SOUTH ATLANTIC FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL

Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing

Key Largo Grande Key Largo, FL

May 7, 2008

Summary Minutes

Mr. Griffiths: Good afternoon. I’m a thirty-eight-year resident of Monroe County in Key West and sixteen of those years an elected official county-wide. The reason why I keep getting reelected is because I’m a reasonable and rational person. In my thirty-one years as a licensed operator, this is the most unreasonable and irrational proposal that I’ve ever seen the federal authorities take on.

Mr. Iarocci: If you’re talking you’re directly toward Amendment 16 --

Mr. Griffiths: The grouper closure and I don’t know the number.

Mr. Iarocci: Everybody for the record too, make sure you do speak so she can get that down so it gets documented that way.

Mr. Griffiths: Andy Griffiths, Key West. The grouper closure -- You know we’ve been so many challenges in this industry and we’ve been able to hang on, with the price of fuel, dockage, insurance, everything is going up. We work a twelve-month year. Our clientele come down here to bottom fish and they bottom fish for grouper. We have a twelve-month year.

All of our assets are leveraged based on a twelve-month income. We cannot make it on an eight- month income. We cannot have our boats sit at the dock for four months and still making dockage payments and still making insurance. What will the captains do for income?

The businesses there, it’s slower certain parts of the year and better other parts of the year, but we need a year-round fishery to stay in business. What would work for us, and I would offer up the idea, if it’s an option, is to reduce the bag limit for recreational grouper to three, exclude the crew, and two of those can be red and one would be an other. Nassau are excluded now and anyway and because some species are not allowed to be kept, we’ve been trained to the air bladder tool and having the proper procedures on the boats for release.

We’ve been through all that and with now the regulation for circle hooks, I think the mortality issue has been put to bed. I think by closing all species, because there’s an assessment issue with one specie, I think that it is unreasonable and irrational.

Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

I would think that putting all these people out of business because something is possibly irrational and unreasonable, we’ve got to go back to the drawing board and look at other options. Again, I offer up the reduction in the bag limit from five to three. That is a 40 percent reduction in effort. I think that makes all my points and thank you for your time.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Andy, and if I could ask you a question. I’ve dealt with you from -- Years and years and years, we’ve gone through a lot of meetings with the Sanctuary and different things and I really appreciate you and your captains and your crew taking the time to come up here.

Andy, you know in the past the Gulf Council has already passed the circle hook regulation and it’s coming through in the state and the Gulf in June. I talked to some people that fish on the line within Monroe County and fish both sides, with the circle and how it’s going to impact their snapper grouper fishery and the j-hook issue, compared to the circle hook, I would like to have your opinion on that. How is that going to affect your fishery fishing for snappers, using j-hook compared to using circle hooks, as a charter captain?

Mr. Griffiths: The grouper has been very popular, because on longlines that aren’t attended, the fish hook themselves, but the yellowtail and a lot of the snappers, you have to set the hook, just like -- That’s part of the thrill of getting a fish on the other end of the line, is setting the hook. You pretty much lose that thrill with a circle hook. However, they are effective with certain shallow-water species. I would say they’re very inappropriate for the yellowtail, because of the technique that’s used, with flat lining.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Andy. Once again, it’s good to see you again.

Mr. Kelly: My name is Bill Kelly and I’ve been a charter recreational fisherman in the Florida Keys, in south Florida, for the past thirty-one years. I’m here to represent the Islamorada Charterboat Association, in part. Our President, Mr. Steve Leopold, is also here. Also, the South Atlantic Charterboat Association and I am a member of the South Atlantic Snapper Grouper Advisory Panel and have been for about the past five years.

I just attended a nice presentation by Gregg Waugh on gag grouper. I am remiss though if we didn’t say this. We looked at statistics that represented two industries, the recreational fishing industry and the commercial fishing industry. For years, in fact for more than a decade, I personally, along with numerous other representatives from the charter/headboat sector, have advocated and pressed for the South Atlantic Council, as well as the National Marine Fisheries Service, to recognize us as three distinct entities: recreational fishermen, charter/headboat as a for-hire commercial operation, and strictly commercial fishermen.

I think that’s imperative that we address this situation, especially now that all the councils have moved forward on an allocation-based system, where this could become critical to the numbers of fish that are apportioned to each of those three sectors. Again, I would reiterate that the South Atlantic Council address that issue and I will press it again at the June meeting in Orlando.

Mr. Iarocci: Bill, to that point, I think I told you earlier, off the record, that the Allocation

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Committee did address that issue and they will be doing the four sectors and they will be looking at, once allocation does come up, it will be recreational, commercial, and it will be charterboat/headboat. They will be breaking it up, with a quota in the -- The pie will be divvied up and it won’t be where it was before and that’s just through the Allocation Committee and not the full council, but it is up for discussion, as we talked about before, where it won’t be recreational/charterboat, but it will be recreational and then charterboat/headboat, which you had been talking about.

Mr. Kelly: That’s a step in the right direction, Mr. Iarocci, and I appreciate it. These numbers are quantifiable. We can take the guesswork out of this and we have enough statistics that we can put together very viable information that would better reflect what’s going on in the fishing fraternity.

With regard to gag grouper though, at the AP meeting in September, I talked with the advisory panel about this, because as the discussion came about, we knew that there was a problem in south Florida, maybe from the Miami area through the Florida Keys. Gag grouper used to be a very viable fishery here in Monroe County and it no longer is.

There are still some spots that can be productive, but by and large, it is a hurting fishery here and we recognize that and we talked about it with the other representatives from Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.

I was the one that made the motion to the advisory panel, which was passed on to the council, that we cut this into two separate areas. Our recommendation, from the advisory panel, was that it would be roughly from central Florida southward to Key West, which is the end of the council’s jurisdiction. The council, however, elected to make it all of Florida and Georgia. That possibly could be amended, if the need arises, but there is a problem here and we wanted to address that and we’re glad that the council is doing it.

However, in certain provisions of this amendment here, if you’re going to close gag grouper and then we read the fine print, which also includes gag grouper and all other types of grouper, for January, February, March, and April, you, in essence, are virtually shutting down the grouper fishery in Monroe County in south Florida.

It’s going to have a huge impact on the charter/headboat industry, recreational and commercial. All of us are going to be severely smitten by this thing and so I hope that the council would address that and take a look at it.

There is concern for black grouper, as it was pointed out by Mr. Waugh, but we don’t have the numbers and statistics to indicate just how severe that is and so I hope the council would put that process off until they have additional information, because it will have a major impact on the grouper fishery in south Florida, in Monroe County.

With regard to vermilion snapper, as much as we’ve talked about the problems with gag grouper at the AP meeting, we really were quite surprised at the abundance of vermilion snapper in south Florida and the Keys. We fish them much deeper and we find quite a pretty sizable stock of fish

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and fish that are much larger than the norm, in some cases as much as six pounds.

They still continue to be caught and found in great abundance and we think it’s a very viable fishery here. However, we recognize that there are problems with them north of primarily the Florida/Georgia state line. Unfortunately, we are grouped in with that.

Since that September meeting, I have had some discussions with other fishermen that are very much concerned about it. Vermilion snapper are a very viable part of their fishery. They have customers that come from long distances solely to fish for vermilion snapper and so we hope the council possibly could revisit that or, as they did in gag grouper, maybe determine a different defining line on where they would have stricter applications applicable to vermilion snapper than they would here in south Florida.

With regard to circle hooks, quite surprisingly, a number of anglers, especially in the charter/headboat industry, have no problem with circle hooks for snapper and grouper and many of them have been using them for some time.

There seems to be a reluctance to use them in the yellowtail and mangrove snapper fishery. I don’t know the answer to that. We saw the same thing apply when circle hooks were mandated for sailfish, but then the statistics from all the tournaments in south Florida and throughout the Keys, where there are probably more sailfish tournaments than anywhere else in the world, the catch statistics actually increased and most guys no longer felt that they needed to be mandated to use them. They very willingly made the transition and I’m one of those that did that.

I tried the circle hooks and found a significant increase in my hook-up ratio and so possibly the same thing could happen with yellowtail snapper and mangrove snapper, but there’s trepidation on the part of all three sectors, the recreational, charter/headboat and commercial fishermen, that it could have a serious impact and I would ask the council to revisit that and possibly gather some additional data and then move forward in an appropriate manner.

Since the subject was brought up a little bit earlier with regard to bag limit commercial sales, I would like to make a comment on that. Some of the restrictions here that we’re looking at, for example the complete closure on grouper and reduced bag limits and so forth, are going to have, along with fuel prices and petroleum products and increased dockage fees, they’ve going to have a significant impact on the charter/headboat industry.

I would like the council to consider mitigating some of those impacts by revisiting the proposed prohibition on bag limit commercial sales. We’ll be putting together some additional information for presentation during the comment period, as well as at the council’s meeting in Orlando.

Mr. DeMauro: My name is Bob DeMauro and I’m here to talk about the grouper snapper. I own and operate Sea-Clusive Charters for eighteen years in Key West and we employee eight employees and out of those eight employees, we have five families and our primary charters are spearfishing and the primary fish that we target is black grouper and snapper, hogfish.

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The people that go out on our boat, they’re not out there for quantity. They’re out there for the trophy fish and they’re out there to take pictures and have fun with their friends and get a big fish. By doing this four-month closure, you would be basically chaining my boat to the dock for four months, because there would be no reason for them to want to go out on the boat and shoot little hogfish or little snapper or whatever.

I would not be able to book any charters and I would not be able to support the employees and then, of course, I would still be left with dockage and insurance and mortgage payments and what have you. Like Andy said, from Andy Griffiths Charters, I think reducing the bag limit would be a good way to bring up the stock.

I personally don’t see a shortage of the grouper. Over the past years, we have got record numbers of groupers down in the Tortugas and that’s why we travel out there, because there is a large abundance of fish out there. Each year, we get bigger and bigger grouper and so I think there’s plenty of them out there. Anyway, that’s all I have and thank you.

Mr. Irwin: The closure, you’ll hear lots of -- I thought Andy Griffiths came up with a good proposal, to reduce 40 percent effort. I think that was a really -- It showed good faith on their part, but I wanted to talk about another thing, about how you put pressure on other species when you regulate one and when you shut one off.

You’re inadvertently going to put on pressure. We’ve been watching this happen for twenty years. You regulate something to death and guess what, the fishermen just move over, whether it’s recs or charter or whoever. They’re just going to go target another fish and that needs to be considered when they make these closures.

I wanted to talk on the circle hooks, a few things about the circle hooks. One thing is loss of efficiency. When you talk about yellowtail and mangrove snapper fishing, you’re fishing on top of the water and it’s a completely different animal than a down line, where circle hooks do work.

