Red Snapper: Ecology and Fisheries in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico

An Assessment of the Red Snapper Fishery in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico Using a Spatially-Explicit Age-Structed Model

Clay E. Porch

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781888569971.ch24

Abstract.—Red snapper Lutjanus campechanus have been fished in the Gulf of Mexico since before the Civil War. The size and efficiency of the commercial fleet increased greatly during the 1960s, but without a corresponding increase in catch, suggesting that red snapper populations throughout the Gulf of Mexico were by that time fully-exploited and perhaps even overfished. Nevertheless, most assessments of red snapper in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico have been based on data collected since the 1980s owing to a combination of gaps in the catch data and limitations of the models employed. The lack of contrast in the more recent data makes it difficult to develop meaningful estimates of stock status, particularly in relation to abundance-based reference points such as the equilibrium spawning biomass at maximum sustainable yield. This paper presents a flexible age-structured model that includes information dating back to the inception of the fishery. The results suggest that the populations of red snapper in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico are well below the levels corresponding to a spawning potential ratio of 30%. They also suggest the stock will not to recover to that level in the foreseeable future without substantial reductions in both the catch of adults by the directed fleets and the bycatch of juveniles by the offshore shrimp fishery.