- Messages
- 5,884
- Reaction score
- 2,997
- Location
- Lake Worth, Florida, United States
- # of dives
- I'm a Fish!
Yes it is very clear now that several people were deliberately trying to disseminate mis-information in this thread. I was called a poacher and law breaker and worse, when in reality everything I have said about collecting (and even using a knife to take a flounder there) is perfectly legal.
Most of the people in this thread are probably well intentioned, but were mislead about the legality of the situation.
We can argue about the ethics of collecting or the gear type (hook and line) versus say a knife for taking some species, but legality of the situation is pretty clear.
I wonder if the county has removed the signs which they have now repeatedly and publicly confirmed are inaccurate and misleading? It bothers me a little when a government agency posts signs in a public place which are know to be WRONG.
So it is CLEAR that DD is not a Law Breaker. It is also clear that DD does not have any interest in "being a good neighbor", with all of the divers that visit BHB regularly. When some of us ( and I am pretty sure I called you this at minimum ) called you a poacher, this is a word that evokes the emotional response that 99% of us get, when we see someone collecting at the BHB Marine Park. We are using this term to make clear the way we feel about the behavior, and to convey it to you in a manner that could not be misconstrued as being only a mild problem for most of us. Legally, you are in no danger of prosecution for poaching. We will most likely continue to use this aptly descriptive term, for the emotional effect it conveys.
I am still serious about taking you on a scooter run to any area in the intracoastal you think could be similar to thwe BHB in nursery ground potential--and I will video any such place in 1080P. There would be no doubt as to what the truth is....After covering huge areas all around BHB, the only other place with significant life ( biomass) is the Inlet/jetty area and channel. But while there are many reef fish here, there are no frogfish, few octopus relative to the BHB, and so far we have found almost no nudibranchs, no mantis shrimps, and none of most of the exciting finds people have at the bhb.
The Peanut Island area for snoreling is horribly lame.... The area West of Annies Dock on the South Jetty is not bad at all, but not nearly as strong for Macro photographers as is the BHB. This is easy to show in videos.
Go South of the turn from the south jetty western route, and you don't get far before there is nothing to see....and por vis.
North of BHB, where the mangroves are, the life is sparse...over miles of mangroves, the life will add up , but it would probably take 15 miles of mangroves to equal the biomas of 1/3 of the BHB area. Again, we can video a 30 minute stretch of mangroves, and you can see for yourself. Luckilly, we have hundreds of miles of mangroves, for the life that is generated from these areas, but our point is that the BHB area is an EXPLOSIVE NURSERY GROUND for many of the rare species people travel all over the world to see---and the BHB area is exponentially more productive than the Mangroves, per ACRE.