Goliath Grouper Caught In Delaware

goliath grouper, delaware, sussex county, sea grant university, College of Earth, Ocean and Environment — Juvenile Goliath Grouper at the UD lab in Lewes .. photo by Chris Petrone ... You can use the airstone for size reference.

Last year a Goliath Grouper made it all the way to Delaware. We see all kinds of weird Gulf stream fish every summer. In recent years we have seen a lot more groupers, especially gag and snowy. Usually I get a picture sent in that asks what kind of bass is this because they look just like a bass. These fish (groupers) usually show up in late summer arriving with the warm waters of the gulf stream, or earlier depending on how the weather has been through out the summer. This Goliath Grouper was caught by Christopher Petrone, Marine Education Specialist, Delaware Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service, University of Delaware, College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment … “I actually found the fish in a “habitat cage” I use for student programs here at the UD-Lewes campus, on August 17. It’s a 10x10x10 wire mesh cage filled with oyster and clam shells, that hangs off of the university dock in the Broadkill River. I was doing a Boy Scout Oceanography merit badge program, where I have them pick through the shells to find small crabs, grass shrimp, gobies, etc. and there was this fish that I had never seen around here before. I brought it back to the lab, and sent a picture to Tim Targett. He sent it to some of his colleagues and they identified it as a Goliath. Unfortunately, the fish was put into the wrong tank and we could never recapture it—it was quite skittish, and fast! Those tanks have since been “moth-balled” during our year-long renovation of our main building, Cannon Lab, and the fish was never found.”

boy scouts, delaware, sussex county, university of delaware, college of earthocean and environment, sea grant, lewes — Chris Petrone with the habitat cage and the Boy Scout Oceanography merit badge program

We have all seen the videos online of people catching giant Goliath Groupers in Florida. In Delaware, this far north, Goliath Groupers are not protected. From the NOAA marine fisheries website … “Since 1990, the goliath grouper (Epinephelus itajara) fishery has been closed to harvest throughout the southeast region of the United States (harvest was prohibited in the US Caribbean in 1993). It was listed as a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act in 1991 (because of the success of the harvest prohibition, it was removed in 2006).It is currently listed as “critically endangered” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN, 1996) Red List.” I seriously doubt we are going to have to add Goliath groupers to our creel limits in Delaware. Maybe one day some of the monster sized ones will make it into our waterways, in the mean time it is interesting to see a juvenile make it this far north. Fish that come in on the gulf stream in the summer will not survive the winter temperatures. They also have no idea where they are so it is not like they will just head back south.