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7th International Science Symposium & Flats Expo
CONSERVATION CONNECTIONS
Why BTT’s 7th International Science Symposium & Flats Expo Will Be the Most Powerful One Yet
BY ALEXANDRA MARVAR
With solid science as their north star, flats fishery stakeholders of every kind will come together November 4-5 to solve some of the biggest conservation conundrums facing flats species today, in the most inclusive, data-informed summit to date.
A string of tarpon in the Florida Keys. Photo: Ian Wilson
The water is roiling under the Bahia Honda rail bridge in Big Pine Key, a known hotspot for tarpon. As climate change, water quality issues and a tangle of other factors put stress on the Keys’ tarpon population, the nearby reefs, and the ecosystems’ predators, angling here has become tense lately. In fact, for some players, the stakes are life or death. In a recent shift, hammerheads causing serious depredation of tarpon, some of which are staging to spawn, may be becoming more common. Anglers are seeing tarpon snatched right off their lines, local guides’ livelihoods are becoming strained, and the sharks—also vulnerable and critical players in the reef ecosystem—are taking the heat.
Enter NOAA Fellow and shark biologist Grace Casselberry, a shark tracking expert investigating the causes of—and the solutions to—this flashpoint predation event, along with her PhD advisor at UMass Amherst, professor of fish conservation, and BTT Research Fellow Dr. Andy Danylchuk. It’s a “perfect storm,” as Danylchuk puts it, of pandemic-propelled fishing traffic, predation trends and climate change, and the need for solutions is urgent,
Researchers tag a hammerhead shark in the Florida Keys. Photo: Kevin Grubb
for the guides, the anglers, the marine life, and the health of the fishery at large.
The team’s findings—and possible solutions—will be presented this November along with dozens of other important studies at the 7th BTT International Science Symposium & Flats Expo, November 4-5 at the PGA National Resort in Palm Beach Gardens. There, all the key stakeholders—internationally recognized marine scientists and flyfishing guides, resource managers and lodge owners, anglers and educators, conservation organizations, industry leaders and brands—will become part of the conversation about what’s going on, and what to do about it.
One of Florida’s most beloved and most diverse fishing industry throwdowns, the Symposium was first launched 20 years ago. If BTT’s mission is to “bring science to the fight,” this is the War Room.
“Science-based approaches to conservation can work only if we understand and embrace them,” said BTT President and CEO Jim McDuffie. “The Symposium provides us a special opportunity every three years to rally anglers, guides, resource managers, industry leaders and other stakeholders to hear the latest research as well as to renew our resolve to work collaboratively.”
The theme of this year’s event is Conservation Connections, which springs from the mission of not only boosting awareness on the biggest conservation issues facing saltwater flats fisheries, but of bringing all these parties together to address them. The action-packed two-day program offers panel discussions and research debuts, spin, fly casting and fly tying clinics, and more, not to mention the planet’s largest conservation-driven saltwater consumer event. According to Luiz Barbieri, program administrator of marine fisheries research at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, the most pressing issues he’ll be there to discuss include: “Habitat, habitat and habitat.”
Habitat, Front and Center
For management agencies like Barbieri’s, adjusting the dial on how many fish are harvested has long been the main form of regulatory control to protect a species and their broader ecosystem. But the more we learn about the threats facing fisheries today, he says, the clearer it becomes that regulation of harvest isn’t impactful enough—especially in catch-and-release fisheries.
“We see some of the systems, for example, in the Florida Keys, where these extensive coral reefs are being impacted by climate change, which is altering the habitats that those fish live in,” Barbieri said. “And we have this trickle-down effect. The whole system is kind of slowly eroding before our eyes.” Not to be dramatic, he added: this “erosion” looks less like an avalanche and more like barely perceptible changes—in temperature regimes, rainfall or other factors associated with climate change. But even these subtle differences are leaving their mark on the
ecosystem, influencing the prey and, in turn, the predators.
“Controlling the removal of fish from the population as a way to protect populations and allow populations to be sustainable over time is great and has worked for hundreds of years,” Barbieri said. “But we now understand that, of course, it’s very important to more explicitly, directly integrate habitats, including water quality, into the way that we manage.”
These other threats, he says, are not as easy to see and address. “That’s why this greater understanding is important,” he said. “You need the data on these things to understand: What are those main connections? Where are those many vulnerabilities we need to watch, and when?”
The Latest Research
According to BTT Director of Science and Conservation Dr. Aaron Adams, these questions are exactly what the symposium is designed to help answer, widening the lens and looking at fishery issues from a holistic, international viewpoint. “It’s totally understandable to get hyper focused on the crisis of the day and management,” he said. “But that’s just playing whack-a-mole unless you have a bigger-picture perspective.”
