The Center for Sportfishing Policy and Coastal Conservation Association called out more federal red snapper management follies in a scathing report last week.

The recreational red snapper harvest count used to make rules and regulations inflated the catch by 30 to 40 percent, marking the third time since 2010 grievous issues have been revealed in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recreational fishery data program. NOAA’s own pilot study acknowledged the errors in its review released in May.

Sport fishermen here and across the Gulf Coast who target red snapper aren’t surprised at all by the admission. Since the 1990s our Cypremort Point skippers and offshore fishermen were dismissing the numbers NOAA used to set creel limits and seasons, both of which got leaner and leaner.

To a man, our guys said there were beaucoup red snapper out there around the oil field structures, wrecks and such in the western Gulf of Mexico. They were right. It’s a shame for all those years of ridiculously low limits and laughably short seasons.

Blame NOAA’s Marine Recreational Information Program that provides estimates of recreational fishing catches and trips. Collected in dockside interviews and mail surveys, it’s used to manage state and federal fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Hawaii. And, due to a few key reasons, it was wrong, dead wrong.

“For years, MRIP catch estimates have been a source of contention for anglers, state agencies and other fishery managers that depend on accurate and precise data for decision-making,” CSP wrote in its report critiquing the NOAA study.

An Outdoor Life story written by Bob McNally posted online Sept. 14 dove into the details.

When states started collecting their own catch and trip data, they found populations of red snapper able to support recreational harvests higher than what the federal government was recommending. The most glaring case in point came two years ago in the Great Red Snapper Count released by the Harte Research Institute with an assist from universities across the South.

The 2021 report showed a huge swing and miss by NOAA, which tabbed the red snapper population at 36 million while in fact there were 118 million red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Great Red Snapper Count,

McNally cited a prepared statement from Ted Venker, conservation director of the Coastal Conservation Association:

“Yet another major revision to the federal recreational data collection system is upon us, and it should bring a realization that NOAA is just not capable of doing this job. At best we are looking at several more years of questionable revisions, recalculations and recalibrations based on a suspect data system that has never proven it can produce accurate information. This is no way to manage a public resource. It would be irresponsible to continue down the road rather than exploring and supporting state-based options to better manage the recreational sector whenever feasible.”

That NOAA discounts the Gulf states’ meticulously collected recreational red snapper data riles Venker, who said Mississippi and Alabama, in particular, have implemented precise mandatory catch reporting, as has Louisiana.

“Mississippi’s federal data is consistently inconsistent,” Venker said, noting examples of discrepancies between federal and state numbers. “In September 2019, the state’s private boat recreational red snapper season was open for only five days and yet the federal system says somehow Mississippi produced 2,482 trips per day, harvesting 68,997 pounds of red snapper every day for a total of 344,984 pounds in just those five days … In 2020, the Mississippi season was open for a single day in September and the feds say anglers made 980 trips that day and caught 32,892 pounds of red snapper.”

Venker also said the most trips the Mississippi state data system has logged in a single day is 513, with an average of 95 trips per day over the past four years.

“Like a good federal government agency, NOAA Fisheries believes its data is the only right data. Rather than continue to insist it is always the smartest entity in the room, NOAA Fisheries should work on being a better partner to the Gulf states as well as the angling public and commit to getting to the bottom of the wild data discrepancies (per red snapper harvest) before cramming down damaging, punitive measure(s),” he said.

NOAA admitted mistakes in its recent pilot study, most notably that collecting recreational fishing data in the federal agency’s current system hinges entirely on the memories of anglers. To wit, the agency acquires most of its data by mailing questionnaires to anglers about how many days they fished over a specific span. When NOAA checked and analyzed the data, it discovered anglers more than likely over-report their fishing activity. Fishermen relying on their memories also are prone to overestimate their catch, NOAA reported.

“Based on anecdotal information from cognitive interviews, as well as the effect of question sequence on reporting, we suspect that anglers are so eager to report fishing activity, that they do so at the earliest possible opportunity, even if it means providing inaccurate, out-of-scope information,” NOAA wrote in its pilot study.

NOAA’s current system doesn’t take those factors into account, obviously. NOAA said changing the order of survey questions and the time frame of being administered could help lower the volume of “out-of-scope” information that eventually guides the decisions of federal fisheries managers.

The CSP realizes that and contends, “Many states have demonstrated the capability of developing survey programs to estimate recreational catch and effort data with more precision.”

In summary in another prepared statement, CSP wrote: “NOAA needs to work with all states to identify the best steps forward including the opportunity to transition some or all recreational data collection to the states and how to best provide support to states that lead data collection improvements.”

Sounds good. Time to take the federal follies out of recreational fishing.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.