Like Andy said, when you set the hook, you have the set the hook on yellowtail and snapper, fish that you’re flat lining and no weight and that you have to set the hook in. For commercial fishing, you’re going to lose efficiency and I don’t think that’s a good thing for us. You cannot use a dehooker with a circle hook.

Also, there’s an exceptionally low mortality rate with fish that are caught on top of the water compared to fish that are caught deep and I think that needs to be taken into consideration when you’re talking about installing all circle hooks for all fish, because you just don’t kill many fish on top of the water with a j-hook.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Bruce. Excellent comments.

Mr. Dalton: My name is Charles Dalton and I’m here to address the closure of black grouper, gags, if you will, for four months. I think your statistics are way out of whack and they’re off base. There’s been a practice down here which forced me to quit a fish house the first of the year, when these people told me that they were marking snowies down as blacks, which would

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increase the black catch quite a bit, just to keep your snowy catch down and to make it look better on paper.

I went elsewhere to sell my fish, which I told these people that down the road it’s going to affect the black grouper seriously. I don’t know what it’s doing to the gag grouper and I imagine that practice is going right down the line, in that same perspective. That’s basically what I had to say about that.

Mr. Iarocci: Do you have anything -- We talked earlier about either j-hooks or circle hooks in your fishery and how that would affect you.

Mr. Dalton: Basically, if we’re talking about j-hooks versus circle hooks, I basically yellowtail and grouper fish with j-hooks and jigs that I’ve designed for grouper fishing. If I was told to stop using j-hooks, I would basically be out of business. That’s what I have to say and thank you very much.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you.

Mr. O’Hern: For the record, Dennis O’Hern, Fishing Rights Alliance, St. Pete, Florida. Thanks for taking the time to listen to us today. I’m speaking on the insane potential gag regulations. I’m going to lead it off by just letting you know on the record that the same problems that were found with the Gulf gag assessment by Dr. Trevor Kenchington do exist for the South Atlantic gag.

There’s a natural mortality issue that just completely makes this assessment look like the fish are in trouble. Trevor is going to be submitting a report to you all so that your SSC can review it. I hope to get it to you within the next two weeks, so there will be some time. I hope the council considers holding off on these regulations until you can review this issue and the other issues that Trevor is going to present.

For the record, Trevor was hired by the Fishing Rights Alliance and SOFA, Southern Offshore Fishing Association. A commercial group and a recreational group are paying half the bill each, just to make sure we’ve got some transparency here. He tells us we’ve got some very grave concerns with the assessment.

National Marine Fisheries Service knew it when we brought up the concerns with the Gulf gag, yet they kind of blew off the South Atlantic, because we didn’t blow the horn too hard on it at the time. Well, we’re blowing the horn now.

Also, one of the things I didn’t really see anywhere in any of these documents is the consideration for the reduction in effort, because the one thing that’s killing effort and it’s never going to let it come back, it affects the commercial guys and the recreational guys, is five bucks a gallon at the dock. You know what? I don’t care how many rec guys you put on a boat, it’s still going to be an expensive trip.

Commercial guys, now it’s five bucks a gallon you’ve got to pay to bring your fish in and there’s

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nowhere in those documents that I see any falling effort or falling projections. The projections, as I know, are based on some incredibly strong 2001 to 2004 effort. That’s not happening anywhere in any sector anymore. I really hope you guys will take that into consideration and hold off, man. Don’t make a billion-dollar mistake, because you’re going to ruin some major industries and you’re going to just wreck some good people’s lives all the way across the sector.

Mr. Iarocci: Dennis, thank you, once again, for your testimony and also, you had made a statement earlier and did you want to comment on red snapper at this time or hold off on that?

Mr. O’Hern: Just that red snapper is the next thing that Dr. Kenchington is going to review. We’re concerned with the red snapper assessment here, just like we are in the Gulf, where it says we’re in so much trouble, yet -- Like the gag grouper, the biomass is at all time high, or near all time high, but yet we’re in so much trouble, but the red snapper in the Gulf -- I think any of you guys who go out toward the Tortugas see it, but it’s -- You can’t catch your gag grouper because you can’t get them past the red snapper. You can’t get any baits down. I’m hoping that you guys will kind of hold off on some more of those draconian regulations and watch what happens in the Gulf of Mexico.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Dennis. We appreciate your comments.

Mr. Nichols: I’m Gary Nichols from the Conch Key area. I’ve been commercial fishing for thirty-five years and I came here to speak on the Snapper Grouper Amendment 16. Basically, one thing I think we’ve been talking about and it’s really scary in the snapper grouper complex, in particular groupers, is the four-month closure.

I think there’s a lot better way to do closures than four-month closures, especially with the commercial fishery. I think that an ITQ or an IFQ, a system of poundage allocation, is a much better system than using a closure of four months, because it’s -- Another thing is we don’t really have a defined timeline for the spawning season for the grouper.

We cut the spawning back all the way into December and that’s kind of ludicrous. I would much rather see -- If it’s the actual spawning time, I think it should be like a one month or a two month, because that’s a real small window when the grouper are spawning anyway, and then have that, along with possibly an ITQ or an IFQ, if you had to do anything.

It’s really going to hurt a lot of fishermen, in particular the commercial guys, and I don’t know -- I’m not really into speaking on the recreational sector, but that’s just my idea. We’ve been talking about circle hooks and most of the guys have spoke on -- I totally agree with James, Rick, Richard on what they were saying, but a lot of them are leaving out the mangrove snapper.

The mangrove snapper, to me, is more important than yellowtail, because I fish stone crabs up until May, the middle of May, and then the only fishery that I actually get to fish a lot is the mangrove snapper and they pretty much are a lot -- They’re a little harder to catch, I think, than the yellowtail, in general, and they do exactly the same thing, as far as catching the fish.

You chum them up on the top and if you have the circle hook, you pull up and the fish is going

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to be swimming at you and they’re a little bit more finicky to catch even, but you’re almost comparing apples to apples with a mangrove and a yellowtail and I would just like to make sure that we have those two together.

Other than that, there’s not a whole lot that I have to say, other than sometimes with the circle hook issue, in particular the recreational sector in general, it may be okay, because I take a lot of people fishing that are novices, whether it be back in the bay catching mangrove snapper or out on the reef for yellowtail. If people are doing just dropping to the bottom kind of fishing -- When we’re commercial fishing, we’re chumming the fish right up on the top, where we can see them and actually direct our lines to them.

The everyday recreational fisherman may be needing to have the circle hooks. Now, the guys that do the headboats and the charterboat guys, they’re more professional and they have their guys and they might be all right with the circle hooks, but I’ll let them speak on the issue, but I do think that in that respect that you might want to have a separate set of rules and I think that’s about it.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Gary. To that point, I did -- In the last three days, I’ve gotten more calls and I’ve stopped by charterboat docks and boats and World-Class Angler and World-Class Sportsmen Tackle Shops, Big-Time Bait and Tackle, Dave Navarro’s place, and every charterboat captain and every commercial fisherman I’ve talked to, when it comes to both -- I’m glad you brought it up on the record and not me, but I will back you up on that.

When it comes to both yellowtail and mangrove snapper, I don’t care if it’s a charter captain or a commercial guy, they’ve talked about the importance of having access to j-hooks in their fisheries and I think we’ll hear more about that on the record later on from some of the people in the room, but I want to also say that -- I think you’ll be one to also help do this, but we need to coordinate some kinds of studies that show charterboats, recreational, and commercial, making a comparison between having the j-hook and the circle hook on the boat and showing the difference, which we will talk about later. I appreciate your comments.

Mr. Bullard: I’m Billy Bullard. I’m a charter fisherman and I work for Andy Griffith’s Charters. We can’t afford to lose -- I’m speaking of the closure of the grouper for four months. We can’t afford to have a four-month closure like that. It’s like the peak of our busy season and that’s actually like 50 percent of our business, because we don’t do much business during November and December and stuff like that, pre-holidays.

This is going to really impact us. We’ve got charters that rent motel rooms the night before and spend money on tackle and it’s going to be a big impact on everybody. I started out commercial fishing and first, we got kicked out of king fishing, with the state water closure, and then trap reduction. I was a lobster fisherman for Butch Carter and I’ve been seeing you for years.

Then I decided to go charter fishing and I was like there’s always going to be recreational fishermen and now, you’re taking away that too. I’m not on a commercial side or a recreational side. I think everybody should be allowed to catch fish, because it’s like what the Keys was founded on. You’re taking away the history and not you, but whoever.

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The circle hooks, that’s ridiculous. Those things were designed to protect the fish and we catch them in the throat all the time with circle hooks and I would rather take a bobby pin and make a j-hook out of it than use one of these circle hooks. They’re a joke. That is a good way to protect the fish, I’ve got to tell you. I don’t know and that’s about all I can say. It’s going to hurt a lot of people and it’s just a small group of people here, because a lot of people don’t know about the meeting. That’s about all I’ve got to say.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Billy. Thanks for taking the time and driving up from Key West. It’s great and we will take this to heart and that’s why you’re here and like I said, this is early on in the process and you did touch on the issues.

Mr. Bullard: One more thing about the assessments. I’ve taken some of these science groups out here diving and they rent the boat and they go to down the -- They send twenty people into the water at one time with bright fins and bubbles everywhere and fish scatter. Then they get down there and oh, there ain’t no fish around here.

I’ve been down there and they’ve collected information and they’ve got these beacons they put on the bottom and they tag these groupers and this and that, but they’ve got good information and bad information. I’ve watched them collect the information.

When the information gets to the council, they take what they like, fishing is in trouble and let’s show this to the public so that we can get a bigger budget. If they show that fishing is okay, well now we don’t need the council no more. That’s my opinion and that’s about all I’ve got to say today.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Billy. I appreciate it.

Mr. Paskiewicz: My name is James Paskiewicz and I’m a commercial fisherman out of Marathon, Florida. I’m here to speak on Amendment 16, regarding the snapper grouper. A four- month closure would definitely be detrimental to the industry. I see it with the recreational industry and with the charterboats and also on the commercial side.

Along with what Bruce Irwin was saying, you’re going to inadvertently put pressure in other places that’s not necessary. I think more science and better planning and there could be more brought to the table before a closure is implemented.

On the circle hook issue, yellowtail snappers, you’ve heard people time and time again saying that the j-hook is definitely the way to do it and you have to set the hook on a yellowtail and some other snappers. Mangrove snapper is another species that the j-hook is really the best way to do it. I don’t really see where you would have a better mortality rate with the circle hook. I just think it’s ludicrous.

If anything, I think circle hooks should be designated to certain species in certain methods. They’re definitely better for deep water and they’re definitely better on a longline. There’s places where they should be implemented, but there are places where they shouldn’t and I think

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that should be taken into consideration.

