Abstract

The Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DNER) is responsible for the conservation and management of all the Island’s natural resources, including the fishery resources. The DNER’s Commercial Fisheries Statistics Program (CFSP) collects and analyzes the dependent fisheries data. The CFSP has been collecting data since 1971. During the 1980s, it was observed that the Puerto Rico’s commercial fishery resources had shown overfishing symptoms (e.g. decrease in landings pounds, change in catch composition, decrease in the size of some important species).\Groupers (Serranidae) are an important resource in Puerto Rico’s commercial fishery. Grouper species share a number of life history characteristics believed to render them particularly vulnerable to human exploitation. Several groupers species in the Caribbean and Western Atlantic are known to aggregate for spawning at specific times and locations. The fishing activity of these resources during their aggregation periods make these groupers very vulnerable to being overexploited.\The red hind, Epinephelus guttatus, has become the most important species of grouper taken commercially in Puerto Rico. E. guttatus is a protogynous hermaphrodite and forms spawning aggregations. However, this species is also heavily fished during the spawning aggregation. During the last 12 years there are many studies reporting red hind as an overfished species. Since 1995, three spawning aggregation sites of the red hind in the west coast of Puerto Rico have been closed to all fishing activity. The Caribbean Fishery Management Council and the DNER work together to enforce this action.\The objective of this study is to describe the fishery of red hind through the data collected by the CFSP (landings and biostatistics data) during 1988 - 2001. Length frequency distributions (LFD) of this species by years, fish traps, SCUBA diving, and bottom lines were compared.

PDF Preview