Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 1027 is a conversation with David Moss, a fisheries project manager at The Nature Conservancy, about why the South Atlantic red snapper season was shut down the night before it was set to open, and why the catch data most anglers throw away is what actually decides whether future seasons happen. David works on snapper and grouper management from North Carolina through the Florida Keys, and he walks through the whole fight in plain terms a person in Ohio could follow.
Press play in the player above to watch the full conversation with David, or pull it up on your podcast app and listen on the way to the ramp.
The four South Atlantic states, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, had applied for exempted fishing permits to open a season. A group of plaintiffs filed suit arguing the permits were written too loosely, with no firm catch limits or season guidelines, and that they skirted the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management Act that governs federal fisheries. A judge sided with the plaintiffs at the last minute and closed the season, after charter captains had already booked trips and anglers had made plans. Three of the four states have since reapplied with much stricter limits. David explains the whole sequence in the episode.
An exempted fishing permit lets managers and scientists study something they could not otherwise look at, like harvesting a few fish from a closed area or out of season to check on spawning or stock health. David explains that these permits usually come with very tight catch limits and a narrow scope. The problem with the first red snapper round was that the permits were left wide open, without the strict limits and season windows that normally come attached. The reworked versions add those guardrails back in.
No. David is a fisherman first, and he understands the reluctance to hand over numbers. He explains that the location data in these apps is proprietary and protected, no different from the card information you already keep on your phone. What managers actually need is the species, the size, when you caught it, roughly how, whether you released it, and a rough depth. Nobody is asking for your waypoints. He makes the case for this directly in the conversation.
Managers measure something called catch per unit effort, which compares how many people go out against how many actually catch and keep fish. A day when nobody catches anything is as useful to that math as a day when everyone limits out. David explains that Magnuson-Stevens requires decisions to be built on the best available science, so thin or missing data forces cautious, restrictive calls. The more anglers report, the more accurate and timely those decisions can be.
They are the same fish managed two very different ways. The Gulf has far more fishable area and far more abundance, and states there have run their own red snapper management for several years, each with its own quota and reporting. The Atlantic hotspot is concentrated from around Cape Canaveral up to Jacksonville, where the fish are plentiful but anglers have not been able to keep them. David describes how the two regions are starting to learn from each other.
Goliath grouper were protected for decades, so there is almost no modern data on them even though divers and anglers see them everywhere. David points to the small limited season that opened, roughly two hundred permits, as an example of managers reopening a fishery specifically to start collecting real information. He uses it to show why the closed-and-no-data cycle is so hard to break, and what it takes to break it.
David lays out several on-ramps. You can attend or webinar into South Atlantic and Gulf council meetings and leave public comment, join a local fishing club like the West Palm Beach Fishing Club, or volunteer with a group like the Angler Action Foundation that does seagrass and oyster restoration. You can also follow The Nature Conservancy's Florida fishing work at nature.org/floridafishing. He is candid that you do not have to quit your job to make a difference.
I have had David Moss on before, and I wanted him back because he sits right in the middle of the thing so many of us are frustrated about and most of us do not really understand. Conservation matters a lot to me. I have kids and grandchildren now, and I want them to be able to go out and catch a fish the way I always have. David is a Florida fisherman first who happens to work inside the management process, so he can explain what is actually happening without talking down to anybody. Press play at the top of the page to hear him lay it out.
A lot of people got the email the evening before and just knew they could not go. No context, no reason they could follow, just a closed season and a ruined plan. I asked David to explain it the way you would explain it to a friend who lives nowhere near the ocean and does not care about the science, only that his buddy in Florida is furious. He takes it from the permits to the lawsuit to the judge to what the three states did next. It is a clean, honest walkthrough, and it is worth hearing in his own words in the episode.
This is the wall a lot of good fishermen hit. You will tell somebody what you caught and even what you caught it on, but you are never handing over where. I put that reluctance to David straight, because it is real and it is not going away. His answer surprised me a little, and it comes down to what the apps actually keep, what managers actually want, and who can and cannot see your numbers. If this is the part that has kept you from reporting, this is the section to hear him out on. Scroll back up and watch it in the player above.
David said something that stuck with me, which is that a bad day on the water is as valuable to a stock assessment as a great one. That runs against how most of us think about a wasted trip. He connects it to the math managers use and to the old dockside and mail-in surveys that used to be the whole picture. Once he explains why the empty days matter, the case for reporting stops feeling like a chore and starts making sense. He tells it better than I can write it here.
You can have an angler who fishes both coasts and comes home genuinely confused. On one side the fish seem to be getting smaller and captains are worried. On the other they are everywhere and you still cannot keep one. David breaks down why the two regions look so different, from the sheer size of the fishable water to how long each has been running its own system, and how they are starting to borrow from each other. If you fish both sides, the episode will make your season make more sense.
