Tab D, No. 2

GULF OF MEXICO FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL

JOINT REEF FISH/SHRIMP MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE

The Quorum Hotel Tampa, Florida

June 6, 2006

TUESDAY MORNING SESSION

Reef Fish Management Committee: Others:

Roy Williams, V. Chair Bill Daughdrill

Karen Bell Phil Horn

Roy Crabtree Robin Riechers

Julie Morris Larry Simpson

Bobbi Walker Doug Fruge

Kay Williams Theodore Brainerd

Phil Steele

Shrimp Management Committee: Mike McLemore

Corky Perret Degraaf Adams

Karen Foote Marianne Cufone

Roy Crabtree Karen Norcross

Joe Hendrix Dave McKinney

Bob Shipp Stevens Heath

Roy Williams Judy Jamison

Jim Smarr

Staff: Benny Gallaway

Steven Atran Martin Fisher

Assane Diagne David Krebs

Trish Kennedy Dennis O’Hern

Stu Kennedy Worth Nowlin

Karen Hoak Will Ward

Rick Leard Bobby DeVaney Jr.

Charlene Ponce Sal Versaggi

Wayne Swingle Peter Hood

Michael Bailey

Others: David Medici

Myron Fisher Shannon Calay

Guillermo Diaz John Broderick

Jim Nance Dave Donaldson

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The Joint Reef Fish/Shrimp Management Committee of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council convened in the Royal Palm Ballroom of the Quorum Hotel, Tampa, Florida, Tuesday morning, June 6, 2006, and was called to order at 8:30 o’clock a.m. by Chairman Corky Perret.

CHAIRMAN CORKY PERRET: We would like to call the Joint Reef Fish/Shrimp Management Committee to order. Do we have a quorum? We do have a quorum. If you would please go to Tab C-1 and the way Mr. Williams and I plan to handle this is I’m going to take the first four segments of this agenda and Roy is going to handle the remaining three.

The first item on the agenda is Adoption of the Agenda. Do we have any modifications or anything anyone wants to add or take off?

DR. RICK LEARD: I think Dr. Crabtree and I had talked before about possibly consideration of an Ad Hoc Shrimp Effort AP.

CHAIRMAN PERRET: Where would you like to add that?

DR. LEARD: Under Other Business.

CHAIRMAN PERRET: Under Other Business, Ad Hoc Shrimp Effort AP. Is that okay with the group? Are there any other changes?

VICE CHAIRMAN ROY WILLIAMS: Roy, at one point you and I talked about Rick Hart giving a talk under IV, under the Ad Hoc Shrimp. Do you still want to do that?

DR. ROY CRABTREE: I think the better place for Rick to give his talk would be in the Shrimp Committee when we talk about Amendment 15. Most of what Rick would present is relative to issues in Amendment 15.

DR. LEARD: Do you want to do the -- Do we discuss the Shrimp Effort AP under the Shrimp Committee or under this committee? We talked before about doing it under this one.

DR. CRABTREE: I think that’s fine. Jim Nance will make a presentation on the Shrimp Effort Committee’s group and then we can go through the joint amendment and then when we come to the Shrimp Committee, Rick can give his presentation there, if that makes sense to you folks.

DR. LEARD: I think what I suggested, Roy, was -- We talked before about having an Ad Hoc Shrimp Effort AP to -- I mentioned, as we talked before, about consideration of that at this meeting, but do think that would be better at the Shrimp meeting or at this one?

CHAIRMAN PERRET: I think Shrimp AP, if it’s strictly a shrimp effort thing. Dr. Crabtree, have you got a preference?

DR. CRABTREE: However you want to proceed, Mr. Chairman.

MR. ROBIN RIECHERS: I think, since we’re talking about a working group and the whole justification for that working group is the combination effort that we have going on and the discussions we have going on in regards to 14/27 and 15 -- I certainly don’t want to lead us down a road of debate of whether these should be split or not split and that whole issue we’ve dealt with many times.

Let’s put it altogether again today. We have one committee running into another. I think if you put Mr. Hart at the end of our business today or in the -- I would put him right after the Ad Hoc Shrimp Effort Working Group, because I assume this whole discussion surrounds bycatch and bycatch mortality.

