AWESOME VIDEO: Save Goliath Grouper (Endangered Species) from renewed Trophy Fishing

[danvolker]

Wow. This is entertaining.

Hopefully it will be entertaining, and a broader reach of the public will take an interest in declining snapper and grouper stocks, as well as the accuracies involved in determining what an allowable harvest should be for any species--and how this could be measured and regulated, and enforced.

Mike, I know you are a fisheries biologist, and I mean no dis-respect to you. I made it clear I believe there are good scientists and bad scientists involved with the Fisheries, and I expect the mis-appropriation of good science is more the fault of the administrators of the commission, and the economics of US Governance.. But certainly there are scientists in administration, that are directed by the wrong agendas....as in the Tobacco lesson...in other words, guys wearing black hats in this Western.

---------- Post Merged at 01:51 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 01:39 PM ----------

Jane Lubechenko the current boss at NOAA hence NMFS and SAMFC is a PEW fellow with an en vironmental activist past.Are you seriously suggesting that she is in any way aligned with commercial fishing?.

Of course not.....But how many with power ARE related to commercial fishing interests?

 

[aue-mike]

Dan, I personally think you are pretty far off base in regards to how fisheries management works and all this conspiracy stuff you are posting. Nothing new though - commercial fishermen claim managers are in bed with enviros (or with recreational fishermen, depending on the issue), enviros claim managers are in bed with commercial fishermen, etc. And I also think your opinions on the cause of perceived fishery declines are a little myopic and simplistic, especially given the impact, or lack thereof, of commercial fishing activity there in Palm Beach County as compared to, let's say, recreational fishing pressure. And then there is the influence of development and habitat decline (or modification) in South Florida. But, that's just my opinion.
Cheers,
Mike

 

[danvolker]

Let's just deal with what I have personally witnessed, so we can remove some areas of contention.

From the mid 80's to around 1999, I dove heavily off of Juno and Jupiter, pretty much weekly. I was a spearfisherman in that time period, and a deep diver. I witnessed huge yearly migrations of Grey grouper after the cold snap each year around November, and while the 80's showed little change in the enormous schools of grey grouper that would follow the coastline from the Carrolinas to Palm Beach and then continue on, by the early to mid 90's this was in dramatic decline. I know the spearfisherman like myself would shoot some, and the local private fisherman would be out in force for this, but we also saw commercial spearfisherman taking huge catches, and maybe you would be kind enough to tell me what was being allowed regarding commercial fishing via nets and other gear.

There is no longer any migration of grey grouper...this fishery was entirely wiped out...and whether this was by commercial guys, or by private, it was a regulated fishery, and one that failed all of us badly.

In the area of the Hole in the Wall, we would often intersect with the Kingfish Fleets..much to their annoyance. In the early 90's, we would often drop through impossibly thick schools of kingfish, I could not say if this was millions or what...just huge....they would go on, traveling at the high speeds they swim at, past us, for the entire duration of a dive, and with no end in sight. Today, this no longer happens...at least not predictably, as it used to. I am pretty sure the kingfish fleets were commercial.

Another example that I can't stop thinking about is the Amberjacks....When I was doing deep dives on wrecks like the Rb Johnson or lorrantz or the Hydro in the mid nineties, there would be a near solid wall of 2 to 3 foot long amberjacks that would prevent us from seeing the big ships as we dropped from the surface, in the over 100 foot vis....WE could see a big silver floor below us, which at 100 feet or so turned out to be massive schools of amberjack. As we would fall out of the bottom of these walls of fish around 50 feet to 100 feet later, then we could see the full length of the wrecks....
Commercial fishing interests began hydraulically winching up these fish, and after a few years of this practice, the huge walls of fish dissappeared, pretty much for good as far as we can see today. Maybe you can cover what fishing techniques were allowed that wiped these fish out, what quota systems were flawed, and how this was allowed to happen.

