Saving Seafood

New NOAA report confirms widespread coral damage from Port Miami dredge

September 10, 2023 — Nearly a decade after dredging Port Miami left a swath of dead coral yet to be repaired, a new federal assessment confirms damage was far more widespread than originally reported.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report found dredging and rock chopping that pulverized the ocean bottom created a blizzard of silt that buried at least 278 acres around the reef, and likely far more. The report upholds previous findings and will be used to permit future dredging as well as long overdue repairs.

Those repairs, which should have started within a year of the dredge ending, could wind up costing Miami-Dade County hundreds of millions of dollars under a 2012 contract signed by the county.

Miami-Dade County officials said Thursday they were reviewing the report. Any estimate on costs to mitigate damage would be premature, they said.

In a statement, Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava said the county was working with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection on a mitigation plan to repair damage.

“I’m deeply concerned about the damage of coral colonies and committed to learning everything we can about what took place and where we go from here,” she said.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection said Thursday it was still looking into the matter.

Read the full article at WLRN

FLORIDA: After the Storm, a Cherished Local Fishing Industry Feels More Fragile

September 2, 2023 — Dan Ellison started shrimping when he was 12, bringing a change of clothes on the boat so he could make it to school after early-morning outings. He would sketch shrimp boats in class, before quitting school in eighth grade to pursue his passion.

“I couldn’t do what a doctor or lawyer does,” Mr. Ellison, 61, said. “But they couldn’t do what I do. You’ve got to know so much to survive.”

He joined his father shrimping and fishing in tiny Horseshoe Beach, Fla., a business that took a significant hit when the state banned net fishing in the 1990s. In a good year, he said, he makes about $30,000.

“It’s just a dying breed,” Mr. Ellison said of shrimpers in the Big Bend region, where the Florida peninsula meets the Panhandle. And the damage wrought by Hurricane Idalia presents a whole new challenge.

Read the full article at the New York Times

Gov. DeSantis plans to seek aid for the Big Bend’s fishing industry

September 2, 2023 — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday said the state will seek federal help for the fishing industry in the Big Bend region, as cleanup efforts moved into a second day from the devastation caused by Hurricane Idalia.

Meanwhile, the state reported its first confirmed death related to Idalia, while utility workers still had about 135,000 customer power outages to tackle from the Category 3 storm, many in sparsely populated areas of North Florida.

The governor’s plan to seek help from the U.S. Department of Commerce for the fishing industry followed White House approval of a separate request for a major disaster declaration.

Read the full article at WFSU

Florida’s Big Bend coast in Hurricane Idalia’s path

August 30, 2023 — Building into a category 3 hurricane, Hurricane Idalia is moving across the Gulf of Mexico’s deep reservoir of historically warm water, with the National Hurricane Center predicting a path into the U.S. state of Florida’s northern Gulf Coast and landfall the morning of Wednesday, 30 August.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency across 46 counties statewide. Local authorities around the city Tampa Bay ordered a mandatory evacuation, and coastal towns and small fishing ports near Fort Myers, smashed by Hurricane Ian last year, were put on watch, even though forecasters are predicting Idalia will likely track farther north, close to Cedar Key, roughly 80 miles north of Tampa Bay.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Florida’s coral reefs are dying. Here’s why you should care

July 30, 2023 — Right now, the Great Florida Reef is experiencing catastrophic conditions following a marine heat wave that has engulfed the ecosystem for months.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the marine heat waved moved into the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea around February and March and is predicted to persist with extreme ocean temperatures through at least October.

The duration and intensity of these abnormally warm waters is a significant concern for the health of the coral.

Dr. Cory Krediet, an associate professor of marine science specializing in corals at Eckerd College, spoke to News 6 while helping rescue efforts in the Florida Keys.

“We’re looking to use microbes to try to increase resilience of corals to future stress. But right now, here at Mote Marine Lab, restoration efforts are happening. They’re bringing corals back from the reef into the land-based nurseries, to try and keep them out of the reef environment until some conditions hopefully may subside back to normal,” Krediet said.