Also, with the grouper -- Let’s take that the gags, since that’s the species that we’ve been talking about today. I think before measures are made to cut back to get back, to get the biomass back up to a sustainable level where we can get to our total sustainable yield -- We’re trying to operate less than 75 percent of the sustainable yield and I would like to see more accountability on the recreational sector, whether it be before a boat even leaves the dock or before a person even has the right to go out and catch fish, that they have to apply for the right.

Maybe you can go out and the average recreational fisherman can catch twelve blacks in a year, but there needs to be some evidence where if an FWC officer boards a boat, they need to know right then and there if that grouper is allowed to be harvested. Instead of trying to after the fish has been killed and after someone has gone out to even target the species, there should be something done and in place that would account for it before it’s even caught.

As a commercial fisherman, we have our yearly licenses and we have to establish our right to go catch the fish. We have to maintain our logbooks and we have trip tickets and we have this and we have that and I think that it’s kind of unfair to have the recreational sector just kind of be willy-nilly.

I know that there are laws in place and there are bag limits and this and that and the other, but we’re talking about such a concentrated effort on certain species, meaning the shallow-water groupers that we’ve been talking about, and I think that there are other ways to do it, opposed to just shutting it down for four months over spawning. As a fisherman, I’ve also seen spawning take place fifty miles apart two months or three months apart. The range is not good for a very large area and I think that should be taken into consideration also.

Mr. Iarocci: James, let me ask you a question and I think a couple of years back when we had the council meeting when you guys offered it and we took the council members out fishing on your boat and we showed them and demonstrated how yellowtail are caught commercially with the poles and the hand lines and spinning gear and how it was done and it was all done with j- hooks.

I talked to Richard and a couple of the charterboats now and after talking with the Regional Administrator from NMFS, before the Orlando meeting what we would like to do is get some documentation of a comparison with people using j-hooks compared to circle hooks.

What we’re going to try to do is maybe get a couple of boats and some day -- I’ll try to get out again on Richard’s boat and maybe try to make a comparison on hooking and trying to get stuff done.

Mr. Paskiewicz: If you would like, we actually did bring something to show, on video, the council -- I have someone else here that is willing to speak that may be able to give someone who is not familiar with a j-hook and a circle hook -- Give them the opportunity to show where a circle hook would be inefficient in our business.

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The dehookers that we use for our species, we brought one with us today and I would like to ask my partner, Rick Turner, when he speaks to bring it and show it and it’s very, very quick. It will make all the difference. Seeing something work -- I wish I brought a yellowtail here to show you exactly how it works, but you get the idea how it works and how it won’t work.

Mr. Iarocci: We can do that in Orlando. I would like to document some of this stuff. I’ve talked to Bruce about this and with OFF getting back together and trying to come up with some committees and I guess once we get dealing with snapper grouper, we’ll talk about this probably at the next meeting. Thank you, James. I appreciate it.

Mr. Cramer: Now I’m speaking on the Snapper Grouper Amendment 16. I would just like to say that I think we need to do something here that makes sense and I don’t think closing this fishery for the gag groupers, closing all the shallow-water grouper species for the gag at this point, is the way to go.

It will severely impact the charterboat guys down here, the recreational fishery, the industry we have down here. To think that in the presentation the reasoning behind it was that if they were targeting other grouper species that they might get the gags and there’s other species -- One, off the top of my head, is the mutton snapper, which the Sanctuary Advisory Council asked for a stock assessment from FWC and we just got that back a couple of months ago and it said that the mutton snapper was not overfished and it was a healthy fishery.

It’s one fishery where these guys that aren’t going to be able to catch a grouper, they’re still going to be fishing for mutton snapper, which they’re on these shallow-water reefs and the wrecks, just like the grouper are.

To say that there’s not going to be any fishery and that by taking out all the groupers that it’s going to stop the bycatch of some of these, it’s not going to happen. I think -- A couple of people brought up earlier about reducing the bag limit and I think that’s a good idea and I think the goliath grouper -- If they were allowed to take some of these goliath grouper that it would also take some pressure off of these other species. People -- A lot of these recreational guys on the charterboats, they want to go out and they want to have a meal or two and if we could put the goliath grouper in on that, that would be great.

I just wanted to bring up the circle hook and j-hook thing. Like I said, I’ve been fishing my whole life. When I got out of college, I fished on charterboats and I have friends who run charterboats and I’ve seen -- They’re catching tuna with circle hooks or sailfish now and they always used to be j-hooks.

I think you’ve got to do something here that makes sense also. Certain species and certain fisheries, the circle hooks are a good idea, the deepwater and the longline fisheries. The sailfish and tuna, it works good for them, but the yellowtail is a totally different fish, a totally different deal.

I think that they need to do it on a species-by-species basis on the circle hook and j-hook thing. I think they need to do some studies and I guess Tony said they’re starting to work on that, but

11 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

they need to do some comparisons on this circle hook and j-hook before they just go across the board and do it. That’s all I’ve got to say.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Jeff. I appreciate your comments and I want to thank you publicly for the work you’re doing, working with the Sanctuary Advisory Council and representing the industry. We need to work very closely with the council and the sanctuary with a lot of stuff pertaining to fishery regulations, so we are on the same page, especially with the mutton snapper. I appreciate your time in that.

Mr. Fernandez: My name is Jack Fernandez. I live down in the lower Keys area. I’ve been fishing for about seventeen or eighteen years. I went to Florida State and I went and got a law degree and stepped into fishing at the time. It was something that seemed like it was not overly regulated and it seemed like it had a bright future.

I worked my way up to two fishing boats, which I did build in Key West, one of the younger captains down in Key West and real aggressive, two or three or four trips a month down to the Dry Tortugas, twelve months a year.

Now, one thing I want to mention about the grouper closure is that whether you refer to what was happening with the red snapper IFQ program and how they originally started it -- I also hold IFQs in the Gulf and I’ve been a part of the red snapper fishery as it’s been through its transition. Now, they tried a twice a year quota and that produced derby fishing and it produced a large amount of fish coming in it at one time and it produced no price for your product and then what happened is it produced a closure.

This closure -- It comes across as being a four-month closure, but in essence, what this is -- This is going to be a six to eight to ten-month closure, because what’s going to happen is as soon as it opens up in May, they’re going to be crushing these groupers, to the point where the quota is going to get filled in a month-and-a-half and now what’s going to happen? That’s going to be an eight to ten-month closure and you know what it’s going to produce, which is exactly what it produced in the Gulf, is a black market.

I don’t mean a small black market. I mean twenty-dollars a pound for grouper filets for every back-door restaurant from Key West all the way to the Carolinas or wherever this extends to. It’s a major problem and to me, it’s just -- People need to live and people need to eat fish and restaurants want the fish and let’s think realistic here. It’s going to happen and that’s problem number one.

The next thing I want to address is like Phil was saying about the circle hooks. It’s just not going to work for the yellowtail and it’s a whole different animal. I bandit fish most of the time and a circle hook was made for an up and down bandit fishing offset. It’s beautiful used under those circumstances, but under the circumstances of the yellowtail, it would just devastate the whole yellowtail industry as far as that.

Another thing that I saw that was addressed earlier is the fact that why should we be tied into a gag fishery, which is really a Jacksonville/North Carolina/South Carolina issue, and I think a

12 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

regional is the right approach to that.

The next thing I want to consider is that you need to consider the age group of the people who are holding South Atlantic permits. We’re talking about 40 to 50 percent of these people are fifty-five years and older. We’re already endangered species. You’re talking about an endangered species like the buffalo and the buffalo is not going to be around but for another five or seven years. You’re already killing a species that’s already endangered and so I don’t see it.

I see that you need to have a little foresight and say, wow, this poor little group here who is going to be dying off in the next five or seven years, it just doesn’t make sense to aggressively go out and put these people out of business, me included. I’m the younger one of the bunch, but I’m saying I want to have a future too here.

The next issue here is the vermilion closure. I bandit fish in the Gulf and they closed vermilion snappers for two years. I got a blue paper this year where they actually opened something back up. They opened the vermilion snappers in the Gulf again because it’s not overfished.

Fish have tails and how can an imaginary line that’s drawn through the middle of the water by who knows -- Now they’re saying that a fish who has a tail -- The Gulf Council is saying these vermilions are not a problem anymore and we’re going to go ahead and let them fish this year, because they’ve closed it for two years. Isn’t that something to be considered?

When the South Atlantic is nothing but an imaginary line drawn through the water, why should one fishery be opened again and not be under pressure, where another five miles down, they’re saying but these fish are not -- I’m just not seeing it. I’m just not seeing it.

Another thing is I’ve been doing my logbooks, like I’m supposed to, throughout the years. Now, when you put on your logbook, you put area. You put Area 2 and Area 2 of the -- The new logbook has changed now, but when you go back in history and you look at what Area 2 is, Area 2 is all Tortugas waters.

What you have now is a misinterpretation of where those fish have been caught and where the poundage -- You’re having a distorted view of where the fish were actually caught. Just because you put Area 2, it doesn’t mean that those vermilion snappers were caught in the South Atlantic, when in reality they were caught in the Gulf.

What you’re having is a distorted numbers. The numbers are distorted and the end result is it’s interpreted as a fish that is really under pressure, when in reality it’s not. That is a major problem that needs to be addressed, is the fact that the numbers are distorted by the logbooks. That’s another problem that I wanted addressed.

I want to mention again about the circle hooks for the yellowtail, because if that goes through -- It already is through in the Gulf and I fish the Gulf for yellowtail and that just blindsided me and we’ll have to deal with that.

Mr. Iarocci: It blindsided a lot of people and there were some people -- The Gulf Council -- I

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made a lot of phone calls and I talked to people from the Gulf Council today and the State of Florida, who has passed this, and there were some people at these meetings. Industry should have been -- I talked to Bob Spaeth from Southern Offshore Fisheries Association and the fishermen that were there -- The people that did comment said it wasn’t a problem, because it was basically, like you said, a deepwater fishery dealing with red snapper and dealing with the grouper fishery, the bottom longline or the deep-drop guys.

Those guys have been using circle hooks up there for years and they did not take into account, because the fishermen or the representatives that were there did not speak to the fact that this would affect the yellowtail fishermen and see that’s why right now -- This is early on in this process and I’m going to do everything I can to address this at the full council and that’s why I’m very glad you guys are here giving this testimony, because it has to come from you, both the commercial and the charter, when it comes to these issues and it is.

When you talk yellowtail and mangrove snapper, it’s a different fishery. There is not much bycatch mortality. It’s caught up on the surface and they’re hooked and they’re thrown back and most of the ones are kept and the ones that are thrown back are fine and I really appreciate your comments.