Not to get too far off tangent, in around 1995, a commercial spearfisherman named Nelson ( don't recal his last name, but maybe someone here will) showed me a video he and his friends had shot, of them powerheading amberjacks on the ledge the Hole in the Wall is on...112 on top, 140 or so on the bottom, off the juno/jupiter area.....When I watched the video, at the time I was speechless....I had never seen this level of wanton killing in my entire life, and really was unprepared to react appropriately for it....What the video showed, was tens of thousands of 2 to 3 foot amberjacks swimming south, along the ledge, with Nelson and his boys shooting them with bang sticks, and stringing them, taking more than 3 fish per minute..the speed of the kills and the speed of the stringing, indicated a finely tuned and practiced past at this, and the stringers of fish looked like huge bunches of bananas....hundreds of fish were being killed and collected, with other divers handling the shuttling to the surface. I believe the purpose was to be sold as cat food.
I walked out of the video dumbstruck...Hours later, I would have had an extremely agressive reaction, as I would today if I was to see such a crime...but at the time, I had never even contemplated anything beyond hunting for sport....where a few fish are taken, and where we saw some "sport" to it.

These are just a few examples, but I could certainly keep going with many more. In both cases, a severe fishing pressure was allowed on a fishery that WAS being regulated. At the time, fishery managers would likely have stated that the takes allowed, were scientifically determined, and at a completely safe level to maintain these fisheries. So what happened? There is no way these two examples were influenced by fertilzer runoff or or habitat decline--they were wiped out by fishing pressures long before that could have even be factored in as having even a fractional effect.

 

[100days-a-year]

You need to get out more,the guys in your area on spearboard are already looking forward to the migration that happens every year'There have been closures and quotas in force for years on gags both recreationally and commercially,I personally saw more than 200 on a wreck last year.Jewfish and red snapper are plentiful enough to drive fishermen off spots,not indicative of a crisis.Perhaps if all the S.Fla folks moved or did not insist on ruining the ecosystem re:yard,automotive,pet,industrial pollutants and ongoing beach renourishment your fish populations would rebound faster.From Canaveral to Virginia the populations of most fish are higher than I remember from the 80s.The Keys and S Fla should probly be managed seperately due to ecosystem,population density and climate differences.

 

[danvolker]

You need to get out more,the guys in your area on spearboard are already looking forward to the migration that happens every year'There have been closures and quotas in force for years on gags both recreationally and commercially,I personally saw more than 200 on a wreck last year.Jewfish and red snapper are plentiful enough to drive fishermen off spots,not indicative of a crisis.Perhaps if all the S.Fla folks moved or did not insist on ruining the ecosystem re:yard,automotive,pet,industrial pollutants and ongoing beach renourishment your fish populations would rebound faster.From Canaveral to Virginia the populations of most fish are higher than I remember from the 80s.The Keys and S Fla should probly be managed seperately due to ecosystem,population density and climate differences.

The "migration" that happens now is no "migration" at all , compared to the 80's and early 90's. I can't be the only one that experienced then, and now.
I get out almost every week. If you think what we get now is in any way similar to what we had in the 80's , you need to talk with some of the old timers.

Back in the 80's, there would be grey groupers forming thick schools over all of reefs from Jupiter, even through boynton. The Palm Beach inlet used to fill up with them, and the local kids that would spearfish. would jump in off of the Pumphouse area, and shoot 5 or 6 greys on any hight tide they wanted. Of course, then, they would have 30 or more spinner sharks getting all nervous and jerky, so they would decide it was time to get out of the water.
Today, try jumping in to the palm beach inlet, after this so called migration you mention the spearboard guys think they will be witnessing begins.
If even one grey makes it into the inlet, on a dive you will do during this "event", I would be shocked.

Oh yeah...I forgot to mention....when was the last time you saw the Palm Beach inlet full of spinner sharks?

 

[100days-a-year]

I am an old guy,I still see those migrations every year.I am out 400 dives every year on hundreds of different reefs,artificiasl and natural in 4 states.Grouper are recovering,jewfish are nearly as plentiful as they were then,in fact several years ago we saw 40 on one barge in Ft. Pierce.Snapper,almaco,AJ,vermillion,trigger are all at the same or better levels than my first dives here yet they get new and more closures and smaller quota every year.
I see the large coastals all the time,dusky,tiger,sand tiger,sandbar nearly every trip.Last year a 24 hour set of 60 hooks netted 59 sandbars when the NMFS researchers did research off Jax.Any summer news show will normally have helo shots of all the sharks after someone suffers a nibble.

I spearfish with guys who have been diving from 30- 50 years here,not one thinks the fisheries need more protection than they have currently and most feel the regs are ridiculous in many cases.