Read the full article at Click Orlando

Crews bust ‘ghost traps’ that kill lobsters, crabs in Biscayne Bay. They hauled out a ton

July 18, 2023 — Abandoned “ghost traps” scattered in South Florida’s coastal waters keep doing their lethal work, sometimes for years, ensnaring and often killing lobsters, stone crabs and other marine life.

Crews of ghost trap busters hit the waters of Biscayne Bay on Sunday to do something about a problem that haunts the environment and damages valuable fisheries.

Among them was Spencer Crowley, who, one by one, handed off barnacle-laden, corroded lobster traps to his three children on a Matheson Hammock Park dock at an event billed as Miami’s inaugural “Ghost Trap Rodeo.”

The trio — made up of Ava, 14, who proclaims herself the strongest despite being the smallest, and 15-year-old twins Jackson and Ella — scurried away to weigh the first set of rotten traps they’d rounded up that morning with their father.

“102 pounds!” Jackson exclaimed.

Read the full article at the Miami Herald

 

The huge blob of seaweed headed for Florida has shrunk by 75%

July 12, 2023 — Florida vacations are back on, sans stinky seaweed.

The record-breaking mass of stinky seaweed that began appearing on Florida’s iconic beaches this spring, known as the Great Atlantic Sargassum Seaweed Belt, shrunk in the Gulf of Mexico by 75% last month, according to scientists from the University of South Florida’s Optical Oceanography Lab.

The seaweed, which smells like rotten eggs and emits toxic gases when it comes ashore, proved a nuisance for Florida beachgoers in the spring – which is also the start of the Sunshine State’s tourist season. In April, the seaweed set a record, with scientists identifying 3 million tons of sargassum in the Caribbean Sea.

Read the full article at CNN

FLORIDA: Data shows Florida seafood landings rank below historic trends

July 10, 2023 — Since the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes and increased fuel costs have reduced the catch of Florida’s seafood industry.

Florida’s Gulf Coast is the largest fishery for the state and is still dealing with the effects of Hurricane Ian in late 2022. The storm made landfall at Fort Myers and devastated Florida’s shrimping industry, sinking boats and destroying infrastructure crucial to the industry.

According to preliminary data compiled by The Southern Shrimp Alliance from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fishery Monitoring Branch, Florida’s March 2023 landings off the West Coast were 72.7% below the historical average. In total, 2023 landings for the West Coast are 42.1% below historical trends.

Read the full article at The Center Square

FLORIDA: Groups urge federal government to cancel a permit for proposed fish farm off the Sarasota coast

June 14, 2023 — What could become the nation’s first deep water aquaculture facility in federal offshore waters was first proposed in 2019 and would be located about 45 miles off Sarasota in the Gulf of Mexico.

When the Environmental Protection Agency first issued Ocean Era a permit in 2020, the Hawaii based company said it would construct a certain type of pen to cultivate almaco jack, a longfin yellowtail fish.

But in May, the company amended the plan, which includes a change in the design of the fish pen. They also said they would now grow red drum, which is one of the fastest-growing species of fish.

Cris Costello, of the Sierra Club of Florida, says the changes are an almost literal bait and switch.

Read the full article at WUSF

FLORDIA: Post-Hurricane Ian: Funding Rejected for Florida Fishermen

May 26, 2023 — Florida fishermen all around the state are on the edge of their seats, hoping to gain some good news about the fishing industry’s future. Those in Lee County are furious that the federal agency NOAA Fisheries has rejected DeSantis’ fishery disaster request.

In late September 2022, Hurricane Ian destroyed nearly all of Lee County, which led to mass destruction of the fishing industry within and around Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Sanibel Island, and Pine Island Sound. The western side of Florida has been devastated by the damage that Ian had caused. On October 15, 2022, Governor DeSantis was joined by fishing captains from southwest Florida to show his support for the fishing industry’s road to recovery.

To get the fishing industry back on its feet, DeSantis requested the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to issue a federal fisheries disaster. The request would have provided federal funding to allow offshore, nearshore, and inshore fisheries to rebuild. “Florida’s fisheries are vitally important to the State’s economy through their impact on commercial and recreational fishing and tourism,” DeSantis stated in his official request.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman