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 2 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008 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 3 Snapper Grouper Amendment 16 Public Hearing Key Largo, FL May 7, 2008 and fish that are much larger than the norm, in some cases as much as six pounds.