Bad News About Red Snapper?

Some Gulf Coast fishing businesses may start to sink.
They blame it on red snapper restrictions.
Regulators are thinking about allowing only one fish per day or even a thirty day red snapper season.
And the changes could affect the price you pay for snapper.
Donnie Matsler is a deckhand on the charter boat, "The Wright One."
As for a possible change cutting the snapper season to one month, or a catch limit of one snapper per person per day, Matsler said, "This is really going to kill our boating season."
He said charter captains are already facing problems.
Matsler said, "It costs us to just keep all these boats out here per boat, per month and, then, not only that, the upkeep of them, but the maintenance."
And, he said, there are rising fuel prices and fewer people chartering boats.
Matsler said, "They just don't come down here now."
And fishermen said there's a trickle down effect.
Jeremy Folse is a deckhand and a diver, cleaning the bottom of boats so they don't burn as much fuel.
Folse said, "If our fishing industry gets cut, that cuts that business out, too. Therefore, my income goes from where I was able to make a living to having to find something else to do, some other job."
And fishermen said fewer snapper mean even higher prices than what you're paying at restaurants now.
Matsler said, "You're looking at like $8.00, $10.00 a pound."
And, the irony of the whole issue, according to Matsler, is, "We're getting so many snapper out here right now, we can't catch the other recreational fish for the snapper taking the bait. There are that many snappers."
If there are that many snapper, why a one month season or a one fish limit?
Regulators say recreational fishermen are exceeding this year's quota by one to two million pounds.
And, the way the law is written, the extra fish caught in 2009 mean the limit in 2010 will have to be that much stricter.