The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s Reef Fish Committee approved several preferred alternatives to the red snapper fishery management plan at its meeting Tuesday in Key West. The committee reaffirmed its support of reallocating a greater share of the combined quota to the recreational sector above a set benchmark as part of the process toward final passage of the management plan changes to Amendment 28 – Red Snapper Allocation.
Their preferred alternative would set 9.12 million pounds as a benchmark at which the historic allocation split that gives 51 percent of the combined red snapper quota to the commercial sector remains the same.
If the quota exceeds that benchmark, committee members recommended that the recreational sector receives 75 percent of the increase.
Based on the 2015 combined quota of 11 million pounds, the new recreational share would be 5.879 million pounds or 53.4 percent of the combined quota.
Other alternatives included no action, setting the benchmark combined quota at 10 million pounds before reallocation begins or simply giving the recreational sector additional quota percentage without a benchmark.
The Council also voted on alternatives to implement accountability measures in the recreational sector.
Their choices were based on a federal judge’s ruling in March affirming commercial fishermen assertions that the National marine Fisheries Service was violating the Magnuson-Stevens Act (Sustainable Fisheries Act) by allowing the recreational sector to exceed their share of the combined Gulfwide quota without doing enough to prevent those overages.
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