Bonefish & Tarpon Journal - Fall 2021

CHANGING

TARPON DYNAMICS

FLORIDA’S WATER CRISIS

TRACKING THE GRAY GHOST

JOURNAL BONEFISH&TARPON

Crush barbs and pick up stream-side trash. Volunteer skills, money and time. Fight for access and vote your conscience. Even our smallest efforts build a future for wild fish, clean water and an inclusive community. It’s not too late. It’s never too early. It’s every day. We are all wild fish activists.

National Park, including bucket-listers such as tarpon, redfi sh and snook.

Nearly 300 species of fi sh depend upon the massive-but-fragile ecosystems unique to Everglades

© 2021 Patagonia, Inc.

Editorial Board

Dr. Aaron Adams, Monte Burke, Sarah Cart, Bill Horn, Jim McDuffie, Carl Navarre, T. Edward Nickens

Publication Team

Publishers: Carl Navarre, Jim McDuffie

Editor: Nick Roberts

Editorial Assistant: Miranda Wolfe

Layout and Design: Scott Morrison, Morrison Creative Company

Contributors

Monte Burke

Grace Casselberry

Dr. Steven Cooke

Dr. Andy Danylchuk

Dr. Luke Griffin

Alexandra Marvar

T. Edward Nickens

Ashleigh Sean Rolle

Chris Santella

Photography

Cover: Paul Dabill

Dr. Aaron Adams

Alphonse Fishing Company

Jenni Bennett

Tyler Bowman

Brian Chakanyuka

Greg Clark

Adam Cohen

Dr. Andy Danylchuk

Dan Diez

Pat Ford

Dr. Luke Griffin

Pierre Joubert

Justin Lewis

Tommy Locke

Miami Waterkeeper

Katherine Mikesell Mill House

T. Edward Nickens

Dr. Addiel Perez

Nick Roberts

Nick Shirghio

Silver Kings

Sport Fishing Television

Patrick Williams

Ian Wilson

Bonefish & Tarpon Journal

2937 SW 27th Avenue Suite 203

Miami, FL 33133

(786) 618-9479

Board of Directors Officers

Carl Navarre, Chairman of the Board, Islamorada, Florida

Bill Horn, Vice Chairman of the Board, Marathon, Florida

Jim McDuffie, President & CEO, Miami, Florida

Harold Brewer, Immediate Past Chairman, Key Largo, Florida

Tom Davidson, Founding Chairman Emeritus, Key Largo, Florida

Russ Fisher, Founding Vice Chairman Emeritus, Key Largo, Florida

Bill Stroh, Treasurer, Miami, Florida

Jeff Harkavy, Founding Member and Secretary, Coral Springs, Florida

John Abplanalp

Stamford, Connecticut

Dr. Aaron Adams

Melbourne, Florida

Rich Andrews

Denver, Colorado

Stu Apte

Tavernier, Florida

Rodney Barreto

Coral Gables, Florida

Dan Berger

Alexandria, Virginia

Bob Branham

Plantation, Florida

Mona Brewer

Key Largo, Florida

Adolphus A. Busch IV

Ofallon, Missouri

Evan Carruthers

Maple Plain, Minnesota

Advisory Council

Randolph Bias, Austin, Texas

Charles Causey, Islamorada, Florida

Don Causey, Miami, Florida

Scott Deal, Ft. Pierce, Florida

Paul Dixon, East Hampton, New York

Chris Dorsey, Littleton, Colorado

Chico Fernandez, Miami, Florida

Mike Fitzgerald, Wexford, Pennsylvania

Pat Ford, Miami, Florida

Christopher Jordan, McLean, Virginia

Bill Klyn, Jackson, Wyoming

Andrew McLain, Clancy, Montana

Jack Payne, Gainesville, Florida

Upcoming Events

10th Annual NYC Dinner & Awards

BTT’s Mission

To conserve and restore bonefish, tarpon and permit fisheries and habitats through research, stewardship, education and advocacy.

October 19, 2021

The University Club New York, NY

Sarah Cart

Key Largo, Florida

John Davidson

Atlanta, Georgia

Greg Fay

Bozeman, Montana

Allen Gant Jr.