CHAIRMAN PERRET: We have another suggestion. Robin has convinced me that would be the place to put it. Is that okay with the group? It will follow Dr. Nance’s presentation. Any other suggested changes or modifications? I’ll entertain a motion for adoption with that modification. Ms. Foote moves and second by Ms. Walker. Is there any opposition? Hearing none, so ordered.

Next is the approval of your minutes, which is Tab C, Number 2. Do we have any modifications to the minutes or deletions or corrections, et cetera? They’re moved by Mr. Williams. Do we have a second? Second by Ms. Morris. All in favor signify by saying aye; any opposition? Hearing none, so ordered.

The third item is we had asked for Mr. Dave Donaldson with Gulf States Marine Fisheries Service to give us a report on fishing effort and what they were seeing and the data that they have been working with.

REPORT ON DECLINE IN RECREATIONAL FISHING EFFORT

MR. DAVE DONALDSON: I appreciate the time to talk to you about some decreases or some effects of the hurricanes on recreational fishing effort. I think there’s a little bit of confusion. I think some people thought I was going to talk about recreational and commercial, but this is just strictly recreational fishing effort.

In a brilliant statement of the obvious, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita had major impacts on recreational fishing activities. At the last meeting, there was a discussion about trying to attempt to quantify these effects and we’re looking at number of trips taken that we collect through the recreational fishing survey as a proxy to look at this information.

Before I get into some of the results, we need to realize that there are other factors that can affect the number of trips, such as weather. Right now, the cost of fuel is a big impact, as you’ll see in some of the later results, and also time of the year.

I’ll be talking about Waves 5 and 6 of last year and Wave 1 of this year. As you know, that’s fairly low activities. Fairly small changes in the number of trips can have an over inflated impact, saying that it looks like a 20 or 30 percent increase when it’s really, in the grand scheme of things, not that big of an increase, because the number of trips you’re talking about is relatively small compared to the overall trips taken throughout the year.

As I stated, Waves 5, 6, and 1 may not be the best time for comparisons. We need to continue to monitor these trips into the higher activity waves, 2, 3, and 4. I think there we’ll be able to get a better idea of the trends and lastly, Waves 5, 6, and 1 are preliminary.

Please don’t distribute this information widely. Waves 5 and 6, they’re still waiting on new census numbers and Wave 1 we haven’t even -- The states and National Marine Fisheries Service haven’t even had a chance to review the data and so they’re subject to change. There may be some changes in the numbers.

The bars are the different waves for the different years and on the axis there is the number of trips. You can see that in Wave 5 there was pretty much no change. In Wave 6, there’s a decrease and in Wave 1, there’s an overall decrease. This is for the entire west coast of Florida and so it goes from the Panhandle all the way down to the Keys.

It’s also for all areas, both inshore and offshore, and for all modes. When I first started, I thought about breaking it down and I would have had about 150 slides and I figured you guys didn’t want to see all that information.

Alabama, we’re seeing a similar trend. Wave 5, it’s about the same. Waves 6 and 1, there is a marked decrease. Those areas didn’t have the direct impact from Hurricane Rita and Katrina and so you wouldn’t expect a large decrease, such as in Alabama where we go from about 160,000 trips in Wave 5 of 2004 to none in 2005.

Wave 6, there was a slight rebound in that people were actually getting out and going fishing and again, Wave 1, it looks like it’s about the same. The problem there is you’re talking about 60,000 to 80,000 trips, which for Mississippi is a very small portion of the number of trips and so it’s that variability I talked about in low activity waves.

MS. WALKER: Dave, are those inshore trips in 2005?

MR. DONALDSON: It’s all trips, but in Mississippi and Alabama the majority of them are inshore trips, yes. Almost none of the trips in those two states are offshore. Then for Louisiana you see a marked decrease in Wave 5, a somewhat lesser increase in Wave 6, and then Wave 1, again, looks like potentially you could be having a rebound, but it’s really too early to tell.

Looking at the offshore, I’ll look just for Alabama and for West Florida we’ll look at the offshore and there’s a decrease across the board for all waves between the years. Alabama Wave 5 is about the same, but Wave 6 and 1 you’re seeing a decrease.

