Meeting Notice
September 18, 2019

 

The Gulf Council will host a Release Mortality Symposium October 7-9, 2019 at the Tradewinds Island Resort in St. Pete Beach, Florida. The Symposium will consist of two parts: A Science Workshop which will convene at 8:30 a.m. October 7, 2019 and adjourn at 12:00 p.m. on October 8, 2019; and a meeting of the Council’s Outreach and Education Technical Committee which will convene from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on October 9, 2019. Both the workshop and the meeting are open to the public.

The Symposium will focus primarily on the recreational fishing sector. The objective of the meeting is to create a roadmap/action plan to promote the use of barotrauma mitigation tools such as venting tools and descending devices. Symposium participants will review barotrauma mitigation research and data collection efforts and recommend approaches for reducing discard mortality that could be used in future stock assessments and management actions.

The Science Workshop portion of the Symposium will consist of invited panelists from a wide arena including academics, managers, policy makers, fishermen, and state and federal agency staff, with varying perspectives and knowledge of release mortality of reef fishes in the Gulf of Mexico. The Workshop will begin with presentations to highlight the magnitude of discard mortality for reef fish in the Gulf of Mexico, describe current research in the Gulf of Mexico, and gain perspective from a Case Study of Yelloweye Rockfish on the Pacific Coast. Panelists will then engage in facilitated discussions to outline and prioritize barotrauma mitigation strategies.

The Outreach and Education Technical Committee will meet as part of the Symposium to make recommendations about communication strategies to promote the effective, wide-spread use of barotrauma mitigation tools as recommended during the Science Workshop portion.

The agenda and meeting materials for the entire symposium can be found here.

Register for the webinar here.