Headboat Fishery in the South Atlantic Region

1 Introduction

Headboats having been operating in the South Atlantic Region (Florida Keys to North Carolina/Virgina border) since at least 1921, earliest photo submitted in the FISHstory Project (personal communication with Julia Byrd, SAFMC Citizen Science Program Manager), and the offshore fishery had developed along the coast in the 1920s and 1930s. After World War II, the effort in the headboat fishery increased when surplus military vessels were purchased and used as headboats (Fitzpatrick et al. 2017). Although the fishery was operating since the early 1920s, little information is available prior to 1972, when the Southeast Region Headboat Survey (SRHS) started. This paper describes effort and catch in the headboat fishery from 1981 to 2023.

Headboat data were provided by Southeast Region Headboat Survey staff. Additional data were pulled from the Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) datafiles and analyzed with a customized SAS code provided by NOAA Fisheries staff for MRIP datafile. The estimates derived from MRIP include Monroe County and results in different effort estimates for the South Atlantic Region compared to the MRIP online query. Vessel or headboat trips refers to the number of trips taken by a vessel while angler trips refers to total number of anglers fishing.

Recreational effort (angler trips) in the South Atlantic Region increased in the shore and private/rental mode from 1981 until 2000 (Figure 1.1). Since then, effort in the two major components of the recreational sector stabilized. The charter and headboat components, which constitute 1% to 2% of overall recreational effort, have been variable. Angler trips on charter boats increased from 2010 to 2019. Since 2019, the number of angler trips on charter boats has been bouncing around 900,000 angler trips per year. Headboats had the fewest angler trips per year, ranging between 173,000 and 418,000 during the time period. Angler trips were highest in 2014 and 2015 and have been decreasing since. The number of trips after the Covid-19 pandemic has been higher than the lows that occurred between 2002 and 2007.

Figure 1.1: A. Recreational effort as estimated through Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) and the Southeast Region Headboat Survery (SRHS) from 1981 to 2023. B. Charter boat and Headboat effort components zoomed in for greater detail.

Because most headboats operate in the ocean greater than three miles, MRIP data were filtered to trips that reported fishing in the ocean greater than 3 miles or greater 10 miles for Monroe County to better compare effort. There were fewer angler trips in the ocean on the private recreational vessels (20% of all private recreational trips) and charter boat vessels (54% of all charter trips) (Figure 1.2). In recent years, the percent of angler trips in the ocean decreased for private (19% from 2014 to 2023) and charter (46% from 2014 to 2023) components of the recreational fishery. There were on average 4.4 million angler trips in the private recreational component, 363,000 angler trips in the charter component, and 298,000 angler trips in the headboat component from 2014 to 2023. The headboat component of the recreational fishery had the fewest ocean angler trips in most years and accounted for 6% of the ocean angler trips from 1983 to 2023 (MRIP was fully implemented in 1983).

Figure 1.2: A. Recreational effort in the ocean greater than three miles (or 10 miles for Monroe County) as estimated through Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) and the Southeast Region Headboat Survery (SRHS) from 1981 to 2023. B. Charter boat and Headboat effort zoomed in for greater detail.

2 Vessel and Effort Trends in Southeast Region Headboat Survey

2.1 Number of Vessels Surveyed

The number of vessels active in the South Atlantic portion of the SHRS declined since 1992, when there was 105 vessels (Figure 2.1, Green et al. 2024). The largest decrease in number of vessels over a four-year period occurred from 2000 to 2003, with a drop of 21 vessels. This decrease coincided with a US economic recession.¹ From 2004 to 2010, there was an increase in vessel numbers. Since 2010, the number of headboats in the South Atlantic region decreased, reaching its lowest point in 2023. Two potential reasons for the decreased number of vessels could be restrictions on Red Snapper harvest and shortened seasons for Black Sea Bass (in 2010 and 2011); however, most of the decrease occurred south of Cape Canaveral, where Black Sea Bass and Red Snapper are less common (see below).

The number of headboats in the Gulf portion of the SRHS was consistently lower than in the South Atlantic before 2017. However, since 2017, Gulf headboats have outnumbered those in the South Atlantic. Importantly, there has not been an equivalent increase in either region when the other decreases, indicating that boats shifting from one area to the other did not cause the change in vessel number.

Figure 2.1: Number of headboat vessels in the Southeast Region Headboat Survey by area from 1981 to 2023. Data from Green et al. 2024

2.2 Effort

From 1981 to 1992, there was an increasing trend in the number headboat trips and angler trips, which corresponds to an increasing number of vessels in the survey (Figure 2.2). After 1992, the number of headboat trips and angler trips decreased to its lowest level in 2003. Similar to the number of vessels, trips increased after 2003. However, the number of headboat and angler trips increased until 2014, four years after the number of headboats started decreasing. The number of trips remained at its highest levels from 2014 to 2016. Since 2017 (except for 2020 associated with Covid-19), the number of headboat trips (approximately 11,000) and angler trips (between 230,000 and 280,000 trips) remained fairly constant.