Yesterday's episode of the Tom Rowland Podcast is a conversation with Captain Dylan Hubbard, a fourth-generation charter and party-boat operator who also helps write the rules he fishes under. We talked about red snapper, the data fight behind the Gulf seasons, and how his family built Hubbard's Marina over almost a hundred years. Dylan is one of the only guests I have had who lives on both sides of that line at once, running the boats and sitting on the advisory panels that shape federal fisheries.
Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page, or scroll back up to watch the full conversation.
Dylan Hubbard is the vice president of Hubbard's Marina, a fourth-generation family operation that is close to a hundred years old. He is also president of the Florida Guides Association, vice president of the Charter Fisherman's Association, and chair of the Gulf Council Reef Fish Advisory Panel. He runs charter and party boats and works inside the federal fisheries process at the same time, which is a rare combination.
In the Gulf, Dylan calls red snapper the greatest conservation success story of his lifetime, with a season this year that ran from June through late October. In the South Atlantic the picture is the opposite, where anglers struggle to get any season at all. The two situations feel contradictory from the outside, and Dylan explains why the same fish can be a success in one place and a crisis in another.
MRIP is the federal Marine Recreational Information Program, and SRFS is the State Reef Fish Survey run by Florida. Dylan's view is that the federal system leans on more estimation and extrapolation, while state data can get closer to a real count. His larger point is that the less guessing we let managers do, the better the decisions get, which is why he pushes for accurate reporting.
Several Gulf state governors backed an exempted fishing permit that would have run a longer red snapper season using state data, partly to test the discard numbers against the federal ones. The application moved fast, and a lawsuit followed. An eleventh-hour federal injunction stopped it, and Dylan explains in the episode why he wishes the experiment had been allowed to run.
The data shows average size and average weight declining even as access has expanded, and Dylan sees localized depletion in some areas by the end of a long season. Part of the uncertainty is that there has not been a successful red snapper stock assessment in the Gulf for about six years. He walks through why the last benchmark assessment fell apart.
Gag grouper are being managed on data from 2019 under a rebuilding program, with short seasons and tight commercial limits. On the water Dylan is seeing more gags, in more places, getting bigger. A new gag stock assessment is starting, and he explains why he is optimistic it will let access improve.
Dylan's advice is to start by getting informed, and he points to the Hubbard's Marina YouTube channel and their monthly live show as a plain-language way to follow what is happening with the seasons and the science. The bigger ask is to give real data to the surveys instead of refusing. As his friend Captain Travis Thompson puts it, if you are not in the room, you are on the menu.
Everybody keeps asking me about red snapper. I have done a few episodes on it lately, and I have had NOAA people on to talk about it, but I kept feeling like I was only getting one side. I wanted to sit down with somebody who actually runs the boats and also sits in the federal meeting rooms, because that person can tell you how the sausage gets made in a way most of us never see.
Dylan is that person. He grew up on the back deck of his family's party boats, and he now spends his own time and money flying around the Gulf to be part of the decisions that decide whether any of us can keep a fish. I have a lot of respect for anyone who will do the unglamorous work of showing up, and I wanted to hear how he ended up doing it. Press play at the top of the page to hear him tell it.
Dylan's grandfather started with rowboats and cane poles back in the 1920s, and by the late 1960s the family had launched overnight long-range trips out to the Middle Grounds. Over the years those trips stretched from eighteen hours to the thirty-nine-hour trip they run today, and the reasons they slowed the boats down instead of speeding them up are not what you would guess. The full arc of how that business evolved is worth hearing in his own words in the episode.
Dylan told me about the moment a mentor challenged him to actually get educated before he started having opinions on management, and how that pushed him into the process. The part that stopped me was the story of how a two-day bag limit that his own grandfather helped put in the record back in the 1980s later saved his long-range trips, and how he got a federal regulation changed in two meetings. I am not going to flatten that story here. Listen to how it comes full circle.
This is the part people keep asking me about, so we spent real time on it. Dylan lays out why the Gulf is thriving while the South Atlantic is stuck in a spiral of discards and shrinking seasons, and why the recent exempted fishing permit and the injunction that killed it matter so much to the people who run boats for a living. He can explain the mechanics far better than I can summarize them. Scroll back up to the player and let him walk you through it.
Dylan makes a case I had not heard put so plainly, that a lot of the anger over closed seasons comes down to guessing, and that the fix is more real data rather than less. He gets into why refusing to talk to the surveys actually hurts anglers, why commercial reporting quietly helps the recreational side, and why the last big red snapper assessment collapsed under peer review. It is worth hearing him connect those dots himself in the full conversation.
We got into gag grouper, where the science is running years behind what everyone is seeing on the water, and Dylan explained why he thinks that gap is about to close in the anglers' favor. He also walked me through how camera studies and cooperative research are starting to use AI to count fish across far more of the Gulf than a human ever could. That last part is a genuinely hopeful stretch of the episode, and I would let him tell it.
When Hurricane Helene destroyed their docks, Dylan and his team were open again five days later. He talks about how fishing communities tend to become the people who lead a recovery, because they already have the boats, the tools, and the knowledge. It is a short exchange near the end of the episode, and it says a lot about who he is.
What stayed with me after yesterday's conversation was how much control a regular person actually has, if they are willing to show up. Dylan saw something that mattered to his family, learned the process, and changed a federal rule. Most of us will never go that deep, and that is fine, but the information he is putting out lets anyone fight for whatever matters to them.
I also just enjoyed hearing his story. This is a guy who got fired by his own dad, came back, and helped grow a family business into something that runs ferries and builds boats. We only scratched the surface, and I already want to have him back to get into the gag fishery on its own.
Give the full episode a listen in the player above, or find it wherever you get your podcasts.
Hubbard's Marina, Florida Guides Association, Charter Fisherman's Association, Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, MREP, NOAA, FWC, The Nature Conservancy, David Moss, Captain Travis Thompson, Jonathan Moss, Mote Marine Laboratory, FWRI, PSTA, Cross Bay Ferry, Publix.
Captain Dylan Hubbard is the vice president of Hubbard's Marina, his family's fourth-generation charter, party-boat, and marine business. He serves as president of the Florida Guides Association, vice president of the Charter Fisherman's Association, and chair of the Gulf Council Reef Fish Advisory Panel, and he has served on the national steering committee of the MREP fisheries education program. He is deeply involved in federal Gulf fisheries management and Florida state fisheries issues, and shares plain-language education on how fishery science and management work through the Hubbard's Marina YouTube channel.
Transcript
Tom Rowland Podcast — Episode 1026: Dylan Hubbard
In this episode: Captain Dylan Hubbard of Hubbard's Marina on red snapper, the data fight behind the Gulf seasons, four generations of family fishing history, and how a regular angler can get involved in fisheries management.
Tom Rowland: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Tom Rowland Podcast brought to you by Star brite. We're brought to you by Star brite today as always. Star brite is the maker of an awesome line of products to take care of your boat. That's where I use it most. Whether it's the Salt Off product or any of the boat-cleaning products, Star brite has you covered. Definitely check them out. They're not only a great company for the products that they have, but they also do a tremendous amount in conservation, and that is certainly important to us all. Captain Dylan Hubbard here with the Tom Rowland Podcast. Dylan, what's going on, man? How are you?
Dylan Hubbard: Oh, man, blessed to be busy and honored to be on the podcast. I've been watching from afar and excited to be here.
Tom Rowland: Well, thank you, man. I appreciate it, and it's great to have you. You're gonna be a really great guest. I was really digging into all the stuff that you do, I don't even know how you have time to do this. My research says, you correct me if this isn't correct, you own Hubbard's Marina. It's four generations, almost 100 years old.
Dylan Hubbard: Yes, sir.
Tom Rowland: You're the president of the Florida Guides Association. You're the vice president of the Charter Fisherman's Association. You're the chair of the Gulf Council Reef Fish... what does AP mean?
Dylan Hubbard: Advisory panel.
Tom Rowland: Advisory panel. You're the chair of the Outreach and Education Tech Committee, MREP National Steering Committee. What this means to me is that you are a charter fisherman, you represent the charter fisherman, and you're also, on the other side, ingrained in the actual decision-making process. That's a very unique combination, and I think it's really important to tell the listeners that, because you're the first person we've had on the podcast that is really on both sides. An operating charter captain and also on the councils.
Dylan Hubbard: I don't serve on any of the councils per se, but I serve on the advisory panels, or APs, for the councils. I'm very involved in federal fisheries specifically, but also really heavily involved in state-level stuff with FWC as well, through the Florida Guides Association. I attend almost every single federal meeting that is held. The state meetings, I aspire to attend as many as I can, but they are definitely kind of secondary to federal waters, just because my business specifically is focused on federal waters fisheries, and that's obviously the most important thing to me. I was really heavily involved with MREP as well, which is the Marine Resource Education Program. I did recently take a step back from MREP, just because I'm blessed to be spread thin in my business, and we're growing. That is something that's always gonna hold a special place in my heart, because I think it's something more people should know about and be involved with, because it really opened a lot of doors and enabled me to become even more effective and involved.
Tom Rowland: We've had that program brought up a number of times with recent guests, even encouraging me to get involved in the MREP program. Can you tell us, from your point of view, stepping into that from a commercial fishing background, what that looks like and how you can be effective like that? Why somebody else might want to do it?
Dylan Hubbard: So, a little background. Back in 2013 or so, I started getting more involved in management and stepping off the deck of the fishing boat, and getting involved more heavily in the office and the business management side of things. That kind of thrusted me into being more involved in fishery science and fishery management decisions, and having opinions on them. Long story short, a close friend and someone I consider a mentor kind of threw some shade and was like, "Dude, if you're gonna be speaking about this kind of thing and being involved in this kind of thing, you need to be educated." At the time, being young, I said, "What are you talking about? I am educated." I kind of dismissed it, but eventually I learned more about the MREP program and basically was told, "Hey, you need to get involved with MREP." I heard that from a couple people, and eventually I took the dive and joined the MREP workshop. It really opened my eyes to the process, how it works, how decisions are made, how the science is done and executed, how management comes to the decisions, how the whole process works. Then I liked it so much I stayed involved, and eventually I was elected to be the program principal for our region, and then the national program principal representing the Southeast at the national level. Needless to say, going through the MREP workshop as a participant first, then as a moderator, then in a leadership role, I took essentially the same classes on how science and management works twice a year for 10-plus years. That really helped. And that workshop connects you — it's networking, because all the leadership from science and management are in the room with you. I got to know these people really well, and it enabled me to be extremely effective.
Tom Rowland: What were the most eye-opening things that you saw, coming from a fishing background, being on the front lines, to moving into that role?
Dylan Hubbard: We could spend seven podcasts talking about that, but the most eye-opening thing, kind of a 100,000-foot view, is that it's not this black box that so many people think it is. If you read Facebook comments or go into any fishing group, it's "follow the money," it's corrupt, these people are stealing from us. There's definitely problems, and a long way to go to a lot of solutions, but it is very transparent. It is not a black box. As far as Gulf Council decisions go, it is almost transparent to a fault, because it takes so long. You can get involved early and make a huge difference and have an extreme amount of influence if you take the steps to become educated, to learn the network, to get to know these people, and to attend these meetings. It's by no means easy, because it's a huge time investment and a huge monetary investment — I fly all around the Gulf states to attend all these meetings, and then I'm time away from my family and my business. Average Joe Angler is gonna struggle to be as involved or as effective. What I feel is my duty and role is to give back to our fishery, our resource, and ultimately our recreational fishermen that support us, because Hubbard's Marina couldn't do what we do without our amazing team, but also our fishing friends who populate our decks and go out fishing with us. To me, it's my duty and responsibility to give those investments to be involved in this process. It was really eye-opening. I got really angry about some things and was very vocal, and one thing in particular was the illegal charters and some of the enforcement issues we faced.
