No more spearfishing in south Florida?

[ermaclob]

any new news on this? was wondering if anyone noticed that the N-59 Description on there site now says "
Establish maximum size limits to complement existing regulations for ecologically significant reef-associated fish species (including but not limited to grouper and snapper species and hogfish) to increase numbers of the larger, more fecund individuals within the southeast Florida assemblage" ...But The draft in the sub section still says Ban spearing on SCUBA for the title.... ?

 

[HalcyonDaze]

any new news on this? was wondering if anyone noticed that the N-59 Description on there site now says "
Establish maximum size limits to complement existing regulations for ecologically significant reef-associated fish species (including but not limited to grouper and snapper species and hogfish) to increase numbers of the larger, more fecund individuals within the southeast Florida assemblage" ...But The draft in the sub section still says Ban spearing on SCUBA for the title.... ?

The spearfishing ban has been replaced with a proposal to impose slot limits on certain species, due to commentary from the community. The Marine Protected Area proposal was slightly tweaked, but still made it through. I commented on both of those proposals; my arguments against the spearfishing ban were posted earlier in this thread.

As for the MPA proposal, my core problem with it is that it is primarily based on work advocating that zoning off 20-30% of the available habitat as no-take reserves produced the optimum tradeoff between conservation and fishing yield. There's some argument that the figure is out of date (it comes from a symposium paper published in 2000), but to me it seems like the OFR process for MPA selection came down to "find reasons to close off 20-30% of the area" without trying to actually build a logical or viable network. Among the proposed no-take MPAs were a lot of headscratchers; one (I kid you not) was to declare a seagrass flat in Lake Worth Lagoon an MPA largely on the supposition that since it was close to the inlet, the seagrass must be more salt-tolerant. Methinks the rationale for that suggestion was more to plop an MPA right in the proposed turning basin for the Port of Palm Beach expansion like a junebug on a cake. There were also proposals to make the Castor a no-take MPA due to the goliath grouper spawning aggregations (er, those are already no-take) as well as at least one for a sea turtle nesting area (again ...).