The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Council) will meet at The Hilton Bayfront, Saint Petersburg, Florida from November 4 - 7, 2024. The local area has been severely impacted by recent hurricanes. JD Dugas, Council Chair said, “We have decided to move forward with this planned meeting, with a modified agenda, because we recognize that fishermen, other interested parties, and staff who may have been impacted by the storms will benefit from the accessibility of this locally held meeting.”

The Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee meeting and Law Enforcement Technical Committee meeting, scheduled for early October were canceled due to Hurricane Milton. In the absence of the materials expected from those meetings, the Council meeting agenda has been modified.

?The Council meeting will begin at 10:00 AM, EST on Monday November 4th, and then at 8:30 AM, EST each subsequent day. The full Council will convene on Wednesday, November 6th after the Council Committees complete their business. Public Comment will be held from 1:45 – 5:00 PM, EST on Wednesday, November 6, 2024. The Council welcomes public comment from both in-person and virtual participants. Instructions on how to provide comment will be located on the meetings materials webpage as soon as it’s available.

The meeting will begin with the adoption of Council Committee Assignments through August 2025. During this meeting, the Council plans to hear a presentation and discuss whether wahoo should be considered for federal fishery management in the Gulf of Mexico. The Council will continue work on a document that would modify vessel position data reporting requirements for the shrimp fishery. The Council will work on modifications to deep-water and shallow-water grouper management measures and consider options to modify lane snapper management measures. The Council also plans work on a document that addresses distributional issues in the commercial Individual Fishing Quota Program and work on a document to modify the federal for-hire red snapper season. The Council will also discuss for-hire data collection and hear presentations on NOAA’s National Seafood Strategy, wind energy development, and a proposed exempted fishing permit that would authorize testing of new bycatch reduction device designs in the commercial shrimp fishery.

Register for the webinar here.

Full Committee and Council Agendas and meeting materials will be posted as they become available on the Council Meetings webpage.