David did not set out to work in fisheries. He was running a landscape company, got frustrated with what he was seeing on the water, and started showing up to meetings. I wanted to know whether a normal person with a normal job can actually move the needle, or whether you have to go all in the way he eventually did. His answer is practical and full of real places to start. Listen through to the end of the episode for the full roadmap.
What I keep coming back to after yesterday's conversation is how simple the ask really is. You do not have to become a science nerd with a computer on the console. You keep a tally of what you catch and you send it to the right place, and over time that turns into seasons and access instead of closures.
Access is the part I care about most. I would rather be able to go than be able to keep a pile of fish, and David made a strong case that the two are more connected than most of us act like they are.
Give the full episode a listen, and if it changes how you think about that little app on your phone, that is the whole point.
David Moss, The Nature Conservancy, Dylan Hubbard, NOAA, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, the Gulf of America Fishery Management Council, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management Act, iAngler, Got One, Vessel, MyFWC, the Angler Action Foundation, and the West Palm Beach Fishing Club.
David Moss is a fisheries project manager at The Nature Conservancy, where he has worked for more than six years running snapper and grouper projects from North Carolina through the Florida Keys and into the Gulf. Florida born and raised, he serves as a recreational representative on the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council's Snapper Grouper and Dolphin Wahoo advisory panels, and came to fisheries management from a background in business and project management after years as a fisherman and youth soccer coach.
Transcript
Tom Rowland Podcast — Episode 1027: David Moss
In this episode: why the South Atlantic red snapper season closed the night before it opened, exempted fishing permits and the lawsuit behind the closure, why app-based catch reporting matters, whether your secret spots are safe, discards and barotrauma, Gulf versus Atlantic management, the Goliath grouper data gap, and how to actually get involved without quitting your job.
David Moss: Doing well. How about yourself?
Tom Rowland: Doing great. You been fishing?
David Moss: I was out last week, got some mangroves and some yellowjacks, so I got the itch off my skin a little bit, which was nice. As we talked last time, the mangrove is my favorite.
Tom Rowland: They are the best on the table for me. That is the one I really like. It is not the most popular, but it is the best, I think.
David Moss: One hundred percent. I will take mangroves over a lot of other species any day.
Tom Rowland: Did you manage to miss the lobster mini season, or did you choose to go after it?
David Moss: No, I do not partake in the madness, much to my brother-in-law's chagrin. He loves to give me crap about it every year, because he goes out, and I am just like, I am good. I do not need the crowds. I will go when regular season opens and there is a lot less craziness.
Tom Rowland: I am with you, man. I saw a picture that said you could see the boats and the traffic from space. That is the thing I try to avoid at all costs, any sort of holiday weekend. Whenever the most boats are on the water, that is when I want to take the day off and not be on the water. If I want that kind of crowdedness, I will go to New York or something. I do not need it in my fishing.
David Moss: Exactly. A lot of people really have a great time doing it, though. It is something so many people look forward to, obviously, because if you can see the traffic from space, it is highly popular. There are a lot of times you can catch lobster. I will go all during the regular season and have no problems. It is part of the adventure. Sometimes I get them, sometimes I do not, but it is always fun just being on the water or in the water.
Tom Rowland: So David, for our listeners, you work for The Nature Conservancy, and you have done that for quite some time now. Can you tell us what The Nature Conservancy does? It feels like this really big organization that a lot of people do not know exactly what it is all about.
David Moss: Sure. The Nature Conservancy is in, I think, 73 countries, all 50 states. Our mantra is conserving the lands and waters that people use. We do conservation, and we tend to do it quietly, but we like to think we conserve for the people. My specialty is fisheries. I have been with The Nature Conservancy for just over six years, and before that and during that, I am a fisherman. I am Florida born and bred. Our tagline from a fisheries perspective is partnering with anglers to foster sustainable fisheries for future generations. We want to make sure there are abundant fisheries for years to come for everybody, and plenty of access for everybody. That goes into everything we do, including land conservation, making sure all these areas and all this flora and fauna are conserved so that everybody gets to enjoy them.
Tom Rowland: And your role specifically, what is it that you do for The Nature Conservancy?
David Moss: My official title is Fisheries Project Manager, so I run a few different fisheries projects in the Southeast. My area of concentration is really from the North Carolina area all the way down through the Keys and then into the Gulf. My work is focused predominantly on snapper and grouper species. It meanders in and out of a few different arenas, all trying to make sure we have sustainable fisheries and that we are doing the right thing by the fishery, and that is for recreational, commercial, charter, everybody.
Tom Rowland: So how busy have you been with the latest red snapper issue in the Atlantic?
