we've been successfully rebuilding that population. But then as that population is rebuilt and people have seen more f fish on the water, they're encountering more fish, they're having to then release more fish, and so then more fish are dying because of discards. So The challenge has been we have this successful population that's rebuilding and getting healthier. People are seeing more fish, but their access is being limited. And so these exempted fishing permits, both the ones that were recently proposed as well as the ones we had worked on with the state of Florida for the last couple of years, were really intended to determine if there's other ways we can manage this fishery that allows for some additional access while sustainably managing the fishery, right?
Tom Rowland: Mm.
Andy Strelcheck: that we otherwise didn't feel like we could complete that work through the fishery management council and implement it effectively or we wanted to learn from those exempted fishing permits first before we took the next step of kind of longer term state management.
Tom Rowland: Wow. So is that kind of what happened with the with the short Goliath Grouper season? Would that be considered something like that? Where I mean, out of nowhere well not out of nowhere, but I thought it was a little bit of a surprise a few years ago that that they allow two hundred Goliath Groupers to be caught with a permit. and I think we talked about this before. I certainly talked about it with with some other scientists about you know, how that decision was made and and that it was a very difficult decision because there's no catch data up to you know, the season's been closed, right? So with one of these exemptive fishing permits mm certainly for red snappers, that could be a really good thing for opening the season
Andy Strelcheck: Right.
Tom Rowland: longer if that's what you're in f in favor of, because the the results of that exemptive fishing permit could show that Well yeah, this is a a really healthy fishery, just like what everybody's seeing with their eyes, that there seem to be a lot of red snapper out here. And then if you do one of those exemptive fishing permits and you actually get the information, does that kind of information lead to possibly opening a longer season? certainly giving you data that that is much needed, right?
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, I mean there's a lot to unpack there. So first going back to Goliath, that's a little bit different situation in that if you recall from when we talked a year ago, the state has authority to manage species out to either three or nine miles, depending on the coastline. And we then manage in federal waters beyond that out to 200 miles. And so the state has opted to allow for some limited harvest of Goliath Grouper in state waters, but pr harvest is prohibited still. Outside of state waters, right? But they've exercised their authority, which they have to do that. For Red Snapper, so yes, so in part it's what can we learn from the exempted fishing permits? Is this a approved or better management strategy than the current short fishing seasons? What information can we gain to help us determine the health status of the population? We actually have two other things that are ongoing or kind of Wrapping up at this point. One is a new stock assessment for Red Snapper. Actually, there's new stock assessments for Red Snapper in both the Gulf and South Atlantic. Those are scheduled to be completed through this fall into start of next year. So we should have some new science and data which is up to date with regard to health of the populations. Congress also, a few years back, Authorized funding for an independent study of Red Snapper in the South Atlantic. It was called the South Atlantic Red Snapper Research Program. And it was a number of academic institutions working together, and the whole intent was to go out independently assess the population abundance of Red Snapper, and based on those results, how does that compare to NOAA's science and information? we can then utilize that to better inform our science going forward. And The results were recently reviewed. The information that's come out so far is that they did kind of two estimates of abundance. One was looking at abundance based on kind of habitat throughout the South Atlantic. Another was a genetic technique called close-kin mark recapture that looks at estimating population abundance based on how genetically similar parents are to offspring throughout the population. The habitat information, because habitat's not well mapped in the South Atlantic was highly uncertain, but the close-kin mark recapture data actually indicated the abundance of the population was very similar to our stock assessment estimates. So I think what I want to leave your audience with is NOAA fisheries doesn't question that this population is doing well, it's healthy, it's large, it's certainly rebuilding. Where the challenge has been is that These discards have led to a lot of the fish being harvested at young ages, which we've had overfishing occurring just simply because the rate of removal of those fish has been too high a rate to have a long-term sustainable population. How the new assessment obviously addresses that, what it looks like to be determined, but it is going to be interesting, obviously, with the new science, obviously, to help inform any sort of future management strategies.
Tom Rowland: Wow. That close kin, how does that work? How do you know the the similarities between the parents?
Andy Strelcheck: So you are asking a novice genetic biologist to say the least, but my my understanding is that they can go out and sample the population and large enough numbers to be able to then look at the genetic similarity or differences between the parents in the population and offspring. And based on the amount of kind of similarities or differences, it will give you an indication of how large the population is.