Glen Raven, North Carolina

John Johns

Birmingham, Alabama

Doug Kilpatrick

Summerland, Florida

Jerry Klauer

New York, New York

Wayne Meland

Naples, Florida

Ambrose Monell

New York, New York

Sandy Moret

Islamorada, Florida

Steve Reynolds, Memphis, Tennessee

Ken Wright, Winter Park, Florida

Honorary Trustees

Marty Arostegui, Coral Gables, Florida

Bret Boston, Alpharetta, Georgia

Betsy Bullard, Tavernier, Florida

Yvon Chouinard, Ventura, California

Matt Connolly, Hingham, Massachusetts

Marshall Field, Hobe Sound, Florida

Guy Harvey, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Steve Huff, Chokoloskee, Florida

James Jameson, Del Mar, California

Michael Keaton, Los Angeles, CA / MT

BTT at The Burge

October 27, 2021

Burge Plantation

Newton County, GA

John Newman

Covington, Louisiana

David Nichols

York Harbor, Maine

Al Perkinson

Charleston, South Carolina

Chris Peterson

Titusville, Florida

Jay Robertson

Islamorada, Florida

Rick Ruoff

Willow Creek, Montana

Bert Scherb

Chicago, Illinois

Casey Sheahan

Bozeman, Montana

Adelaide Skoglund

Key Largo, Florida

Paul Vahldiek

Houston, Texas

Rob Kramer, Dania Beach, Florida

Huey Lewis, Stevensville, Montana

Davis Love III, Hilton Head, South Carolina

George Matthews, West Palm Beach, Florida

Tom McGuane, Livingston, Montana

Andy Mill, Aspen, Colorado

John Moritz, Boulder, Colorado

Johnny Morris, Springfield, Missouri

Jack Nicklaus, Columbus, Ohio

Flip Pallot, Titusville, Florida

Mark Sosin, Boca Raton, Florida

Paul Tudor Jones, Greenwich, Connecticut

Bill Tyne, London, United Kingdom

Joan Wulff, Lew Beach, New York

BTT 7th International Science Symposium

November 12 – 13, 2021

Bonaventure Resort & Spa

Weston, FL

Features

10 The Perfect Storm

Florida’s crumbling water infrastructure and outdated treatment systems threaten the flats fishery. Alexandra Marvar

16 Creatures of Habit

New research is shedding light on the movement patterns of tarpon in the Florida Keys, information that will be applied to conservation. Monte Burke

28 A Flat-Out Mystery

The search for bonefish pre-spawning aggregations in the Florida Keys intensifies. T. Edward Nickens

34 Becoming the Borskis

Inspired by angling and the natural world, acclaimed artist Tim Borski and his family have made their mark in the Florida Keys. Monte Burke

40 Flats Without Borders

BTT is partnering with resource co-managers in Belize and Mexico to conserve the region’s iconic flats fishery. Chris Santella

54 Predators and Prey

New research underscores the threat from sharks that tarpon face, and the importance of being an ethical angler. Grace Casselberry and Dr. Andy Danylchuk

Anglers explore the Everglades.

Photo: Nick Shirghio

Setting the Hook

From the Chairman and the President

Every important research project on the flats involves a little oldfashioned sleuthing. We see it when scientists interview stakeholders for new leads, ground-truth habitat conditions observed from satellite imagery, and use tracking devices to monitor fish movements.

A great example of our detectives at work can be found in BTT’s search for bonefish spawning areas in the Florida Keys. Where do Keys bonefish spawn? The answer is a missing link in our understanding of bonefish reproduction in the region, and discovering these locations is a necessary first step in their conservation. By studying the bonefish that use them, we can also begin to answer other important questions. Are local spawners experiencing environmental stresses that are potentially impacting the population? What portion of the Keys fishery originates from local spawns versus the possible recruitment from more distant locations?

In his excellent article that follows, T. Edward Nickens chronicles new efforts that are yielding promising clues. Among them, legendary Keys guides were recently interviewed to glean their historic observations and extensive knowledge of the fishery. These conversations netted several potential sites, three of which will be the focus of intensive research by BTT scientists next season.

