Fishing Ban Slapped On Grouper: Federal officials halt commercial harvest of popular restaurant fish

July 15, 2004

Release from: Bill Finch, Ben Raines and Russ Henderson
Mobile Register (Alabama)

First it was red snapper. Then redfish. Now grouper.

At midnight Wednesday night, a large portion of America's newest, most fashionable restaurant fish was made off-limits to commercial fishermen.

As in decades past with other once-popular Gulf fish, such as red snapper and redfish, the grouper's reproductive habits haven't been able to keep up with all the grouper sandwiches and almond-crusted grouper showing up on menus across the country.

Federal officials announced June 15 that the commercial harvest of shallow-water grouper, including the common red grouper, would be halted for the year once the catch exceeded a certain quota. The catch should exceed the quota sometime in September, if recent annual harvests are any indication.

But at midnight Wednesday, another provision of the new regulation kicked in: The commercial harvest of deep-water grouper, which represents almost a quarter of the Gulf grouper catch, ceased immediately. New bag limits for recreational harvest of red grouper also went into effect.

Chris Nelson -- owner of Bon Secour Fisheries, a Baldwin County seafood distributor -- said it's unclear what effect, if any, the new regulations will have on restaurant fare. The people serving Gulf Coast grouper may replace it with imported grouper, he said, or they may replace it with another kind of fish that they may or may not call "grouper."

Nelson and other seafood dealers note that Mobile's commercial seafood industry likely won't be affected in any measurable way, since most of the Gulf's grouper catch is landed and processed in Florida.

But it's increasingly clear that where consumers are concerned, the grouper fad is becoming a victim of its own success.

Many kinds of grouper:

What's being sold as grouper -- even when it's honestly grouper -- isn't a single kind of fish, but rather a group of dozens of kinds of fish that are in the sea bass and grouper family.

In the northern Gulf of Mexico, there are a half-dozen common shallow-water grouper, including black grouper and red grouper, and a half dozen typical deep-water grouper, including the Warsaw grouper, the misty and snowy groupers and the speckled hind grouper.

Members of the sea bass family also are distributed widely in Asia and other areas, and their local sea bass species often are sold indiscriminately as grouper.

All of these fish tend to be similar in that they have big mouths and a stout bass-like body and firm, white, generally mild-tasting flesh. They're voracious predators and may live decades and weigh hundreds of pounds, scientists say.

Local author and biologist Bob Shipp said grouper has always been a popular restaurant fish in South Florida, though until recently, it was much less well-known in other parts of the country.

Grouper is less common than snapper and redfish in the upper Gulf, Shipp said, and has a reputation for being "a little bit wormy, particularly the big ones."

Because grouper are top-line predators, they also tend to accumulate the toxic heavy metals they consume with the smaller fish that make up their diets. According to federal data, the commonly harvested black grouper average over one part per million of mercury. Federal and state health authorities warn people not to consume fish that contain more than 1 part per million of mercury.

Two other grouper species, gag grouper and snowy grouper, are under a "limited consumption" warning in the state of Florida as a result of mercury contamination.

That information isn't advertised nationally, and there's no good way to distinguish what kind of grouper is being served. So the consumption advisories seem to have had little impact on grouper's growing reputation as it became the glamour fish that replaced the heavily regulated snapper and redfish.

Much of it is imported:

Now that grouper has made a name for itself, other countries have gotten in on the act and furnish about half of the genuine grouper sold in the United States, according to data from the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Many tourists who flock to the coast in search of Gulf fresh fish might be surprised to find that much of the grouper they're buying is from Southeast Asia.

"We don't do any local grouper," said seafood distributor Nelson. "It's all imported. We import some from Mexico, but it mostly comes from Indonesia." The Indonesian grouper is closely related to Gulf grouper.

Some of the foreign-harvested grouper comes with its own controversy, and some biologists report that stocks of Southeast Asian grouper also may be in trouble.

As the demand for grouper raises the price, Nelson warned, there could be more attempts to pass off other, unrelated species of fish as grouper.

Nelson said the grouper he sells is without question grouper. But he said that much of what people are eating as grouper is anything but.

"My brother and I were making a trip through Florida recently," he said. "Between here and Apalachicola, we stopped at five or so restaurants, and at every one of them, I ordered a grouper sandwich. I ate tilapia, I ate catfish, I ate basa (a catfish from Southeast Asia). I never did get to eat a grouper sandwich.

"I'm in the industry," he continued. "I recognize what I'm eating. Most consumers can't tell the difference."

Shipp said the "mislabeling problem is rampant," but added that he thinks it applies to a wide variety of fish and not just grouper. He noted that his son runs a restaurant, and a supplier tried to sell freshwater trout as salmon.

Warning signs:

The evidence that grouper couldn't stand heavy fishing pressure was becoming evident long before this group of fish became a national item.

What was once of the most commonly recognized groupers -- the Goliath grouper, also known as jewfish -- was declared off-limits to the commercial market in the early 1990s.

Goliath groupers, which can live for decades, grow up to 6 feet long and reach 800 pounds, were once fairly common in shallow waters around piers and were occasionally caught there. But scientists believe that heavy fishing in deeper water areas, where the grouper gather to mate, was the main cause of decline.

Like many long-lived species, grouper aren't very effective at sexual reproduction until they are large and rather old, and many are caught years before they ever mate. Most grouper species are neither male nor female when they're born; male grouper may not firm up their gender until they are several feet long and a decade or more old.

Compounding the grouper's reproductive dilemma is its habit of breeding in areas well offshore in large "aggregations." In some grouper species, tens of thousands of fish can be found in a single cluster.

Grouper populations return to these aggregation areas like clockwork, making them easy targets for fishermen with large boats.

A few decades ago, before Goliath grouper became popular targets for the commercial fish market, biologists surveyed mating aggregations that averaged more than 100 fish per cluster. By the late 1980s, the average was less than 10 per aggregation, and more than a quarter of the aggregations had disappeared entirely -- a level that many felt would lead to inbreeding and a genetic crash.

Commercial fishing for Goliath grouper was halted in 1990, and in the years since, aggregations have climbed somewhat to 30 to 40 fish per aggregation. But scientists are concerned that the largest, most healthy reproducers still are being selectively harvested out of the aggregations, with serious consequences for the health of the population.

Other species continued to decline throughout the 1990s.

Between 1986 and 1990, the commercial harvest of black grouper averaged over 1 million pounds per year, while between 1998 and 2002, the total black grouper harvest averaged under 350,000 pounds, according to federal data.