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.
There was a recent incident at the mooring buoys in a sanctuary preservation area at French reef.
Atwell said it was “about 11 miles southeast of Key Largo. Last week, our buoy team was out there on site doing maintenance, and found that several of the mooring buoys were full of bullet holes. We have about 20 mooring buoys out there at French reef. So if it were a firing range, it would be what you would call a target rich environment. But of course, that is not what they are there for and our team found that at least three caliber guns were used as indicated by the size of the of the bullet holes. Some of the buoys had to be removed, but the full complement is back in place. We’ve got photos of the damage on our social media pages this week. So if anyone wants to take a look at that, and then a reminder, it is against federal law to damage markers or any official signs, whether they’re temporary or permanent, stakes, posts, mooring buoys, boundary buoys, trapped buoys or scientific equipment. So if anyone has information on who may have done this, the social media pages also have a phone number. You can fill in that information.”
Citations for lawbreakers have been written, too.
Atwell said, “Let me say that our NOAAH Office of Law Enforcement joined forces with FWC and other partners to be part of the one day mini lobster season for Florida residents on Sunday and that pretty much went off without much incident which was good to hear. But in advance of that over the July 4 weekend, there was a lot of activity and I’ll run down a couple of these stories. Investigators were working in unmarked vessels and observed this is July 4 weekend and observed a personal watercraft and anchor and displaying a dive flag and the investigation revealed that the men were actively spearfishing in a prohibited area known as the triangles. This is in the Upper Keys in state waters where spear fishing is prohibited and both of those Miami men were issued a misdemeanor for spearfishing in the Upper Keys. The same day the same officers observed scuba divers surface and that investigation revealed they were also spearfishing in a prohibited area of the Upper Keys. They made contact with that diver, he was in possession of an undersized hogfish so that man was written two misdemeanors for spearfishing in the Upper Keys and possession of an undersized hogfish and the next day again on unmarked federal patrol in plain clothes, the same officers were at Alligator Reef Sanctuary, which is a troll and release only but they observed a small Boston Whaler with three men on board who were actively trolling in the area and keeping what they were catching. So the investigation revealed they had five Barracuda on board and those men were each cited federally for fishing in a SPA, and also a citation, believe it or not for having any lifejackets on board. Finally, this is kind of a wild story. Later in the day, those officers received a call from FWC dispatch, men actively spearfishing in the Molasses Reef Sanctuary preservation area. So the investigators arrived on scene, they found a boat, a vessel at anchor, no one was around a boat, they continued to look around and found a man far away from his vessel hanging onto a buoy and waving frantically. Investigators picked him up. He was exhausted from swimming against the current and said well, there’s two other guys and so they went and found the other two in various areas. They were all spearfishing, which, of course, is illegal where they were at. So the three men were rescued, brought back to their dinghy and then issued a federal citation for fishing in a SPA. They were issued a notice to also appear for failure to transfer the ownership of a vessel and one man for being too far away from his dive flag. So that was a bad weekend for those dudes. But I guess the moral of the story is that we are on patrol, often in unmarked vessels and everyone should know the rules by utilizing our marine sanctuary explorer app. It will tell you what you can and can’t do. And the other thing is, if you see something call the FWC phone number that can be found on our website and a lot of times, especially on weekends, we can respond quickly and be there just like that incident which actually ended up saving people’s lives. Most of the time we find the perpetrators do know the law, they’re just ignoring it which is unfortunate.”
The National Marine Sanctuary personnel are taking part in new deep water nurseries.
Atwell said, “Everyone’s familiar with the images of baby corals growing in land based nurseries. But once they’re large enough that practitioners will often transfer them to the ocean, hang them on those trees where they continue to grow in the water column until they’re ready for out planning. Of course, those corals represent rare genetic stock and protecting them during last year’s heatwave took on an unprecedented, I would even call it a Herculean effort. One of the solutions was to move those corals from shallow in water nurseries, to deeper water where even a couple of degrees of temperature change can make a difference and within a week reef renewal had transferred more than 5,000 coral to 70 feet of water off of Tavernier. While anticipating a similar need this year, what we ended up doing was issuing an emergency rule to establish not one, but three temporary special use areas in the Upper, Middle and Lower Keys so our coral practitioners can quickly move them out there when they need to. Some of those transfers have already begun. The three sites are really, really small, .07 square miles, they are in federal waters. They were permitted last year by the Army Corps, but only the Tavernier site was utilized. So the other ones are in Marathon and then Looe Key. This temporary protection carries with it no entry protection. So if you want to know exactly where those areas are, again, our marine sanctuary explorer app will tell you with GPS precision, where they’re at. These special use series will only last 60 days, and it’ll expire on August the 27th unless an additional 60 days are needed. At the same time, we’re using this emergency rulemaking to take public comment to see how people feel about us perhaps moving forward and making these permanent, so we don’t have to use our emergency process each summer to do this. If you go to our website, the first story on there tells you all about these temporary special use areas with coordinates if you want to actually put them into your Garmin or some other GPS device. Again, you can download the marine sanctuary explorer app as well.”
The marine sanctuary is now on Instagram.
Atwell said, “So in addition to Facebook and X, if you want to find us on Instagram if that is your social media of choice, you can look for us under the handle Florida Keys NMS.”
A paid internship is available.
Atwell said, “We’re looking for, I think uniquely a graduate student who’s familiar with the Florida Keys, it’s a five month internship that begins in August, a great opportunity to get paid to do what you love. By going to our social media pages, from this month, you can find links to find an application.”
For more information, click here: https://floridakeys.noaa.gov/