In a similar way, BTT’s scientists have begun crunching data from the multi-year Tarpon Acoustic Tagging Project. As Monte Burke explains in his article, “Creatures of Habit,” the movements and habitat uses of Atlantic tarpon are being examined anew with the richest dataset ever compiled on the species. New findings demonstrate the highly repeatable behavior of individual tarpon and refine our understanding of what triggers their migration. Just as angler Tom Evans could recognize familiar tarpon like “Spooner” every season in Homosassa, it’s likely that we’re also fishing the same body of fish on our angling pilgrimages to the same locations and at the same times each year.

Monte also shares the concerns of Keys guides that tarpon movements are changing—and that some tarpon that once arrived like clockwork are now missing, especially in the Lower Keys. What triggers these changes remains a mystery—and a subject for future analysis and research. Reasoned speculation includes degraded habitat, altered flows, increased fishing pressure and boat traffic, among other human-induced impacts. As Monte concludes, it’s clear that “humans and tarpon are in this together. And we need to focus increasingly on ways in which we can hold up our end of the bargain.”

There is no better place to uphold our end of the bargain than by working together to address Florida’s continuing water woes. If we lose the water, we’ll also lose aquatic habitats and all the species that rely on them.

In this issue, Alexandra Marvar’s account of “Florida’s Water Infrastructure in Dire Straits” should be our call to action. Florida has become a sieve leaking nutrient pollution and dangerous contaminants into waterways and coasts statewide. These are

Carl Navarre, Chairman

Jim McDuffie, President

problems that pose profound risks to human health, fish and wildlife, and a state economy that runs on water. Florida’s saltwater recreational fisheries provide an annual economic impact exceeding $9 billion and directly support nearly 90,000 jobs. Commercial fisheries add another $3.2 billion in sales and support more than 77,000 jobs. And it all hinges on clean water and healthy, abundant habitats.

According to statistics from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, some 1.6 billion gallons of wastewater have spilled since 2015, feeding toxic bacteria and poisoning habitats and marine life. And this is before taking into account the impacts of failing septic systems statewide. Yes, red tides like the one that gripped Tampa this past summer occur naturally and were first documented centuries ago by Spanish explorers. But there is growing consensus among scientists that nutrient pollution exacerbates the problem, making red tides and other harmful algal blooms more widespread and severe. Addressing these problems will require a significant and sustained commitment by the state to modernize water infrastructure and effectively manage water resources—and it will require our resolve to demand action.

There are hopeful signs on the horizon. Earlier this year, the Florida Legislature, with the encouragement of Governor Ron DeSantis, established a new Wastewater Grant Program with an initial appropriation of $500 million and $116 million in recurring funds, which BTT supported throughout the legislative process. This is a small but important first step in the marathon ahead.

We may have never imagined that water infrastructure would factor into mission success, but it has become a critical part of the calculus to fix our water and conserve Florida’s flats fisheries. As a result, BTT will be on the front lines of what promises to be a years-long slog to support policies and secure funding to enact meaningful change. And, as with other endeavors, we will be led by science. The results of a major, multi-year research study, which will provide sobering new evidence of the scale and likely sources of contaminants in South Florida bonefish, will be presented at the 7th International Science Symposium in November.

Thank you for your continued support of science and conservation programs, which is helping us to identify important spawning habitats of the Gray Ghost, better understand the movements of the Silver King, improve fishery management, and advocate for clean water and healthy habitats.

Bonefish & Tarpon Trust Welcomes Three New Directors

Business leaders Evan Carruthers and Ambrose Monell have joined the Board of Directors of Bonefish & Tarpon Trust, along with renowned Florida Keys fishing guide Captain Rick Ruoff.

“We are honored to welcome Evan, Ambrose, and Rick to the Board of Directors,” said Jim McDuffie, BTT President and CEO. “We will benefit greatly from their leadership and expertise as we pursue our mission to conserve the flats fishery.”

