John, the commercial cry about all those over-abundant pesky snapper is obviously not supported by the rapid decline in the recreational fishery. What I understand is happening is that the by-catch of snapper is an issue because the associated species that share the same general environment (gurnard, trevally, john dory etc) have been so heavily depleted by over exploitation that even the heavily depleted snapper stocks are a by-catch problem when trying to catch the last few gurnard etc. Certainly the recreational catch of these other fish has suffered as badly or even worse than the snapper take.
We have such a huge focus on the snapper that we shouldn't forget how badly damaged the other stocks are as well and we shouldn't let the trawlers do the final decimation of those stocks as a consequence of any decisions made around the snapper stocks. We don't know how the interaction of those stocks affects the overall health of the fishery and they all need some breathing space to rebuild, not just the snapper.
If I remember correctly, the industry has failed to catch their TACC in the SNA1 area for most of these associated species year after year. Most years not even getting close. That surely indicates that the stocks are not even close to whatever MPI is basing their calculations on, and could be under even more threat than the snapper are. The industry finds it convenient to blame over-abundance of snapper for the problem as they have to stop fishing when they run out of by-catch allowance, but in reality they wouldn't catch 4500 tonnes of snapper bycatch targetting the other species, so it is really down to the heavy depletion of those species and bad catch planning.
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