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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The group that manages Gulf of Mexico fishing in federal waters says states can keep managing anglers’ catch of red snapper after this year. The popular sport and table fish is still recovering from nearly disastrous overfishing.
The Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council announced the decision Thursday in Biloxi, Mississippi.
Louisiana’s Department of Wildlife and Fisheries called the decision a major victory for the state’s private anglers.
Environmental groups said, however, that more work was needed to prevent overfishing because each state counts its recreational catch differently. That makes it “difficult to know just how much fishing for red snapper is actually occurring across the Gulf,” said Meredith Moore of the Ocean Conservancy.
“We think it really could work. But the really technical data issue has got to be cracked,” she said.
Sepp Haukebo, manager of private angler reform for the Environmental Defense Fund, expressed cautious optimism.
“As a Gulf angler myself I am hopeful, but guarded as we move toward a solution that should allow us to spend more time fishing for red snapper and less time arguing over them,” he said in a news release.
Louisiana officials say the data, despite the limitations, is an improvement over previous National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries data, and the states are working to improve it still more.
“Each state’s data collection program has been certified or otherwise accepted by NOAA Fisheries and the Gulf Council as the best scientific information available,” Patrick Banks, Louisiana’s assistant secretary of fisheries, said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press.
Red snapper has been a hot issue in the Gulf, with seasons getting shorter and shorter as fish got bigger and more numerous. In 2017, the Trump administration extended a three-day season to 42 days, even though regulators said the extension could add up to six years to the time required for red snapper stocks to recover.
Last year, regulators agreed on a two-year pilot program under which each state sets dates for and keeps tabs on the recreational red snapper catch in federal waters off its coast. If approved by the U.S. commerce secretary, this would become official policy.
The federal government still regulates commercial and charter boat catches.
Although charter boat captains aren’t affected, Shane Cantrell, executive director of the Charter Fisherman’s Association of Surfside, Texas, called the decision awesome.
Each year, commercial boats are allocated 51% of the total quota for red snapper. Private anglers are allocated about 58% of the remainder, with the rest available for charter boats. This year, 2.8 million pounds (1.3 million kilograms) are available to people who go out in chartered fishing boats, with nearly 4.3 million pounds (1.9 million kilograms) for anglers on their own.
And while the recreational anglers’ quota used to be Gulfwide, it is now divided by state, with each state responsible for setting the dates for each season.
Any Gulf state that goes over its quota will have it subtracted from the following year’s quota.
If it catches less, the uncaught amount can be carried over, Louisiana’s news release said.
Banks said the Gulf-wide system often hurt Louisiana anglers because better weather off Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi gave anglers there a better chance.
“Now we have a certain amount of fish reserved just for us,” he said in the news release. “Our Wildlife and Fisheries Commission sets the season for our anglers to catch that set amount of fish and they can set that season whenever they want that best fits our anglers and ensures responsible harvest levels.”

Submitted Photo
Zeph Aucoin represented Morgan City High School in the 2019 livestock shows. He won Champion Game Bird, eight first places and four second places in the St. Mary Parish show. He won five firsts and three seconds in district. He won four firsts, five seconds and Best in Breed at state. Pictured are Zeph with his champion rosecomb and call duck.

I got my flu shot early in the fall. I got the flu last week.
Medical folks say that the shot will make your case milder even if you get the flu bug. There may be something to that; I had only one day of the “just take me out in the woods and shoot me” intensity. But if what I had was the mild version, I don’t want to see the other.
The scientists also say, as I have just had cause to notice, the vaccines do not actually inoculate you against the flu; they “help your body prepare to fight it.” Well, my body was unprepared, and so were the bodies of a handful of friends and neighbors who came down with it.
There still appears to be a good bit of guesswork in deciding which flu strain to inoculate against each year, but it must be said that the vaccines have worked to head off terrible epidemics such as the one in 1918, when a strain of “Spanish flu” infected 500 million people worldwide — about one-third of the planet’s population at the time. More than a quarter of the people living in the United States got sick, and 675,000 died.
More U.S. soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu epidemic than died in battle during all of World War I.
The epidemic probably got to Louisiana through the port of New Orleans and may have spread into south Louisiana through the port at Morgan City.
The histories are hazy about the exact timing and numbers, but most date the Louisiana outbreak here from the first week of September 1918, when the ship Harold Walker steamed into New Orleans. Fifteen passengers were sick and three had died when the ship docked.
Five crew members were sick when an oil tanker reached the city two days later. The ship’s radio operator died while at sea. Later that week, a United Fruit Company cargo ship brought still more sick crewmen to the city. New Orleans newspapers reported the city’s first influenza death on Sept. 29.
By the end of October, 14,000 people in New Orleans had suffered through a bout with the flu and more than 800 had died — and other towns were feeling its effects. Newspapers began to print pleas for anyone trained in nursing to contact the Red Cross and volunteer to help care for the sick.
Early in October medical officials in Morgan City issued an order “prohibiting the holding of public gatherings of any kind … until further notice, due to prevalence of Spanish influenza.” Other parishes and communities soon followed suit.
Health officer Dr. C.D. de Gravelles wasn’t sure whether he had authority to order Morgan City’s churches to close their doors, “so [he] put the matter up to them in the form of a request,” according to a newspaper story. The churches complied quickly enough, but there seems to have been some trouble in closing the back doors to the town’s saloons.
De Gravelles reported 39 cases in Morgan City (which then had a population of about 5,500) and 30 in Berwick (about 1,500 population) under his personal care. The numbers were comparable in communities across south Louisiana.
The virus had apparently spread inland by Oct. 16, when the St. Landry Clarion reported, “There is no let-up in the spread on the ‘flu.’ On the contrary, the malady has spread so rapidly that it said to be epidemic in every state of the union and the number of victims is becoming alarming.”
On Oct. 19, newspapers in Morgan City, Franklin, St. Martinville, and elsewhere used big chunks of their front pages to print in its entirety a U.S. Public Health Service bulletin that basically told people to stay away from other people.
That seemed to be the only thing that worked. On Nov. 2 the Clarion was able to report, “The influenza epidemic throughout Louisiana and the other states is reported as waning, so much so that the health authorities feel extremely gratified at the present outlook, and the general public is looking forward to a full resumption of every-day activities. Schools, churches, places of amusement, etc., will reopen very shortly and the handicap people have been laboring under during the prevalence of the malady will soon be forgotten.”
It’s hard to find exactly the number of people who died in Louisiana during that epidemic. Records were poorly kept and many of the flu deaths were attributed to pneumonia. But historian Ann McLaurin did a pretty careful study (“The Influenza Epidemic of 1918 in Shreveport,” North Louisiana Historical Association Journal, Winter 1982) and estimates that there were about 174,000 cases of the flu reported in the state between Sept. 28 and Nov. 5, 1918, with 3,114 deaths.
A collection of Jim Bradshaw’s columns, "Cajuns and Other Characters," is now available from Pelican Publishing. You can contact him at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.