![]() Gear restrictions to protect habitat and reduce bycatch.Seasonal closures from January to April to protect spawning aggregations.Commercial and recreational size limits to reduce harvest of immature grouper.Closing the fishery once annual quotas are projected to be met.Establishing annual catch limits for both commercial and recreational fishers.Limiting the number of available permits (both transferable and nontransferable) available to commercial fishers.The plan and its amendments include numerous measures to rebuild current populations. Implemented in 1983, the Snapper-Grouper FMP was established to end historic overfishing of red and other grouper species. Red grouper are managed under the Snapper-Grouper Fishery Management Plan (FMP) along with several other south Atlantic species. NOAA Fisheries and the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council manage the red grouper fishery along the US Atlantic. Young grouper are preyed upon by jacks, other groupers, sharks, barracudas, and morays adults are eaten by large sharks and carnivorous marine mammals. They are among the top reef predators, controlling some aspects of balance in a reef system. Red grouper have large mouths with a slight under-bite, which allows them to eat their prey whole by dilating their gill covers and rapidly inhaling. The proportion of males in a population of red grouper increases with age. The females reach sexual maturity between ages 4 and 6, and those who turn into males often do so between the ages of 7 and 15. Red grouper are protogynous hermaphrodites, meaning they all begin life as a female and eventually some may transform into males. ![]() They spawn in shallow waters from February through June, and spawn almost 26 times in a season. The oldest recorded red grouper in the Gulf of Mexico was 29 years, while the oldest recorded in the South Atlantic was 26 years old. Red grouper grow slowly and can reach up to 50 inches in length and weigh up to 50 pounds. ![]()
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