David Moss: It has been busy, to say the least. We actually submitted public comment, as The Nature Conservancy, on it. When these EFPs, or exempted fishing permits, were initially applied for, our position was that this is fine. We understand there is a disconnect between what the anglers are seeing on the water and what the management agencies are saying is happening. At the heart of what we submitted was, listen, this is fine, let us just make sure we get the best data and science out of it. Let us do it the right way. Let us not do it as a one-off. We are all about access, but let us do it smart, so we can keep enjoying this fishery for years to come and not have these tremendous peaks and valleys you sometimes see with fisheries.
Tom Rowland: A lot of people were ready for the red snapper opener, and it closes the night before. Everybody gets an email: it is not going to happen, you cannot keep them, you cannot fish for them. You are really close to this, and I think there are still a lot of people out there who do not understand what happened. They are frustrated, they do not know a lot about fisheries science, and they do not even care. They just did not get to go. Could you explain what happened, in layman's terms, to somebody who maybe lives in Ohio and does not know anything except that their friend in Florida is all mad because he did not get to keep red snapper?
David Moss: Sure. The four South Atlantic states, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, had applied for what are called EFPs, or exempted fishing permits. Usually EFPs are designed for very specific scientific purposes. When they are issued, they will often have very stringent catch limits or a very stringent area of focus, and they are used by NOAA and the management agencies to study things you would not otherwise be able to study, like looking at a closed area and harvesting a few fish, or harvesting a few fish out of season to see if their spawning habits have changed.
David Moss: When these EFPs were applied for, unfortunately what happened initially was that it was all nebulous. It was left very wide open. There were not necessarily catch limits attached to them. There were not strict season guidelines saying we are going to open on this day and close on this day, or a very specific catch limit saying once we catch X amount of fish we are going to shut it down.
Tom Rowland: And all those things happen with other species, right, when there are EFPs associated?
David Moss: Correct. What happened was a group of people, I believe based out of the North Carolina area, filed a lawsuit saying this was put together as a way to skirt Magnuson. The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management Act is the law that governs all of fisheries throughout the country. They filed suit saying this was really done in a slipshod way to just have a broad open season with no real catch limits. At the last minute, it went down to the wire, and a judge sided with the plaintiffs and closed the season. The really unfortunate truth is that it caused a lot of heartache for charter fishermen who had trips booked, for hotels, for all of it. People canceled at the last minute.
Tom Rowland: So what has happened since?
David Moss: Three of the four states, I believe South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, have all reapplied and taken the judge's comments into account. They listed very strict catch limits and a potential season target. Some of that can flow a little bit depending on catch rates and weather. As of today, August 5th, we have not heard whether or not those have been approved. They were trying to do it for the fall of this year. We at The Nature Conservancy have had conversations with a few of the state agencies about what they were looking to do, and we have offered our assistance in any way we can, with outreach to let anglers know what is going on, and with some of the science and data that comes in, because that is our background.
Tom Rowland: So how open have they been to your help?
David Moss: They have been very open. Unfortunately, everybody is just waiting right now to see whether or not these EFPs get approved. As you can imagine, there is a lot more scrutiny on them this time around, especially given that it went all the way up to a court the first time. I am sure they want to make sure all the i's are dotted and the t's crossed.
Tom Rowland: And so what happens if it is approved?
David Moss: Then we will find out exactly what the seasons are going to be. All three states that have applied have reporting requirements, usually through some sort of app-based product, so you can report on your phone what your activity is. This is all great data. As silly as it sounds, when you go out and get skunked, that is great data too, because it helps the management agencies know exactly what is going on. If there are a million people out there and a million people do not catch anything, then perhaps the stock is not as strong as we thought. Conversely, if everybody is catching them, then we know the stock is doing really well.
Tom Rowland: The apps you are mentioning, which ones are those?
David Moss: Florida's FWC has its own app you can go to, MyFWC. The other two states have apps associated with a product called Vessel. These are all going to be red snapper specific for when and if the season does open.
Tom Rowland: And are anglers in the other states, or Florida, required to use those?
David Moss: If these EFPs get approved, that is my understanding, yes.
Tom Rowland: And the data they are required to submit, is it just catches, or what?
David Moss: It is more than that. What management agencies really need to see is activity. There are all these different metrics they use to determine stock status, and one of them is what they call catch per unit effort, or CPUE. What is the proportion of people going out there, versus the proportion actually catching fish, versus the proportion actually keeping fish? That all calculates into the really complicated math that goes into a stock assessment, deciding how healthy the stock is, how long it can remain open, what the size limits are, what the total catch limits are.
Tom Rowland: Does that also take into account discards? That is a word maybe not everybody is aware of, but that would just be a released fish, right? If you catch a fish, it is too small, or you do not want to keep it for any reason, you release it, and that is a discard.
