Fish and Wildlife Commission votes against harvest of Goliath grouper in Florida waters

FORT LAUDERDALE — There won't be a harvest of Goliath grouper. At least not for more than a year. 

That was the word handed down by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Thursday at its meeting in Fort Lauderdale.

Following three hours of public comment produced by 56 registered speakers, the seven-member governor-appointed volunteer commission decided to not open a harvest for Goliath grouper at this time. However, the commission left the door open for one in the future.

FWC vice chairman Robert Spottswood, commenting after the public comment period, said, "We can't continue to be stuck on this dime. I don't want to keep kicking the can down the road, and have to come back five years from now (after the next stock assessment). It's not all black and white for me."

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Commission chairman Bo Rivard agreed with Spottswood.

"One speaker asked us, 'Why are we having this discussion?' The answer is because Goliath grouper stocks have come back," Rivard said.

Without making a motion or having a formal vote, Rivard directed staff to continue current Goliath grouper research and management, and develop a road map to direct future conservation efforts.

Harvest and possession of Goliath grouper — formerly known as jewfish — have  been prohibited in Florida and U.S. federal waters since 1990. It remains critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature list. Recent stock assessments by the FWC indicate the stocks are recovering well.

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Anglers and some recreational divers who spearfish and harvest spiny lobster claim the Goliath grouper is an opportunistic predator responsible for overeating prime target species, such as snapper, lobster and snook. But few of them spoke Thursday.

Of the 56 speakers who signed up, all but about two speakers urged commissioners to maintain the species closure.

The FWC completed a stock assessment in 2016 and in 2017 directed staff to explore whether there was an option or demand to open the fishery for limited harvest. 

Tom Ingram of Tallahassee, president of the Diving Education and Marketing Association, was the first speaker Thursday during the public comment phase of the meeting.

He urged commissioners to continue protection of the Goliath grouper, likening it to the manatee, another beloved iconic Florida creature, which also happens to be slow moving and requires close management to keep its population numbers robust.

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Scripture even entered the conversation Thursday. Rabbi Ed Rosenthal, of Eckerd College in the Tampa Bay area, who leads a small group of people who believe in faith-based conservation and call themselves the Scubi Jews, actually read Hebrew to the commissioners. He and several of his students requested the commission consider that the fish are there for a bigger purpose than just to catch or harvest.  

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Tripp Aukeman, of Coastal Conservation Association of Florida, said the recreational angling organization supports a limited harvest of Goliath grouper.

Don DeMaria, a commercial diver from Summerland Key, said he once dove on a wreck in the Gulf of Mexico called the California with noted marine conservationist Jean-Michel Cousteau Jr. and son Fabien Cousteau. They had encountered a spawning aggregation of more than 100 Goliath grouper. DeMaria said Jean-Michel Cousteau told him "what we had here was really special and he had never seen anything like it in the world and that we should preserve it."

"This issue has the potential to cause embarrassment to the commission and governor similar to the black bear hunt a few years ago," DeMaria told the commission. 

Chris Koenig, of Florida State University's Coastal and Marine Laboratory, said the Goliath grouper is being impacted by too many other issues to risk it's numbers from opening a harvest. He reeled off multiple reasons to consider.

"They are inedible because of high methyl mercury content. They have low productivity rates," Keonig explained. "Their habitat is being destroyed — we have lost one-third of our red mangrove habitat, and it is essential to Goliath grouper, which spend the first five years of their lives in the mangroves and the water quality in the estuaries they live in as juveniles is in decline. The Indian River Lagoon is useless. Florida Bay is nearly useless. Biscayne Bay isn't very good. And the only place they really can live is Ten Thousand Islands. Plus, they're value as an ecotourism attraction for scuba divers is extremely high."

After Rivard's comments to direct staff to come back after doing more work on Goliath grouper, the crowd, many of which were wearing white "Save the Goliath Grouper" T-shirts, applauded.

Commissioner Sonya Rood said the meeting was unexpected.

"I came into the meeting thinking one way about Goliath grouper," Rood said. "But I'm leaving feeling a different way."

Other topics

It wasn't all grouper all day Thursday. The commission gave final approval on regulation changes to fishing for tripletail and sheepshead which will be in effect beginning July 1. For tripletail, the minimum size limit was increased from 15 to 18 inches, and all FWC recreational and commercial regulations for this species will extend into federal waters.

For sheepshead, the daily bag limit for anglers will be reduced from 15 to 8 per person year-round. There will also be a recreational vessel limit of 50 fish per vessel per trip during the months of March and April, plus all regulations will extend into federal waters for sheepshead.

The commission also heard staff updates on Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishing which was announced recently by Governor Rick Scott to be a 40-day fishing season.

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Sharks

On the first day of meetings Wednesday, commissioners directed FWC staff to develop draft regulations concerning the fishing for large sharks from Florida beaches.

The practice, which has become more controversial since the advent of social media, is being blamed for the deaths of large sharks, such as hammerhead sharks or tiger sharks and causing more shark-human interactions in the surf zone.

Follow Ed Killer's FWC Meeting coverage live throughout the day on Twitter at @tcpalmekiller.