Scott Atwell, Communications and Outreach Manager for the Florida Keys Marine Sanctuary, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s been going on in the sanctuary.
The marine sanctuary also handles law enforcement on the ocean.
Atwell said, “Our law enforcement got a call over the weekend on Saturday. Investigator Chris Matson was out patrolling on our behalf and I got a phone call from a local charter captain about a vessel that was scuba diving and spearfishing in the Key Largo existing management area, near turtle reef. Now, of course we call it the Key Largo existing management area because that was actually the precursor to the sanctuary that we have today. It was the first sanctuary in the Florida Keys. So Investigator Matson waited for those scuba divers to get to the surface, stopped the vessel and found that the men were in fact actively spearfishing, six speared fish were on board, but you can’t spear fish in the Key Largo existing management area and so they were issued a federal citation.”
It was a busy day for Investigator Matson.
Atwell said, “Earlier he was on the beat in the federal water’s patrolling the area of conch reef, sanctuary preservation area where he observed a vessel at anchor and actively fishing in what is a no take zone. Many times these Upper Keys violators are from Miami. In fact, I think I could say most of the time they are from Miami but this particular couple was from Key Largo. Should have known better and the man was issued a federal citation for fishing in a sanctuary preservation area, which of course are all clearly marked with those yellow boundary buoys. Finally, Investigator Matson was on patrol in state waters at turtle reef when he observed a vessel with a dive flag and free divers in the water actively spearfishing in John Pennekamp State Park and so an inspection revealed that the man there had an undersized red grouper less than 20 inches minimum in total length, a total of three hogfish, two of which were undersized. So Investigator Matson read the man his Miranda warnings. He agreed to answer the questions and subsequently revealed that he had in fact speared all the fish and so he was issued a misdemeanor citation for spear fishing in John Pennekamp State Park and possession of the undersized red grouper and over the bag limit for hogfish and undersized hogfish. The takeaway from all this is that our officers are on patrol oftentimes in unmarked vessels and it’s incumbent on the folks on the water to know where they are and what the regulations are. My guess is most of the time, they do know what they are. But our advice is always to download our free mobile app, marine sanctuary explorer, which will actually geo locate for you as soon as you enter one of these managed zones and tell you everything that you can or can’t do. If you see illegal activity taking place, report it. If our officers are nearby, we can get there in time. From any cell phone, it’s as simple as going star FWC.”
Ten days earlier there was another law enforcement effort.
Atwell said, “It has to do with the protection of sea turtles. For the second consecutive year, our NOAA Office of Law Enforcement organized and led a joint operation aimed at protecting the sea turtles in around the marine sanctuary by partnering with US Coast Guard and FWC. It was quite a week long event. It began at our Eco Discovery Center in Key West, where everyone got together for a refresher training on what are called turtle Excluder Devices or TEDs that are on the end of the nets of the shrimpers. Those TED’s allow turtles that might get swept up in the net to be able to escape. We began with biologists from NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center turtle division, getting a refresher training and then the 24 officers who were involved in this deployed among six different vessels patrolling in and around the Keys for a three day operation that targeted to fishing offshore in federal waters and in the southern Gulf of Mexico, mostly, as I say, with commercial shrimpers, who were primarily targeting the pink shrimp. Most of them hail from ports ranging from Texas to Florida, most of them not in Key West. During that exercise, the officers boarded 11 vessels and found that most were not in compliance with TED requirements, which was interesting, because last year, most of them were in compliance. The violations were minor for most of them, resolved on the spot through compliance assistance, such as trimming overhanging net flaps on the TED’s, but in a few cases, the violations were more severe, bent TED bars or set in an improper angle that lowers the likelihood of the turtle escaping on harm. So it was an important operation, many of the turtles are endangered and otherwise are a protected species. It’s great to see our officers getting together for this collective operation to make sure we’re doing everything we can to keep the turtles safe.”
There is a job opening at the sanctuary.
Atwell said, “We do we call it a maintenance Operations Coordinator, someone who can plan execute and document preventative and other maintenance for our sanctuary vessels. This job is based in Key West, it does have a specific professional history requirement, which is the candidate must have been a federal employee or a veteran. It’s easy to figure out more on this job, go to usajobs.gov, type in maintenance, and Key West as the location. Now while this opening is very narrow in scope, we’re going to have some other jobs coming down the line. So stay tuned. I’ll talk about them more. The sanctuary is a great place to work. Great colleagues of mine, I spent a lot of my professional career in higher education. I often say that working at the sanctuary is kind of like a micro mini version of working at a university where you’ve got a lot of really smart people dedicated, all moving in the same direction and great colleagues and a great place to work.”
With the water heating up, what’s going on with mission iconic reefs?
Atwell said, “I just read an article that April was the warmest April on record. So that does not bode well for what’s going to be coming our way. We do know that already the temperatures that we’re measuring in the water are a degree or two warmer than they were last year at this time, by a week or so. So that seems to be the trend that we’re seeing. But the mission iconic reach team, of course, this is the 20 year program to restore the coral reefs in the Florida Keys. Our job at NOAA is to manage and monitor the progress. We’re getting into what we call the field season between now and October, when our team is out doing a lot of this monitoring work, and one of the ways we do that is through photo mosaics. There’s a phrase in the business called structure from motion techniques, which essentially means you dive over these coral reefs with a camera, video camera taking thousands of still images per minute, and then you dump it all into a computer. Then the computer gains context by reference points that are on the ground and then stitches it all together into a 3d model.”