Doctor Snapper
An IntervIew wIth Dr. BoB ShIpp
Dr. Bob Shipp is widely recognized as one of the most authoritative voices in red snapper management in the nation. He’s spent some 18 years—six separate 3-year terms—as a member of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, including three terms as chairman. He’s also chairman emeritus of the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama.
Dr. Bob Shipp
Here are some of his thoughts on how we got to where we are today in Gulf red snapper management, deemed by most anglers as unnecessarily repressive on recreational harvest, and on where we need to go to make things better.
BY Frank Sargeant we’ve now gone too far the other way, to the point where
CA: How did we get to the current status of management? DS:There was a time when red snapper was overfished and
we’re not getting maximum sustainable harvest out of this fishery or giving fishermen what they could be enjoying without harm to it.
undergoing overfishing—too many elements impacting
There were not a lot of harvest rules on either commercial or
CA: What factors have brought fish numbers back?
recreational anglers—anglers back then had a seven-fish bag
DS: First, the trawl fishery for shrimp is just a fraction of what
limit and no size limit. Maybe more importantly, there was a
it once was. The combination of cheap, farm-raised shrimp,
huge wild shrimp trawl fishery at the time. Studies showed
high fuel prices in the ‘90s and the requirement for use of
that the trawls in some areas were killing over 80% of the
fish excluder devices to allow escapement of juvenile fish
juvenile red snapper, so the whole system was disrupted.
all made shrimping far less profitable than it was once, and
There was no question that the numbers were way down,
a lot of boats just quit operating. So the destruction of the
particularly in the larger fish, and something had to be done
juveniles is no longer a significant problem from these trawls.
the stocks, both adult and juvenile. This was in the late ‘80s.
to preserve the fishery. Today’s rules are the result of an effort to turn that around, which we have done, but in my opinion
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Secondly, I think the cumulative numbers of artificial reef