Dylan Hubbard: I was really vocal about some of this, and it kind of ruffled the feathers of some high-level NOAA Office of Law Enforcement folks. They took a closer look at Hubbard's Marina, and we got approached and were told that the way we operate our 39-hour trips was illegal because of a regulation consolidation in 1996. Somewhere up in DC, someone changed the definition or interpretation of a day's bag limit and possession limit, so essentially how we operated our trip became illegal — the whole two-day bag limit in the Gulf. The only reason that's even allowed is through that process I dove deep and did a lot of research. Back in 1988, when they passed Reef Fish Amendment One, in those meeting notes — they were handwritten back then, and it's in the meeting archives, you can go look it up — it talks about how there's a boat in Madeira Beach that runs long-range, multi-day trips, and we need to have a two-day bag limit allowance. That's why federal for-hire boats in the Gulf can get a two-day bag limit when they're on a trip of greater than 30 hours — it's because my grandfather was involved in attending these meetings.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Dylan Hubbard: It was pretty cool to see that come full circle for me, and then be able to be presented with this problem and be told, "Hey, you can no longer run your 39-hour trips the way you run them. You have to change your whole business model." I said, "No, actually, we're gonna fix this." Within two meetings I had regulation proposed, passed, and implemented, and federal laws changed so we could continue to operate our business.
Tom Rowland: That certainly illustrates the importance for somebody to become involved, because instead of just things happening to you, you're in a position of some control that you can have.
Dylan Hubbard: One hundred percent, if you get involved.
Tom Rowland: Tell me about that trip. It says your family, your grandfather, pioneered that long-range overnight reef fishing trip. What was that like when you were a kid? Is it a big head boat that goes out overnight? Can you outline the operation a little bit?
Dylan Hubbard: My grandfather started back in the '20s with rowboats and cane poles. Then he went away to World War II, my great-grandfather took over for a while, so that's why we credit it as a fourth-generation company. Over the years, my grandfather came back from World War II, got charter boats, and in the mid-'60s he commissioned a large go-fast party boat. They ran about 27 knots, and in '67 he launched his overnight long-range trips. They would go out to the Middle Grounds and fish for 18 to 24 hours, catch a ton of fish and run back in. That was the start of those multi-day trips. Over the years it's gotten longer — it was an 18-hour, then 24, then 26, 30, 32, 34, 36, and today it's 39. The reason is we've made the trip longer and slowed the boat down, so instead of running 26 knots we're only running seven to nine knots. The boat runs slower, we have less wear and tear on the engines, we burn less fuel, we keep ticket prices lower. We still have go-fast charter boats. My father built and pioneered the first ever hydrofoil-assisted catamaran in the Gulf that was Coast Guard inspected to run day trips. That long-range overnight party boat trip is what we're most notably known for, but we do a lot of private charters and different fishing styles. Nowadays fishing is almost the smallest part of our business, because the other side has grown so much — pleasure cruises, pirate ships, seafood markets, boat building, and media companies.
Tom Rowland: Do you have photos and history of those early days?
Dylan Hubbard: Yes. We have a Hubbard's Marina timeline that we continue to add to. I have photos of my grandfather back in the day hand feeding the dolphins he owned at Shell Key. He used to row people across from Pass-a-Grille to Shell Key, where he had dolphins caged up. They would do flips and jump through hoops, and he named them after his kids, my aunts and uncles. I have a lot of photos of that, and a lot of photos of the docks covered in Goliath grouper, boatloads of snook and tarpon hanging on the dock. A lot of really cool old history of where we used to be and how regulations used to be. That's one cool thing about our company — we've seen so many changes, from soap on a rope and aligning stars, to Loran and paper bottom machines, to today where we've got GPS trolling motors, SideScan and live imaging. It's becoming incredibly advanced.
Tom Rowland: How old are you?
Dylan Hubbard: I'm 35.
Tom Rowland: You grew up around the docks there and around the long-range boats when they're coming in. What was that like?
Dylan Hubbard: It was cool, man. I'm definitely blessed to be the son of a son of a son of a sailor, and grow up in the industry, on the back deck of the party boats. As a kid, my dad would come get me from school on Friday early, I'd go home and get my stuff and go on that long-range trip, and they would just drop me off. The captain and crew would keep a close eye on me, mostly to ridicule me. That's how I spent my weekends growing up, catching a bunch of fish and learning from a bunch of the regulars. People can look down on party boat fishing, and in my opinion there's a place for it in the evolution of an angler. Everybody wants to learn how to fish and tie the knots, and party boat fishing is a great place to learn — it makes accessing the fishery easy and affordable. Once you get the hang of it and become more expert, a lot of people buy their own boat, or get a buddy with a boat, or become a charter captain themselves. Party boat fishing lets you meet so many different people, grow your network, and learn, because on every trip there's somebody from the East Coast who does a different style of fishing, a different knot or a different rig. We've seen those things come through, like the invention of braid. I remember the first time I was on a long-range trip and saw a guy fishing with this nylon stuff, and you're like, "What's that?" Or the double snell rigs — we used to chain hooks together, and then all of a sudden people were snelling hooks.
Tom Rowland: What was your path? You start out as a kid on this head boat, probably doing some mating, cleaning up, getting bait. How did you get more experience so you could start mating on that boat?
Dylan Hubbard: As a young kid I wanted to buy a boat when I was about seven years old. I talked to my dad about it, and he said, "You better get a job." I did — I went out and did whatever I could to make money, whether it was catching pinfish and selling them at the dock or cutting grass. Eventually I saved up enough money to buy a boat when I was about eight, and used that boat to make money catching bait and selling fish.
Tom Rowland: What was that boat?