Tom Rowland: Well, I just wonder, like
Andy Strelcheck: So the more similar the information is genetically, the smaller the population, the more divergent, the larger the population. And the estimates that they've produced have fairly low uncertainty around them. But it is a sub definitely kind of an emerging area of science and study that's being utilized now for assessing population abundance of fish species.
Tom Rowland: That's super interesting 'cause my first question would be how would you how do you know who the parents are? but I mean I guess you're sampling some fish and then through DNA you're saying this fish is related to these other fish, right? And that's and and there is a a a lot a high degree of variability here and that that leads itself to a to a large population or this is almost a identical fish to the parents.
Andy Strelcheck: Sounds like you might have a future segment with the University of Florida and their research team to talk about.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well I I think that's a I think that's an interesting thing. I you know, that's that's something that I I really haven't heard of that and I feel like I should have, but or maybe I didn't pay attention to it, but I didn't or maybe it wasn't explained to me like you you said. that this genetic variability between the parents and the and the offspring would give a signal of how big the population is. That's a smart person that figured that out. And and then somebody else has to be even smarter to say, well this is how we determine that and all we need to do is catch these fish and then catch these fish and we can we can determine, you know, at least something. that's pr that's pretty interesting.
Andy Strelcheck: Very smart person.
Tom Rowland: I th I wonder if it you know, I g I I'm assuming that if you're using it and NOAA's using it, a government or org organization is using it, that it has proven to be an effective means of of determining how big the the population is. But all those questions for for next time. Well, do you have anything that that you wanna talk about? Like as far as what you feel like the the public might need a better explanation on? I'd love to offer you the the the mic and and if you feel like there's something that you wanna kinda give a better explanation on.
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, I there's a number of things maybe we could cover that would be interesting to your audience. so I know there's been maybe some frustration about Gag Grouper in the Gulf in recent years. If you recall the seasons have gotten down to two weeks. we're working on trying to rebuild that population. So as we're mandated under federal law, because the population is depleted, we're working to rebuild those levels and so Catch levels are starting to increase. And last year we had the 15 day season, but we got all of the landings data, monitoring data back, and we did not exceed the catch level, which allows us now to increase the season length. And so we've increased the season length to 30 days this year, which still is short, but it's an improvement and we're heading in the right direction, and something that's been super exciting with regard to seeing some progress there for important iconic species. Of species like gag grouper. Similar thing is kind of happening in the South Atlantic. That gag season is slowly getting a little bit longer as that population rebuilds. So we're hopeful that we're on the right track, obviously, with Grouper. And then red grouper, I mentioned it earlier. We have a very positive Gulf Red Grouper assessment. Last year we actually took some emergency actions to implement higher catch levels. We're working on implementing. Many new regulations this year to follow on to those regulations to make them more permanent. that has allowed us to extend the recreational season from what was approximately six months to now a year round fisheries, right? so returning access, which is great based on the results of our science, which is down in your neck of the woods, some of the things that have been really positive, yellowtail snapper and mutton snapper and I'll even throw lane snapper in that category. Their distribution and geographic range appears to be expanding, but they're doing really, really well in terms of their populations. And so we've had very good stock assessments for all three of those species and are continuing to allow catch levels to go up as those populations increase in size. So some good things that are happening overall with the s our snapper grouper management.
Tom Rowland: That's great. Can can I ask you about the emergency action? You said you took emergency actions for the Red Grouper. Like what would that entail?
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, so we have authority to take emergency action under some limited circumstances. And last year when we got the assessment for Red Grouper and it allowed for this big increase, we wanted to make sure that we returned the economic benefits for that catch limit increase to the fishermen. Typically, if we had just gone through the standard process and not taken emergency action, we would not have been able to get that catch limit in place for last year's season, whereas the emergency action allows us to execute. But I the rulemaking process implemented more quickly. That allowed for us to extend the for-hire in private recreational seasons, but also increase the commercial catch levels. But it's limited in terms of our authority. We can only use it under certain circumstances.
Tom Rowland: Okay. And so in that situation it you increase the catch. Do you remember what the what the increases were?
Andy Strelcheck: I don't off the top of my head, but it was close to a doubling of the catch levels. It was a pretty substantial increase.
Tom Rowland: really? Wow. And so that has to be a really substantial positive report that you're getting on the population to double the I mean, so can you can you expand on you you said it was very positive on the on the red grouper. how does that how does that look like numbers or or some way of of saying how how healthy that fishery is compared to what it was?