David Moss: Exactly, and that information is also very valuable, particularly with red snapper, because red snapper, like really any snapper or grouper species, can suffer from something called barotrauma, which is similar to the bends a scuba diver gets. When you bring a fish up from depth, especially in deeper water, if you just release it on the surface it will float there and eventually die, and get predated on by a shark or a dolphin. So it is important, when you release them, to release them properly using a descending device or a venting tool. All of that goes into stock health, because if you catch ten fish and release eight, but those eight have barotrauma and were not released properly, those fish still die. Even though you and I did not get to enjoy them on the table, those are fish coming out of the population.
Tom Rowland: So The Nature Conservancy has its own app, right?
David Moss: No, we do not. For deep-water species we are running another project, a pilot project looking at tilefish, blue lines and goldens, queen snapper, Warsaw grouper, things like that. We are working with two different app organizations, one called iAngler and the other called Got One, where we would like people to report what they are doing in those areas. That subsegment of snapper and grouper are what management agencies call rare event species. They are not called rare event because it is rare for us to catch them. They are called rare event because it is rare for a management agency to intercept a vessel that has caught one. It was labeled rare event years ago, when there were not many recreational anglers doing it, because we did not have the technology. We did not have the electric reels, we did not have the bottom machines we do now.
David Moss: So what we are trying to do is twofold. Get people comfortable using apps, because they are very easy and user-friendly. It can also be a great log for yourself as a fisherman, so when you want to look back six months and see what it was like when it was 85 degrees and blowing 15 out of the east, you can. The other side is that it lets management agencies know what is really happening on the water, rather than the odd survey they do where sometimes they catch people and sometimes they do not.
Tom Rowland: There is definitely an angler's, guide's, person-on-the-water's point of view that maybe you should not give the data, because it could be used against you. A lot of frustrated people think, well, that is the last time I am giving them data. So why should anglers participate now, other than the fact that some of it may eventually be mandatory?
David Moss: I used to think that way, actually. That is how I got involved in fisheries management. By trade I was a business major, and I used to work in the private sector, and I did not like what I saw going on, so I figured I would put my money where my mouth is and got really involved in the management process. Then my eyes opened. If you think of really any walk of life, the less data you have, the less accurate you are going to be in the decisions you make. To take it to an extreme, if nobody is ever reporting a snook catch or a red snapper catch, then to management agencies that could very well mean there is nothing out there, and we need to take drastic measures. So the more data we can give, the more accurate and timely the decisions can be. As we start to see changes in habitat, we know some species are moving. They are catching snook way farther north than they ever used to, and that is going to help with management decisions.
Tom Rowland: So you are saying the more data an angler can give, the better chance they have of having a season for that fish, or access to that fish?
David Moss: Well, yes and no. I do not want to make any undue promises, but it is certainly going to give us a more accurate representation of what is going on. What it will hopefully do, when we see a disconnect like with red snapper, which is almost a four-letter word anymore, is help the management agencies and the angling public get on the same page a little bit better. There are certain species with an abundance of data, and quite a few with almost no data. The less data we have, the less accurate the management decisions are.
David Moss: The deep-water rare event species are a prime example. It is very difficult for scientists to go out and study these fish because they are so deep, so they have to rely on what anglers are doing to get any information. It is not like they can drop a fish trap into 800 feet and see what queen snapper are doing. Because of that, whatever information we give could quite possibly be the only information they get, and if we are not giving them any information, that certainly leads to bad things.
Tom Rowland: The way management organizations, NOAA or FWC or anyone else, do a stock assessment is a very detailed way they get the data. Using these apps and angler reports is a newer thing. How willing are they to accept user data and base management decisions on it?
David Moss: It has changed significantly over the last three to five years. If you had asked me this even five years ago, it would have been a hard no. They viewed it as completely unreliable. That mood has shifted significantly, I am happy to say. Technology is the way of the world, and it is not going anywhere, so why not use it to the best of our abilities? Perfect evidence is what is going on with the red snapper EFPs. All of these states applying for them have put app-based reporting in as part of it, which tells us they are going to use this self-reported data as accurate data for management decisions. We are very excited to see that tide shift.
Tom Rowland: Would they be reluctant to use it because somebody could game the system with false reporting? How would you even do that?
David Moss: Yes, that was one of the prime concerns. My argument was always that gaming can happen with the old ways too. There are really two main ways to gather recreational angler data. One is a dockside intercept, where a representative from a state agency or NOAA stands at a popular boat ramp and asks, did you go fishing today, how long, what did you fish for, what did you keep, what did you discard. You are not required to give any information, and it is whatever you can recall. You and I have both been in hot snapper bites where I do not remember how many fish I caught and released. It seems like you caught a hundred. So it can be wildly inaccurate. The other way is a snail-mail survey that asks what you have done for the last three months. I have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast yesterday. I think the management agencies are finally opening their eyes to the inaccuracies of that and realizing app-based data is just as accurate. You can fudge the numbers at the dock too. But with an app you can flick it open, or even say, hey Siri, just caught a 19-inch mutton and it is headed for the cooler, and it records it. That is way more accurate than any interview.
