Since the seasons opened for private anglers and state-licensed commercial party boats on May 23 and federally permitted charter boats on June 1, anyone who follows Alabama anglers on social media has likely been inundated with photos of Alabama’s iconic reef fish, the American red snapper.

In fact, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ (ADCNR) Marine Resources Division (MRD) indicated the private recreational harvest had hit 135,193 pounds as of June 1, according to Snapper Check data. The 2025 quota is 664,552 pounds.

“The red snapper season in Alabama has seen a lot of changes over the past two decades,” said Conservation Commissioner Chris Blankenship. “I am pretty happy with where we are now on season length and the healthy population of fish off our coast. When you look at the anemic two-day season they have in the South Atlantic, I am thankful on how we all have worked together to be in the place we are now in the Gulf. Just a reminder, the season in the Gulf was three days in 2017 before we started state management during the first Trump administration.”

Not only is the early season harvest an indication of the health of the red snapper population off the Alabama coast, but research conducted by the University of South Alabama’s (USA) Stokes School of Marine and Environmental Sciences has revealed a thriving population of red snapper and other reef fish in Alabama’s vast artificial reef zone. This year’s survey report indicated 7.6 million snapper off the Alabama coast in water up to 350 feet. Expressed as a weight, that is 19.6 million pounds. Most of the snapper are in shallow and mid depths of 60 to 180 feet. The study counted age 2-plus fish that are 10 inches or longer.

“That’s a lot of fish,” said Dr. Sean Powers, Director of USA’s School of Marine and Environmental Sciences, who said two standardized studies are taking place in the reef zone, one with mainly ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) that was started by Conservation Commissioner Chris Blankenship when he was Marine Resources Director. The other study began under Powers’ predecessor, the late Dr. Bob Shipp, and includes the use of an ROV and volunteers fishing certain spots with specific tackle for a certain amount of time per drop.

“What we call the Shipp study was standardized in 1998, and it tells us what the anglers are experiencing,” Powers said. “I took over the study around 2010, about the time of the (Deepwater Horizon) oil spill. Marine Resources has consistently been funding that through Sport Fish Restoration funds.

“The larger survey is one that Commissioner Blankenship and I agreed to start when we were moving toward state management. The first year of that survey was 2011. That one is totally random. We map the bottom with sidescan sonar. MRD also uses those maps to inventory the artificial reefs. That allows us to pick structures at random, so we’re not doing high-quality sites or low-quality sites. We’re pretty much using the ROV camera and electronics.”

USA takes the video of each structure and estimates the abundance of red snapper around the reefs, artificial and natural, as well as bare bottom. Powers said USA spends about 35 days annually in the Gulf doing the surveys. The study has been so successful that it was the basis for the Great Red Snapper Count, a Gulf-wide study that estimated a red snapper population of 118 million fish.

“The trend in both surveys indicates a higher number of red snapper since the surveys began, the Shipp study in 1998 and the ROV study in 2011,” Powers said. “During the last five or six years, we’ve seen the average size of red snapper decrease. We believe that is because of fishing pressure. But we have tons of new fish coming in every year. It may very well be that, without the large snapper on the reef, it makes more room for the small snapper.

“The other thing we can calculate in our surveys is the weight of all the snapper around the artificial reef. If you look at the total weight number, it’s about the same over the past five years. But instead of having big, medium and small snapper, we now have small and medium snapper.”

Powers said people have asked him what’s wrong with the red snapper fishing because they are discarding more fish because the average size is lower. However, Powers said a significant change would have to be made to the season length to change the population dynamics.

“If they want to go back to where the average size is 10 pounds, then we have to go back to nine-day seasons,” he said. “Those big fish are still out there, but it’s not as easy to catch one. I am confident that everybody can go out there and get their two 16-inch (minimum size) snapper relatively easily. For the really big snapper, you have to target them. You have to have better sites that aren’t fished that much, and you have to be a fisherman again.”