Mr. Fernandez: Another situation that I want to address was the fact that I have a VMS on my boat, a Gulf and a South Atlantic permit, and I have 900 pounds of allocated IFQ red snappers and I work under a fifteen-inch size limit over here and then I jump over here and I’m a twenty- inch size limit and I go into the Fort at night to sleep and that’s in the South Atlantic, but I go out and fish out in the Gulf to work and boy, tell me where to go and tell me what’s happening. There’s such a gray area that it’s looking more like it’s black and so I just want that issue to be addressed.

Mr. Iarocci: Phil and I have been talking about this for a while and I’m glad it’s on the record and we do need to deal with it and also, like you said, there is a big concern about the data coming out of Key West and whether it is -- The vermilion is great in the Gulf and where are these fish -- It’s a big problem and I appreciate your comments.

Mr. Petrucco: My name is Joseph Petrucco and I’m the vice president of the Islamorada Charterboat Association. I wanted to speak about a few different things today. The first thing I wanted to speak about is the season closures, both for the grouper species and also for the snappers, for the vermilion snappers.

I feel that a season closure on either one of these is going to be devastating to our local tourism and our charter fishing. Just as an alternative, I believe that a size limit or a bag limit would be more reasonable and we’re not opposed to something like that, but an actual closure is going to really hurt our industry badly, so much so that I guess the whole point of the council would be to protect economic interests and to soften the blow of the overfishing issue. We realize it has to be done, but we have to soften the blow. There’s other ways to do it. A season closure is definitely not the way.

The next thing I would like to talk about is we could talk about the circle hook issue. In my

14 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

opinion, the circle hooks are not the answer on all species. They do work on some species and on other species, they are detrimental to catch and release fishing.

We keep talking about the yellowtail snapper fishery and it is difficult to catch and release a yellowtail snapper that’s undersized on a circle hook. That, in and of itself right there, should be enough reason not to include that. The whole idea here is we want to protect our species and not destroy it and that right there is bang, real simple.

The other thing too is we like to use a dehooking device, for several reasons. First of all, if you grab a fish and squeeze him and touch him, you interfere with his slime coat and so obviously a dehooking device -- We usually get a pretty good eye for what’s legal and what’s not and we don’t want to hurt these fish and so we want to use a dehooking device and just bang, and let it go.

With a circle hook, again, that makes it very difficult, as well as actually catching them. I’ve tried to use them quite a bit on yellowtail snappers and there are times when they can work, but they’re really poor. They’re really poor for it. Vermilion snappers and other species, they’re excellent and we like them, but again, it’s a species specific thing.

The other thing I would like to speak about is I think it’s very, very important -- I’m not sure what you would group this under. I think it’s something that would be grouped under the Magnuson-Stevens Act in general, but the charter associations all across the country, and all throughout the South Atlantic, we really need some sort of proper representation.

I heard the comments you made earlier, Tony, to Mr. Kelly and that’s good to hear, that we have a step going in the right direction, but we really need representation on the council and we need representation throughout the whole Magnuson-Stevens Act and we really need that.

The charter industry represents probably the largest pie economically and we represent tourism and obviously our entire economy is based on tourism, number one. There’s a lot of other things that branch off of that. Commercial fishing, really, in a lot of ways, does branch off of that, because we’re feeding people fresh fish, not only all over the country, but also here. It’s a big deal.

A lot of these issues -- Again, we’ve got to -- The whole idea was to protect the economic resource and we’ve got to find a way to do that, as well as protect the resource. I think we need proper representation to do that. Really, basically, regarding all these issues, that’s about all I have to say.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you. We appreciate your comments.

Mr. Whitezell: My name is Philip Whitezell. I’ve been a yellowtail fisherman for about thirty years, a commercial fisherman, and I’m here to talk about the circle hooks. Yellowtails have never been able to be netted or trapped very well. They act differently than other types of fish. What you have when you put a piece of bait on a hook, yellowtails come up to it and they’ll feel it and spit it out.

15 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

If you don’t snatch them, you’re not going to catch them. They’re not the type of fish that you can do the activity like a circle hook would have to do. The fish would have to grab the hook and swim away with it and hook himself. It just doesn’t happen that way with a yellowtail. You have to snatch him. We’re using smaller and smaller and smaller hooks, so that they don’t feel them.

The weight of the hooks too, the hooks are very heavy. The circle hooks are real heavy and they aren’t going to float right and it’s just not going to work. On the groupers, the groupers is -- I have a problem with the line that’s drawn down around the Fort.

We have about six miles of water that’s considered the Gulf and it’s just an allotment problem or a boundary problem and I don’t know what can be done about it, but we do have that little six miles of water there that still seems to be the Atlantic and I think we’re going to get pulled into a lot of Gulf restrictions in that little six miles of water. To the north, we would be maybe as much as the state waters that are considered Gulf state waters. I think that would pretty much cover what most people that I know fish. That’s about all I’ve got to say.

I never catch any gags. We just don’t catch gags. We catch gags in Hawk Channel and they’re small and so we can’t stay there and that brings me up another thought about the hooks. If we were to stay there and fish for fish that we have to measure, just another thing on the hooks, we can’t stay there. There is no mortality on this fish.

When we’re catching undersized fish, we have to move. We just can’t stay there and so if you’re concerned about the mortality of the fish, we just don’t have many discards, if that’s what you’re considering the circle hooks to be, something that when you let go of the fish they’re going to live. It just doesn’t work for us. We have to take what we catch.

Yellowtails, when we’re targeting yellowtails, we catch mostly yellowtails. There’s very few -- Many blue runners, a few here and there, but we don’t catch much else but yellowtails. Mangrove snappers are approximately the same thing. They will spit a bait out if you don’t hook them. If they feel the line tugging on the side of their cheek, they’re going to spit it out and the same thing with the yellowtail. That’s about all I’ve got to say.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Phil. It’s good to finally see you at a meeting giving testimony, because I’ve always wanted -- I hear from you guys, especially on this issue, and we had talked a little bit off the record about the yellowtail down at the Fort and fishing out of Key West and that fine line between the South Atlantic and the Gulf and the Gulf Council has already implemented the circle hook rule.

Where you do yellowtail right now, just a rough guess, how much yellowtailing are you guys doing on the Gulf side right now and is that going to impact you, that circle hook rule, yellowtail fishing on the Gulf side of Key West?

Mr. Whitezell: If we go all the way to the Fort and we have to fish in that area, it’s a big problem, because the Gulf includes the north side of the Fort and the whole bank that is left to

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us, that’s not a no-take zone any longer, and what is called the River. We fish there -- Maybe some years I may fish there 25 percent of the time I’m in the Fort and other years maybe 10 percent and maybe in another year, maybe 50 percent of the time, but we’ve already gone all the way to the Fort and so it does seem to be part of the same reef system.

Where else in the Gulf do you have these giant peaks and the bottom raising sixty feet like that? It’s just all of a sudden that that’s now the Gulf of Mexico and it’s -- I don’t think the line is drawn in the right place and in the future, I think you’re going to have some conflict over counting of fish and everything else.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you. I appreciate it, Phil.

Mr. Hawkins: I’m Ken Hawkins. I live up in Hollywood, Florida and I own and operate a party boat that I’ve operated for thirty years. I’m speaking on the vermilion snapper. First of all, the closure that you’re considering here is actually in the height of our season and we’ve been -- This is basically what we fish for in those months.

Actually, this year, our king mackerel didn’t come in like they should have. They were to the north of us and they were to the south of us, but they didn’t come in here. For some reason, the vermilion snappers did and we were catching them from eight inches to almost twenty inches and just all you wanted to catch, basically, from sixty feet of water out to 300 feet of water.

We have wrecks and other rubble on the bottom out there that we’ve placed out there and there’s places there that you can catch an average vermilion snapper that’s two to four pounds, which are huge. It’s just like off the Carolinas. We have no problem coming in with a good catch of fish of vermilion snappers.

I don’t know where your assessment has come from, but somebody is way off. You just can’t shut us down because we didn’t catch no kingfish and what do we rely on? Triggerfish and vermilion snappers. That’s all we can catch and you take that away from us and what is the people paying forty-dollars to go out to catch? Nothing really, because we have plenty of triggerfish in our area, but most of them won’t make the twelve-inch limit, millions of them.

You stop the boat in places and all of a sudden you drop your lines in, which you’re trying to catch a king mackerel, and here comes a thousand triggerfish underneath your boat and eat every piece of bait off your hooks in a matter of seconds. It’s costing us money for ballyhoo extra and our fuel is up and everything is going up. You just can’t take our livelihood away from us. There’s got to be a median here.

I’ll tell you that consideration of instead of the ten vermilion snappers being separate, put them in our aggregate. That might help a little bit and those particular times you’re talking about closing it, lower it to eight fish or something like that and take two fish away. Let’s start somewhere where they are to come down or they are to go up and let’s do something. Don’t just shut us down. It’s a big impact and you’re going to hurt a lot of people here and we’re struggling now and you just can’t do it to us.

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Mr. Iarocci: Also, if you could touch base on the -- Because of the party boat issue, I would like you to touch base on the circle hook/j-hook issue also.

Mr. Hawkins: The same thing. Even vermilion snapper fishing, if you have enough time, you can stand there and let the fish eat the bait and everything, but people aren’t going to do that. They’re tourists and they’re going to feel a bite and they’re going to jerk. They’re not going to catch that fish and so we need a semi-circle hook or something. Don’t just go to a straight circle hook. We can live with a semi-circle.

Then, the size limit. We started out with no size limit and then we went to ten inches and went to eleven inches and went to twelve inches. We’ve been working with you guys all this time with that and we haven’t said anything or complained or anything, but now -- I’m sure you have to do something, but just don’t take it all away from us at once.

As far as size limit goes, I used to -- I’ve been catching vermilion snappers all my life and eight- inch vermilion snappers are breeding. You’ve got from eight inches to twelve inches now that are out there spawning and reproducing and I can’t see where the -- Then, every one that you catch under twelve inches is going back anyway and so I can’t see where there is a problem. I’ve said enough.

Mr. Iarocci: I appreciate your comments and taking the time to drive down here.

Mr. Wren: I own and operate a charterboat in Islamorada and I would like to thank you for having this close to my home, so I don’t have to travel. My name is Larry Wren and I own the Pirate’s Choice Charters in Islamorada, at Holiday Isle. You’re talking about closing down a significant portion of the year to my clients or for me to fish.

You’re looking at an industry that’s between I’m going to say a minimum of 30 percent to 75 percent down, with daily escalating prices with fuel. Tourism is suffering with the economy as a whole and you’re turning off what little bit of draw the tourists have in a peak time of the year.