Dylan Hubbard: It was a 17-foot Carolina skiff with a 40-horsepower Nissan Tohatsu that was probably three times older than I was, and it broke down on me nearly every trip. I learned how to tear down a carburetor and clean it while hanging over the back of an outboard engine. It taught me a lot and gave me a lot of freedom. Fast-forward into 12, 13, 14 years old, middle school and early high school, I'd work on the boats on the weekends and over the summer. That's where my passion was. At the time it didn't make sense, but now it makes a lot of sense — my father fired me.
Tom Rowland: Wait, hold on. Your dad fired you? I have to know a little bit about that.
Dylan Hubbard: He always put a big emphasis on, "Hey, you want to work here, you start from the bottom." Clean up garbage cans, scrub decks, count pinfish, clean the shrimp tanks, fix the reels. I eventually earned a spot on a charter boat, then on a party boat. As I started to progress, he cut me off and said, "No, you can't work here anymore. You need to go somewhere else." It didn't make sense at the time, but it makes a lot of sense now. He wanted me to go work somewhere where my dad wasn't my boss, get a real job, learn that corporate structure and corporate management styles. At the time I was 15, so I worked at Publix. Publix is a great company, and their corporate structure is really good. I got to work under a bunch of different managers, saw styles I liked and styles I didn't, and learned how to work with people and get people bought in.
Dylan Hubbard: For a while I went down a different path. I went to college in Orlando specifically because I wanted to be away from the water, and went down a business management and hospitality management path. I realized very quickly, I know what I want to do — I want to get back to the water, back to Hubbard's Marina. I came back from college and started right back at the marina. My goal was to be a crew member for a while, earn some money, get my hours, become a captain, and run fishing boats. Through that process I had an injury — from the gym, or the boat, I don't know — and I got L4, L5 damage to my lower back and had to have a pretty invasive back surgery at 21.
Tom Rowland: Oh, boy. Was it a microdiscectomy?
Dylan Hubbard: A bulging disc in L4 and L5. They wanted to cage it, and thankfully I went and got second opinions, and they eventually decided not to cage it and just shaved the bulging disc that was bothering the nerve. It took a long time to recover, and it totally shot me off my trajectory. I had my captain's license, I'd worked two, three years as a full-time captain, and all of a sudden I'm in the office recovering from surgery. Through that time I learned very quickly that business management and marketing is something I like and excel in. I was presented with, "Hey, you can keep running trips and be that charter boat captain, or focus on the business and grow it." It was always this delicate balance — I want to be on the boat and catch fish, but also, where is my time best spent? Over the years it's become more and more focused on the business and operations. I took over as vice president of Hubbard's Marina back in 2015, and we've been blessed to grow exponentially over the last 10, 15 years, thanks to our awesome team of captains, crew, and staff. Opportunities keep falling in our lap. I get made fun of around the docks — some local charter captains say I'm guilty of never saying no — but it's paid off.
Tom Rowland: Is your dad still involved in the business?
Dylan Hubbard: Over time he's taking more and more steps back. Right now we've got a piece of property up in Floral City, and he's pretty focused up there — we have cows, a bunch of livestock, an orange grove, and some property rentals. Then we have a boat building facility in Gulfport, which is his main project. Recently my sister has stepped up into the company as our public-private partnerships arm, focused on business development in that space. We've been blessed to get the contract to operate the Tampa Bay Ferry, or Cross Bay Ferry, and bring that back to life. My father right now is in Mexico getting the Bay Breeze, one of these big 150-passenger boats that we just worked with PSTA to secure, onto a ship to bring it here so we can start operating that ferry.
Tom Rowland: When did that ferry stop operating?
Dylan Hubbard: Maybe a year and a half ago. Back then Hornblower operated it, only about seven months out of the year on a limited schedule. Now we've worked with PSTA to find these two vessels, and we'll have two crisscrossing the bay running year-round, with an incredibly expanded service — much more timely and efficient, so people can actually use it as a commuter option. Plus it's going to work around the schedule of the Lightning and any events happening in Tampa. It's pretty exciting, and a huge amount of growth for our business.
Tom Rowland: You ever talk to your dad about firing you, at this stage of your life?
Dylan Hubbard: No. If I did, I would tell him it was a wise decision, because it put everything into perspective and got me off the route of just working at the business because it's the family business. It taught me a lot about management styles and working in the corporate structure.
Tom Rowland: Do you have kids of your own?
Dylan Hubbard: Yes. I have a son who's seven and a daughter who's five, and my son is in for it. Can you imagine firing your son? Yeah, and I look forward to it.
Tom Rowland: That's a really tough thing for a dad to do. You know what the right thing to do is, and maybe you encourage, "Maybe you should go somewhere else," but just to straight up say, "You can't work here anymore," that's some serious leadership from your dad. However hard it was on you, it was probably even harder on him, from my perspective as a dad. I have three kids and now a grandson, and I probably should have made that decision at some point when my kids were wanting to work here.
Tom Rowland: You worked at vitamin shops and gyms and hospitality. Those three industries are some of the best marketing that there is. I wonder if you have some perspective on what you learned from those industries and how you're applying it to all of your businesses now.
Dylan Hubbard: Specifically watching Andy Frisella and 1st Phorm and their growth, and his focus on entrepreneurship and leadership, I've learned a lot through his podcast. And the Jockos of the world, of course. I'm learning every day and focused on trying to improve every day. Speaking of, I'm a little frustrated I missed out on your ICAST workout — next year I've got it in my calendar. Jonathan Moss is on my board of the Florida Guides Association, so I have a bone to pick with him that I saw him in that photo and he didn't tell me about it.
Tom Rowland: He's there every year. Usually I do it more than one day. This year there was a breakfast that started at 7:30, so I only did it one day this year. It's really fun — you see all these different people, people with a similar mindset who want to get it in. What kind of training are you doing now?
