4/16/2023 0 Comments Red snapper season texas![]() "The western Gulf is subsidizing the eastern Gulf," said Tom Hilton, founder of Hilton's Fishing Charts. The western Gulf is home to 52 million of the 110 million red snapper 48 million of the eastern Gulf''s 58 million red snapper reside off the coast of Florida, which holds nearly 45 percent of the allocation. Added with Louisiana's 19 percent, the western Gulf accounts for a quarter of the allocation even though the Great Red Snapper Count determined the biomass of the red snapper population is more evenly split. The recommended allocation for Texas accounts for just over six percent of the total for all Gulf states. However, the National Marine Fisheries Service has not established the official allocation yet. The Gulf Council recommended a private angling allocation for Texas of 270,386 pounds for this season, up marginally from last year's 265,105. Spread across the commercial, for-hire and private sectors, the 300,000-pound increase in ABC is barely noticeable. The gap between the 15.4 million-pound ABC and 25.6 million-pound OFL created an unprecedented buffer of about 40 percent. However, the acceptable biological catch (ABC) was set without using the Snapper Count, and only saw a small increase from 15.1 to 15.4 million pounds. The new OFL is a huge jump from the previous 15.5 million pounds. The SSC used the Great Red Snapper Count to set an overfishing limit (OFL) of 25.6 million pounds. About two-thirds of those fish were discovered on what is referred to as “uncharacterized bottom,” which includes anything from small rock formations, sunken containers, undiscovered banks and shipwrecks.Īnglers will likely have to wait, though, to access these previously undocumented fish because the results from the Great Red Snapper Count were only partially incorporated by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s scientific and statistical committee (SSC). That research ascertained a population of 110 million red snapper aged two years and older in the Gulf, which is more than three times the previous estimation of 36 million. The Great Red Snapper Count was a groundbreaking, three-year study that assembled some of the top fisheries scientists to identify an absolute abundance of red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.
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