Abstract

This work is a summary of the 175 (67 snapper, 61 groupers and 47 spawning aggregations) presentations at the GCFI annual meetings which have contributed to advances in the biology, life history and fisheries management of snappers and groupers in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. During the first three decades of GCFI, snappers and groupers were minimally represented at the annual Institutes (1 grouper–6 snapper papers), probably because the fisheries for snappers and groupers was far less important than the shrimp and other pelagic fisheries in the region. However, the fisheries potential of snappers and groupers was identified in most of the GCFI presentations describing the fisheries resources of several countries throughout the region (Mexico, USA, Venezuela, Martinique, Honduras, Guyana, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and others). The number of publications for these fisheries increased dramatically in the 1990s, especially for groupers, with 40 presentations covering a wide range of research areas from aquaculture to stock assessment and spawning aggregations. The contribution for snappers has been more evenly distributed, with 28 and 29 publications for the 1990s and the 2000s, respectively. In the case of spawning aggregations, there were 19 papers during the 1990s increasing to 27 papers in the period 2000-2006. This reflects an increase in research and management efforts in recent years. This presentation describes the historical trends for snapper and grouper fisheries, as well as spawning aggregations, from the perspective of contributions to the GCFI Proceedings.

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