Dylan Hubbard: I do cardio five days a week in the morning at 4:30, then get to work, and I lift in the afternoon before I go home — four to five days a week. And I'm dabbling in jiu-jitsu as much as I can, though that's challenging to work into the calendar.
Tom Rowland: Do you have any background in that, wrestling or anything?
Dylan Hubbard: I was a bouncer in college for many years, and that was a lot of fun. So that's my experience level in trained martial arts and fighting — not formally trained.
Tom Rowland: We have so many other things to talk about, and one of the things on everybody's mind, that I've done a couple podcasts about lately and even had some NOAA people on, is the red snapper. You're coming from a different perspective, and probably can speak on things differently than they can. From your perspective, being on both sides of this issue, reading the comments — there are some very angry comments, some people who really feel they've been seriously wronged — and seeing the fishermen on your dock, your charter captains, seeing that there are red snapper everywhere: where are we with this?
Dylan Hubbard: Just to your earlier point, Andy being on your podcast speaks to the transparency and the willingness to have conversations.
Tom Rowland: They want to be even more transparent. I went to another meeting at ICAST where they brought in media in an open forum, and they were saying, "Look, you're not gonna hurt any feelings, let's talk about how we can be better at communicating." But one of the problems I see is it's a very big ship, and it's very slow to turn. The desire is there. I just don't know if they can act quickly enough, because it's a bureaucratic organization.
Dylan Hubbard: That's the biggest challenge — everything takes very long. Something fast at the Gulf Council, from the time it's first brought up to the time it's actually regulation and announced on Facebook, is two years, three years, and that's fast. Some of the stuff we've been talking about since I showed up 10, 11 years ago. Today we live in a world where people expect an update in five minutes, and for so many things you're getting updates immediately. But from a government organization, you're not doing that, no matter what the organization is.
Tom Rowland: Let's talk about the snapper thing and where you see this issue right now.
Dylan Hubbard: I think the snapper thing is different in different places. In the Gulf, I think we're pretty happy where we're at with snapper — we have a Gulf season that's incredibly long, and a lot of access. Fast-forward to the East Coast, the South Atlantic, I'm not as heavily involved because my business is on the West Coast of Florida and we're focused on the Gulf. I think it's a very unfortunate situation the South Atlantic has been stuck into, and it's become very apparent that there's a problem there because it's getting so much media. This problem has been building up — I've been watching it come to a head for the last 10 years. A lot of the problems they're having in the South Atlantic have already been tackled and accomplished in the Gulf.
Dylan Hubbard: Essentially what's happened is you have this circular issue spiraling down. What governs our fisheries is Magnuson-Stevens, this very black-and-white document with national standards in it. The great analogy we use at MREP is you have these guardrails, and you have to stay within them. This is failing in the South Atlantic because the guardrails are: when a population is deemed overfished, you have to go into a rebuilding program, and quotas have to be restricted. If you overfish or exceed those quotas, there's a payback. What's happened in the South Atlantic is you have so many fish, the population has rebounded so much, that just the catch and release, just the discards, are at such a high magnitude that a certain percentage of those discards die — discard mortality. The discard mortality rate and the number of fish caught and released are so high that it's exceeding the quota. You exceed the quota, the quota gets smaller. The next year the discards are so high because there's so many fish, the discard mortality exceeds the quota again, and the quota just continues to get smaller and smaller, and season access shrinks. That's essentially where they're at in the South Atlantic.
Dylan Hubbard: This recent play was all of a sudden FWC, with the leadership of DeSantis, making a play with the other state governors to attempt this EFP, or exempted fishing permit. The whole idea was, "We think there's a problem in federal data. We think the discard magnitude isn't that high. We want to try this other program and see what those discard numbers would be if we used a different data set." They were trying to have a season substantial enough that you don't have effort compression. Some recent seasons were two days, one day, and because it's so short you have effort compression and a lot of bias in the data sets — basically useless amounts of information. You need a season that's three or four weeks so you spread out that effort. So they applied for this exempted fishing permit to basically show the glaring differences between state and federal data, and the potential problems in MRIP, the Marine Recreational Information Program, versus SRFS, our State Reef Fish Survey. Normally there's a pretty drawn-out process for these permits, and they kind of rushed it, and the feds knew it. Andy and his team said, "Hey, we gotta do this," and the federal administration was like, "Yay, go states, more power to the states, let's do this," and got behind them. They opened themselves up to lawsuits, and that's what happened. Environmental groups sued, commercial fishermen jumped onto the lawsuit. I think it was a mistake to do the injunction. I would have loved to see that exempted fishing program move forward, because I would have loved to see the data come out of it, and I think we would've seen an issue. In the 11th hour, that federal injunction came along.
Tom Rowland: Yeah.
Dylan Hubbard: It's horrendous what they're facing over on the East Coast as a business operation. I'm friends with Haley Stevens, who might be someone you should have on your show, because she could talk even more specifically about this. She's essentially my counterpart on the East Coast of Florida, and she owns a party boat operation with her husband out of Ponce. I can't imagine being in her shoes — the night before your sold-out red snapper opener trip, you get this news, and you have to drive down to the dock and explain to everybody who's dressed, ready, and showed up, "Hey, we'll go fishing today, but we can't keep red snapper."
Tom Rowland: A lot of that is out of the control of the regular person. What is in their control is whether they voluntarily give up information on how many discards they had. That is a conversation I see in the comments everywhere — "Man, I'm not telling those guys anything, because everything I tell them is used against me." Then you have The Nature Conservancy doing some great work trying to explain to anglers why you should give them information. I wonder what your opinion of that is, because that's the one thing that's in your control.
Dylan Hubbard: David Moss with The Nature Conservancy is a good dude, and there's some good work some of those NGOs do. The Nature Conservancy is doing a good job with that. Me personally, I see that all the time — "No, FWC, I'm not gonna give them my information, the feds are just gonna misuse my data."
Tom Rowland: Do you want them to keep guessing?