Tom Rowland: What about if you are out of range? If you have to report something immediately upon catching it but your app is not working, when do you report it?
David Moss: Almost all these apps work essentially in airplane mode. They record it, and then as soon as you get in range or get a Wi-Fi signal, it downloads everything. In the Southeast, if you want a deep drop you are 15 miles out, well out of cell range, and unless you have Starlink on your boat, that is going to be an issue. So it records it, stores it, and uploads it all when you are back in range. Even then, if you are in a hot bite, the last thing you are doing is reaching for your phone, unless you are taking pictures.
Tom Rowland: The mandatory apps are one thing, but the voluntary ones, iAngler and Got One, you would just choose to use, and share only the data you want to share. That is another reluctance point. A lot of anglers say, I am not giving out any spots. I will tell you what I caught, but I am not telling you where.
David Moss: Absolutely, and even really good captains are reluctant to put it out because people start following them. For iAngler and Got One, the most important data from a management standpoint is the species, the size, when you caught it, roughly how, whether you released it, and a rough depth. That is really the most important thing. Nobody wants your secret spots. To be honest, I do not want the responsibility of having that information and anybody blaming me. If you can give a rough depth, caught three queen snapper in about 850 feet, that is good enough. All of these apps, whether the state-run ones for red snapper or iAngler and Got One, are proprietary. The geolocator does not get given out to anybody. Your information is totally protected, no different than having your credit card information on your phone that you tap to pay.
Tom Rowland: So the way you are partnering with these two apps, what information does The Nature Conservancy get, and what do you do with it?
David Moss: We really do not get any information. We want to be the go-between. We want to send it through to the management agencies so they can make timely decisions on the stock. Using golden tilefish and snowy grouper as an example, I think golden tilefish season this past year was about two and a half months, and snowy grouper was pretty close to that. It comes down to the fact that they may have gotten one intercept at a dock of one person who caught a snowy grouper. Because it is still listed as a rare event species, when there is one person catching them, that extrapolates out to them thinking there are however many, let us say a thousand for easy numbers, people catching and keeping them. If we can show that there are way more people catching them than you ever thought, and we can still go out every day and catch them, and it is a very healthy stock, then that one report does not blow up the algorithm.
Tom Rowland: That seems like inaccurate data. They get a couple of reports of a fish, then maybe they have cameras somewhere that count how many boats left an inlet on a given day, and they multiply. But most of those boats are just going to the sandbar, or yellowtailing, not deep dropping.
David Moss: You are absolutely right in everything you just said. The bottom line is we have no idea how many people are actually fishing. There is no good measure for it. In the state of Florida there are, last I checked, almost 3 million people with a saltwater fishing license. Some fish the Gulf, some the Atlantic, some just fish inshore for snook and redfish and trout, some go out just for mahi. FWC has done a better job than most, because you have to get the reef fish endorsement when you get a license, so that helps give some idea of the universe of people fishing for snapper and grouper. But how many people actually get it, or go out once and hang out at the sandbar? Where I live in Southeast Florida, out of Boynton Inlet or Hillsboro Inlet or Boca Inlet, on a flat Saturday there are hundreds if not thousands of boats going through, and the vast majority are not fishing. If we assume they all are, that completely skews the numbers. So how do we do better? By recording every time we go out, the good days and the bad days.
Tom Rowland: For people outside Florida, you have two very different things going on right now, the Atlantic and the Gulf. Even with a fish like red snapper, can you give us an overview of the difference?
David Moss: The biggest difference is just square miles. The Gulf has way more fishable area for these fish, so their level of abundance is way greater than on the Atlantic. There is a hotspot of red snapper from about Port Canaveral up to Jacksonville, that Florida-Georgia border area. They catch them in South Carolina, a little off Georgia but you have to go way out, some in North Carolina, and we can get them down in the Lower Keys here and there. In the Gulf they are everywhere. You can go out of Fort Myers, Tampa, Destin, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and catch them. The Gulf has also been doing state management of red snapper for five or six years now. Each state has its own plot of fish to manage, with reporting requirements, and each does it a little differently. Now we are seeing a little bit of a peak and valley in the snapper population in the Gulf. The latest stock assessment was not quite as robust as we would have liked, if memory serves. That is what we are trying to avoid in the Atlantic, and it is why we supported doing the EFPs the right way, with accurate, timely data and best practices on release.
