Greater Amberjack
The preliminary 2024 harvest data on Amberjack is not so good. The preliminary estimates of catch have us overfishing the 2024 season by slightly over double the annual allocation. The Recreational components Annual Catch Limit (ACL) is 404,000 pounds, and the Annual Catch Target (ACT) is 335,320 pounds. The harvest data shows 842,872 pounds of harvest which is a little over double ACL. When harvests exceed the ACL in highly regulated species an accountability measure is triggered, which creates a payback provision in the regulations. Which leads to the notion of there not being any allocation available for the 2025 season.
This is preliminary data has not been approved for use. They would have to find some extensive outlying data to make these corrections, but they could very well do that. The Regional Administrator for the Southeast agrees that this is very frustrating. The agency by law must get the stock moving into rebuilding and stop overfishing. But landings over the years have been so volatile. Leading to big swings in size and abundance making virtually impossible to apply season lengths with any kind of confidence.
It is important to remember that the agency has done what the law requires and has tried to do things within it to create more sustainable access. But the management of Amberjack has been the greatest challenge of all the reef fish with volatility in not just landings, but the average size of the landings from year to year. As you remember the increase to a 34” fish was supposed to give us a 10-month season, and that year a huge push of big fish came into the Gulf, and we caught them in less than four months. This is just an example of using the previous year’s landings information and applying it to a management measure to provide more access and it all just blew up in our face with such a wild swing of landings and their size being so different. So, it’s important to understand this challenge is frustrating to everyone involved.
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Regional/State Management / Sector Separation of Greater Amberjack
The Council received a presentation on decision points to consider when evaluating options for regional and state management of greater amberjack for the recreational sector. Decision points include whether to include the federal for-hire component; the number of states or regions to consider; the method used to determine how to divide allowable harvest amongst states or regions; and which management measures to delegate under a state management scenario. The Council plans to move forward with development of a document to continue to evaluate these decisions points on greater amberjack for discussion at a future meeting.
This is the effort of the State of Louisiana as well as other states to flush out what regional or state management of Greater Amberjack would look like. During the discussion they really tried to remove the sector separation part of the discussion but by the urging of myself and others in our industry we got it kept in the document moving forward. This has really been the first opportunity for another one of the major reef fish species to be looked at from a sector separation standpoint. This is some of the states starting to show their hand in wanting all the major reef fish species under their control. And you can bet they will continue to try and drag the for-hire sub sector with them.
This document was supported to move forward to find out what the options would look like. And while it may not be something we want in the end its important to go through this process. Especially since it opens the door for more sector separation. So as this evolves be prepared because letters and/or public comment may be required of our industry to instill what we want out of the process.
(Written: April 2025)