I think there should be a more intelligent way to do this, rather than just slamming the door closed all at once, be it a less -- I’m all in favor of less bag limit per boat, per day, something along those lines, but just to blanket turn us off on some sort of a fish, on species of fish, I think it’s just wrong to do all at once. There should be a more -- There has to be a more intelligent way, not should.

As far as the j-hook and circle hook, the yellowtail population, I’ve heard in a meeting earlier downstairs, is actually stronger than what they thought and why are you going to make us switch to an ineffective way to catch the fish? I’m going to say so many of the fish strikes are already missed on a j-hook that to institute a circle hook for a yellowtail snapper is absolutely ludicrous and let’s stay with the j-hook. Again, I thank you.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you and I appreciate your comments.

Mr. Starling: My name is Lee Starling and I’m a commercial fisherman from Key West,

18 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

Florida. I’ve also been in the charter and dive industry for a long time and I try to look at it from different aspects. I appreciate the opportunity to testify here. First, fishing is a privilege. It’s not a right. I don’t know where people get this idea that it’s some god-given right that they’re supposed to get. It’s a privilege if you take care of your resource.

I’m going to jump right into it. The spawning season closure is incorrect. Our fish spawn during April and May here and what happens is we open up the season and also, we have a coinciding recreational season and we’re wiping out our spawning aggregations is what we’re doing.

It’s created a derby fishing atmosphere and we have fishermen from all over the south come down to the Keys and fish it. What day was the first? It was blowing like twenty-five or thirty and I shouldn’t have been out there, but I had to. I had to go compete, because there were other fishermen competing also. A lot more fishermen, recreational and commercial, are coming from Miami.

Mr. Iarocci: Are you addressing the Amendment 16 or the --

Mr. Starling: I’m talking about the grouper closure. More and more people come from Miami and other areas of Florida to fish our area and one of the things is because the Bahamas now have a lot stricter rules. People that were running over there are now coming down here and so I’m probably seeing about five times the amount of effort in the area that I fish in than I did before.

If you’re going to close the spawn, close it for everybody, recreational and for commercial, and what this will do is it will improve law enforcement capabilities and it will prevent poaching and it will prevent sales to restaurants. We don’t have enough law enforcement and they need to be able to step on a boat and say no, there’s no loophole here, because that’s what is occurring.

If you’re going to have a closure, no retention of catch by captain and crew and I don’t feel like there should be sale for charterboat captains either and I’ve got those licenses and I’m a charterboat captain, but I feel like that when I take someone fishing that I’m charging them a reasonable amount to go fishing and so I shouldn’t be supplementing my income.

Every time you hand out a Southeast Atlantic charterboat license, basically what you’re doing is you’re creating another commercial fishermen, because when they go do the fish market, they don’t say you can only sell your recreational limit, one person’s recreational limit. They buy what they bring in.

Also, what’s new now is unregulated species are being killed. There’s a big up in effort now in killing barracudas, jacks, not just grouper. Those are being sold also. They’re being taken to Miami and sold. Some people say there’s a reduction in effort because of fuel prices and I don’t feel that’s true at all. These people get on the internet, specific websites, and they communicate with each other and they combine their resources and what they do is there are more people on boats when they go out.

You’re not seeing two and three people on a boat, but you’re seeing six people on a boat and

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these people are very good. The skill of fishermen is greatly improved with GPS techniques. We’re in the age of information and there are no secrets anymore. They’ve got radar and stuff and they click on me and they interface their GPS with their radar and that little hole that took me a year to find, they get it in a few seconds.

They’re also taking fish that we traditionally would not take and so I actually feel like there’s more effort. There’s probably five times the effort in the Cosgrove/ Marquesas area than there used to be and a good deal of it is spear fishermen. Damn, I think I actually said it all.

Mr. Iarocci: Circle hooks?

Mr. Starling: Circle hooks, I’m for circle hooks, but not in the snapper yellowtail industry. As a matter of a fact, my big secret is a cane pole. I’ve got a cane pole and I take my hook and I pinch the barb down and I put a little skin on there and boy, I pull them and pull them and pull them. Then I’ve got a dehooker that I take the fish -- I never really handle the fish.

What I would like to see maybe is a dehooker that had two slots, to where when you knock the fish off, it fell in and then if you didn’t want to keep it, you could like pull a little lever or pull a piece of board away and it went into a five-gallon bucket of water or something, where you could toss it over and you actually wouldn’t have to handle that fish. That’s just an idea.

Mr. Iarocci: Let me ask you a question while you’re there about one of your earlier comments, I guess about the illegal sale of fish. You do know that a lot of the charter captains in this area -- We’re dealing with allocation right now on the South Atlantic Council and the Allocation Committee right now is looking at getting into the different sectors and allocating a certain amount of poundage say to the charter fishermen, to the commercial fishermen, and the recreational fishermen, headboat fishermen.

If a charterboat captain -- I just want to see what you say about this. If a charterboat captain has all the federal permits to sell fish and they are allocated their own percentage of the quota, do you think that would be -- Should they be allowed as a commercial fisherman, if that’s their allocation, to sell those fish or should they be held accountable as a charter captain, even though they do have the federal permits?

Mr. Starling: I feel if you’re on a charter that you should be a charter and if you’re out commercial fishing, you’re out commercial fishing.

Mr. Iarocci: If they’re out fishing with the permits without the charter, you feel it’s okay for them to sell?

Mr. Starling: Yes. If you’ve taken and had the foresight -- Years ago, I kept telling everybody that you need to get these permits, because they’re going to become limited access and everybody told me I was crazy. Now you need those permits and eventually -- There’s no young men in this room. I’m fifty and pretty soon -- I might have to start running charters myself. I don’t want to. I’m not good with the public, obviously. I just don’t have the patience, but at least I recognize that.

20 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

Mr. Iarocci: All right, Lee. I’ve got a bunch of people I’ve got to get on the table here. I appreciate your comments.

Mr. Starling: I would really like to see more law enforcement.

Mr. Iarocci: I know you’ve been saying that. Every time I see you, we always talk about that and we need --

Mr. Starling: West of Key West.

Mr. Iarocci: Yes, you guys need it. That’s the wild, wild west.

Ms. Houghton: My name is Nicola Houghton and I’m here to speak about the grouper Amendment 16. Unlike a lot of the men that are here, I’m in a little bit different area. I actually work in the recreational area, but my husband is a commercial fisherman and so I see both sides of the coin.

First of all, I don’t believe -- I’ve been diving down here for ten years and that is my primary means of recreational fishing, is spearfishing. I don’t think that there’s a proper assessment of the amount of grouper there or what grouper are there, because I can tell you that I went down on a dive yesterday, in around a hundred feet, approximately, and there was twelve black grouper there and all well within legal size and two big jewfish and they were all there.

There’s plenty of fish there. I believe there has been some talk with people about as far as when they actually do spawn. Commercial fishermen gut their fish all the time, before they ever take them to the fish house. If it was told to them that they need to report when or when they did not find roe in a fish, to get a better idea of when they do actually spawn, I’m sure they would be more than happy to tell you the size of the fish, the species of the fish, and if they had or had not any roe in them, just to get it more accurate, so when and if you do have a closure that it’s done at a more appropriate time.

I do believe that a small closure, not a four-month closure, but a small closure -- I know small closures have always been done commercially, or at least has been done commercially for quite a few years, but I believe if there is a closure for a spawn, it should also be done recreationally, but I think it needs to be done at an appropriate time, when it actually is more predetermined that there is that time that those species are spawning.

I also do believe that there needs to be an assessment of the goliath grouper, or the jewfish, because there’s plenty of them. I can tell you that I’ve been scared out of the water by them. They can be fairly aggressive if they want to be and so there are more than enough there. Maybe a lottery or something like that and I’m sure that would be a good way for the council to be able to gain money and it would be a way to fund regulations and stuff like that and I’m sure most people would be interested in signing up for something that would be able to give them the opportunity to nab a jewfish.

21 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

As far as the circle hooks versus j-hooks, most fishing, as far as hook and line fishing, I’ve done is mostly for yellowtail and I’ve pulled the hook out of the mouth of a yellowtail more than enough times to know that even with a j-hook it’s not a guaranteed bite. I’m not familiar with circle hooks. I’ve never really fished with them, but I know that I can miss hooking them on a j- hook and so if it’s harder on a circle hook, then I’ll just never catch one. That’s about all I have to say.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you very much.

Mr. Kogan: My name is Owen Kogan and I’m a recreational fisherman. I’ve fished ever since I was in my early teens and I’m in my mid-fifties now. I’ve seen the fishing in south Florida go from bad to worse each year and I’m speaking about on the recreational end. I used to commercial fish years ago, but there was no future in it. I’m an engineer and I go out trophy fishing and whether it’s snapper or grouper or any other large game fish, to me they’re all fun to catch.

Let me get into one thing. You’re talking about on snapper grouper all the laws you want to put in place and let’s have what’s called the must-haves before the like-to-gets and off of Key Largo, they’ve got a scam going on right now, where they’ve got outlawed fish traps, which are outlawed, I believe, everywhere now, in state and federal waters and am I right?

Mr. Iarocci: Right.

Mr. Kogan: There’s no reason to have that out there. If they’re putting it out there, that’s a blatant breaking of the law and if they take it beyond state waters and federal waters, it violates Lacey Act and if they disguise it as something else, it’s conspiracy and ongoing criminal enterprise and there’s nowhere for it at all and you would agree?

Mr. Iarocci: Let me ask you something. Are you talking about the wire-sided lobster traps?

Mr. Kogan: I’m talking about the traps that are big that are light-weight with the chutes in them and I’ll tell you how they’re being deployed. They’re not lobster traps. What they have done now is on every deep water -- I fish a lot of stuff off Key Largo, off Elliott Key, Ocean Reef and I fish in depths of average 180 out to 300 feet and every large wreck, except the ones off Ocean Reef -- Whistle Buoy, which all the sailfish fishermen fish, every time lobster season is closed and there’s no buoys out there and I get gags and I get blacks and I get muttons.

As soon as the lobster season starts, every one of these areas have a set of buoys on it and some have a sea number engraved in the buoy and some don’t, which by law, you’re supposed to. If it’s a lobster trap, you’re supposed to have a federal number on it. This is all in 200 feet of waters, in federal waters just about out there, and as soon as the lobster season opens -- It’s like one of these cartoons where the whistle blows and all the game disappears and all the snapper and groupers are gone.

Years ago, I used to use what’s called the sea shepherd approach. Are you familiar with sea shepherd? They go after -- They say we’re going to take the law into our own hands and they go

22 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

destroy gillnets and other illegal stuff and harass whalers and stuff like that.

Before they started doing this new scam, I was able, with a chain grapple, to cleanse areas of fish traps, after the 1990s. I just cut the lid off and opened up and cut it loose and set it back down and they put more of it out and I dragged it up and got rid of it. Now they do it in a way where I can’t destroy it. What they’ve done -- If you want to ask me to make a picture of it, I’ve got a picture right here of what they have.

That’s an illegal buoy. There’s no numbers in it and there’s no registration on it. You’ve got coordinates on it. Here’s the coordinates and a GPS and every one of the deeper wrecks off of Elliott Key in Key Largo, after lobster season, has these on them and they deploy a gang of also deepwater bottom. We’re talking about depths of 200 to 300 feet, maybe 180 out to 300.

They deploy a gangline of lobster traps and each lobster trap weighs maybe eighty pounds of cement and it may have a dozen traps on it and then they tie another rope with another dozen wire mesh fish traps and now this is so heavy -- I don’t have a trap puller and they do it deliberately. They pull them at night out there. My friend with night-vision goggles ran up on them with his lights off, but we didn’t want to get shot at and so we left.

Mr. Iarocci: I’m going to stop you. I will bring this up to enforcement. We have to talk about this, but we’re taking comments on Amendment 16. I know this is an enforcement issue, but we’ve got a lot of people here that want to speak to the amendments right now and you’ve made your point on this. I’ll take this to enforcement and I’ll talk to some of the fishermen up here in this area and talk about this, a few that are here at this meeting right now, but have you got any comments to make about circle hooks, j-hooks, or the four-month closure?

Mr. Kogan: Let me go back about the circle hooks. In the recreational fishermen, there is a middle ground between a type of j-hook, which I don’t call the big heavy commercial kind. Gamakatsu makes some and Owner makes some and Gamakatsu. They’re like a slightly offset I call a high-tech Mutu hook. These are premium and I don’t think it’s commercial gear.

Game fishermen use a -- It’s a premium quality hook and I find for snapper and grouper in deep water, especially on headboat, I would hate to have to use j-hooks. I couldn’t catch any fish on j- hooks in the deep water and these also -- I just put the rod in the rod holder and wait for the rod to bend over.

Mine are like 6/0 to 8/0 and I like a Mutu style. It’s like a little bent, but a little shorter. It’s a very strong high-tensile hook and they’re expensive as hell, but also, I do another form of fishing called deep jigging, which jig and ballyhoo and I also do it artificially in tournaments and not last year, but the year before, I won Grand Master Champion, Master Angler, on a Key West fishing trip, four fishing trips off of non-chartered boats with my friends, and I got five all-time records and three winners out of that. That’s never been done before. That was one of the jigs I make and most of the jigs were artificial and some were a jig and ballyhoo combination, where I fish for everything, but they have j-hooks on them.

Mr. Iarocci: Let me ask you another question pertaining to the j-hook and circle hook and that’s

23 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

what I wanted to talk about, because I was talking today with Mark Robson from Florida DEP and we’re talking about if this does go through -- It is passed in the Gulf with the circle hook issue and pertaining to -- You just brought up about jigging and have you ever experimented with what you would do with a jig with a circle hook? I know some of the jig companies are looking to do that and have you done that personally or what is your opinion of a jig with a circle hook?

Mr. Kogan: I’ve done a hybrid system, where I used what I called baiting jigs and instead of jig and ballyhoo, if we’re fishing for very large groupers and sometimes I’ve ended up with too many goliath groupers on there in deep water. They really take the pleasure out of fishing if your back and arm knows about it, but I’ve taken a big jig and I’ve put a wire coming out of the back of the jig or I’ve put a swivel on a jig hook.

Most of the time it’s a swivel and a jig hook with a stinger rig and I rubber band that around live bait with a jig hook through its lips and I let that thing down there and yes, the circle hooks work great when they grab the bait end, but it’s not that flat, heavy, ugly circle hook. It’s one of these Gorilla type Mutu type high-tensile strength, but it’s like a 10/0 size.

They work great for that, but the problem is -- I don’t use that rig too often. I’m using it for big black grouper. I get so many jewfish on it or goliath or whatever you want to call them today and they are no fun in deep water.

Venting of deepwater fish, I’ve got a real bone to pick with this. I’ve done my own experiments a few years ago and my experiments consisted of a two-liter soft drink bottle filled with boat foam. I made a little buoy with a piece of fiberglass, a little flag on it. I took about a hundred yards of leftover super braid and wound that on there, so the whole rig could be made relatively cheaply and a cordless drill with one of those line strippers to wind it up.

I had taken small, undersized released fish -- Sometimes I had fish that were over my personal bag limit and so they were bigger and so I let them go. I vented them according to all your instructions with a real venting tool and not with some bootleg tool and then I go ahead and put a very small hair hook in their lip and send them back down while they’re still alive and have the buoy unravel and the buoy will float there.

In depths of 120 feet of water, the buoy moves around and almost all of them survived. Then when I go to pull it up, I pull it up and the little hook comes out. It pulls out of the fish and the fish swims away. After about 200 feet of water, I have maybe, after an hour, one to two of them actually -- About 10 to 20 percent actually are still showing any sign of life at all and that’s not much.

Now, out of that -- Sometimes this fish will be eaten and the whole rig just takes off. That’s not -- I don’t know what happened there, but at depths of 240 on out, in a half hour, every one is stone cold dead when it swims back down. I watch the buoy and I bring it up and it’s just limp. It’s dead.

What I was going to say is in commercial fishing -- Yellowtail, let’s be environmentally correct

24 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

on trying to steer the industry towards an environmentally sustainable fishery that brings a good profit with low overhead. The days of these large ships going off the Gulf of Mexico and laying longlines and fish traps --

Mr. Iarocci: You’re going to have to wrap up now, because we’re going on and on and just wrap it up and I’ll have to get the next speaker.

Mr. Kogan: Really quickly, a pan fish fishery closer to shore, with high fuel costs, where the fish are not being bloated from being brought out of deep water, I think is a much more environmentally friendly and easier and less overhead and high profit fishing out of a small boat than going for deep water and throwing back fish dead.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you for your comments.

Mr. Kogan: By the way, that stuff, I’ll be glad to go on boats as a guide when this stuff starts showing up again. You can give me a call and I’ll go on boats and have a trap puller and we’ll go out and find some of this stuff.

Mr. Iarocci: I’ll get this to the marine patrol. We can give it to the Coast Guard tonight.

Mr. Kogan: It’s federal waters. The Coast Guard doesn’t have trap pullers on their boats.

Mr. Iarocci: We’ll get it taken care of. Thank you.

Mr. Roydhouse: I’m a fisherman and I’m addressing Number 18 and my name is Paul Roydhouse. I have a couple of charterboats and two headboats in Fort Lauderdale and I’ve been snapper fishing for vermilions consistently for over twenty years and I have never seen them be better or be bigger than they have been the last three or four years in our area.

They’re migratory, because they come and go, but I do a lot of snowy grouper fishing or I used to. I haven’t in a long time, because of the -- I’m not going to go out for one fish, but when I used to do it, I wouldn’t even fish for snappers unless all the baits were gone. When I first started fishing for snappers when I was a kid, all the vermilions were four or five per pound and I found twenty years ago, when I was fishing them pretty consistently on a couple charterboats, that we were catching them a half-pound per fish, two per pound.

This last year, we were catching them up to four and five pounds and I’ve never seen fish that big in this area. I’ve seen them in the Bahamas, in deep water, that big. The vermilion snapper fishery in my area has never been better than it has the last two or three years.

This last year, October, November, December, January, even February, there were very few kingfish to catch. They all stayed up north, in Fort Pierce or north of that, and so there was no fish for us to fish for except for triggerfish and vermilions. If we didn’t fish for those, the impact on the reef fish would have been a lot heavier.

That fish kind of saved our fishery for those few months, so the people could actually catch

25 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

something. We didn’t devastate them. The people I fish are tourists and they don’t really know what they’re doing, but they do like to catch fish and if they closed that for four months, it would really kill my business.

Mr. Iarocci: If I may, I’ll bring it up again. Circle hooks compared to j-hooks, how will that affect your business?

Mr. Roydhouse: For snappers, I’ve got no problem with circle hooks. They’ll take it and groupers, the same thing. I’ve been fishing snappers and groupers with circle hooks for twenty years and so it won’t affect me, but we do use a lot of j-hooks for kingfish and we’re going to get bycatch with the j-hooks, the same thing.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you.

Mr. Sidorski: I’m Raymond Sidorski and I’ve been fishing my whole life. I never did anything else, except for I washed some dishes in high school there for a little while, but that didn’t pay off too good. First, I’m going to talk about the circle hooks. We’ve heard the same story over and over by all these hand liners and yellowtailers.

It’s something that we know isn’t going to work, because as soon as a yellowtail senses there’s a hook or a line attached, the fish lets it go or it alerts the rest of the school and the school goes down. If you were to let a fish run like they wanted to do and pull back slowly, the predators and everything else are alerted to that and it causes the predators to come up and eat your fish and so it’s just something that’s not going to happen for us commercial guys.

Recreationally, they need to catch their couple of fish and I’m sure they can catch a couple, but like my mate says -- He’s a new mate, but he’s been tournament fishing for sailfish and he’s put all kinds of money into the world sailfish thing a couple of weeks ago and they had ten fish on, with the circle hooks.

Not one fish did they get after that week with that circle hook and he’s so pissed off at the circle hook. If I had brought him here, he might have exploded, because you miss ten fish on my boat and that means you have to go get another job somewhere else, because you cannot miss ten fish. It’s just impossible. We don’t miss a fish for a day at a time. After catching 200 or 300 fish in that one day, not one fish is lost.

When you check my catch record for the week, I won’t have one pound of small yellowtail, after a week. After catching 2,500 pounds of fish, there won’t be one pound of small. Small is under a one-pound fish and so every fish that I have caught for a week is all over a one-pound fish and when I do dehook, you can’t even see it. It happens so fast.

I’ll catch a fish and I’ll look at him as he’s going through the air and I’ll grab my dehooker and I’ll go and he’ll be back overboard. He’s not even touched and he’s not even -- He’s gone and as soon as I see a school of fish come up, I’ll assess the school and I’ll say all right, I can fish on these for a week or a day and if there are any smalls in it, I’ll say no. If I catch one of them small -- If those big fish don’t run them small ones out, I leave to the next spot.

26 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

Then sometimes the tide will change and bingo, I’ll be up into the Gulf, later in the day. I’ll be fishing in the Gulf and catching the shit out of them and all of a sudden, bingo, the wind comes up crazy and I’ll run into the Fort and the wind goes away and something happens, I’ll fish in the South Atlantic for the rest of the day.