Tom Rowland: It seems like in the Gulf some captains are saying the average size is going down, and they are concerned. On the Atlantic it does not seem like that is the problem at all. They are very available, but you cannot keep them. So anglers who fish both sides do not know what to do.
David Moss: That is exactly it. The good news from the Gulf is you get more reports, because of app-based reporting in a few states, so you can make quicker decisions. If the average size has gone down over two years, what do we need to do? Maybe a slot limit, maybe raise the minimum size, maybe lessen the ACL. The ACL is the annual catch limit. Each species has a defined ACL that gets split among different sectors. In the Gulf there are three: the charter-for-hire, the commercial, and the private recreational. In the Atlantic there are just private recreational and commercial, and the charter falls under private rec. The commercial guys have equipment they are mandated to have on the boat, and people meet them at the dock to see the catch. So the commercial data is actually probably the strongest in the eyes of some of these management agencies, because people are putting their hands on the fish, measuring them. There are cameras on the boats in some cases, and they can tell where the boats are.
Tom Rowland: Do you ever see a day where, if you want to fish for these fish recreationally, that is something we have to do?
David Moss: I hope not. I hope we can do this willingly. In the Gulf, the commercial fishery has a hail-in, hail-out requirement, where you let management agencies know when you leave the dock and give a window for when you will be back, and they can send a law enforcement agent to check your catch. You submit a catch report within a set time, and the fish house verifies what they got from you. It is fairly similar in the Atlantic. I am hoping we could just use apps to report from a recreational standpoint, went out today, had a great day, caught 15 dolphin, kept eight, all over 30 inches, and that is it. I hope we are mature enough to be able to do it.
Tom Rowland: You said you got involved in all of this because you were frustrated. What was your initial frustration that made you decide to get involved?
David Moss: It was a few things. Even though I live in Southeast Florida, I fish in the Keys a lot. Mutton snapper is one of my favorite fish to fish for, and I saw, at least in my mind's eye, that the mutton snapper fishing was not as good as it had been. The yellowtailing seemed to have gone down a little, and some of the grouper. In my mind I was thinking, it is the commercial's fault, all these guys with the big trawlers you see on TV. So I started going to council meetings, paying attention to the advisory panel meetings, getting involved to make my voice heard. I got on the Snapper Grouper Advisory Panel as a rec representative for the state of Florida, and it opened my eyes. The commercial fishery is not perfect, nor is the recreational fishery, but what I saw was that we need to work together so we all can go out there. It is a shared, open-access resource. At the end of the day, commercial fishermen in the Southeast fish essentially like you and I do, with hook and line. Nine times out of ten they are just way better at it, because if they do not catch a fish, they do not eat.
Tom Rowland: You keep saying it opened your eyes. What were the first things that opened your eyes?
David Moss: The whole management process and how it works was one of the first things. We like to think there are lobbyists constantly funneling money in and that is where all the decisions are made. I am not saying that does not happen to a point, but the South Atlantic Council is made up of representatives from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, with management agency representatives from each state, usually a recreational representative and a commercial representative, so you have both sides of the coin. They all give their voice and make recommendations. They are also bound by Magnuson, the law that governs fisheries. This is the difficult part: Magnuson states fairly plainly that we need to make management decisions based on the best available science. If we have garbage data, there are going to be garbage decisions. Even if you and I say we are seeing a bazillion of a species on the water, if the data does not back that up, their hands are tied. They have to make the decision based on the data, not the hearsay of what you and I say.
Tom Rowland: That is like the Goliath grouper situation, right?
David Moss: Exactly. The divers, the fishermen, the sightseers, everybody sees these fish, but there is no data because it has been closed for so long. There is a moratorium and you cannot kill them.
Tom Rowland: And so they did make a decision to open a season, a small one, for small fish, I think based on what people were saying. I assume one justification was to get some data, to see how many permits people buy and how many are filled.
David Moss: That is exactly what is going on. They are everywhere, but there had been no season except that small one, 200 permits or so. When it was coming through, we spoke to a couple of members of FWC, both on the commission and staff, and that was the logic, and it is sound logic. It had been closed 20 or 30 years, so there was zero data. We hear the complaints, that at some spots you can hardly bring a fish to the boat because the Goliaths are taking them all. So let us go get some data, not wide open, but let us see what we can do and how we best manage this fishery.
Tom Rowland: What was it that opened your eyes enough to have you continue to get more and more involved, and what did you think you were going to be able to accomplish?
David Moss: Honestly, a lot of it is I just love to fish, so if I cannot fish 365 days, at least I can talk about it. The other part was, in a weird way, my sense of giving back. If I cannot fish, this is my give back. Let us try to make sure this is sustainable for years to come. I was born in Port St. Lucie and used to snook fish over there. What can I do to make sure that, if my daughter wants to go fishing, or eventually her kids, they can enjoy it the way I did and the way you do? It is that passing it on to the next generation. Leave things better than the way you found them. With the ups and downs and cycles of the fishery, how can we level that out? It is fishing, not catching. We know we are not going to catch our limit every time. But let us be able to enjoy the resource and hopefully have more good days than bad.
