CHARTING THE WAY FORWARD

Bonefish & Tarpon Trust is collaborating with Florida Keys fishing guides to support a set of science-based recommendations for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary’s revised management plan, known as the Restoration Blueprint.

BY MICHAEL ADNO

For every mile you drive in the Keys, the landscape talks. The ground points back to the Pleistocene when a coral forest rose between the Florida Straits and the Gulf of Mexico. Living coral grows just a stone’s throw offshore. And the water animates the place, drawing people to the Keys in the millions year by year. As Rachel Carson wrote of the Keys in 1955, “There is a tropical lushness and mystery, a throbbing sense of the pressure of life.” Today, that resource falls within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS), a tropical archipelago managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

Since 1990, in cooperation with the State of Florida, the Sanctuary has been responsible for managing that vast resource, which includes four national wildlife refuges, six state parks, three aquatic parks, and two of the country’s earliest national marine sanctuaries. Now the Sanctuary management plan is being reworked through a collaborative initiative called the “Restoration Blueprint” to better protect the place.

From the northern edge of Biscayne Bay National Park, the

Sanctuary first forms a thin vein that falls south before enveloping the backcountry of the Upper Keys along the edge of the Everglades National Park. As it moves west, it fans out from the barrier reef running along the southern edge of the Keys to the rim of the Gulf until it reaches the Dry Tortugas along its western boundary. Within the 3,300 square miles, 6,000 different species of flora and fauna live alongside 80,000 human residents and the third largest barrier reef in the world.

The last time the Sanctuary amended the management plan was 15 years ago, and since 2007, the threats to the Keys have only grown more urgent with an exponential increase in tourism and habitat loss, and declines in water quality. Degradation of the island chain’s unique coral reef prompted creation of the State’s Pennekamp Reef preserve in 1960 followed in 1972 by the first federal marine unit: the Key Largo National Marine Sanctuary. Subsequently a series of large vessel groundings on the Keys reef provided the impetus for a broader federal marine unit (with authority to order large vessels away from the reef), which was established in 1990. Now the problems afflicting the reef, and other Keys’ waters and fish habitat, include water quality and an explosion in boating use.

During the past year, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust worked with the Lower Keys Guides Association (LKGA) and the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association (FKFGA) to better understand the Sanctuary’s Restoration Blueprint and how it would affect the flats fisheries throughout the Keys. Simply put, the coalition wanted to protect those habitats while retaining responsible access for guides and anglers in a series of recommendations they ultimately made to the Sanctuary.

“We have too many people loving our resource to death,” said Dr. Ross Boucek, BTT’s Florida Keys Initiative Manager. “We need more responsible management in the Keys.” In broad strokes, it’s as straightforward as placing more markers to help users navigate, reshaping boundaries for idle/no motor zones, and including adaptive management in the Blueprint.

Over the last decade, Monroe County has seen exponential tourism growth, increased cruise ship traffic, and an immense uptick in recreational boat users, especially in the span of the pandemic when every vessel in the island chain seemed to be in use. “We’re long overdue for some management updates,” said Kellie Ralston, BTT’s Vice President for Conservation and Public Policy. As ever, the question for her was: How do you address all the folks’ desires and package that as policy? “The zoning proposals that we have put forward in our recommendations still allow for reasonable and responsible access almost everywhere,” she said. “There were only a few instances where we were supportive of no access areas because of resource concerns.”

When Dr. Boucek sat down with members from the LKGA and FKFGA, they looked over the Keys flat by flat, discerning which flats were eaten up by prop scars and which tarpon lanes were constantly run over by boats, and decided how to prioritize protections. “We listened,” Dr. Boucek said, “wrote it all down.” And that’s what formed the heart of the 74-page document of suggestions that BTT and the guides associations sent to the Sanctuary last fall.

Area by area, they laid out where critical habitats are found throughout the Keys for permit, bonefish, and tarpon. The LKGA and FKFGA lent BTT the perspective of those absorbed every day in the resource, and BTT coupled that local knowledge with its science-based understanding of spawning behavior, migratory patterns, and feeding activity. What shook out after all that back-and-forth was a set of suggestions that were tailored to conserve crucial habitats for bonefish, permit and tarpon throughout the Keys.

The process began when the guides associations tapped their members’ understanding of the rhythms of the places they fish, discerning where fish swim and when, what obstacles they encounter, and the changes witnessed over time. That deep well of local ecological knowledge was collected and inevitably distilled. From there, in meetings, at marinas, and across the table, members shared that hard-earned knowledge with BTT, who used the accounts alongside its own data from long-term studies to figure out just what was at stake and how the Sanctuary could best address the declining fish populations, water quality, and habitat loss in the next iteration of its management plan.

