The application for an Exempted Fishing Permit (EFP) was submitted by Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium on April 17, 2023, and involves assessing the efficacy of an optimized retention management strategy in the eastern Gulf of Mexico commercial reef fish fishery with red grouper, Epinephelus morio, as the test species. If granted, the EFP would allow the retention of undersized red grouper in federal Gulf waters seaward of 35 fathoms on three federally reef fish permitted bottom longline vessels with electronic monitoring systems, which use multiple cameras and sensors to record fishing activity, catch, and discards. The proposed EFP activity is a component of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) Electronic Monitoring (EM) and Recording grant No. 76682. The EFP would exempt harvest activities from federal regulations specific to commercial red grouper in federal waters of the Gulf at 50 CFR 622.37(b)(2)(i).
Exempted Fishing Permit
EFP Application
More Information
Return to the Gulf of Mexico Exempted Fishing Permits Page
Return to Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Homepage
Contact NOAA Staff
To reach Sustainable Fisheries staff, please call 727-824-5305
For questions about this EFP: Rich.Malinowski@noaa.gov
Oceanic whitetip shark. Hawaiʻi longline fishermen use leaders to connect weighed branch lines and baited hooks. A new rule prohibits steel wire leaders in the Hawaiʻi deep-set longline fishery, starting May 31, 2022. The rule aims to increase the survival of hooked oceanic whitetip sharks caught as bycatch in the Pacific Islands region. Credit: Andy Mann
Homeported in Pascagoula, Mississippi, NOAA Ship Pisces is the third in a class of state-of-the-art, acoustically quiet fisheries survey vessels built for a wide range of living marine resource surveys and ecosystem research projects. The ship focuses primarily on U.S. waters from the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, and South Atlantic to North Carolina. Credit: NOAA
Recreational angler holding red snapper. Credit: Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.
