There’s still time to harvest a few wild oysters in Alabama waters, or to catch a red snapper, but it’s running out fast: Both seasons end on New Year’s Eve.

Recent announcements from the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR) depict a red snapper harvest that fell short of the federal quota but topped last year’s catch, and an oyster harvest that declined significantly from last year.

Red Snapper

ADCNR’s Marine Resources Division announced last week that that it will close the state’s 2024 red snapper season for private anglers at midnight on Tuesday, Dec. 31.

For 2024, federal authorities set the state’s recreational quota at 659,654 pounds. As it announced the end of the season ADCNR said that “2024 red snapper fishing landings for private anglers and state licensed commercial party boats will be approximately 570,000 pounds.”

That means that recreational landings for the year will fall about 89,654 pounds, or nearly 45 tons, short of the limit. However, it will be slightly more than the 2023 harvest and significantly more than the tally for 2022.

In 2022 the state’s recreational quota was set at 1.12 million pounds. When the season closed on Dec. 31, anglers had reported less than 500,000 pounds. Federal authorities then set the 2023 quota at 591,185 pounds. Anglers hit that figure on Oct. 17, bringing the season to an end.

Marine Resources Division Director Scott Bannon said the fact that this year’s catch fell short of the quota didn’t mean the fish weren’t out there.

“The weather played a major role throughout the 2024 red snapper season,” Bannon said in a Dec. 19 statement. “Several tropical storms and hurricanes created rough water conditions for boaters and anglers this year.”

“In spite of the challenges posed by the weather along the coast this year, it was exciting to see anglers reeling in red snapper throughout the late spring, summer, fall and early winter 2024,” said Chris Blankenship, ADCNR Commissioner. “We will continue working to ensure our citizens and visitors have access to the incredible red snapper fishery off the coast of Alabama.”

“Thanks to the benefit of having a state managed season, anglers were able to choose the best time to be on the water and avoid the inclement weather,” said Bannon. “Our mandatory reporting system, Snapper Check, also continued to allow us to closely monitor the state’s red snapper quota and provide anglers with a long season. We thank our anglers for continuing to report their red snapper, greater amberjack and triggerfish catches through Snapper Check. It’s an important tool that helps provide increased access to these fisheries.”

The 2025 recreational quota will be 664,552 pounds, according to Marine Resources. Opening dates for the 2025 season have not yet been.

At a series of public meetings, Bannon has said that state officials are considering a format change that would allow snapper fishing seven days a week in June, rather than four-day sessions around weekends. But that proposed change has not been formally adopted.

Wild oysters

Before the 2024-25 oyster season was opened on Oct. 7, state conservation officials provided a cautiously optimistic forecast. Their 2024 exploratory dives showed the number of mature oysters to be generally comparable to the numbers they found in 2023. But Jason Hermann, a biologist with the Marine Resources Division, warned that predatory oyster drills seemed to be on the rise.

Last week, ADCNR announced that it would close all public water bottoms to oyster harvesting at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 31. The department projected a harvest of approximately 25,000 sacks totaling almost 2.1 million pounds of oysters in the shell, with a “dockside value” exceeding $1.5 million.

As of Thursday, Dec. 26, the state’s online dashboard for the harvest showed a recreational and commercial total of 23,546 sacks. In Alabama, a sack is 80 to 85 pounds of oysters in the shell.

The latest harvest numbers continue a decline seen last year.

There was no harvest in 2018-19; state officials said their exploratory dives showed there weren’t enough oysters to make it worth the effort. Harvesters brought in 11,258 sacks in the 2019-20 season and 22,070 in the 2020-21 season, the biggest haul since 2013-14. The next round brought a much bigger count now reckoned at 50,020 sacks in 2021-2022.

That stands as a peak for recent years, though it is a fraction of the harvests seen early in the 20th century, when healthy oyster reefs were more widespread in Mobile Bay and nearby waters. The 2022-23 harvest brought in a somewhat lower 44,409 and as the end of last year’s harvest approached, ADCNR officials were predicting a final tally of about 32,000 sacks, a substantial decline from 2022-23.

“Each oyster season is different and has many factors to consider when it comes to the sustainable management of Alabama’s oyster population,” Bannon said as ADCNR announced the season’s end. “Last year there was significant mortality on the reefs due to oyster drills, a predatory snail that thrives when salinity levels are higher. Unfortunately, Alabama did not experience enough large rainfall events in the north part of the state to impact salinity levels along the coast and push out the oyster drills. This year, due to lower dockside prices, the harvest limit was increased from six sacks to eight sacks per harvester to allow them to increase their daily earnings. The harvest averaged 448 sacks per day this year, which is approximately 38,000 pounds of oysters per day. We are thankful that our local catchers were able to earn more money this year and provide Alabama’s highly sought after oysters to the state, regional and national markets.”

ADCNR and other entities have a variety of initiatives under way to increase oyster habitat. Among other things, ADCNR says it has received about $10 million in funding related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and restoration work using those funds will begin in 2025.

The state closure and harvest numbers relate only to the harvest of wild oysters, not to oyster farming operations.