
Originally Posted by
duckcrazed
Bog, I'm curious what constitutes proof for you?
Data show a 25+ year decline in both trammel net and electrofishing surveys, there's peaks in year classes strength in individual years, but the overall trend is down and falling. Age and length structure of adult fish is declining, ie, the old productive spawners are not being replaced. Long-term guides and anglers are all seeing/reporting declines. A lot of anglers are reporting flats that used to hold several schools now have none.
What else would you need to see to constitute proof, I'm genuinely curious?
For what it's worth, this isn't the same problem we have with red snapper. The problem with red snapper population is the age structure is screwed...all the offshore surveys show a big increases in red snapper, no one is arguing that, but 50 years ago, there were 40+ year old red snapper, and now there's none over 10 years old. This age structure mismatch is why the assessment continues to show the population is overfished...completely different issue than we are having with red drum (although we are also seeing length and age decreases).
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