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, I mean stock assessments are essentially our tool to evaluate the health of a population, and they include a whole host variety of different data sources from landings data to age composition of fish that are sampled to trends in abundance. And that assessment came back after processing all that information. We had I think four years of increasing abundance. trend with our surveys that allowed that catch level to go up. you know another thing that affects grouper species, especially on the west coast, is water quality and red tide events. And we haven't had any kind of major red tide events in recent years, which is also I think helpful for species like Grouper and those inshore species.
Tom Rowland: When you have one of those red tide, does that d just reset all of the catch records and I like how does that like let's just say you're you have an assessment and then you have a bad red tide, fish are floating everywhere. How do you how do you then like put that into the data? I mean, how how how could anybody know how many fish died in a red tide event? I'm sure it's just an estimation, but I'm just wondering how you make that estimation.
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, and it's Considered more of like a natural mortality event at that point, right? So you'll see it indirectly show up because of fishing activity. Less fish will be landed, less fish will be harvested or discarded. But the you know science team does have ways of kind of assessing the overall magnitude, size, extent of a red tide event to estimate kind of what level of natural mortality may have occurred, and they'll build that into the model because it's
Tom Rowland: Uh-huh.
Andy Strelcheck: Not certain like you're pointing out, it's an estimate. They look at kind of different runs of the model based on uncertainty surrounding those estimates in order to kind of gauge the impact of a red tide event. Usually then several years later, once we start to see recruitment, those young fish entering the fishery, we can really get a good idea of how significant that red tide was in impacting harvest.
Tom Rowland: Wow. Takes years to to understand it. And then I guess for some fish I I I guess you know, certainly the inshore fish are affected badly at at least as badly by severe cold. you can have some bad bad fish kills there too. And is that kind of looked at the same way? It's a natural occurrence, of course, but it it's still those fish are being taken out of the system w one way or another, so there's fewer of them and that has to be put into the the model somehow.
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, that's exactly right. And most of the species you're referring to are gonna be state managed, but they have obviously inshore surveys. They can look at for example,
Tom Rowland: Mm.
Andy Strelcheck: net surveys that they may conduct to collect the f fish species inshore and you can see obviously the change in abundance, you know, in terms of what they're catching in those nets or other survey methods to discern how much of an impact those cold weather events obviously had on those fish species. As you s probably seen, obviously the state of Florida often responds by then closing fisheries for, you know, periods of time following a cold weather event just to give those fish an opportunity to increase survival and recover from those events.
Tom Rowland: So a lot of what we discussed in the very beginning were these these surveys that that you'll you'll have volunteers or NOAA employees at at boat ramps, at places where where they're asking fishermen questions and a lot of those questions are gonna be, let's just say, you know, centered around red snapper, how many did you catch, how many did you discard? And so there's gonna be a certain number of fishermen that recreational, commercial, guides, whatever, that are just gonna say, I'm not gonna say anything. I'm I'm giving as little information as possible because I feel like you know, some people will feel like the more information every time I give information, the season is taken away from me, right? every time I give them more information I get to keep less. So, you know, as an ethical angler you want to do what you're supposed to do, you want to be within the law, you want to but but that's not something that is required by law that you take that you participate in one of these surveys, is it?
Andy Strelcheck: No, it's not a require I mean s there's certain programs that we do require participants to submit data. So for example, we have mandatory reporting for logbook programs in the South for-hire. But for private anglers.
Tom Rowland: Mm. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That but you know what you're getting into when you're getting that. You're gett getting that license and you know that you're gonna have to do that to maintain the license and tha that's that's a different story. What I'm asking is is like you just have there's just a there's just a feeling with some fishermen that You don't want to give any information because the more inform that information is only going to be used against you. So I I this is the question that a lot of people wanted me to ask. Why should people participate in in one of these surveys and tell and and say how many fish were discarded and how they did it? Did they descend them? Did they release them in certain ways? If their intention, that personal fisherman, is their what they would really like is a longer season. They see all these fish everywhere. They they feel like there's just there's an overwhelming amount of red snapper. I don't know why I can keep them. The more information I give it seems like the lower the season is. So that's the question that several people asked me to ask today was why should they participate in these in these surveys?
