Many of you aren't fishermen. But even if you don't know a red snapper from gangsta rapper, this might still be worth a look.

The South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council is as crooked and bloated a government bureaucracy as exists today. It perverts science. It feeds on special interests. More importantly, it squanders a natural resource. It announced this week the 2016 season for the American Red Snapper will be closed - as it was in 2015. During the three years prior, the season was open for a total of 12 days.

It all began in 2008 when NOAA scientists determined that the red snapper stock in the South Atlantic was at just 3 percent of the biomass 50 years prior. That would have been 1958 when there was neither a NOAA, nor any other group counting red snapper. Perhaps 10 percent of all boats, recreational and commercial, could make the trip out 50 miles where the species thrives. There was no real sonar to find the hundreds of reefs where the fish spawned and no satellite positioning systems to find them again if you did hit a honey hole by accident or luck. So the "science" began as a fabrication, and that continues today.

Any local angler or charter boat captain will tell you unequivocally that the biggest problem with red snapper today is getting away from them. They've morphed from the most popular reef fish ever, to scavenging pests. And now that the evidence is much more than anecdotal, here's how NOAA continues to keep the fishery locked down. It has determined that in 2015 the total snapper "removal" was 276,729 red snapper. The TAC, or total allowable catch for last year, was 114,000 snapper. If, at this point, you're asking yourself how they could possibly come up with these numbers, move to the head of the class.

Now remember that both commercial and recreational snapper were closed for all of 2015. So who was taking these fish? The answer is no one.

Back to the new nomenclature of "removal." What that means is that anglers fishing for legal reef species removed this number of snapper accidentally from the water, then released them back into the ocean. Many employ one of several release tools.

Early on, snapper were "vented." The a procedure uses a hollow needle inserted behind the pectoral fin that releases pressure from the air bladder, which expands as the fish ascends. More recently, "descender" tools were developed for fish caught even deeper, such as rock bass, and to more safely release fish such as snapper, generally caught between 100 and 240 feet. These take the fish on a slow ride back down, giving the air bladders a natural method of equalizing pressure internally.

The feds, of course, have their data on mortality rates. Since one can't physically follow a fish to the bottom and hang around to see how it's feeling the next day, they base a lot of their data on tagging fish. This is so bizarre it's funny.

So if the tagged fish are not caught again, scientists make mortality assumptions. This is like tagging migratory ducks - which real wildlife biologists do - but then assuming that if the tags aren't returned, the birds were all shot, rather than heading to Canada for a summer vacation. Red snapper travel as well.

So this cycle of stupidity will never end. Our biomass will continue to grow exponentially, so the number of "bycatch" will likewise grow. So we will continue to "remove" more fish each year, and continue to close the season the following year. What's so wasteful about all of this is, if the feds allowed anglers to take the 114,000 pounds - assuming a slot limit that protects juvenile and breeding stock - those fish could actually feed someone rather than swim off into the depths and end up feeding crabs. It's like raising cattle and running them off a cliff.

It's also worth noting that West Coast waters are overseen by the Gulf Fisheries Management Council. Its snapper stock is less robust than ours. Yet recreational fishermen have a 45-day season. Commercial snapper boats will be allowed over 7 million pounds. And its season is based on exactly the same NOAA "science" as our own. Go figure.