RedSnapper_Effort_Stunz_Greg_CorpusChristiTX_30August2022_Reel4126.mp3

Greg Stunz [00:00:00] Counting fish is kind of like counting trees, except, you know, you can't see them and they move.

Greg Stunz [00:00:05] And you quickly realize that, oh, maybe it's not as is as easy as we thought, because historically, and even in the red snapper fishery, we measured the abundance of the fish based on how many you caught. The more fish you caught, well, the more fish there must have been out there because, you know, you caught them.

Greg Stunz [00:00:23] And so, but we made a fundamental mistake as fisheries managers through time. We kept catching more and more fish, and we were like, "Oh, this is great, the Gulf of Mexico and the oceans in general are limitless, ... you know, Mother Nature is always going to supply."

Greg Stunz [00:00:38] But what we failed to factor into that catch, was the amount of effort that was going into it, and that's the problem.

Greg Stunz [00:00:45] So in fisheries, we teach you, you don't monitor just the abundance of fish you catch. You monitor how much effort you expend to catch those fish.

Greg Stunz [00:00:54] And that really tells the story, because what we failed to figure out is that, well, first we had sailing vessels, then we got motorized engines, and then we got LORAN electronics to find places in, you know, the featureless Gulf. And then you got GPS. And then you got, now, boats with five engines hanging off of the back of them, that can find a rocking chair anywhere in the Gulf of Mexico and travel 40 to 50 miles an hour.

Greg Stunz [00:01:19] Well, our catches obviously go up from all that, because we get better and better at catching fish.

Greg Stunz [00:01:24] But that doesn't mean that the population is healthy.

Greg Stunz [00:01:26] All that is considered effort. You know, we can have better gear, fish more hooks, better baits, all kind of things.

Greg Stunz [00:01:33] So your catch rate goes up, but in reality, your population might be going down.

Greg Stunz [00:01:37] And we didn't realize that at the time. And we really overfished that fishery because we weren't accounting for all this effort going into it.