Winston Churchill once wrote, "To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often." The Gulf of Mexico red snapper allocation needs to change. The data used to set the current 51 percent commercial and 49 percent recreational allocation of red snapper in the Gulf were gathered when Nolan Ryan was a key player on a very good Astros team. Warren Moon was just starting his career as quarterback for the Houston Oilers, and the price of oil was around $10 per barrel.

Since the data were gathered in the mid-1980s, the demographic and economic changes along the Gulf Coast have been staggering, and yet there are those who contend that the current allocation shouldn't be changed. According to them, it should be the one thing for which time stands still.

The present allocation was based solely on simple catch history, which is perhaps the most inefficient way to allocate a natural resource. In the 1980s, the red snapper stock was severely depressed. Under those conditions, commercial fishermen motivated to find a payday scoured the Gulf for red snapper, while recreational anglers were discouraged from even trying due to the lack of fish. The allocation of 51/49 is not only based on 30-year-old data, it most likely represents an artificially inflated commercial share. Strangely, it has stood for decades.

Meanwhile, the red snapper stock has rebounded wildly, due primarily to a reduction in shrimp trawling, which takes a significant toll on juvenile red snapper.

The picture has changed completely since the allocation was set, and this week the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council has an opportunity to finally begin a process to reallocate this fishery based on modern criteria. However, the outcome is uncertain due to pressure from an unlikely alliance of select commercial fishing businesses and environmental groups that are committed to reducing the number of citizens allowed to access this public resource.

In 2006, the Gulf Council took the controversial step of implementing a catch-share program for the red snapper commercial sector. Under this system, each commercial operator was gifted with a portion of the red snapper resource to use as its own based on that boat's catch history. The operators paid nothing for this public natural resource, and to this day, their administrative fees are so meager that they do not even cover the cost to operate the federal program.

Under the catch-share program, shareholders are allowed to buy and sell shares only from other shareholders, and today fewer than 400 businesses own 51 percent of the entire public resource. Those winners have become rich from this system of management and are committed to keeping it. Meanwhile, millions of recreational anglers, and the businesses that depend on them, have struggled with shrinking seasons and reduced access.

A number of economic studies have shown the current allocation makes no sense, including a groundbreaking one in 2009 by Wade L. Griffin and Richard T. Woodward of Texas A&M University. In 2013, the Gulf Council's own Socioeconomic Science and Statistical Committee determined that to maximize economic benefits to the nation, an allocation shift of 10 percent to the recreational sector is supported. A bigger shift would likely produce greater benefits, but 10 percent was the largest analyzed.

The reasons to reallocate are overwhelming and the Gulf Council should be commended for finally taking steps to address this relic of a bygone era. Change is clearly an improvement.


Venker is conservation director for the Houston-based Coastal Conservation Association.