Tom Rowland: What councils are you on right now?
David Moss: I am on the Snapper Grouper Advisory Panel for the South Atlantic Council, and the Dolphin Wahoo Advisory Panel for the South Atlantic Council. I am also part of a couple of different steering committees for some education programs. I try to stay involved and keep my ear to the ground.
Tom Rowland: For somebody who is frustrated and wants to get involved or learn more, what path would you suggest? Where would they start?
David Moss: You can start a few ways. Number one, I am an open book. If you want to shoot me an email and ask questions, I am here for it. In a previous life I was a coach, so I love the mentoring and education. If you fish the Gulf, there is the Gulf of America Fishery Management Council. Go to their website and look for when they have council meetings and advisory panel meetings. You can listen in via webinar and start to educate yourself. Same with the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council. They rotate states every few months, so in the South Atlantic it goes from North Carolina to South Carolina to Georgia to different areas in Florida, and in the Gulf it rotates between all the Gulf states. If you want to attend in person, they are all open to the public. If you want to just listen via webinar while you are driving or at work, put your headphones in and listen. Then there is public comment, if you want to leave it. They do listen to public comment. Same thing with FWC, if you want to listen to the FWC meetings.
Tom Rowland: You were a coach? What kind?
David Moss: Soccer. I started at the boys high school, and then, as much as I did not want to, I ended up coaching my daughter's teams too, because decent soccer coaches are tough to find.
Tom Rowland: My experience coaching my daughter's team is she asked me to be the coach, and I said sure. We get to the first practice and she goes, I do not like soccer, I do not want to play soccer. She is very certain in her decision-making. She made that decision on day one and never played. So there I was, everybody else's kid's coach.
David Moss: Once you volunteer for that coach's position and they give you the whistle, nobody is taking it from you, especially not in soccer. My daughter was not a huge fan. My wife was a college-level athlete, softball in college, and she did volleyball and softball growing up. Her first love is volleyball, which is where my daughter ended up migrating to. She played soccer because she kind of had to, and she was pretty decent at it for somebody who did not want to be out there. One thing I noticed when I started coaching is that right next to the soccer field there was a baseball field with 20 guys out there coaching what seemed like 10 kids, and then there was me with 15 girls, coaching soccer.
Tom Rowland: Did you enjoy the World Cup?
David Moss: I loved it. My wife was going to buy me tickets, and I said, as much as I would love it, you are not spending that kind of money. We looked at a couple of games and the cheapest tickets were like 800 bucks. I would love to, but no. It was an incredible event to have right here.
Tom Rowland: So how did you transition from being a soccer coach to working for The Nature Conservancy?
David Moss: My background is business, project management, and business management. I was actually running a landscape company for quite a few years. I am going to forget the name of the hurricane, but it was the one that stood over the Bahamas for three days, crawled across Grand Bahama and just sat there. I think it was Dorian. Working for a landscape company, I would be in the office at 5 every morning, and whenever hurricanes come through we are first on site after safety personnel to clean everything up. So I was in at 5, leaving at 7 at night, making sure three branches were set up with chainsaws, fuel, trucks, knowing where all my crews were, and then going home to prep my house every night. You are watching this hurricane just sit there, and my stress is building and building. It felt like when you are a kid and you get in trouble and mom says, just wait until dad gets home. The anticipation was way worse. About a month after that, I got a pop-up for a job with The Nature Conservancy. It was a project management job involving fishing and fisheries, so I figured, that is me, why not. I threw it out there and was lucky enough to get selected. My diverse background is a little different from what The Nature Conservancy usually goes for, which is a lot of fishery scientists, so I bring a different perspective. My first job is fishing. I do other things to make money, but my first job is fishing.
Tom Rowland: Is there a way to get involved to a degree where you feel like you are making a change and keep your job, or do you have to go all in like you did? I just had Dylan Hubbard on the podcast, and he outlined a similar path. He gets on one council, then another, more and more involved, mostly to protect his family's business, and then he sees things and voices his opinion. But some people feel like they do not have time for that. Is there a way to get involved on a small level and still make a change?
David Moss: Yes. Especially here in Florida, we are lucky to have a lot of coastline and a lot of local fishing clubs you can get involved in. Whatever your fishing pleasure, there is something for you, bass clubs, inshore clubs, offshore clubs. Get involved, because a lot of these clubs are doing the right thing, or at least trying to, by our fisheries.