Dylan Hubbard: No. I don't want anybody to manage my fishery on guesses. For the last 10 years, what's really involved me in fisheries management is I've been trying, begging, pleading, doing whatever I can to stand up what's called Sea Fire in the Gulf, because I want census-level mandatory reporting for charter boats and party boats. On my party boat, every trip we have to do a catch report — how much fuel was used, how many crew members, how many captains, where we fished, how we fished, how long we fished, what we caught and kept, what we caught and released. We've had to do that on party boats since 1986. Charter boats are still under MRIP, so there's a lot of guessing. In my opinion, the less guessing we let the feds do, the better. So don't let them guess, give them information. We have this APIS, this Angler Point Intercept Survey. People come around with clipboards and ask, "Hey, did you go fishing today?" So many people are like, "Forget those guys, I'm not telling them anything." That doesn't help, because that means fewer intercepts, which means our universe of anglers and our sample size is less, and that sample size gets amplified exponentially across an area. If you let them guess, their guesses get extrapolated, and that's where we see problems with MRIP — low sample sizes, low numbers of intercepts, and then that extrapolation causes huge problems. We have to do a better job spreading the word that talking to the feds and the state and giving them real, truthful data is so important.
Dylan Hubbard: In the Gulf we have a defined universe of federal for-hire anglers, because we have federal permits and a moratorium on them. There can only be about 1,287 charter boats and party boats in the Gulf, and there can never be any more — only less. There are a few things you've got to know: how many people are out there fishing, how many trips they take, what they caught and kept, what they caught and released, and their catch per unit of effort. On the party boat side, we know all five of those things. On the charter boat side, we know how many people are out there, but we guess at the rest. On the private recreational side, all five are guessed at. That's a problem.
Dylan Hubbard: So many people are out there saying commercial fishermen are the problem, the reason a fishery's closed. On the Gulf side, if it wasn't for commercial fisheries, we'd have a much bigger problem with a lot of our data, because commercial fishermen have VMS. They have to report before they leave the dock, report three hours before they come back, every fish is weighed coming off the boat, every fish is touched by FWC biologists. That provides a huge amount of data to our scientists that benefits recreational fishing in a huge way. A lot of recreational fisheries management is determined from commercial data. All these stakeholders have to work together in order to accomplish our goal, and that's the challenge — the stakeholder conflict and the blame game, when in reality if we worked together we'd be much more efficient and much more powerful.
Tom Rowland: Is that possible, to work together?
Dylan Hubbard: In the South Atlantic, they pretty much ruined that, because of that injunction they filed, which I think was the biggest mistake commercial fishermen ever made. You've lost in the court of public opinion before that court case ever went to court, because they're hated. Even DeSantis came out and said he wanted to make red snapper a game fish and kill commercial fishing. You made the governor that upset.
Tom Rowland: Is there any recovery? You've been doing this for 10-plus years. Is there a blue-sky recovery plan for the infighting between groups?
Dylan Hubbard: I hope, and I try. I've been told I'm guilty of being too positive and optimistic, but all we can do is try. You can't eat an elephant in one sitting — you just gotta keep taking bites and put one foot in front of the other. We've seen it work in the Gulf. The federal for-hire fleet is kind of this bastard child, because we're recreational fishermen under recreational regulations, we take recreational fishermen fishing, but we do so for profit and we are a commercial business. We fall into this weird center line. It's important to continue to work to bridge that commercial-recreational line, because that's how we get things done. Unfortunately this is way more political than I ever could have imagined. We get things done much more efficiently when we're able to work together and play that political ballgame — your enemy today can be your friend tomorrow. It's important not to burn bridges. You and I might disagree and even have a little hatred on one subject, but tomorrow we can agree and walk into that room arm in arm and fight together on the same subject. Sometimes these NGOs are the enemy we're fighting tooth and nail, and the next day they're willing to give you money to help you down a path of another topic, like better data collection for recreational fishing. But then you come around and say, "We need to improve these gag grouper numbers," and gags are under a rebuilding program, so they wouldn't support that, and all of a sudden we're enemies again.
Dylan Hubbard: What's funny about this red snapper thing — on the South Atlantic side they're struggling to get a season. On the Gulf side, we've got a season that's gotten longer and longer, and we're seeing average size and average weight just downtrend.
Tom Rowland: That's where I was gonna go next. It's kind of similar to a few years ago when we were talking about the water crisis in Florida — for an outsider it was very hard to understand how some areas don't have enough water and other areas have too much. Certain groups, like Captains for Clean Water, did a really good job of educating what the problem is, breaking it down so that even someone who's never been to Florida can understand that the water is supposed to flow south, it's been blocked, and now it's going out the side. The snapper thing is almost the same — over here you can't keep them at all, they're everywhere and you can't fish for them, and over there you can fish for them too long. Can you bring us up to speed on the seasons and the sizes?
Dylan Hubbard: In the Gulf, let's put our blinders on and focus on just the Gulf. I think red snapper in the Gulf is the greatest conservation success story of my lifetime for sure. Back in the heyday in the 1920s and '30s, red snapper were everywhere — we have historical documents and journals from old sailing vessels that would go out and catch hundreds of thousands of pounds. Then fast-forward to when I was a kid growing up on those long-range trips, seven, eight, nine, 10, 12 years old, I didn't know what a red snapper was. I caught my first red snapper when I was like 12, and I was like, "What is this fish?" Slowly we started to see them more commonly. From 2009 to 2016, we saw more and more of them every day, and the seasons got shorter and shorter because of what the South Atlantic is going through — they were deemed overfished, undergoing overfishing, catches had to be released, discard mortality caused overages, we had paybacks. In 2016 it started going back the other way with management. They came out of the rebuilding program, and now seasons have gotten longer and longer, and access has improved more and more.
Dylan Hubbard: Now we're at a point where we have not seen a successful red snapper stock assessment in the Gulf for going on six years. They've been trying and failing.
Tom Rowland: What's a successful one, and why are they failing?
Dylan Hubbard: Any stock assessment — a SEDAR stock assessment, Southeast Data Assessment and Review — has a data workshop and a review workshop. There are different kinds. The analogy is a car: you can have an update assessment that lifts up the hood and changes the oil, or a benchmark assessment, where the engineers get together and totally redesign the car from the chassis up. They attempted a benchmark assessment on red snapper, trying for about six years. About two years ago that benchmark came to be, and they forced in, politically, all this Great Red Snapper Count data. The stock assessment group comes together — all these biologists and academics — and works through the process, then the model gets reviewed by third-party peer reviewers from around the world. This is all something fishermen can attend, and I did. I was at the workshop review panel where they brought guys in from New Zealand and around the world, super intelligent guys, and basically their job was to poke holes in the stock assessment. They poked so many holes that someone left crying from the meeting, and it was not accepted. They threw out the whole stock assessment, so they had to start from scratch. We haven't had an assessment that spits out whether the fishery is healthy or not in about six, seven years.
Dylan Hubbard: It's kind of scary to see what's going to happen, because the seasons have only gotten longer, and the data shows the average size and average weight are both declining exponentially since state management began. This red snapper season for us this year is June 1st through October 25th — a very substantial season — and it's getting harder and harder to find healthy numbers of really large fish. If a stock assessment shows the population isn't healthy, all of a sudden we're gonna start sliding back the other way and seasons are gonna shrink. Some people say red snapper's healthy, some say there's a huge problem. I'm somewhere in the middle. When season opens, no problem catching red snapper. At the end of a four-month season it gets difficult — we're fishing deeper, further, harder, longer to catch that limit, and the size gets smaller. We see that localized depletion. In our area, Central West Florida, we have a lot of natural bottom for those fish to spread out. In other areas, off Destin, Panama City, Alabama, they don't have natural limestone ledges or coral reefs, so they create artificial reefs, and those get plundered when the season opens up. At the end of the season they're pinching tails trying to find barely legal red snapper.
Tom Rowland: Well, in Texas you can fish year-round, right?
Dylan Hubbard: I'll get myself in trouble giving my real thoughts on Texas data. Keep in mind Florida drives the bus in the Gulf. We represent a majority, like 60% of federal permits, and almost three quarters of the landings. For a lot of species — gag grouper, red grouper, lane snapper, yellowtail snapper, hogfish — we drive almost 100% of the landings. A lot of what's discussed around the Gulf Council table is basically Florida driving the bus. The Gulf Council drives federal management in the EEZ, the Exclusive Economic Zone, beyond nine miles. Anything nine miles and out is federal waters. The Council is made up of 17 voting members — the regional administrator, Andy, five state employees, one from each Gulf state, and then 11 appointed members. Florida has four people; other states have at most three; Alabama and Mississippi have two. When people say commercial anglers are killing the Gulf, if you look at the table, nine of the 11 appointed members are private-rec, CCA-appointed folks. It is 100% swung in the private-rec arena right now, and it has been for a very long time.
Tom Rowland: Overall I feel like commercial fishermen want a healthy stock so their job's easier, and private people want a healthy stock so their day is better.
Dylan Hubbard: It comes down to optimal yield. We all want to have a healthy fishery.
Tom Rowland: It gets so challenging to understand what's going on for the regular guy — the charter fisherman who fishes for red snapper sometimes, and the recreational guy who catches a beautiful big red snapper and can't keep it, or can't find it. From your very unique perspective, if you put on the hat of just a regular recreational fisherman or charter guide, what can be done? What's the advice you give somebody who's not deeply ingrained in the decision-making, who goes fishing four times a year and is never going to get involved?
Dylan Hubbard: My advice is to try to get involved as you can. We do a live show every second Sunday of each month, and the entire show revolves around what's going on now and what's coming up.
Tom Rowland: Tell people how they can listen to that.
Dylan Hubbard: You can find it on our Hubbard's Marina YouTube channel. Our YouTube is very focused on teaching and educating people on fisheries, our trips, but also a huge focus on fishery science and management — we have a ton of videos on how it works. I built a whole website page about how fishery science and management works, because one of my passions is not only educating people on how to fish, but also on how this whole process works, to make people as effective as possible, and to open up that MREP education to more people, because not everybody can take a week-long workshop twice a year. Our show happens every second Sunday of the month at 7:30 PM live on our YouTube and Hubbard's Marina Facebook page — it's a text-in question show. We always have a section on what's happening with the federal and state regulations, the current seasons, what's changed and what hasn't. From there you can get involved in different ways — join the CCAs, join the commercial lobby groups, follow charter captains.
Dylan Hubbard: I can't tell you how many times I get a phone call from a charter guy that's like, "Dude, what's going on? When can I fish for red snapper?" It is hard to keep up with.
Tom Rowland: What I like about your approach is you're putting out the information, and you don't know where anybody's going to go with it. Your example demonstrated that this long-range trip was important to you, you saw it was in danger, you got involved, and you made a change. You could be giving out information that goes against your best interest, but you're giving people the information to understand how this works, and then they can apply it to whatever is important to them.
Dylan Hubbard: I can't tell you how many times I've worked to educate people, and then the next week or month or year they're across the aisle from me fighting me on an issue.
Tom Rowland: That's good, because that's getting people involved.
Dylan Hubbard: One hundred percent. If you don't get involved, then you're just at the mercy of whatever happens. One of my good buddies, Captain Travis Thompson, always says, "If you're not in the room, you're on the menu." That's the important part for me — trying to be in the room so we're not on the menu as recreational fishermen, and then trying to educate others so they can be as involved as they want to be. It's kind of like what happened after Hurricane Helene, when we showed up the next morning and saw our entire business and dock destroyed, and all we can do is one foot in front of the other.
Tom Rowland: Open five days later. Really? And today, can you even tell that it happened?
