Here's why gag grouper season is much shorter than usual this year

Gag grouper season opens

FOX 13's Jennifer Kveglis reports

TAMPA, Fla. - This year's gag grouper season is dramatically shortened due to a decline in male population. According to NOAA, the gag grouper season began on Sept. 1 and ends on Sept. 16.

"It’s significant because we went from a 6-month gag grouper season just the year before last, to last year we were expecting 2 months and change. We wound up getting a shortened season last minute," Captain Dylan Hubbard of Hubbard's Marina said.

This year the season is only 15 days.

Gag grouper (Credit: Hubbard's Marina)

"Getting out there enjoying all of the great things Florida has to offer is always a challenge when we have these reductions on recreational fishing seasons," he said. "It’s in the name of trying to protect and proliferate the species."

Captain Hubbard said the results of the stock assessment this year of male gag groupers was shocking.

"Historically, around 20 to 30 percent of the population is male," he said. "Then it was observed as low as 17 percent. Right now they’re seeing observant rates of male gags at below sub 2 percent."

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The reason for the population decline is multi-faceted.

"Nowadays, with the advancements in technologies, bigger faster boats, more people out on the waters, trolling waters," he said. "We’ve got electric reels now."

Red tide is also to blame.

"This stock assessment for gag groupers was one of the first times that stock assessment scientists used red tide as actually a cause of mortality," he said. "Gag grouper are one of those species that live in the gulf. We catch them out deep. But they really reproduce, and those babies grow up in our back bay and upper bay estuaries. So when we have these hardened-down red tide events they kill off a potential of year, two-year, three-year, future populations."

Captain Hubbard said there is a silver lining.

"Red snapper, in my lifetime, is the biggest conservation success story in the gulf. We went down to a three-day season," he said. "Now Governor DeSantis announced this year the largest, longest private recreational red snapper season since that time."