 

[danvolker]

I am an old guy,I still see those migrations every year.I am out 400 dives every year on hundreds of different reefs,artificiasl and natural in 4 states.Grouper are recovering,jewfish are nearly as plentiful as they were then,in fact several years ago we saw 40 on one barge in Ft. Pierce.Snapper,almaco,AJ,vermillion,trigger are all at the same or better levels than my first dives here yet they get new and more closures and smaller quota every year.
I see the large coastals all the time,dusky,tiger,sand tiger,sandbar nearly every trip.Last year a 24 hour set of 60 hooks netted 59 sandbars when the NMFS researchers did research off Jax.Any summer news show will normally have helo shots of all the sharks after someone suffers a nibble.

I spearfish with guys who have been diving from 30- 50 years here,not one thinks the fisheries need more protection than they have currently and most feel the regs are ridiculous in many cases.

---------- Post Merged on October 15th, 2012 at 09:02 AM ---------- Previous Post was on October 14th, 2012 at 11:00 PM ----------

Let's clarify a big difference between the diving off of Stuart/Fort Pierce, and off of Palm Beach......The size of the ecosystem is VASTLY LARGER in the Fort Pierce/Stuart area, than it is off of Palm Beach or Lauderdale or Miami..or the Keys.

The reefs extend out in the vicinity of 20 miles or more, depending on where you are off of Fort Pierce. I dove this area heavily in the early 90's with a fellow spearfisherman , Craig Suavely. Most of our diving was at technical depths, as we were looking for big groupers or big anything. This was the place to find it. However, life is dispersed over an enormous area here as well, making it more difficult for divers or fisherman to enjoy their favorite sites ( instead of of a 5 minute boat trip from Palm Beach inlet, think...maybe a 45 minute trip, in a FAST Boat, in good sized seas, far from the safety of shore.....and a diver off of Palm Beach that loses his boat can easily swim to shore...Off of Fort Pierce, 20 miles out, lose your boat and you are in a very real emergency situation... There is no chance of a large diving population to ever impact this huge northern reef area, between the harshness of the seas, and the poor visibility that is common to the area. I doubt the recreational fisherman exist in high enough numbers off of Fort Pierce or Stuart, to have anything close to the impact per square foot of reef off of fort Pierce/Stuart, that would be possible for the population of fisherman that live around Palm Beach, fishing on what is relatively, a tiny little reef expanse that only goes out for about 2 to 3.5 miles ( again, compared to a vast expanse going out over 20 to 25 miles, along a vast coastal range).

Every time I ever dove off of fort Pierce, I was blown away at how big the fish were, and at how I would see "clouds of grouper" that appeared on the reefs the way "clouds of grunts" appeared here in Palm Beach..and this was even before the kill off of the greys.....even when we thought Palm beach had a lot of big grouper, we were never close to fort Pierce.

If a spearfisherman spent most of his time spearing and diving Fort Pierce and Stuart, he might never see a problem with dwindling fish stocks, because the ecosystem there IS so enormous. And there are areas of concentrations on some of the deep wrecks, that are mind boggling. These are also sites far too challenging for 99% of the world's tourist divers, so you are left with a small local population, and the real pressures probably to be from fishing boats....Due to the huge area, it is almost like having marine management areas for re-charge, because the area is so huge, there is are plenty of populations of fish rarely exposed to fishing pressure.
Someone that dives here all the time, may very well think I am full of sh*t for saying there is an overfishing problem, if they try to extend their own experiences off of Fort Pierce, to Palm Beach.

Palm Beach Diving is really nothing like Fort Pierce Diving. We have a relatively small strip of reef, that is heavily "hit" by divers and fisherman alike. Add commercial guys to the mix, and we lose fish populations without careful regulation. Palm Beach seems like a large area compared to most tourist destinations, but nothing I have ever witnessed compares to the massive wilderness of the Fort Pierce/Stuart area.



In areas where fish are heavily concentrated over a small area, particularly when these are areas of easy access to fisherman and divers, it is easy to have over-harvesting occur.
Recall the issue with Hogsnappers, and how we spearfisherman used to hit them heavy off the 120 foot deep Playground at Twilight....back in early 90's....You could shoot 6 huge hogs in 10 minutes or less on this dive. Today, you are lucky to see one small hog, in 4 dives. We wiped out what had been a big population of hogsnappers, due to concentration, ease of access, and insufficient regulation.