That perspective will come through presentations like this year’s “Rethinking the Future of Flats Fishery Management,” in which BTT Juvenile Tarpon Habitat Program Manager JoEllen Wilson will present actionable science that can be applied by fisheries management to include habitat, aiming to help all stakeholders understand, from their own roles, the network of moving parts at work, and how to make conservation planning more effective.
“Right now, fisheries management for marine fisheries doesn’t incorporate habitat. It doesn’t incorporate water quality,” Adams said. “One of our goals here is to help lay the groundwork for how Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission could create a management system that incorporates habitat and water quality, because if they do that, then others will follow.”
BTT scientists also will make a case for spending more resources on studying how to better regulate catch-and-release. In the five years since the last BTT symposium, there have been only a few new studies conducted on how bonefish, tarpon, and permit respond to catch-and-release, including the first ever such study on permit. However, existing data on bonefish in the Bahamas indicate that mortality rates from shark and barracuda predation after a fish is released may sometimes be as high
BTT is working with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to incorporate habitat into fisheries management, beginning with redfish and snook. Photo: Pat Ford
Dr. Jennifer Rehage releases a bonefish after sampling it for pharmaceutical contaminants. Photo: Ian Wilson
as one in every three fish. Panels and presentations including “Catch-and-Release Science for Fish on the Flats” and “Money
to Burn? Why Science-based Best Practices for Catch-and-
Release Matter” will look at ways to reduce predation rates after fish are put back—and crunch the numbers on how this could save a fishery millions.
Dr. Jordan Cissell and team mapped the impact of Hurricane Dorian on mangrove forests in Grand Bahama and Abaco and will offer an update on the progress of BTT’s Northern Bahamas Mangrove Restoration Project, the science that helped to lay the groundwork for the project, and how it all ties back to flats fish populations. Among the studies shared by Dr. Luke Griffin will be a look at all we’ve learned from BTT’s Tarpon Acoustic Tagging Project, as a discussion about findings from years of research on the movement patterns of tarpon, and how those findings could inform broader, regional, cooperative management strategies throughout the Gulf of Mexico and southeastern U.S. And BTT Collaborating Scientist Dr. Jennifer Rehage and Dr. Jerker Fick of Sweden’s Umeå University will present the latest findings on the threat of pharmaceuticals to Florida’s flats fishery—exploring how drugs that filter through wastewater systems into coastal habitats, from birth control to opioids, affect species like bonefish—along with reviewing possible solutions to this growing problem.
Another impact Adams and BTT hope the Symposium will have is to convince the State of Florida to elevate repairing and upgrading its wastewater treatment infrastructure to a numberone priority. “Again,” Adams said, “that would have nationwide and regional implications. We’re literally polluting ourselves to death—as well as our fish.”
Multidisciplinary Conservation Solutions in the Wild
According to Rehage and research associate Nicholas Castillo, the study on pharmaceutical contaminants in bonefish habitats, which involved catching and sampling a number of bonefish, would not have been possible without the skilled anglers and guides who took part in the process. Another instance—like Danylchuk and Casselberry’s hammerhead and tarpon research—where stakeholders both in the lab and on the water collaborated to create a new world of data.
“The symposium is unique in that anglers, fishing guides and scientists come together as a community to discuss what is happening to our fish and how do we make it better,” Rehage said. “I can’t think of another venue where this happens.”
The more connections these often-siloed players make, the more strategic, effective, and unobtrusive necessary closures can be; and, the more alternatives there may be to closures. In the case of the Bahia Honda, one possible solution researchers are exploring is to work with guides to install rare-earth magnets that repel the hammerheads, leaving tarpon and anglers to their sport—and reducing conflict between humans and sharks.
The programs should yield actionable takeaways for fishery managers, scientists, conservation organizations—but what about for the general public? Danylchuk and colleagues will join a panel, “Power to the People: How Informed Advocacy
Can Fuel Grassroots Conservation Efforts for Flats Fisheries,”
taking a look at the recent growth of community-driven grassroots movements that can not only help bolster top-down lobby, but to foster bottom-up voluntary change. Panelists will delve into some specific cases wherein grassroots voluntary efforts backed by hard science boosted conservation efforts for flats fish habitats.
Brands can be major players in these grassroots efforts, with their direct relationships and communication channels to an audience that loves to get out on the water. BTT Platinum Sponsor Costa Sunglasses is presenting this year’s symposium, and their advocacy work is a key example of what brands are capable of in this space, starting with their ‘Kick Plastic’ campaign to raise awareness about limiting single-use bottles back when it was a radical thought.
