LE
LE
Nice to hear from LE on this.....the law is the law, end of story, BUT....Jewfish <goliath> groupers were greatly over-harvested years ago, their numbers dwindled, thus the law was enacted as would be done in in other fishery, to protect and allow the specie to rebound.
Is a proven tried and true method of rebuilding any fishery, BUT, there is some rumbling from sports fisherman, commercial fisherman and the Gulf Council, who make the rules that jewfish have made a complete recovery, and in fact are overpopulated and now have a direct effect on grouper populations, as it is almost impossible to fish any wreck site, hook a grouper and get it up, without a jewfish taking it.
On my aquaculture site there is usually 4-5 resident jewfish, one is about 10 foot long, biggest I have ever seen, must weigh 400-500 pounds, his mouth is about 2 1/2 foot wide, and I can swim right up to him, and he does not flinch.
The others are much smaller 100-200-300 pound range, and I have one 'football' that follows me around every dive and scoops whatever comes up from under the rocks as I harvest them, he is so tame that he hangs about 2 inches off the side of my head and mask, just waiting.....a bit unnerving when I forget he is there and spin around to his face two inches away.
There are usually 100 or so grouper on the site at any given time, and they ALL have huge scrape marks on them, where they barely have escaped, numerous times from the jaws of the jewfish. So the predation of the legally harvestable populations of grouper are being 'over fished' by the jewfish, so something really needs to be done legislatively to allow some harvest and population control for jewfish as their populations have overwhelmed their food source.
Being on the water in any fishery requires you know the 'rules of the road' or you are going to pay the ticket, education is the key, an informed angler is a legal angler.
Richard TBS:rollface: :rollface: :rollface:
