ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – Florida Fish and Wildlife (FWC) is giving anglers the opportunity to directly provide data and improve the management of red snapper in the South Atlantic ocean.
With an exempted fishing permit, you can fish for red snapper and keep them outside of the 1-day federal season. But only a limited number of anglers can get one.
Boaters were out in droves Friday for their one opportunity to go fishing for Red Snapper this year. The season was reduced to one day because of overfishing concerns, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The FWC recognizes that a 24-hour Atlantic Red Snapper season is disappointing. That’s why they want to recruit recreational anglers to collect better data on snapper fishery. Up to 200 people will be selected by lottery every 3 months for the opportunity.
FWC Federal Fisheries Section Leader CJ Sweetman said about 1,600 exempted fishing permits will be issued to anglers this year. Locally, 800 of those permits will be awarded to the “Hot Spot Fleet” which stretches from the Florida Georgia Line south to Cape Canaveral.
“The most recent federal stock assessment for Atlantic red snapper classified as undergoing overfishing. But the stock assessment also showed that there’s near record abundance of red snapper, which is kind of what everyone sees on the water,” Sweetman said.
Local Angler Fletcher Hallett shares the sentiment of many others in Northeast Florida; that the federal regulations are too harsh, so he’s hoping to be selected to receive an exempted fishing permit (EFP) from Florida Fish and Wildlife.
“I wasn’t real happy about it. You know, when we go offshore probably 90% of what we catch is Red Snapper when we’re bottom fishing. And we catch a lot of big ones too, not just small ones we catch a lot in the 15 and plus range,” Hallett said.
EFPs allow harvest for certain fish and wildlife prohibited under current federal regulation, like red snapper. Hallett sees the permits as an opportunity to bridge the disconnect between locals and organizations like NOAA and FWC.
“There’s a lot of Florida anglers upset with the feds, with NOAA and the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council, because they believe, and I agree with them, that the South Atlantic Council doesn’t have the right data to be able to effectively manage our fishery,” Hallett said. “So by us having this permit, it’ll just allow us to give better data to FWC so that FWC can take that to the council to the Feds and get it to open back up, you know, to be a longer season.”
The three EFP projects are happening simultaneously over the next 12 months from August 2024 through July 2025. They will be broken up into four, three-month quarters.
- Quarter 1: August 2024 to October 2024
- Quarter 2: November 2024 to January 2025
- Quarter 3: February 2025 to April 2025
- Quarter 4: May 2025 to July 2025
Each quarter’s application period will open the month before.
Sweetman explains that the goal is to collect information directly from the fishermen themselves.
“It won’t be going through some other process. It’ll be going directly to FWC. And we’ll be able to evaluate that information and provide that data up to NOAA Fisheries and the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council with the hope of better managing the red snapper fishery with this information that we have at hand,” Sweetman said.
To apply for an EFP, log in or create an account with Go Outdoors Florida and select the project you want to collaborate with the FWC on. In Northeast Florida, you’ll want to select the “Hot Spot Fleet.”
You don’t have to own a boat to apply for an exempted fishing permit. The deadline to apply for the project starting in August is this Wednesday, July 17.