By Marcie Jones, Gulf of Mexico Program Coordinator, Environmental Defense Fund Oceans Program
I recently attended Corpus Christi’s 10th Annual Earth Day – Bay Day Festival on behalf of EDF’s Gulf of Mexico Oceans program. I’d heard about the festival since I started at EDF last year, so I was really excited to share our catch share message with the 10,000+ attendees.
This annual event is hosted by The Coastal Bend Bays Foundation so that locals can learn about bays, estuaries, wetlands, native plants and animals, recycling and general conservation and environmental issues.
Our booth was full of information, facts and photos that showcased the problems with fisheries, explained why people should care, and described how catch shares can help. I met many interesting people, from age 5 to 85, asking about our work, commenting on the booth photos and picking up information such as our Oceans of Abundance report.
By the end of the day, I’d talked with hundreds about our work and had lots of ideas to improve the booth for next year.
Cool tidbit: At the beginning of the festival the Gulf Coast Indian Confederation blessed the grounds with a drum circle ceremony.
Eight months after Hurricane Ike slammed Texas’ largest fishing community, Galveston is steadily recovering from the storm. Red snapper fishermen under IFQ management kept their businesses going because they could fish later in the year and lease quota to others when they couldn’t fish themselves. 
Federal regulators recently finalized rules to help regional fishery councils comply with new U.S. fisheries laws to end and prevent overfishing with “annual catch limits” and “accountability measures.” This means that tougher limits on fishing are coming, and Gulf fishery managers can take this opportunity to save fisheries and the multi-billion dollars in economic benefits they provide the region. Here’s what can be done:
The Gulf Council recently voted to consider adding all reef fish to the successful IFQ program already working for red snapper and coming on-line for grouper and tilefish in January. When implemented, it will be one of the largest and most modern and effective management systems in the U.S.
January marked the second anniversary of the Gulf’s red snapper IFQ program. Fortunately, fishermen, regulators and environmentalists continue to report good news compared to the decade the fishery suffered under destructive derby management (also known as a “race” for the limited number of snapper that fishermen were allowed to catch each year).
The West Coast is a big step closer to improving management of its valuable and struggling groundfish fishery. A plan for individual fishing quotas (IFQs) was identified as a top priority for the groundfish commercial trawl fishery by fishermen and the regional fishery management council. A goal for implementation in 2011 has been set.