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Commercial Fishing License Buyback Programs

The department administers commercial fishing license buyback programs for shrimp, crab, and finfish. Funds generated from a surcharge on these commercial licenses and on the Saltwater Fishing Stamp Endorsement are used for purchasing and retiring commercial crab, finfish, bait shrimp, and bay shrimp licenses. The goal of the program is to reduce the number of license holders and fishing effort in each of those fisheries.

The license buyback programs depend on voluntary sellers to offer their licenses to be purchased by the department. To date, most of the funds expended have been used for the purchase of commercial bay and bait shrimp fishing boat licenses. This is primarily due to the size of the fishery and that the inshore shrimp fishery was the first limited entry and buyback program established in 1995-96. The current management regime, which includes the regulations in place and the limited-entry program, has led to decreasing inshore shrimping effort (30%) and decreasing total catches of bycatch organisms (40%).

To date, $7.7 million has been spent in the purchase of 1,260 commercial bay and bait shrimp fishing boat licenses. Additionally, during the same period $676,069 has been spent purchasing 24 commercial crab fishing boat licenses and 120 commercial finfish fishing boat licenses.

If you are a commercial fisherman in one of these fisheries you may get more information on this program by contacting one of our Fishery Outreach Specialists: