Volume 55

Landings Allocations between Different Segments of the Spiny Lobster Fishing Community in Florida


Authors
Matthews, T.R.; Sharp, W.C.; Beaver, R.W.
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Date: 2004


Pages: 1031


Event: Proceedings of the Fifty Fifth Annual Gulf and Caribbean Fisheries Institute


City: Xel Ha


Country: Mexico

Abstract

In Florida, the Caribbean spiny lobster, Panulirus argus, supports both an intensive commercial fishery and a popular recreational dive fishery. The fishery has been dominated by the use of wooden-slat traps since the 1950's. From the early 1970s to 1991-92 fishing season, the numbers of traps increased dramatically from approximately 200,000 to 939,000. The State of Florida implemented a trap reduction program in the 1993 - 1994 fishing season that reduced the numbers of traps to 530,000 by the 2001 - 2002 fishing season. Additional reduction of the number of traps to 400,000 is scheduled. Commercial lobster landings have been, on average, higher since the implementation of trap limitation than any previous eight-year period. However, the proportion of total landings by commercial trap fishermen decreased progressively soon after the implementation of the program from a high of 77 % in the 1994 - 1995 fishing season to 62 % in the 2001 - 2002 fishing season, while the proportion of the landings by commercial divers increased from 3% to 11%. The proportion of the total landings by recreational divers has also increased by several percentage points in recent years. Such a shift in landings away from the commercial trap fishery toward commercial and recreational divers was recognized as a potential, but unintended, effect of restricting the number of traps. Fishery managers must now consider the implications of trap limitation on the historic landings allocations between fishing groups.

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