Year: 2021
Relevance
The U.S. Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery stock assessment is hindered by a lack of robust data. To address this need, a $12.5 million research program, was launched, and Congress made available $10 million in funding for a 2-year research project designed to independently estimate Gulf red snapper abundance using best available technologies.
Response
A team of 21 leading scientists from 12 institutions designed and implemented a large-scale population survey to independently estimate the abundance of age-2+ red snapper in the northern Gulf across 3 habitat types, 3 depth zones and 5 regions on the continental shelf. They sampled natural reefs, artificial reefs and uncharacterized bottom and within 3 depth strata. This last strata turned out to be very important as it was estimated to harbor a majority of the fish, due to its sheer size. The Gulf of Mexico Sea Grant programs, led by Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant funded the research.
Results
The scientific team estimated a total of 118.5 million red snapper. The regional breakdown was: Texas, 22 million; Louisiana, 17.4 million; Alabama and Mississippi, 8.5 million; Florida, 70 million; and Pipelines (Gulf-wide), 0.5 million. This abundance estimate was nearly three times the previous NOAA Fisheries estimate, and it showed that while red snapper predominate the natural and artificial reefs, there is a large relatively unaccounted for population of red snapper found throughout the undefined bottom. New catch advice was generated using updated estimates of absolute abundance for red snapper derived from the Great red snapper count.
Recap
Researchers estimated there to be 118.5 million red snapper in the northern Gulf of Mexico using a multitude of common and novel sampling techniques. (2021)