Precedents for the BTT, LKGA, and FKFGA Restoration Blueprint proposals were the seasonal closure of Western Dry Rocks and the no motor zones in the Everglades National Park—both the product of a close collaboration between users and managers to conserve fisheries and vital habitats. Pointing to those successful management initiatives, Captain Andrew Tipler, President of the LKGA, feels hopeful about the opportunity not only to preserve the resources in the Florida Keys but to see them improve. He likened the reasonable restrictions included in the Blueprint proposal to the regulations in National Parks where some sites are only accessible seasonally, by trail, or rather have a specific means of reaching them to protect them from unfettered access or neglect. The groundswell of conservation efforts bound up in just this process alone bolstered Tipler’s hope as he acknowledged the involvement of the American Sportfishing Association, the Coastal Conservation Association Florida, and the International Game Fish Association among a handful of organizations that have become intimately involved in the Keys community, too.

For Captain Eric Herstedt, a member of FKFGA, channel markers were the first thing that came to mind in an overhaul of the Sanctuary’s approach to management. “That’ll be huge,” he said. Nearly every day, he sees boats run aground, as do most guides fishing the Keys—not to mention the constant disturbance of fish throughout the year. In the maze of shallow basins and channels that make up the backcountry of the Keys, that’s acutely felt in how scarred flats degrade over time, losing seagrass and in turn becoming less attractive to fish. “People have discovered the water, and that’s a major challenge for NOAA to take on,” said Captain Will Benson, a LKGA member and a BTT representative as well as an advisory council member for the Sanctuary. “I see boats running aground and chewing up the bottom almost every day, and there is no law enforcement.”

“We’re asking for the Sanctuary to put in channel markers to help less-educated boaters, first-time boaters, or frankly people who have run out there a lot but find themselves challenged to navigate safely,” Benson said. Anyone who’s found themselves trying to line up islands in the dark or threading keyholes in low light knows that it’s not just novices who could benefit from more markers in the Keys but everyone. Not only would it condense boat traffic and provide safe passage for those running the backcountry, but as Benson said, it would protect the flats that form the heart of the fishery and, in some ways, codify behavior that the majority of guides already practice. “It comes down to good boater education,” he said.

From Ocean Reef down to Sugarloaf, everyone has watched as a string of tarpon shows up hundreds of yards away. The mind starts making dozens of calculations as the body courses with cortisol, and then in some cruel turn of happenstance, an uneducated boater or jet ski buzzes the string, and the fish change course. Sometimes that happens over and over, eviscerating any chance at a shot. While it’s a stretch to assume that the decades of etiquette practiced by guides could be commonplace among everyone (Have you ever tried to explain this to a jet skier?), markers along the ocean side of the Keys would help control that––alongside a network of idle zones and no motor zones to protect those important basins and travel lanes.

“The tarpon fishery is definitely the one that seems to be taking the brunt of this,” Dr. Boucek said. And included in the coalition’s suggestions is a series of idle and no motor zones to suit those places where fish tend to congregate, whether to move from channel to channel or rest in a certain basin.

Herstedt remembered the pushback from guides when the Everglades National Park introduced its own no motor zones, referred to as poll/troll zones, which were originally overly expansive and limited access, but were modified with input from a BTT-fishing guides collaboration to incorporate boat running lanes. But after seeing the effect on the fishery, especially in places like Snake Bight, Herstedt feels that guides understand the value. “We weren’t happy,” he said at first, “but now we love them.” For the FKFGA and Herstedt, the priority with the Restoration Blueprint is to protect as much they can while they can—a thread of solidarity among everyone in the Keys.

“It matters to everybody,” Benson said. “The Florida Keys has a coastal economy.” So whether or not this was on their radar, the guides all felt that this was central to the character of the Keys. “We need to protect it,” Tipler added, “Make it better.”

With all of the moving parts and vast stretches of water that fall within the Sanctuary’s borders, not to mention the other federal and state management agencies that work within its borders, BTT and LKGA pushed hard for measures that would focus on water quality, adequate law enforcement, and prioritizing adaptive management. Just in the last five years alone, the effects of climate change, hurricanes, and boat traffic seem exponentially worse. “The agency needs to be more responsive to those changes,” Benson said. “We’re asking them to include this concept of adaptive management, so we don’t have to wait 20 years to respond to something that needs to be addressed now.” It’s a means to cut through some of the red tape and bureaucracy that comes with coordinating responses among five agencies with different approaches to management. If a boundary needs to move due to a displaced bird population or blocked channel, the Sanctuary can act accordingly rather than sitting on its hands for years.

But as everyone involved will tell you, it’s not the sole responsibility of the Sanctuary to protect the resource—it’s yours and mine too. For everyone who visits the Keys, whether it’s to snorkel, get lost, or fish, there needs to be some engagement beyond your time on the water. Dr. Boucek pointed to how awareness in recent years has spread like wildfire, and he hoped that investment in advocacy on the part of anglers and guides continued. Write policy makers. Push the agencies to take responsibility. Get friends involved. “Stay engaged,” he said.

This back-and-forth among the handful of agencies, BTT, and guides is just one part in a long sequence. Each step will shape what this place looks like in a century.