Starting in 2017, Commissioner Blankenship led the Gulf states to work with Congress and the U.S. Department of Commerce to establish a pilot program for state management of red snapper. In 2020, NOAA Fisheries issued a final rule allowing the Gulf states to manage their red snapper fisheries. The first Alabama quota was a little more than 1.1 million pounds. Powers considers this year’s quota to be the sweet spot.

“I’m really comfortable with the recreational harvest at 660,000 pounds,” he said. “When we were harvesting around 1 million pounds, I think that was too much. That’s when we started seeing the average size decrease pretty dramatically. Even though the average size is lower, we are seeing the average size tick back up in the last couple of years.

“It’s remarkable to me how quickly this fishery responds to changes. We rebuilt this fishery from its low point in the early 2000s fairly quickly, more quickly than the feds thought possible. When we reduced the length of the season, we saw the average size skyrocket up. After we increased the season, we saw it respond fairly quickly. So, I’m comfortable that the average size will tick back up if we keep the harvest where it is.”

Powers also advocates for people to keep the first two legal-sized red snapper they catch and not try to high-grade to larger fish, which increases the discard mortality.

“If you want bigger fish, use a sow rig with better bait and keep it up in the water column,” he said. “Use your electronics. There are a lot of things people can do to increase the chances that the first two fish they catch are keepers, which are the ones they should keep. Another thing is later in the season, the artificial reefs closer to shore have mostly sub-legal fish. You go farther offshore, you get bigger fish. That’s what frustrates the charter boat guys. They want to go out and burn the minimum fuel as they can, and then come back and do two, sometimes three, trips a day.

“But everything is a balance. If you want a snapper season that consistently lasts through the summer, then you’re going to have to accept that it’s going to be a little more difficult to catch a legal snapper. You’re really going to have to be a skilled fisherman and do your research to catch a big snapper.”

Powers said the outstanding result of the reports is the health of the red snapper population and the number of new fish (recruits) showing up in the survey, which also shows an increase of abundance for greater amberjack and triggerfish.

“I think some of that can be attributed to the salinity in the Gulf,” he said. “We’ve had very good environmental conditions the last few years, and we have an abundance of artificial reefs.”

MRD Director Scott Bannon said the stock surveys started by Commissioner Blankenship and the surveys started by Dr. Shipp assure him that the red snapper population off the Alabama coast is in great shape.

“The Shipp trip data has been collected for the past 30 years, the longest dataset in the Gulf of America,” Bannon said. “Along with the ROV data, they give us an annual snapshot of the stock of reef fish in the Alabama reef zone. What they’ve shown us over the years is a general upward trend for most of the species, and they give us information about the health of our reef zones. When we are looking at state management for recreational red snapper, we are confident that the quota we have is appropriate and not in any way detrimental to the stock.”

Bannon said the USA and MRD data estimates the number of artificial reefs at 12,000. The reef zone covers about 1,200 square miles of Gulf bottom, the largest reef zone in the world.

“Our reef zone is designed to accommodate fish from birth to death, basically,” he said. “We have reefs designed for the juvenile fish before they move off to these larger structures. When the fish get larger and older, they actually move away from the structure. We feel confident that our population is healthy and that recruitment is good. That means there are plenty of babies being born every year to sustain the level of fishing we have now. We feel we have a well-managed, healthy reef zone.

“We also know that some anglers want to catch fish of a certain size. When we started state management, we knew we could manage for people to fish a lot or we could manage for big fish. If you’re going to manage for big fish, that means a much shorter season. We decided on a season where people can go as many days as possible when it’s convenient for them, and they’ll still be able to keep legal fish.”

Bannon also reminds anglers that the annual $10 Alabama Gulf Reef Fish Endorsement funds the USA Gulf surveys.

“There’s no other state that has this type of data, and we get this every year,” he said. “The Gulf Reef Fish Endorsement was designed to fund that research and have funding in place to continue this research. This data is so invaluable to us. That money for the Reef Fish Endorsement really returns right back to the person with the opportunities that we have.”

By David Rainer, Alabama DCNR