Dylan Hubbard: No. We are extremely blessed with an amazing group of captains, crew, and staff, and it literally took us five days behind Hurricane Helene to reopen. It was amazing to watch.
Tom Rowland: All of the hurricane states are full of incredibly resilient people. It's not something I particularly want to do again, but when you go through it, you see regular people rise to the challenge and become leaders in their community. Often it's the fishermen, because they have boats, tools, and knowledge that not everyone does.
Tom Rowland: This has been really great. I'd love to have you on again, because we barely scratched the surface and only really talked about the red snapper, but that's what everybody keeps asking me to ask about. The gag fishery could be a whole podcast series. Give us a couple-minute update on where we are with the gag fishery.
Dylan Hubbard: The gag season is a glaring example of what we're trying to solve. It's 2026 and we're being managed on data from 2019, because of the stock assessment process, and basically science is struggling to keep up with what's happening on the water. The fishery is starting to rebound. We had a problem, the biomass was ruled too small, and we were put into a rebuilding program, so now we have these super reduced quotas, seasons, and access. A lot of commercial guys are on a 25- or 50-pound trip limit, or they don't have any gag quota at all. Recreationally, we're seeing 10-day, 14-day seasons, a 19-day season last year, and now this year we have a 30-day season. Our seasons are getting a little longer, but we're seeing so many more gags on the water, in more areas, and they're getting bigger. The science needs to catch up with what we're seeing. Average Joe recreational fisherman sees there's tons of gags everywhere and asks why the season isn't longer — it's because of that lag in science to catch up to management. The science has to catch up, then be digested by the SSC, the Science and Statistical Committee, then go through the APs, then the council, then be made regulation. The benefit is when it finally does, the fishery will be really healthy, because we've been so severely restricted. We have a gag grouper stock assessment starting soon, and I'm confident it'll show a healthy population.
Tom Rowland: What do you think of the potential of it failing like the red snapper one did?
Dylan Hubbard: It won't. The red snapper one failed because they tried to inject too much data politically — the Great Red Snapper Count wasn't a stock assessment collection program, it was a really unique science project, and they tried to force it into the model. It was a square peg down a round hole. For gags, we're using SRFS data, and the state of Florida is a majority, if not all, of the catch of gags in the Gulf, so we're able to drive the bus with the state data. FWRI over in St. Pete does an amazing job, Luis and his team. We're going to get this right and get it done fast. That's the rose-colored glasses I get in trouble for wearing.
Dylan Hubbard: One last thing — there are some positive things coming. AI. One of the biggest problems we have is the state of Florida and others drop these cameras down and do incredible fishery-independent research. On the fisheries-independent side, they are pioneering methods to use AI to ingest and output more information from these camera studies. Right now we're dropping cameras all over the Gulf, getting really good information about population sizes and age-and-growth tables, but it takes a human to sit and watch and count, and a human can only take a very small percentage of that camera data. If we use AI to ingest that whole data set and all that geography, we're amplifying our ability to collect scientific information from more areas and more sample sizes, so there's less guessing and better-informed management.
Tom Rowland: Is that a place where recreational anglers could drop their own cameras and provide that?
Dylan Hubbard: Yes and no. There are cooperative research projects. FWC is pioneering a cooperative research project with private recreational anglers — they're paying recreational anglers to put cameras on their boats, and that camera information can be utilized in this project. A human watches the footage and identifies and counts fish, and then they let AI watch the footage and teach these large language models how to better identify fish. Mote Marine is doing a lot of that work, and there are cooperative research projects happening all across the Gulf. We're huge proponents of cooperative research, because you're empowering professional and recreational fishermen to go out and collect scientific information and better inform management.
Tom Rowland: I would think people would be very likely to give up the video if they don't have to give up the coordinates.
Dylan Hubbard: That's the problem we run into, and that's why it can't be used. We're fishermen, we're smart, and we make good decisions — you don't go out to an area where fish aren't. But those zeros are important. Knowing where fish are and aren't is very important, so that's why recreational fishermen can't just drop a camera down. A spearfisherman shows up to a meeting and says, "If you could just look at my camera footage, I see all these big breeder gags." That doesn't work, because that's fisheries-dependent science. Fisheries-independent is the gold standard because it doesn't involve fishermen decisions — we're not changing our behavior. If you're not catching fish, you lighten your leader, get a smaller hook, cut a smaller piece of bait, or change baits. Fisheries-independent does it the exact same way all the time over a large period, so it gives you a truer number of where that population is. The camera studies drop down 18 cameras with lasers, count and measure the fish, using stratified random sampling. We did a cooperative research project where we towed that big sonar to map the Middle Grounds. We didn't realize someone was gonna FOIA-request that information and sell it, which they did — and the whole reason there's Strike Lines charts and Garmin relief shading and C-MAP maps is because of those camera studies.
Tom Rowland: You said something I have to correct you on. You have more confidence in my fishing ability than maybe I do, because I tend to go to places that there aren't fish. Anyway. I appreciate this very much. For everybody listening, the Hubbard's Marina YouTube page is a great source of information for whatever your agenda is — you can learn all about this, and then take that information and fight for what's important to you if you want to get involved. Thanks, man. It's been great to get to know you.
Dylan Hubbard: Yeah, man. You can connect with me via hubbardsmarina.com or Hubbard's Marina Facebook or YouTube. Send us messages, email me, and we can chat if you have questions about what we talked about. On our website we have that page all about how fisheries management works.
Tom Rowland: How do they text in for your show?
Dylan Hubbard: The phone number's on the bottom of the screen, but our main office phone number, if you Googled it you'd find, is 727-393-1947. You can text that number — it comes to us — or call our main office. Or just email me at info@hubbardsmarina.com, and we can connect and answer whatever questions you might have. And don't forget, if you're too busy to go fishing, you're just too darn busy.
Tom Rowland: We can't end it any better than that. Thanks, Dylan. I appreciate it. We'll be back with another great guest next week. See you then.
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