Look at the Amberjack issue at the deep wrecks....no one can dispute they are gone today from Palm beach to Miami. Maybe they still will show off of fort Pierce on one of the 25o foot deep wrecks, but I have not been there in a few years

 

[packrat12]

I started diving in West Palm Beach during the mid ‘80s. Back then, to see anything large on a reef or wreck was very unusual. I knew the Jewfish best only from a ‘trophy’ mounted on my local dive/fish shop’s wall. I do not think I saw my first large Goliath Grouper until the mid ‘90s. Now they are a more common sight. This fact attracts quite a bit of business for dive operators in South Florida. South Florida diving is much better for it and I am thrilled my child can see these fish when I did not in the ‘80s.
Since the Goliath Grouper generally is not eaten, it is selfish for a Spearfisherman to take one as a trophy only for their pleasure while many more would have enjoyed the fish if it was left in its natural habitat. When you speak of ‘rebounding’ populations, it is also a reminder that those same populations were decimated previously. The justification of ‘culling’ also does not make much sense. Nature itself will bring back the proper balance, whatever that is, as the Goliath Grouper is native to the area and has been in these waters a lot longer then we have. The notion that you are killing the fish for its own good is ludicrous.
I am personally for the management of other species of Grouper but find it very difficult to say that the Goliath Grouper should be included as few people actually eat them. On a side note to that, the taxidermists that mount them may not even be using the fish that was caught for the molds. So yet more waste and unnecessary killing of a majestic fish.

 

[Mx.Diver]

Clearly some of us are not versed in our study of species. The Goliath are NOT rebounding tremendously. If so they would be seen throughout the South Atlantic & Caribbean. They are BARELY recovering & still ENDANGERED by OVERFISHING (i.e. poaching, accidental catch in nets, 'catch & release' where the fish still dies). They are NOT EDIBLE due to high mercury levels. There is NO SENSIBLE HARVEST for the thrill of a photograph. Let's take photos of LIVE fish for generations to come. Read the studies linked in the post. Here's another viewpoint; If the Goliath populations gather on wrecks this means their numbers are focused in a few-hundred-ft area of a very large ocean. They are seldom seen in number away from wreck sites. To me this says 'tiny population'. If they congregate on wrecks fishermen should AVOID those spots, instead they would park right on them for the thrill of a big catch even though it must be released or wasted for a single photo op. This sells sport charters & creates an easy way for a charter operation to exploit these fish to rake in bucks, thinking a released fish is fine. Here's another clue I can relate from personal experience; I knew divers that collected tropicals for aquariums, by hand. They needed to tie the fish bag on the anchor line to decompress for best chance of the fish surviving to the pet shop market. Possibly a bad comparison, tiny triggerfish to Goliath, but has anyone considered this possibility? Bringing a large fish quickly to the surface from deep water could be detrimental physiologically beyond the hook injury. There is a charter operation in Boca Grande FL that baits with small rays in order to attract a Goliath for the thrill of landing it. I won't mention a name so he cannot benefit by the publicity but is this not a 1st class example of exploitation for profit? It also alters the natural behavior tendencies of the Goliath, being opportunistic.
Let's face it people, all of this is symptomatic of the root and larger problem; there are simply too many humans on this planet ...yes? And we have become very good at massive consumption of all resources.
Perhaps I should add a silly comment like this;
When people take away all the food sharks usually eat the sharks have no choice but to eat more people... (I said it was silly)
Final comment: We do not need to harvest or hunt/kill Goliath Grouper, period. Let them remain protected by moratorium on fishing.

 

[danvolker]

I could easily do an interview with still living dive legend, Frank Hammett...who WAS diving heavily in the 50's, and was shooting everything big in sight in the 50's and 60's...and on to the late 90's.
Frank has a wealth of information he can share about what the reefs were like in the 50's and 60's, and how quickly the Jewfish were wiped out by him and others....Franks grew up with the mistaken notion that the oceans were an inexhausible source of food and fish....this was actually taught in school systems through the 60's and 70's at minimum.

Frank was one of the most prolific hunters of this early period, with few other divers at the time coming close to his records of big game trophies or hunting records.
If any one person could or would shoulder blame for wiping out the jewfish, Frank would offer his apologies for being a major part of that problem.

But he can also tell you about the massive schools that existed in the 50's and 60's, before the concentrations of fishing and spearfishing in Palm beach county, had any significant effect.
Frank is not the only diver I know that can speak to the marine life in the 60's and 70's...but he may be the only one that can speak about the 50's.