As I mentioned earlier, Bobbi, offshore the majority of trips over 95 percent and actually, it’s closer to 98 percent, but almost all of those trips are taken in inshore waters and so those graphs that I showed earlier reflect those changes.

Kind of in summary, the data shows that there were some decreases in all states. In Waves 5 and 6, it ranges from actually a slight increase to 100 percent decrease. In Wave 1, there was about a 17 percent decrease to a 24 percent increase. That’s in Mississippi and, again, it’s when you’re talking about the low number of trips -- Even though 24 percent seems like a lot, in the grand scheme of things it’s not and so it could indicate a rebound of the fisheries, but I really think that it’s too soon to tell.

We need to do more research. We do need to watch and look at what happens in Wave 2, Wave 3, and Wave 4, since those are higher activity waves. The offshore trips have decreased both in Florida and Alabama and the last statement there that other factors may have contributed to this decrease, I think the cost of gas is probably the main reason for that, because it’s so dang expensive to fill your boat up to go offshore.

It may actually explain some of the increases in the inshore areas, because people are more inclined to stay inshore than go offshore and so with that, I will take any questions.

CHAIRMAN PERRET: Thank you, Dave. Do we have questions?

MS. WALKER: For the species that we manage, would Waves 2, 3, and 4 give us a better picture if we had that data?

MR. DONALDSON: Yes, it would, because the level of fishing that occurs, especially in Wave 6 and 1, is very low, especially in the northern Gulf where the impacts were mainly felt. I think it’s a bit premature to make any judgments about it.

DR. ROBERT SHIPP: Dave, how do you get your data?

MR. DONALDSON: The effort data?

DR. SHIPP: Yes, how do you get it? Is it trip data or do you meet them at the dock or how?

MR. DONALDSON: The effort data is actually collected through a telephone survey. For the for-hire fishery, we contact the captains directly and for the private and shore mode, it’s the random digit dialing.

CHAIRMAN PERRET: Other questions?

MR. MYRON FISCHER: You showed a slide with the offshore fishery declining in Alabama and Florida and you titled it “Effects of the Hurricane” and I was wondering how about Louisiana and Mississippi, where the storm actually hit, what the offshore data showed.

MR. DONALDSON: It didn’t show anything, because there’s hardly any trips. At those periods of times, almost 100 percent of the trips are taken inshore. There’s very few offshore trips, at least in the data that I had, that showed that there’s any significant number of trips being taken offshore in the EEZ.

MR. FISCHER: The inshore trips remain the same?

MR. DONALDSON: The inshore trips decreased significantly.

CHAIRMAN PERRET: Other questions? Dave, I’ve got one. I was surprised to see Wave 1 seemed to be at or in some cases higher. Dr. Shipp’s question of how did you get your data and telephone surveys -- Friday, I asked my fish guys that are doing the surveys just to tell me what’s going on and I quote: Corky, my guys tell me that fishing pressure from boats is down about 60 percent. The people they are interviewing are not having problems catching fish. Piers are gone in all counties. However, there is some access on the jetties around the harbors and on the seawalls. Charter trips are down at least 80 percent. Obtaining live bait is a problem.

I still don’t know how Wave 1 can be at that level with this kind of current information that the number of people are just not fishing.

MR. DONALDSON: Corky, I was surprised too to see that increase. What I will say is that that data is very preliminary. Literally, we haven’t even had a chance to sit down and review it and so there may be issues with that.

There’s issues with they expand that data using census data and they’re using old census data, not the current census data, and so that could have impacts as well.

CHAIRMAN PERRET: I guess the consistency of Wave 1 for each state was basically the same? In other words, it was all at about or maybe a little higher or a little lower and maybe the actual data from the field guys would be similar to what my -- At least for Louisiana and Mississippi, where the storm hit the hardest. Any other questions for Dave?

MR. FISCHER: Corky, I just feel I have to make a statement. It’s not a question for Dave. Presently, in Grand Isle, that once had six marinas, it’s going to be rebuilt with only three. Cigars is totally gone. Bridgeside just rebuilt, but they’re not open. Sand Dollar opened its doors about three weeks ago. Pirate’s Cove still doesn’t sell gas or diesel. Fourchon is devastated pretty bad, but we’ve got fuel running. Cocodrie is okay.