“It’s just the right thing to do,” said Joe Gugino, Costa’s Conservation and Community Partnerships Manager. “We’ve been doing it for so long, it’s ingrained in who we are—it’s just how we do business.” Costa provides financial support, marketing support, and above all, momentum to conservation causes, leveraging customers’ trust in the brand to help boost the visibility and legitimacy of—and the love for—cause groups and their causes.
That’s why BTT’s Flats Expo is happening right alongside the symposium. Here, leading outfitters, guides, lodges, artists and more, including BTT supporters Maverick and Hell’s Bay Boatworks, and sponsors from the hospitality space, from Hawks Cay Resort to Campeche Lodge, will showcase the industry’s newest equipment, apparel, skiffs and tackle, and offer fly tying and casting demonstrations for every skill level. It’s also a chance for brands, consumers and causes to all come together.
“We’re not claiming perfectionism—it’s impossible to be perfect—but it’s always striving to be better and to improve,” Gugino said of Costa’s brand conservation focus. “For example, the symposium is one of our sponsorships and a lot of the effort we spend is removing single-use plastics as much as possible. That costs money, time and effort—and it’s more than just throwing a banner there. But that effort is showing our partners the importance of coming to the table with solutions—not just talking about them.”
Typically triennial, this upcoming installment of the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust’s International Science Symposium and Flats Expo has been delayed twice because of COVID-19, making it the first BTT Symposium since 2017, and with water infrastructure issues and the effects of climate change top of mind, its mission has never been more timely.
“This will require a more incrementalist approach,” FWC’s Barbieri said of the work at hand. “Instead of getting frustrated by our inability to handle the issue as a whole, we try to take one bite at a time, and understand that this is complex and multi-dimensional, that we’re not going to be able to wrap our arms around everything. But with a better understanding of how it all comes together and the science behind it, we can make some level of progress.”
Alexandra Marvar is a freelance journalist based in Savannah, Georgia. Her writing can be found in The New York Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine and elsewhere.
Matt Connolly Bonefish & Tarpon Trust to Honor Conservation Leader Matt Connolly
At the 7th International Science Symposium and Flats Expo, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust will honor Matt Connolly with the Lefty Kreh Award for Lifetime Achievement in Conservation alongside fellow award recipients Sandy Moret, Chico Ferndandez, and Dr. Andy Danylchuk.
“Matt Connolly shaped the cause of conservation in our nation,” said BTT President and CEO Jim McDuffie. “His leadership and his legacy are evident at many organizations, including Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, Ducks Unlimited, and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. Matt joined us at a critical moment in our development, and his efforts positioned BTT to become an effective conservation organization in Florida and across the range of flats species in this hemisphere.”
A lifelong conservationist, Connolly began his career as the state ornithologist of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where he served as assistant commissioner of natural resources, director of conservation services, director of coastal zone management, and director of fisheries and wildlife. Connolly went on to hold leadership positions at Ducks Unlimited (DU), serving as its first director of development and then as executive vice-president.
During that period, Connolly also served as first COO of Wetlands America Trust as well as chairman of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan Implementation Committee. Subsequently, he was appointed to the newly created North American Wetlands Council by the Bush and Clinton administrations and elected by the council as its first chairman.
Following his retirement from DU in 1999, Connolly served as the first president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP). In 2005, he joined the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust Board of Directors, where he went on to serve as Board President for 10 years. During his tenure, the organization began translating research results into fisheries policy and witnessed significant growth in membership, revenues, and visibility, the latter including his collaborative role in helping to bring the popular fishing show, Buccaneers & Bones, to television
Connolly has also served on three corporate boards and on the board of the federal Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation. He is the recipient of the Chevron/Times Mirror National Conservation Award and the U.S Forest Service Chief’s Conservation Leadership Award.
As a 2022 award recipient, Connolly will be enshrined with other legends in BTT’s Circle of Honor, which is housed in the Florida Keys History & Discovery Center in Islamorada, Florida.
Guiding the Way
BY MICHAEL ADNO
Each year, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust honors anglers, guides, scientists and resource managers who have advanced flats fishery conservation. Within BTT’s Circle of Honor, one finds a group of people who embody the values that inspired BTT and helped to shape the organization. But above the acclaim of adding the honor to a resume, what this means to the recipients is maybe less important than what they hope it will mean for the places they have dedicated themselves to protect and conserve. It’s an honor meant to recognize their role in fisheries conservation, their relationship to the culture of the sport, and what lies ahead. A century from now, maybe the record will read like a roadmap of sorts.
