Proposal: Protect turtles, curtail long-line grouper fishing for five months

The reef fish committee of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, trying to protect loggerhead turtles, voted today to banish long-line grouper boats to water 300 feet or deeper for five months, beginning in late spring or early summer.

Long-liners, who catch more than 60 percent of commercial grouper, usually do not fish that far from shore because their main target species, red grouper, usually stay in shallower water. Some fishermen say the measure will put them out of business.

The full management council will vote on the measure Thursday, but the reef fish committee's recommendation traditionally carries much weight.

Seafood distributors say grouper may well disappear from many restaurant menus and seafood counters if long-liners are banned from their traditional fishing grounds.

But regulators say they have little choice because a recent study shows long-liners are inadvertently catching and killing way more loggerheads than previously thought. And loggerheads are listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. (For more information click here.)

Long-line grouper boats, most of which work out of Madeira Beach, send out several miles of line with hundreds of hooks attached. They usually soak their bait on the bottom for three hours or more, tempting anything that comes along. Turtles can hold their breath for an hour or so, but will often drown if they don't get hauled up pretty quickly.

Observers who accompanied long-line boats last year estimated turtles were getting hooked at a rate nine times higher than a 2005 study had indicated. And since loggerhead nests on beaches have also been declining for several years, regulators feel they need quick and forceful restrictions.

If the full committee approves this "emergency rule'' Thursday, it will take effect as soon as the National Marine Fisheries Service can draft and publicize it according to federal guidelines. That probably will take until May or June, with long-liners then banished to deep water from about June through October.

Restaurants that want to keep fresh grouper on the menu will have to rely on imports from Mexico and other locales.

Meanwhile, the management council will study other possible long-term restrictions that could take effect as early as 2010. Those include different baits, weaker leader, restricting long-line fishing to a few dozen boats, a three-month closure and closing fishing areas due west of Naples north to Tarpon Springs. Many of the turtle catches logged by observers took place in that geographical area from April through August. For more details on those options, click here.

Comments

[Grouper Catcher]

Whether long lining for grouper continues or not in the eastern Gulf, the above article suggests falsely, that if the long liners are eliminated, so to will grouper be from area restaurants.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The long line sector catches 60% of red grouper, and less than 50% of the gag. If a gear restriction becomes reality, local restaurants will still be supplied because most of the local supply comes from vertical gear boats anyway (better quality). Much of the long line production gets shipped to New York,and Canada, and supermarkets.

So PLEASE St. Pete Times, stop using fear and hysteria to sell newspapers by printing misstatements, and untruths.

Many long line vessels will convert to vertical gear, and if anything, grouper will once again be commonly offered by locally eateries, instead of imported who knows what posing as "grouper."

[peggy]

NMFS failed to do the job they were assigned to protecting the fish and habit this is years to late thank the turtles for their scarafice