Andy Strelcheck: Yeah, so I I would answer first by saying there's a lot of data that goes into a stock assessment and our estimates of health and abundance and how we manage fisheries and recreational reporting is one of many, many components, right? you mentioned obviously kind of the ethical angler, you know, and and that's the way I approach things, right? Like I've gotten surveyed when I've gotten back from a fishing trip. I'm tired, you know, it's been a long day on the water. Last thing I really want to do is talk to some about what I caught and remember what I discarded, but you take the time You provide the information. The downside of not providing the information, right, is it in some cases, in many instances, it might actually provide the exact opposite effect as to what they're thinking may happen, which is the less surveys we get or the less cooperation we get, the more uncertainty there is in terms of our recreational catch estimates. That then has to be taken into account with regard to how we include that in the science, and then ultimately that drives up the error bar. The uncertainty around our catch level estimates, right? So we often hear this, right? That we don't like the management. You know, if we report, then it's going to directly negatively affect the management. In my view, there's not this one to one direct correlation at all between those two. That's why we've been working hard, obviously, to look at alternative methods for collecting data from recreational anglers. I mentioned some earlier about these catch cards That they could take out on a fishing trip and then report when they get back. We've been working with the state of Florida in terms of some kind of incentivized management programs where they have to report when they leave, report when they get back, but the dockside sampler can meet them, and then as part of that, they were able to go out and harvest more red snapper that otherwise would have been restricted or prohibited. So we I think the key to all of this is cooperative research. It's also true. Trying to Maybe be less reliant on angler observations and data at the end of a trip so we can delink kind of that management response from the actual experience on the water and the catches. In the Gulf, I mentioned earlier, you know, some studies that are going on. So you may have received like a survey in the mail that says, How many trips did you make in the last month or two months, right? And you report that. We get anywhere from about a 20 to 30 percent response. Yeah. Why don't we get responses from that 60, 70, 80 percent, you know, not well known, but some is because they didn't go fishing, others they just choose not to respond. So now we're looking at things like camera-based systems at boat ramps, right? to count boats that are leaving and coming back, or satellite-based systems that could actually count vessels that are you know, from satellite imagery. All of these kind of innovative tools that hopefully will. Data, but the key also is that cooperative approach with anglers, right? We want to work with anglers, co-op, you know, have cooperative anglers. We recognize there's frustration with some of our management strategies, and so we've also developed some cooperative research programs where they're working hand in hand with our scientists, taking us out on their boats. We're collecting data based on the methods and means that they use, and then that gets plugged directly into our science, and so it's kind of a win-win in my view. The scientist benefit from their experience with those anglers, the anglers see the perspective of how the scientist is using that data and it's ultimately being funnelable to the scient science enterprise.
Tom Rowland: That's that's cool. That's a good answer. I appreciate that. And I know some other people are gonna appreciate that too. so certainly a lot of things going on. if people are are interested in reading more about what they what we've talked about or what the upcoming things are or attend meetings, what's the best resource to send them to?
Andy Strelcheck: Number of resources. So if they are interested in attending fishery management council meetings, you can check out the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council or Gulf Fishery Management Council's websites. can easily be found through a Google search. They also will publish videos and documents and other materials with regard to things that we're actively working on, actively you know deciding management strategies on. So that's obviously Obviously, one way they can just be informed about what's happening currently. If they want to get involved, the councils are always looking for members of advisory panels. That's in my way the best way to contribute as a recreational angler or for hire captain is get involved yourself, be there at the table to advise the council members, provide recommendations, give your you know on-the-water experience and observations that can inform the process. And then on the NOAA fishery side. We have Sean Meehan who's our recreational fishing coordinator. And we have a wealth of materials, obviously, through our NOAA Fisheries Southeast Regional Office webpage that are available for people to learn more about, obviously management and fishery regulations.
Tom Rowland: Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I r I know that you answered many of my questions and I feel like you answered a lot of questions for for other people and and you took the you took the red snapper question right off the bat with a good attitude. I appreciate that. I know that's something that you're probably talking about a lot. So I appreciate you talking about it here. Andy, I'd love to have you back and I look forward to we're gonna do what three or four more kind of NOAA sp species specific podcasts in the next couple of months. So if you enjoyed this one, stick around. We're gonna be talking about sharks, we're gonna be talking about shark diving, we're gonna talk about Lots of other stuff. Lots of other stuff coming up. but Andy, thank you very much for your time. I know you're a busy man. And we'll be back with another great guest like Andy next week. So stick around and we'll see you then. Okay, thank you.
Andy Strelcheck: Thanks, Tom.
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