Why are fishermen seeing so many red snapper when the assessments say they are in trouble?
For a long-lived species like red snapper, it’s not just the numbers of individuals that are important to keep stock productivity high, it is equally important to maintain age/size structure. The current lack of old fish in the population has resulted from excess catch rates that occurred 15-35 years ago. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the stock was in a declining condition and the need for management was identified, overfishing created a “hole” in the age structure (similar to the redfish situation back in the 1980s) that we are experiencing now. Even though red snapper may begin spawning as early as age 2, small females produce only a fraction of the eggs that the old “sows” produce. Female red snapper do not reach full reproductive potential until they are about 15 years old and they remain highly productive for many years, perhaps until they are more than 40+ years old. Those big, old female egg producers are in much lower abundance now than is necessary for a healthy population beca
