Felix Cox

Aransas Pass | Fisherman

Mr. Cox was a fisherman from Aransas Pass who shrimped the Texas coast and worked the Gulf’s offshore reefs, particularly for red snapper, for many years. He became increasingly concerned about the long-term profitability and sustainability of the fishery. Due to that, he worked with non-profits such as Environmental Defense, and with regulators, to develop better schemes for managing the reef fishery. The red snapper population was of particular concern: the fishery was classified as severely overfished by Congress in 1997, and the US Department of Health stated that snapper would not survive in the wild if populations did not rebound by at least 20%. Mr. Cox worked on one of the more promising solutions, called the ITQ [Individual Transferable Quotas] system, which apportioned marketable rights to the harvest, and discouraged the dangerous and wasteful derby system.