Comparing growth rates and length-at-age relationships of red snapper, Lutjanus campechanus, among heavily fished and lightly fished regions of Alabama and Louisiana.

摘要

Red snapper are considered overfished and experiencing overfishing. Compensatory growth may facilitate stock recovery; however, it is not known if compensatory growth is occurring. To shed light on this growing concern, we designed this project to assess the following hypotheses: one, Alabama heavily fished, Alabama lightly fished, Louisiana heavily fished, and Louisiana lightly fished regions of red snapper have the same growth rate; two, yearly progression over time does not have an effect on the growth rates of red snapper in the four regions; three, the von Bertalanffy growth parameters and length-at-age relationships did not vary between the four regions of red snapper. As expected, a general trend of increasing growth rate over time was observed in all four regions. When compared by region, faster growth rates were observed in Alabama heavily fished compared to Alabama lightly fished, Louisiana heavily fished compared to Louisiana lightly fished, Alabama heavily fished compared to Louisiana heavily fished, and Alabama lightly fished compared to Louisiana lightly fished. These observations imply the need for adaptive management strategies to promote stock recovery of red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico.