When it comes time to spawn, most of the red snappers leave the reef, returning to shallow waters. They lay their eggs in the water. The eggs float to the surface were the red snappers hatch in about 24 hours. This occurs from the late spring to early summer months. The baby red snappers live on or near the surface for the first 20 days of their lives until they are physically able to be buoyant, can manage swimming in the ocean currents on their own, and are able to swim and stay on the bottom of the ocean floor.
See our picture of an Ocean Sign above. The red snapper is considered a white fish and is one of the most sought after by restaurants and chefs. They have a nutty flavor and can be prepared in a wide variety of ways. The meat is very high in protein and is low in sodium and saturated fats. Sport fishermen love to go after the red snapper because of the red snapper will fight the fishing line. Blackfin snapper can also look very similar to a red snapper, and often inhabit the same depths and structure.
The most obvious difference is a black half-moon shaped marking at the base of the pectoral fin. The eye of the blackfin is often more orange or copper than a red snapper and the blackfin snappers bottom fin closest to the tail anal fin is rounded, rather than pointy. The vermillion bag limit is 10 per person under the reef fish aggregate bag limit.
More detailed commercial and recreational regulations can be found on our fishing regulations webpage or on the recreational or commercial version of the Fish Rules Mobile App.
As recently as 20 years ago, red snapper from the Gulf of Mexico GOM were thought to live only about years; we now know them to be significantly long-lived compared to many familiar marine fishes. Spotted seatrout specks in Louisiana seldom survive past age 5, tunas are old at age 12, and redfish may live about 40 years at the maximum. The oldest red snapper reported in the scientific literature is an individual sampled in February This specimen, a female However, an even older specimen, almost 59 years of age, was sampled from the commercial harvest by LSU biologists some years later.
This potentially long lifespan complicates management of red snapper; the species must be managed more like a forest than an annual crop like shrimp. Very old individuals have been rarely encountered in the various research projects that have sampled either the commercial harvest or the recreational harvest and they have become increasingly more uncommon in the last decade or so. The vast majority of the red snapper harvested by both the recreational and commercial fisheries are in the range of years of age.
Age frequency of red snapper harvested by the commercial fishery off Louisiana, Modified from: Nieland, D. Fischer, M. Baker, Jr. Red snapper in the northern Gulf of Mexico: Age and size composition of the commercial harvest and mortality of regulatory discards. Pages in W. Patterson, III, J. Cowan, Jr. Fitzhugh, and D. Nieland, editors. Red snapper ecology and fisheries in the U. Gulf of Mexico.
Back to Top. Red snapper grow in length relatively fast during their first 10 years or so of life reaching, on average, a length of about 30 inches. Growth rate decreases drastically thereafter as they shift more energy into reproduction and less energy into growth.
This growth strategy also allows them to get big quickly, an advantage in both avoiding and deterring predators. However, there is great variety in individual growth rates among red snapper; size is little indication of age see figure below. Interestingly, old individuals are seldom very large and large individuals are seldom very old.
The Age-length relationship for red snapper from the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana. Modified from: Wilson, C. Age and growth of red snapper Lutjanus campechanus from the northern Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana. Fishery Bulletin — The red snapper spawning season in the northern Gulf of Mexico begins in May and ends in late September about days ; peak spawning months appear to be May, June and July.
Unlike many fish species that spawn between dusk and midnight, red snappers begin their spawning activities in the early afternoon and stop at dusk. There is no evidence that red snappers form spawning aggregations at specific sites year after year as do some other species of snappers and many species of groupers. Red snappers seem to spawn wherever and whenever they are capable of doing so.
Almost all female red snappers in the GOM off Alabama become spawning-capable reproductively mature at age 2 and at a total length of about 13 inches. In the GOM off Louisiana, however, while many females become spawning capable at age 2, some female red snappers do not start spawning until they are age 6 and almost 27 inches in length. This is likely due to differences in population sizes between the two areas more fishing pressure and fewer red snappers off Alabama.
This process of maturing at younger ages and smaller sizes, called juvenescence, is usually a compensatory response to diminishing numbers within a population of fishes. Age at maturity able to produce and spawn eggs for female red snapper captured off Alabama purple and Louisiana green ,
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