Anglers take closer look at limited permits

As offshore anglers snarl at tightening catch restrictions and large area bottom closures, federal agencies are moving to regulate prized species like snapper and grouper in part by limiting the number of people who can go after them.

The system, called catch shares, restricts the number of permits issued and fish caught to make sure enough of the species survives to repopulate. The idea hasn't been popular here: Try divvying up a limited number of permits among more than 100,000 recreational, charter and commercial anglers in South Carolina alone.

Anglers of all stripes have bristled at the suggestion of it for years. But times have changed.

Faced with the threat of losing vast areas of prime fishing offshore, anglers have now petitioned the federal South Atlantic Fishery Management Council to take another look. What's at stake is a saltwater industry that's estimated to be worth $600 million per year in the state and the ability to put fresh, local sea fish on the plate in the Lowcountry.

"Somehow we have to save the year-round fishery. These guys are struggling to make paychecks," said Matt Ruby, a Little River commercial fisherman and co-owner of Seven Seas Seafood, one of the petition organizers. "Hopefully it would give [the council] a little flexibility to stay away from these large area closures. I just would rather not see the fishing continue to struggle for who knows how many years. It's hard enough now."

Wayne Mershon, a Murrells Inlet commercial fisherman and the owner of Kenyon Seafood in Murrells Inlet, has adamantly opposed catch shares and was against the recent petition. But he's at least weighing the potential.

"There's going to be nobody to step into our shoes" to fish commercially if the restrictions and closures continue, he said. Whether catch shares help "boils down to how much you're allotted."

Council regulators are scrambling for ways to enforce a revision of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act that says within one year of determining a fish stock is depleted, over-fishing must be stopped in that region of the ocean. Among other regulations, the council is considering prohibiting fishing along a huge swath of the offshore bottom from the South Carolina line into Florida.

Nearly all the sought-after catches offshore are considered over-fished by federal surveyors. At least in theory, catch shares is a way to keep boats on the water while restoring the stock. Some form of the shares is used in most coastal regions, with some successes. In the Southeast, a type of catch-share permitting is used to regulate the deep-water wreckfish.

Dividing catch shares for sought-after snappers and groupers is almost a dilemma in a region where a few commercial snapper-grouper boats compete with thousands of pleasure and charter boats. Because "shares" usually can be sold or traded among anglers, a handful of people can end up owning the fishery "because they're rich enough to buy all the shares," Mershon said.