Great Amberjack Count Estimates Far More AJs in the Gulf

By DAVID RAINER, Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources

The Great Red Snapper Count, utilizing new sampling gear and methods, estimated that far more iconic red snapper are in the Gulf of America than traditional assessment methods had indicated. A team of marine scientists used the same methodology to conduct the recent Greater Amberjack Count that produced similar results.

Dr. Sean Powers, Director of the Stokes School of Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of South Alabama (USA), headed up the study that involves a dozen research entities from the south Atlantic and across the Gulf. On a break from his judging duties at the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo (ADSFR) on Dauphin Island, Powers shared the findings of the multi-year study.

“For the last four years, we’ve been working on this project from North Carolina all the way to Texas to get an independent estimate on greater amberjack, similar to what we did for the Great Red Snapper Count,” Powers said. “The reason we focused on greater amberjack, especially in the Gulf, it is a stock that has supposedly been overfished and overfishing is occurring for decades.

“That really never made sense to us that it (overfished condition) could persist for so long. The (NOAA Fisheries) stock assessment has very little other data except for catch data.”

What Powers and his team wanted to do was gather fisheries independent data without the catch data. Congress appropriated $5 million to NOAA Fisheries and $5 million to the National Sea Grant College Program to conduct the amberjack study.

“We went out and measured population sizes on different reefs and different habitats where amberjack would occur,” he said. “We had 11 different institutions involved doing that for two years. The south Atlantic portion (North Carolina to Key West, Florida) of the stock that we found agreed with the stock assessment. We estimated there were 2.2 million greater amberjack 1-plus years old, and their estimate was 2.1.

“But when we moved to the Gulf, the latest stock assessment by the feds says there are 1.5 million greater amberjack. What we found was 3.2 million, so roughly double what the stock assessment says. Our estimates were what was matching up with the fishermen. Fishermen in the south Atlantic really didn’t have many concerns and it was open all year.”

However, it is a completely different story in the Gulf of America. Currently, no greater amberjack season has been set for 2026, and the previous seasons were set so that anglers would have something to catch when for-hire (charters) red snapper season is closed. The ADSFR, which is held on the third full weekend in July each year, hasn’t had an amberjack category in more than 15 years.

“In the Gulf, we’ve had shorter and shorter seasons, and the fishermen are asking why are we doing that because they are abundant,” Powers said. “Now there are some differences in the stocks in the Western Gulf, where they have really big amberjack, where ours are just above the legal limit (34 inches fork length).

“We hope our study will get reconciled with the stock assessment, because we don’t even have an amberjack season scheduled yet.”

Kevin Anson, Director of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ (ADCNR) Marine Resources Division (MRD), said the results of the study are promising.

“Over the last ten to twelve years there have been significant changes in Gulf of America greater amberjack size and bag limits, commercial daily trip limits and season lengths, but the fishery just hasn’t responded as anticipated,” Anson said. “This research may provide managers better information on important biological or behavioral factors that could help with identifying more impactful management options.”

Powers said the research team tries to keep its methodology as simple as possible when conducting these abundance studies.

“The way stock assessments are done now is you measure the catch, which is very difficult to do, particularly for the recreational sector.” he said. “Then you make a series of assumptions about how big the population has to be to produce that catch.

“My career has focused on an alternative – let’s just get out on the water and get more observations and actually count the number of fish at selected sites and randomly selected sites.”

Powers said Alabama, through USA and MRD, have pioneered the way the study was conducted.

“Senator (Katie) Britt and Senator (Richard) Shelby before her were intrigued that we had to make so many assumptions and that we just needed to be out there counting fish,” Powers said. “We do that with underwater video. The water in the western Gulf is too cloudy, so we use acoustic cameras that use sound. As long as you have a sample size, and you do enough samples in enough different areas, then you can produce the estimate. For example, you take the number of fish on an artificial reef multiplied by the number of artificial reefs, plus the number of amberjack on natural hard bottom multiplied by the amount of natural hard bottom.

“It takes a whole lot of work. Obviously, it’s not as simple as that, but I prefer those models because if nobody believes us, we can go back through our videos and recount.”

ADCNR Commissioner Chris Blankenship is appreciative of the work of Senator Britt and the Congressional funding support of the research.

“Congressional support was needed to help us find out more about this species,” Commissioner Blankenship said. “The information may lead to more access to amberjack for Alabama anglers and throughout the Gulf which would be beneficial to coastal communities.” 

Powers said the obvious question is how to resolve the differences between the NOAA Fisheries amberjack assessment and the Greater Amberjack Count.

“We have two different numbers, especially in the Gulf, and we’re working with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) to try to figure out which parts of each study we can take to produce a better estimate,” he said. “This was two years of fieldwork and four years for the total project.

"If we can do these studies on the important species or the economically viable species like red snapper, amberjack and triggerfish, we can get independent estimates and check that with what the stock assessment is telling us.”

Powers said greater amberjack is considered a reef fish, but it does travel more than species like red snapper.

“Amberjack are also pretty migratory,” he said. “They’ll be here (northern Gulf) most of the summer around our reefs. One of the really cool other things we’ve found is that amberjack in our area will stay on a reef for 30, 60 or 90 days, a long time. On the south Atlantic side, those fish are on a site for three or four days. We also did a lot of tagging to make sure that the south Atlantic and Gulf fish are really different stocks. They may meet up around Key West at certain times of the year, but they are really separate stocks.

“We also found that the fish caught off Alabama and Florida don’t get that big, but off Louisiana and Texas, around those oil platforms, they get gigantic. It’s not unusual for our colleagues to catch amberjack from 60 to 100 pounds. In our neck of the woods, it’s more like 20 to 30 pounds with an occasional big one. I think that is because of less fishing pressure in the western Gulf.”

Powers hopes the Gulf Council will come up with a solution to provide some sort of amberjack season in the Gulf for 2026.

“We went over the amount we were supposed to harvest last year, so the season has been delayed, and no season has been set,” he said. “We’re hoping the Gulf Council will reconsider it, especially when the fishermen are saying they are abundant. I think that’s what they’re going to look at under an emergency rule.”

 Visit https://gulfseagrant.org/reef-fish-extension/greater-amberjack-research-program/ for more information about the Greater Amberjack Count, including a copy of the final report.

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