GULF OF MEXICO FISHERY MANAGEMENT COUNCIL
REEF FISH MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE MEETING
The Galveston Convention Center Galveston, Texas
APRIL 12-13, 2010
April 13, 2010
VOTING MEMBERS
Robert Gill Florida
Kevin Anson (designee for Vernon Minton) Alabama
Roy Crabtree NMFS, SERO, St. Petersburg, Florida
Julie Morris Florida
Robin Riechers (designee for Larry McKinney) Texas
William Teehan (designee for Ken Haddad) Florida
Kay Williams Mississippi
NON-VOTING MEMBERS
Myron Fischer (designee for Randy Pausina) Louisiana
John Greene, Jr. Alabama
Joe Hendrix Texas
Tom McIlwain Mississippi
Damon McKnight Louisiana
Harlon Pearce Louisiana
William Perret (designee for William Walker) Mississippi
Michael Ray Texas
Ed Sapp Florida
Bob Shipp Alabama
Larry Simpson GSMFC
STAFF
Steven Atran Population Dynamics Statistician
Steve Bortone Executive Director
Karen Burns Ecosystems Management Specialist
Assane Diagne Economist
John Froeschke Fishery Biologist
Trish Kennedy Administrative Assistant
Shepherd Grimes NOAA General Counsel
Karen Hoak Secretary
Richard Leard Deputy Executive Director
Phyllis Miranda Secretary
Charlene Ponce Public Information Officer
Cathy Readinger Administrative Officer
Carrie Simmons Fishery Biologist
OTHER PARTICIPANTS
Pam Anderson Panama City Beach, FL
Holly Binns Pew Environmental Group, Tallahassee, FL
Steve Branstetter NMFS
Donna Brooks GFA, Cortez, FL
Glen Brooks GFA, Bradenton, FL
James Bruce Cut Off, LA
James Burn Cutoff, LA
Evonn Caraway Freeport, TX
Bob Carter FL
Vicki Cornish Ocean Conservancy, Washington, D.C.
Vicki Delacruz GFA
Chris Dorsett Austin, TX
Tony Frady Lillian, AL
Claudia Friess Ocean Conservancy
Jack Golden Valrico, FL
Gary Graham Columbia, TX
Chad Hanson Pew Environmental Group
Scott Hickman TX
Darrell Hingle Hitchcock, TX
Peter Hood St. Petersburg, FL
Judy Jamieson Gulf and South Atlantic Fisheries Foundation
Michael Jennings Angleton, TX
Bill Kelly Marathon, FL
Joe Kent Galveston, TX
Stu Levenbach Office of Management and Budget
Jean Lockwood Department of Commerce
Ron Lukens High Spring, FL
Michael Miglini Corpus Christi, TX
Russell Nelson CCA, FL
Sarah Norman Galveston, TX
Mike Nugent Port Aransas, TX
Dennis O’Hern FRA, St. Petersburg, FL
Heather Paffe EDF, Austin, TX
Ellis Picksit Gulf Restoration Network, Liberty, TX
Bonnie Ponwith SEFSC
Ed Schroeder Galveston, TX
Vicki Schwantes NOAA
Brooke Shipley Texas Parks and Wildlife, TX
Phil Steele NMFS
Andy Strelcheck NMFS
TJ Tate Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholder’s Alliance, FL
Bill Tucker Dunedin, FL
Roger Zimmerman Galveston, TX
- - -
The Reef Fish Management Committee of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council convened in the Galleon Ballroom of the Galveston Convention Center, Galveston, Texas, Monday afternoon, April 12, 2010 and was called to order at 1:30 p.m. by Chairman Bob Gill.
ADOPTION OF AGENDA AND APPROVAL OF MINUTES
CHAIR MAN BOB GILL : The agenda is found in Tab B-1. Are there any changes or additions to the agenda?
DR. ROY CRABTREE: Bob, at some point, I would like to talk about the definition of buoy gear and I believe there was a draft sent out in the briefing book to the council members that we would like your comments on.
MR. STEVEN ATRAN: That’s on the agenda.
CHAIRMAN GILL: Any other changes to the agenda?
MR. BILL TEEHAN: I would like to put something on the agenda, just a real quick summary or whatever from NOAA about the intent of the recreational red snapper season length in the Gulf.
CHAIRMAN GILL: We’ll add that under Other Business.
MR. TEEHAN: It would be Other Business.
CHAIRMAN GILL: Any other changes? I would like to add one on permit income requirement, reef fish permit income requirement. With those changes, is there any objection to adoption of the agenda? Not seeing any objection, the agenda is adopted. Next is Tab B-2, the minutes. Are there any changes to the minutes?
MR. SHEPHERD GRIMES: Page 44, line 39, the end of line 39 and on to line 40, it’s Dr. Crabtree’s statement that refers to “greater triggerfish”, which I believe should be “greater amberjack”. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
CHAIRMAN GILL: Well done, Mr. Grimes, and thank you. Any other changes to the Reef Fish minutes? Any objections to approving the minutes as modified by Mr. Grimes? Seeing no objection, the minutes are approved.
The next item on the agenda is Item III, SEDAR-19 Black Grouper Stock Assessment, Tab B, Number 3. There is associated with that a new emailed PowerPoint presentation by Dr. Muller from FWRI, but he’s not with us this afternoon and Dr. Simmons will make the presentation on the Black Grouper SEDAR Assessment.
SEDAR-19 BLACK GROUPER STOCK ASSESSMENT
DR. CARRIE SIMMONS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Bob Muller couldn’t come, but he said this has a happy ending and so you should have no problems with this presentation. I’ll be giving the Review of the Benchmark Assessment for Black Grouper in the Southeast United States.
Just a brief management history, in the 1980s, black grouper were placed in the fishery management plans for both the South Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. The state placed an eighteen-inch minimum size limit in 1985 and then the Gulf Council established a twenty-inch minimum size limit in 1990.
The South Atlantic also changed that in 1992 and added the five fish aggregate bag limit. In 1999, there were some other big changes to the minimum size limit. There was a twenty-four-inch minimum size limit and in the South Atlantic, it was only two gag or black grouper in the five aggregate and then we, in 1999, also changed the twenty-four-inch minimum size limit for the commercial and twenty-two-inch minimum size limit for the recreational sector.
In 1999, the South Atlantic also added some proxies in there, the MSY proxy of 30 percent static SPR and the OY proxy of 45 percent static SPR and then in 2001, we implemented the February 15 to March 15 closure for the recreational sector.
The stock definition, the life history workgroup concluded that there’s only one stock of black grouper in the Southeast U.S. waters and that was based on the genetic structure. That’s similar from Belize to Florida, but in Bermuda, they found a distinct stock -- A difference in the stock from the six microsatellite loci and that was based on Zatcoff 2001 information.
For natural mortality, one of the things they wanted to look at for the upper limit was to use some catch curves and they broke it up into two time series, from 1992 to 1998 and then 1999 to 2008 and that had to do with the minimum size limit changes that occurred in 1999.
We got a total instantaneous mortality, a Z value, which incorporates natural mortality and fishing mortality, and for 1992 to 1998, that was 0.15, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 0.14 to 0.17. Then in 1999 to 2008, we got a total instantaneous mortality of 0.18, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 0.17 to 0.19. That was based on a lot more fish and as you can see, that minimum size limit changed there.
Previous studies used a natural mortality rate of 0.2 per year and that was from the headboat data and that took place because the maximum size from that sector in age was much lower and so they were getting a higher natural mortality rate, but when they used the maximum age of thirty-three years, they were getting a lower natural mortality rate and that was incorporated with the Hoenig’s equation and that what was used in the assessment of 0.14.
He also wanted me to point out the fact that there were fish not just aged at thirty-three years, but in both time series, there were a low sample size of fish aged from twenty to thirty-three years and so that’s important.
For discard mortality, they used 20 percent for the hook and line fleets, which is both for the commercial and recreational fleets, but that was for shallow water depths. They had sensitivity runs around 10 percent to 30 percent. For the longline fleet, which operates in deeper depths, they used 30 percent, with sensitivity runs that ran from 25 to 35 percent.
Black grouper are protogynous hermaphrodites. They’re females first. Their spawning season runs from February to April. 50 percent of the females were mature at 6.5 years, which is approximately 856 millimeters total length. The youngest mature female they found was three years and the spawning is more likely to occur, they believe, in South Florida, but larvae can be transported to other areas, like the Carolinas, where they do find adults in low abundance.
For movements and migration, little is known about black grouper movements, other than that the juveniles settle in the vegetative areas on seagrass beds and in soft corals and the adults are highly associated with rocky ledges and coral reefs.
They used a statistical catch at age model called the ASAP2 and these are all the parameters that went into the model. They used hand line, longline, headboat, and MRFSS information. They used ages one to twenty-plus years. For age composition, they used von Bertalanffy growth curves, but they had to assign the ages based on gear and time-specific parameters.