Day after day, for weeks at a time, for the last twenty-five years, I’ve been doing the same thing and you tell me when it’s time for me to snatch back on that line, do I got to let him go or -- It’s impossible. When that fish grabs my line, I’m going to do the same thing that I’ve done a thousand times a day every day for my whole life and so there is no maybe we can do this or maybe if it will happen. It’s there and it’s bred into me and that’s what I have to say about circle hooks.

It’s not something that’s going -- That hook was made for longline and for electronic gear and for when that fish gets on there and when he spins up that he won’t cut that hook out and he’ll be dragged in and it was made for deep water and for it to hook themselves when that gear is laying on the bottom. We know that’s what that’s for.

On to the next is the gag grouper. I’ll fish in the wintertime for groupers and part of the day I’ll fish for grouper, until they stop biting, and then I’ll fish for yellowtail and I’ll have a catch of sometimes a thousand grouper for the week and I’ll have a thousand yellowtail or sometimes it will be better, 1,500 or 2,000 grouper for the week.

After all of these years, I can say that I’ve probably only caught ten gags each year or less and this year, not one. Sometimes I’ll fish for the whole grouper season and catch one gag and that’s after catching hundreds of different types of species of fish day in and day out, from morning to night, with every kind of bait. I use every kind, natural and unnatural and I don’t even want to tell you what kind, because then you wouldn’t believe it. It’s just every kind of bait and every kind of area and all kinds of depths and I never see a gag. It’s not something in the last twenty- five years that I’ve seen come and go. It’s just not something that -- It’s not our area. That’s it.

Mr. Stiglitz: I’m Richard Stiglitz, a commercial fisherman in Monroe County for the last thirty- eight years. I’ve been fishing longer than the South Atlantic Council was put in place and you’ve been regulating us and telling us for however long you’ve been in place that the fish is going to get better.

Every year, all you keep doing is trying to take more and more away and I don’t understand how you can come up with stock assessments that you’ve told us year after year after year they’re going to get better and year after year, every year, you come up and -- Now the groupers are bad and the snappers are bad and they’re trying to take more kingfish away from us. They’re fixing to try to take lobsters away from us.

Mr. Iarocci: Richard, if I could, the way this is run, you have to -- We’re focusing on the different -- I made the comment, but you were out of the room. If you’re speaking to snapper grouper, like say the circle hook or the four-month closure -- You’re speaking to Amendment 16?

27 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

Mr. Stiglitz: I’m talking about the grouper and I don’t understand how year after year this council keeps coming up with numbers to just keep taking stuff away from us. Obviously, as far as I’m concerned, you guys ain’t doing your job, because you’ve told me twenty-five or thirty years ago, when this council started, if we went along with all your stuff that our fishing would be better and we would get stuff back.

I have yet to get one pound of anything back, not one pound of any fish that we catch down here in south Florida that you’ve told me and promised me -- I know this council didn’t, but the original council promised this stuff to us and now you want to take more fish away from us. I think your math somewhere is going awry somewhere and I don’t think that we need a closure on the groupers.

I think that somehow you all need to do your math better, because everybody is saying we’re catching plenty of fish and I don’t know how you just keep coming up with that. Then I would like to talk about the circle hooks. I do a lot of yellowtail fishing and you’ve seen what Rick and Jimmy have showed you and all.

Circle hooks have their place and I think the majority of the fishermen that fish recreational and commercial -- When circle hooks are feasible, they use them anyway. Don’t force something down some people’s throat that we can’t live with.

I’m watching that yellowtail eat my bait and 95 percent of the yellowtail I catch, he’s hooked right there in the corner of the mouth with a straight hook and I throw him on that dehooker and I have him off the hook in a second and I probably could go right back and catch him again. With a circle hook, I physically have to handle every fish I catch and it’s just -- We’re catching yellowtails in the daytime and we have about a three-hour window to catch our fish, in the mornings. After that, then they start spreading out and they get finicky, but we catch our meat in a three-hour period.

If I have to physically handle every fish, you’re going to cut my production probably about 50 percent. A j-hook, to me, is a necessity. I’ve used some -- I’ve tried the circle hooks with a cane pole, like Rick was saying, and it don’t work. When I watch him eat it and I lift up the pole, the hook just flies right back out of his mouth.

When the fish are back, I’ll put that little circle hook on my spinning rod and it works, but I gut hook just as many fish with my circle hook as I do a j-hook, when I’m floating it way back, but it’s a -- 99 percent of my fish I’m catching right here at the back of the boat. Thank you.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Richard.

Mr. Turner: My name is Rick Turner and I’m a commercial fisherman for snapper and grouper out of Marathon, Florida. What my business partner, James Paskiewicz, stated earlier about the gag grouper, I think there does need to be more accountability with the shallow-water groupers, with the recreational sector.

28 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

We pretty much report everything that we catch. The council knows and the Fisheries knows what the commercial sector catches. I think it’s purely speculation what the recreational sector catches and from the people that I talked to, the recreational sector is getting better educated and better equipped, with more bottom machines and technology and numbers and plotters that give you where every piece of rock on the bottom is. They don’t have to have experience any more to go find these fish.

I think a lot more is being caught by the recreational sector than needs to be and I think that maybe a tagging system would be something that would be beneficial to the entire industry and the species.

Speaking on the j-hook/circle hook deal, I’ve brought a dehooker that -- This is a unit that we use here and first of all, let me tell you what’s going to happen with this circle hook. This is actually a modified circle hook. It’s not really the Japanese circle hook. It’s not a true circle hook. What’s going to happen with about 90 percent of the fish that I catch is I look at the fish eat the hook and I watch him eat it and at certain times of the year, I’m going to put a piece of bait on this and I’m going to drop it in the water right in front of me and I’m going to watch the fish eat it and he’s going to be looking at me looking at him and it’s going to go in his mouth and I’m going to pull it out, because he’s not turning away.

He’s going to stay looking at me and eating the chum coming out of my bag and he’s not going to turn sideways and he’s not going to swim away. He’s going to wait for another piece of food to come to him. I’m going to pull it out of his mouth and he’s going to eat it again. I’m going to pull it out of his mouth and he’s going to eat it again.

Secondly, after that being inefficient, the dehooker -- The way it works is gravity. A j-hook is straight down. We put the fish in here and pull down on it and the weight of the fish is going to hold it in and we hold it down like this and the fish drops into the fish box. I don’t know if you can see that or not. We just pull down like this.

We pull straight down and that fish falls off, usually with his own wiggling. With a circle hook, if we put that in there, especially a true circle hook, it would never come off. We put the circle hook in there and that fish has to come forward, towards the piece of metal, which means we would have to physically handle every fish by hand to take it off of the hook, which would be totally inefficient. It would basically cut our catch probably by a tenth, in the time it would take to dehook the fish.

Also, the fact that it would take forever to hook a fish if you’re looking at him. It would work okay if you have to drift them way back and you don’t see the fish eat it, but 90 percent of the fish that I catch, I won’t hook with this, because he’s not going to turn away. He’s going to stay in my chum slick and look at me and I’m going to pop it right out of his mouth and he’s going to eat it again and I’m going to pop it out of his mouth again and then I’m probably going to get mad, because he’s going to laugh at me.

That’s pretty much what I’ve got to say. I can lend this to you if you want, if you want to take this with you to a meeting with all the rest of the people, so they can see it better. We’re not

29 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

using this right now and I can leave this with you, if you would like.

Mr. Iarocci: Rick, I think what we’re going to do is eventually, like I talked about earlier, is start putting some kind of a documentation together and if we could talk about, like I said earlier, getting on Richard’s boat and getting on a couple of charterboats and doing a comparison, either videotaping it or doing that and showing that.

If we get a chance to present this to the council, and we’ll have the meeting in Orlando, to show the difference and that hopefully we’ll be able to show on this video, but we’ll talk about that later and I appreciate you getting that and making that comparison, because, like I said, show me has a whole lot more than trying to explain something to that effect.

Mr. Turner: The circle hook definitely has a place in some fisheries, for sure, but for the yellowtail, it’s just not -- The yellowtail in particular, that’s what I’m more concerned about than anything. That’s a large part of my income and it doesn’t really have the place to be made the only hook we can use.

Mr. Iarocci: Got you covered and thank you, Rick. I appreciate it.

Mr. Warrilow: My name is Richard Warrilow and I also commercial fish for yellowtail and grouper. I would like to first comment on the circle hooks. You’ve had a lot of very good comments. I really enjoyed Rick’s presentation. The circle hook has a place in fishing.

I believe it will work great on your grouper and it works great on big fish. I see no problem with requiring it on grouper, dolphin, king mackerel, sailfish, stuff like this that I have no problem with. The problem I have is with yellowtail snapper. The yellowtail snapper, you take a circle hook that’s half again the size for the size number and if you take a number 4 hook, it’s going to be half again as big as a number 4 hook.

It’s not a viable hook for a yellowtail and in regards to that, I’ll address the pliers, the blunt-nose pliers, aspect of it. You take a fish that’s hooked deep and you get in there with a pair of needle- nose pliers and there isn’t a fisherman out here that doesn’t do it. They do their best to save that fish. If you hook a fish with j-hook, I can get him out, because, again, Rick and the rest of them, they’re de-barbing their hooks. You can’t de-barb the circle hook to make it work any better.

It hooks deep and you’re -- The biggest problem with the blunt-nose pliers and the circle hook is that the small fish -- You take an eight-inch yellowtail and you’ve got a circle hook in him and first of all, you can’t dehook him. You’ve got to hold him tight to keep him from finning you and you’re trying to take the circle hook out with a pair of blunt-nose pliers and you’ve got one of two things. If he’s not dead when he hits the water from being squeezed so hard from trying to get your hook out and you’re going to take blunt-nose pliers that you can’t get down and unhook him with and what’s going to happen?

Two days from now, he’s going to die, because he’s got no lips. You’re just going to rip the lips off the fish and throw him back in the water, because now he’s taking away from your livelihood and now we’re starting to mess with a nursery fish and that, to me, says ten years from now, even

30 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

though we have no problem with yellowtail, that ten years from now, because the council decides that they ought to go with the Gulf and put circle hooks in, we are going to have a problem with yellowtail.

Why follow them into a dark hole? I don’t agree with it at all. If they want to use them for grouper and stuff like that, I will go 100 percent behind them, but let’s not get into the small snappers. Mutton snapper, they handle a circle hook great, but not the yellowtail and not the mangrove. Let’s use it in the areas that it’s meant to be used in and let’s not make an area or create an area because everybody thinks a circle hook is great.

Let’s get into -- I won’t go any further with that one. One of the problems, and it happened when we just went through the LAPP program and all these other things, is you’re looking at addressing a problem with grouper from North Carolina and South Carolina all the way down and why doesn’t the council take the southern part of Florida and I don’t care if they cut it off at Miami or Fort Lauderdale or they cut it off in the Keys and say okay, let’s take the easy zone and create it and take some of these regulations, where we don’t have a problem with gag grouper, and why should we have to be addressed with them?