David Moss: Where I live, the West Palm Beach Fishing Club is close to me, and they have a lot of conservation initiatives. You can go to meetings at your leisure and talk to some great people. There is also the Angler Action Foundation, which does a lot of great conservation work, seagrass restoration, oyster restoration. You can volunteer your time to help out, or just pay attention to their newsletter to educate yourself. Same with The Nature Conservancy. If you follow our fisheries page, nature.org/floridafishing, we try to keep it updated with the work we are doing.
Tom Rowland: In your daily job, what information do you think people need to hear? What are we missing that is important to you?
David Moss: The biggest message, and we have hit on it a few times, is that your information matters. The more information you provide, the better decisions can be made. When I go to advisory panel meetings, I am asking captains I know throughout the region what they are seeing. One of my best friends runs a party boat in Islamorada. I have a great friend who is a commercial fisherman out of Jupiter. The information matters, the data matters. Everything now is a 30-second shot, but management decisions take a little longer than that. The quicker we can provide the information, the quicker the decisions get made. There are a lot of people moving to the South every day, and the more people we have here, the more data we are going to need.
Tom Rowland: People are moving in all the time, and you can get involved in other things too, like the water issues, because some of the infrastructure is not equipped to handle the influx. There are great organizations that have done great work on the water issues. I applaud you for getting involved and doing the work you are doing.
David Moss: I really appreciate that, and I appreciate you giving the platform. The fact that you can platform people like myself, or Dylan, who is a great guy, helps people have a voice from respected fishermen. We can all keep this going and keep getting out there catching fish.
Tom Rowland: This is a different kind of thing. It may turn into a bunch of 30-second clips, but you have the opportunity to fully express a thought. It is really hard on a radio or TV show where you have 30 seconds. Conservation is important to me. I have kids and grandchildren now, and I want them to be able to fish and see the things I have seen. We are stewards of that.
Tom Rowland: Your spots are important to you, all that is important, you do not want to give it away. But what you are saying is that if you give that knowledge to the appropriate resource, FWC, NOAA, whoever is collecting the data, then you stand a better chance of being able to go. To me, access is the most important thing. How many you keep is less important.
David Moss: Absolutely.
Tom Rowland: And sometimes an area gets closed off completely, maybe because sawfish are there, or birds are nesting. Maybe if you gave the correct information, that would not happen.
David Moss: It is an interesting thing. So many fishermen are hunters as well, and we have no problem giving plenty of information from a hunting perspective. We know we have to do certain things to manage different species when hunting, controlled herd hunts, reporting certain diseases in deer so they do not spread to other herds. For whatever reason, as fishermen, we just do not want to give that information.
Tom Rowland: You know why that is? Because you can see the deer. You have trail cameras, you have drones, you can see what is going on so much better than at 700 feet. We cannot see it, and the only way to see it is to actually go down there or catch what is there and bring it up. A lot of times that is really hard. It takes a lot of work, and going to places and not catching anything before you find that one great place, and you do not want to tell anybody about it. I will tell you exactly what I used, but I am not telling you where.
David Moss: That is exactly it. It is really difficult to get any information on a lot of these fish. But why can we not be the ones, recreational fishermen, to provide it? If the scientific community cannot get the information because it is expensive, deep, or difficult, I have plenty of information on what I am really seeing on the water. The scientists, whether NOAA or FWC, are fishermen, but they do not go out with the frequency and knowledge you and I do. Why can we not provide the information and have them use it appropriately?
Tom Rowland: I think more information would be provided if there were more examples of that information being given and something good coming of it, a longer season, or seeing the fish get bigger every year and being able to keep more. And when that starts to go down, we keep fewer, and then it rebounds. With Goliath grouper, a lot of people have shouted from the rooftops that there are so many out there, that a wreck that used to have fish on it now has nothing but Goliaths.
David Moss: In a good way, that is what has happened with red snapper. Enough people went to meetings, and it took a lot of years, but enough people pounded on the door saying something has to be done. Finally the states were able to submit for these EFPs. It was not the best route the first time, but hopefully it will be much better this time, and we can get a much better accounting of what is going on. The bonus is that if we want to, you and I can go home and keep a couple for the table too.
Tom Rowland: That is really what people want. They have a nice boat, they want to take it out, catch a couple of fish, and celebrate. David, you are doing a great job. I appreciate you coming on, and I appreciate your work. So a couple of things you mentioned, nature.org/floridafishing, that is the Nature Conservancy page where they can get information on what you are doing, and you gave out your contact through The Nature Conservancy. That will all be in the show notes. If anybody wants to get in touch, definitely do.
David Moss: I really appreciate you platforming this, and hopefully we can get this going in the right direction.
Tom Rowland: We will be back with another great guest like David next week. Thank you very much for joining us, David, and we will talk to you later.
David Moss: Awesome. Appreciate it.
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