In a victory for sport fishermen, NOAA has scrapped a proposed rule that would have banned fishing for 55 fish species off Florida’s Atlantic coast during the winter to aid the recovery of overfished red snapper, one of the region’s most prized sport species.
In a bulletin announcing a suite of changes to federal management of South Atlantic red snapper, NOAA said it had axed the three-month ban — called a “discard reduction season” — on dozens of species that share the same near-bottom habitat with snapper, citing heavy opposition from fishing interests.
Those species include black sea bass, red grouper, vermillion snapper, gag, scamp, greater amberjack and gray triggerfish.
The NOAA rule was embedded in a broader suite of management plan changes called Amendment 59 to the snapper-grouper fishery in the South Atlantic. The agency maintains that while red snapper are recovering in the ocean between Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the Florida-Georgia border, too many of the fish are discarded by fishermen, resulting in injury and death.