Rolling tarpon in the Florida Keys. Photo: Dan Diez
Captain Paul Dixon
Captain Paul Dixon
When asked about Paul Dixon, BTT board member Adelaide Skoglund thinks of two anecdotes. One is serious. The other she says not to mention. The first begins at five in the morning when Dixon and Skoglund leave the dock in the pitch black, just hoping they’d have Curtis Point to themselves by first light, which can mean arriving long before sunrise. The other is about how Dixon says a four-letter word with such tenacity that it’s the first thing she thinks of when she hears his name. Between the two bookends, you get the sense of a deeply committed guide who is as serious as he is funny, who is as modest as he is admired.
Unsung is an understatement when it comes to Captain Dixon. In the 1980s, when he started poking around the east end of Long Island, the fishery there was nearly extinct. By the early 1990s when the striped bass fishery returned, he opened a shop, got his captains license, and built an outfitting service out of nothing.
“People came out from the city and realized they didn’t have to go to the Keys,” he says. “The business grew. I bought more boats, trained more guides, and it sort of all just blew wide open.” Around the same time, a call came from Florida about guiding in the Upper Keys and bringing some of his clients down to a place called the Ocean Reef Club. He agreed, and soon he got word on the docks that there was going to be a meeting for something called “Bonefish and Tarpon Unlimited.” When he cleared the doors, Stu Apte, Billy Pate, and Steve Huff were all the persuasion he needed to join, and Dixon found himself hanging over the gunwale with Tom Davidson soon after, inserting the first tag in a tarpon.
Back up north, his enthusiasm set his mind on fire, sitting in on meeting after meeting in Suffolk County, advocating for the protection of the fishery there, and later becoming a part of the Guides Associations in the Northeast that have largely looked to BTT as a model. “This was a new way of looking at it, and that’s the way I saw BTT.” Science, data, and advocacy were the program, and it’s proved effective, he thought. Of course, he looks around and says, “Florida is heartbreaking to me. The water quality. The grass loss,” before pausing. “That’s why BTT is so important, because if you don’t fight in today’s world… I don’t know. I would like to say I hold hope, but it’s a tough world.”
In October, he will be honored at BTT’s annual dinner in New York City, an event that Dixon helped establish and co-chaired for years, cultivating support for BTT in the Northeast. Last year, the event raised a record-breaking $1 million for BTT’s conservation programs that span from the southeastern US to the Yucatán Peninsula. At a glance, you could deem Dixon a pessimist, but then again, after decades of advocacy, you might say otherwise. As Skoglund says, “He loves the industry. He loves the people involved. He loves the fish, and he wants people to enjoy them.”
Andy Mill
2022 Curt Gowdy Memorial Media Award
The marks that make up Andy Mill’s life look glamorous from 10,000 feet up. In broad strokes, the constellation includes Olympic skier, broadcast journalist, father, husband, podcaster, and formidable tournament angler, who won five Gold Cup tournaments. Mill remains one of the only anglers to ever win a major permit, bonefish, and tarpon tournament. He remembers watching Walker’s Cay Chronicles in the 1990s and how haunted he was by saltwater fish. “If I could ever see any of these fish just once,” he thought. “It would be a treasure.” His departure point of the television was like so many others that find their way to South Florida.
But it was strange how his own trajectory would so closely follow that of luminaries like Flip Pallot, who shaped Walker’s. Mill left skiing for journalism, the mountains for the Keys, went on to host his own television show, and then as an author he found himself signing books at the same table as Pallot, Chico Fernandez, Stu Apte, and Lefty Kreh at the first Bonefish & Tarpon Trust Symposium. “Here I was among the Mount Rushmore of fishermen, signing my own book,” he remembers thinking. And this year, to receive the Curt Gowdy Memorial Award, he just laughs. “Oh my god, it’s a real pinch-me-moment.”
“BTT is the organization it is today because of people like Andy Mill,” said BTT President and CEO Jim McDuffie. “Just like Curt Gowdy before him, Andy has shared his stage in life with us, helping to put a spotlight on our mission and inspiring others to support it. I know Curt would be so pleased that Andy has carried that banner forward.”
Over time, Mill has come to believe that his approach to conservation is one that reflects BTT’s values in terms of thinking on a broad scale but implementing action at a local level. “The fabric of the sport is connected by all these little dots, which are people who love to fish, and if they’re all of the same mindset that we’ve got to watch our own footprint then we’ve instantly helped the resource,” he says. Mill points to the way anglers handle fish, to where and when they fish with regard to worm hatches or shark predation, and even to the implementation of closures to protect spawning fish, noting how critical the closure of Western Dry Rocks will be for fisheries in the Keys.
“If you take a look at BTT, I’m so proud of that organization, because all these years later you see the impact they’ve had,” Mill says. “It really takes an army to move the needle.”