Natural mortality, they used that 0.14 we mentioned for ages three to thirty-five years and they used a higher natural mortality rate for ages zero to three. For tuning, they had four fishery-independent indices and one fishery-dependent index and for steepness, they used 0.75 for the base run, with a range from 0.6 to 0.95 at 0.05 increments.
They used constant catchability because when they looked at various sector’s catchability, there was a lot of variability in the data and they couldn’t really pick out a trend in any of that and so they felt that it was best just to use constant catchability.
Here is the information you’ve been waiting to see, the stock status criteria. The maximum sustainable yield is over 500,000 pounds and the spawning biomass at MSY is 5.9 million pounds. The overfishing limit, F at 30 percent spawning potential ratio, is 0.22. The minimum stock size threshold is just over five-million pounds and the two parameters the South Atlantic Council asked for are the minimum spawning stock threshold and the optimum yield at 45 percent fishing mortality were included as well.
This is not a geometric mean, but this is fishing mortality in 2008 that was estimated at 0.11 and then the overfishing ratio, F in 2008 over F 30 percent SPR, was less than one and so overfishing is not occurring, at 0.50. Biomass in 2008 was estimated to be over 8.2 million pounds and then the overfished threshold, spawning stock biomass, was greater than one, at 1.40.
To get to those data points in the table, he just wanted me briefly to go over these figures and the top figure shows the overfishing ratio on the X-axis and he just wanted me to mention that you have all these data points that are less than one. You only have one outlier here that’s close to one and so a very highly unlikely event and so you have many of the data points less than one and overfishing is very unlikely to occur, based on all these simulations that were completed.
For the overfished threshold down here, spawning stock biomass, for the point estimate, as you can see, all of them were greater than one, except for a few data points that are close to the ratio of one. Again, those were very unlikely events.
The bottom figure shows the overfishing threshold compared to the overfished threshold and these are kind of small and you’ll probably have to look at it on your computer. The green line is that ratio of overfished spawning stock biomass ratio. The red dotted line is the minimum stock size threshold and so when you compare these, again, there were very few data points that were lower and outside the range of being overfished or overfishing or close to the minimum stock size threshold.
The next figure shows a comparison of maximum sustainable yield and optimum yield over a time series and we just wanted to point out since 1998 that we’ve been harvesting below the maximum sustainable yield.
For the sensitivity runs, as you might imagine here, as you increase release mortality, which is that hand line percentage that you have there, you increase your fishing mortality and you decrease, because you’re going down here on the scale, your spawning potential ratio and there were just a few changes when you use the natural mortality of 0.1. Your fishing mortality didn’t change much or your spawning stock biomass, but when you use 0.2, your spawning stock biomass increased and your fishing mortality decreased slightly. The steepness runs are all those kinds of brown triangles there. There wasn’t much difference in the model when they varied steepness.
The two points above this point here, where overfishing would be occurring, and the red dot that’s less than the minimum stock size threshold, those were asked to be completed by the review panel, to make sure that whatever was input into the model was not coming up with the same answer and so they forced the data to do this. They truncated the information to get those data points there.
This is just a comparison of the two types of models. The ASAP2 was the one that was used and the ASPIC was another one they looked at, which is a surplus production model. He wanted me to point out here that in the last ten years, if you look at these two different models, there’s very little difference and so that’s always good information to look at. If the two models were very different, then you might question your information.
For the projections from P*, this is a range from 0.05 to 0.50 and it includes the landings, discards, spawning stock biomass, and fishing mortality per year. You see this kind of jump here from 2010 to 2011 that’s kind of strange and that has to do with the increase in landings and fishing mortality that would have to occur in order to achieve those landings and so because we’re harvesting at currently below the maximum sustainable yield. That’s why you would have that kind of strange jump up like that.
All these lie on top of each other because there’s very little variability that was incorported from the model into these projections. I think there was only two sources that were used here and so they’re all going to be on top of each other.
These projections are more spread out, because they have more variability incorporated from the model. They have the same parameters again, with landings, spawning stock biomass, discards, and fishing mortality.
The red squares are the current fishing mortality rate. The kind of orange top one here is fishing mortality at maximum sustainable yield and the percentage of 0.65, 0.75, 0.85, those are all just multiplied by the maximum sustainable yield to get those projections. Fzero you would expect to be down here and, again, the Fzero versus Fcurrent versus F at maximum sustainable yield.