Why do we have to shotgun these groupers and say we’ve got a problem with gags over here and so we’re going to shotgun every shallow-water grouper out there and say, okay, we don’t have a problem with these other grouper, but we don’t want any problem with them and so we’re just going to shotgun everything and that, to me, is wrong.

If you’ve got a problem with gag grouper, close gags year-round and who cares? If you’ve got a problem, let’s clear up the problem, but don’t create a problem. If you want to reduce the limit or if you want to say, okay, as it is right now it’s five grouper per person and if you’ve got four people on the boat, you’ve got twenty groupers and why not say two per person and a maximum of four per boat or whichever is less?

There’s got to be a compromise here, to where we’re not getting into all the different groups of grouper, just because we have a problem with gags. I think a little bit of thought is all it’s going to take.

The closing from January through April is ludicrous. Several of the gentlemen have said it and the one woman, especially. You go to any of these markets and you pull a grouper in January and February and you don’t find any roe at all. Yes, when you get into March, late March and April and the first part of May, you’re going to find roe.

Let’s deal, again, where the problem lies. It’s not in January and February and so why deal with that? All you’re doing is hurting the commercial side of it. Leave it alone or I can’t give you an answer to the problem, but I just think that you’re just making a problem where no problem exists.

The other people have talked about enforcement and I’m 100 percent for enforcement. I don’t care if they had to raise the tag limits for all people in the State of Florida or whatever to twenty- five dollars a year so that they can put more enforcement on the water. Enforcement does not

31 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

hurt the man that’s doing what is right. It only hurts the people that are not.

On the Gulf side, they came out with the GPS tracking system because they had some people fishing in the illegal waters. Why did they punish everybody that had a commercial license in the Gulf of Mexico because of one or two people? That’s all I’ve got to say.

Mr. Iarocci: I really do appreciate your comments. You’ve made some great comments on both sides and like I said, that closure, I think it’s going to affect both the charter/recreational and commercial and I think everybody is speaking the same way, but one thing I want to address is when you did mention about the LAPP program and the person is in the room right now, Bruce Irwin, who sits on the board.

We had brought it up at the meeting up in Georgia about the regional approach, what you’re talking about, with snapper grouper and looking at breaking it and doing a quota or a regional area when we deal with it and why should we be dealing with it and everybody asks me, Tony, why are we dealing with what’s going on in North Carolina and off of Key West or off of Islamorada and that’s got a lot of validity and I’m glad you said that on the record, coming from somebody that’s in tune and educated to what’s going on and it is an approach that the council is researching and thank you for your comments.

Mr. Zimmerman: My name is Scott Zimmerman and I’m the Executive Director of the Florida Keys Commercial Fishermen’s Association. I’m also an alternate to Jeff Cramer on the Sanctuary Advisory Council and a member of the Snapper Grouper Advisory Panel with the South Atlantic Council.

First, I would like to start with Amendment 16, specifically their reference to economic and social impacts of the amendment. In defining MSY and OY for gag, I point out that, in quote, it does not alter the current harvest or use of the resource. Going on to social impacts, defining MSY, OY, or MSST for a species or a species complex would not cause direct social impacts, because it would not place specific controls on the amount or manner in which the resources are harvested.

This amendment points out that economic and social impacts of the rule will not alter the current harvest and the use of the resource. I have a bone to pick with that. We’re talking about a four- month fishing closure and eliminating j-hooks. How does that not affect fishermen on a socioeconomic level? That’s my question and as you define MSY and OY, you must also address the economies which are impacted by the proposed rule at the same exact time.

You are reducing the amount of fish to protect fisheries that are socially dependent on the outcome of this rule and the councils need to be more transparent about how they’re addressing these social and economic impacts. In addition to the impacts on fishermen and the companies that depend on them, there are downstream effects on tourism and the fish houses that export product to land-locked states and they are going to be affected also.

I’m going to move on to spawning stock closures, because of the spawning stock. In Australia, the first coral reef finfish closure for 2007 took place in October and fishermen were reminded

32 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

that the fish were off limits during a nine-day period.

The first annual spawning season closures for coral reef finfish were from October 4th to midnight of October 13th, coinciding with the new moon. There are two more closures later in that year, from midnight November 2nd to midnight November 11th and from midnight December 2nd to midnight December 11th.

If you do a web search for spawning closures -- If you do a web search and put in “spawning closures and fish” you will see an overwhelming amount of information coming from Australia, because they believe they’ve had success closing fisheries to protect spawning stocks. If this is the case, then why are fisheries not taking lessons from other tropical reef fish fisheries? Why are we managing -- The way that we’re managing spawning closures are dramatically different in the United States than what the Australians are doing.

Our reef fish -- The question is, are our reef fish fisheries so dramatically different than the ones that are in Australia? I don’t believe that they are. The belief is that all reef fish congregate at a time when they receive a variety of physical, chemical, social, and biological cues. These closures, these ten-day closures, are based, as I said earlier, on a photoperiod cycle, on a lunar cycle.

This four-month spawning closure that they’re proposing here in the South Atlantic has nothing to do with -- It cannot be compared in any way to the process that they’ve implemented in Australia and that’s very questionable, because with an aquaculture background, that’s how we spawn fish, is on a photoperiod cycle and on a temperature cue.

The fact that they’re closing down this fishery for four months I really don’t think has a scientific basis. For years, size limits have been used to strengthen the overall fecundity of a stock and its capacity to rebuild itself and seasonal closures have also strengthened the capacity for fisheries to rebuild themselves and so there’s widespread disagreement in the usefulness of continuous spawning closures over a four-month period, because the current management system, closing the fishery when the quota is reached and the size limits, both outweigh the long-term benefits of making a spawning closure of that length.

Mr. Iarocci: Let me address that. It’s not a spawning closure.

Mr. Zimmerman: That’s how it’s referenced.

Mr. Iarocci: I know, but it’s dealing with all the issues with the closure and it’s not just dealing with the spawning.

Mr. Zimmerman: Then they’re taking advantage of a terminology of a science that’s not exact or not even close to being at any forefront of fisheries management. The science of protecting spawning closures sounds great, but when applying the practice, it’s not as simple as closing down a fishery for four months.

Closing access to a stock when it’s spawning must be researched in terms of area, spawning

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stock biomass, and seasonality. Population dynamics and other environmental criteria must be applied on a micro level to address reef line spawning events. Currently, the science does not support the council’s application of spawning closures.

I’m going to move on to circle hooks here. The problem I have with the use of circle hooks in commercial fisheries, especially yellowtail, because I’ve spent a bit of time on those boats, is that there have been no studies that prove that fishermen will be equally productive at putting product onboard as they are with j-hooks.

Yellowtail, which is not undergoing overfishing, is fished commercially by bringing fish to the surface. Circle hooks are great for bottom fishing in deepwater, but not for yellowtail fishing. Circle hooks in the yellowtail fishery is an issue of time and money. With the cost of gas being predicted to increase, chum will increase too and the competition with imported products, often mislabeled and sold as snapper and grouper, the Fishermen’s Association cannot willfully give the council its blessings on this effort.

You need more than decreased mortality studies to convince commercial fishermen that circle hooks are going to allow them to make ends-meet. We’re asking that the council works with industry and documents the economic feasibility of using circle hooks in the commercial yellowtail fishery.

In conclusion, I believe that the potential for a black market in this fishery, because of a four- month closure, is ridiculous and based on scientifically flawed basis. A circle hook is not going to work for yellowtail snapper. It makes more sense in other fisheries. The fact that they’re working at break-neck speeds to fulfill Magnuson Act requirements and mandates sets the stage for horrible assessments and red grouper in the Gulf is a great example of that.

Commercial fishermen are stewards of the marine environment and there’s no doubt in my mind about that and this association is doing everything it is empowered to educate commercial fishermen and hold them accountable for sustainable practices.

Finally, I just wanted to make this very clear to the council, that I remain unbiased about limited access privilege programs and individual fishing quota ideas, even though it may not have come out that way in the council meetings. I have to remain unbiased. This is an idea and it needs to be soused out and I thank you and I look forward to the meeting in June.

Mr. Leopold: My name is Steve Leopold and I’m a charter fisherman in Islamorada and I also represent the Islamorada Charterboat Association. I’ve been a charterboat fisherman for twenty years here in the Keys and I would like to see the charterboat recreational designation divided into two separate designations.

I oppose a closure on grouper for the following reason. Our charter businesses are greatly affected by the word “no”. A prospective client does not want to hear the word “no”. I agree and support bag limits and size limits. I would like to see a slot limit considered on the grouper and not a closure. The large breeding stock must be protected.

34 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008

By closing the grouper fishery, the pressure on other reef dwellers might become a problem in the future. I also support the use of circle hooks for all fish species except yellowtail snapper and also, the traditional dehooking process is impossible with circle hooks. I’ve tried myself, in reading this the other day when we yellowtail fished, to catch yellowtail with circle hooks. It’s not very easy and also, the dehooking process is impossible and I think you’ll be doing a big damage to the fish by making it mandatory to use circle hooks.

I would also, in the charterboat/headboat designation, I would like to see the size limit of yellowtail increased to fourteen inches. I think a twelve-inch yellowtail shouldn’t be killed and with that, I’m finished and thank you very much for allowing me to speak.

Mr. Iarocci: Let me ask you, Steve -- That’s the first time I’ve heard that and that’s something to look at. A fourteen-inch yellowtail, that would be across the board, both recreational and charter and commercial?

Mr. Leopold: I can’t speak for the commercial fishermen. If that hurts their business, I wouldn’t defend that, but I think for -- I have that size limit and actually, we’re a little bit higher than that. There’s your no, but for charter fishing, I don’t like to see a twelve-inch yellowtail put up on the dock.

Mr. Iarocci: Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it.

Mr. Hill: I’m Tom Hill with Key Largo Fisheries and actually, my little talk was really kind of going between the two of them a little bit. As far as the grouper and the snapper, back in 1995, when we banned the nets, one of the outcries was that as soon as we ban the nets that there will be fish jumping in the boat and there will be fish everywhere and we won’t have to worry and so a lot of the guys abandoned their nets and they -- If they decided to stay in the industry somehow, they moved from one portion of the industry to the other and they all grabbed hook and line and began to fish and now we’re about thirteen years later and now we’re looking at dissolving that as well and there’s a major concern, on my part, for that situation.

Transcribed By: Graham Transcription Service, Inc. May 27, 2008

Council Member – Tony Iarocci

Staff Member – Julie O’Dell

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