Carruthers is Chief Investment Officer & Managing Partner at Castlelake, LP, which he co-founded. He serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations and is a member of the national development committee for Pheasants Forever. An avid fly angler, Carruthers regularly participates in Florida Keys fishing tournaments.

“I am thrilled to join the board of Bonefish & Tarpon Trust,” said Carruthers. “I have been a supporter of the organization for a number of years and continue to be impressed by the leadership role they play in preserving the fishery that fly anglers such as myself enjoy each year. The organization’s steadfast commitment to scientific research has proven to be the bedrock in the pursuit of solutions for a more sustainable fishery for future generations to enjoy.”

Monell is President of the Ambrose Monell Foundation and the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and serves on the boards of the Peregrine Fund, Wildlife Conservation Society, and the Monell

Chemical Senses Center. He is a former trustee of Atlantic Salmon Federation and the Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole, MA), and former Overseer of the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.

“I am delighted to have been asked to join the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust Board of Directors,” said Monell. “BTT’s unique efforts in the research of these extraordinary species and their environments should be inspirational to other fishery researchers around the world. I very much look forward to furthering these endeavors and enjoying their continued success in the future.”

Ruoff began guiding in the Florida Keys in 1970 after graduating from the University of Miami with a degree in marine biology. He was elected Commodore of the Islamorada Fishing Guides Association, forerunner of the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association, in 1976. Ruoff is credited with strengthening the organization and deepening its involvement in conservation issues, including Everglades restoration.

“I have been a bonefish and tarpon guide in Islamorada for the past 51 years,” said Ruoff. “In that time I have witnessed vast changes in Florida Bay and the fisheries. As my background is in marine biology, I realize that these changes are profound and that the solutions may take years or decades. First, we have to identify the problems. BTT has stepped up with a renewed energy and direction to research and resolution. I am proud to lend my experience and support to this organization.”

Evan Carruthers

Ambrose Monell

Captain Rick Ruoff

Oh ! The Places They Take You ...

Partners In Preserving The Fish And The Places They Roam.

Tippets

Short Takes on Important Topics

7TH INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE SYMPOSIUM

The new Bonefish & Tarpon Trust Florida license plate is now available.

RIDE IN STYLE WITH NEW BTT LICENSE PLATE

Show your support for Bonefish & Tarpon Trust on the road with the new BTT Florida license plate, featuring the art of Derek DeYoung. Orders for the plate are now being accepted, and it will be produced as soon as BTT has sold 3,000 vouchers at a cost of $33 each ($25 will directly benefit BTT). If you hold a valid Florida Driver’s License or Official Florida Identification Card, you are eligible to purchase plate vouchers for your car, truck, trailer and RV! Visit btt.org/license-plate to reserve your BTT plate today.

Don’t miss Bonefish & Tarpon Trust’s 7th International Science Symposium and Flats Expo on November 12 - 13, 2021, at the Bonaventure Resort & Spa in Weston, Florida. Presented by Costa, this special two-day event will bring together stakeholders from across the world of flats fishing—anglers, guides, industry leaders, government agencies, scientists, writers and artists. The program includes presentations on major research findings along with spin and fly casting clinics, fly tying clinics, panel discussions with top anglers and guides, art and photography, and a banquet honoring Florida anglers Sandy Moret and Chico Fernandez and BTT Research Fellow Dr. Andy Danylchuk for their contributions to flats fishery conservation. The Symposium will also feature an expanded Flats Fishing Expo, where sponsors will have a bright spotlight to share information about their products and corporate commitment to conservation. Space is limited, so visit BTT.org/Symposium to register today.

MEXICO’S FLATS FISHERY PROVIDES $45.2 MILLION IMPACT

The economic value of the flats fishery provides important leverage for conservation. The information empowers anglers to advocate for improved management, and provides justification for resource managers and policymakers to enact new regulations. For this reason, BTT has commissioned economic impact assessments (EIAs) for flats fisheries across the Caribbean Basin. These studies have helped to enact conservation in many locations where BTT works: national parks to protect bonefish habitats in the Bahamas; catch-andrelease regulations for bonefish, tarpon, permit in Belize; a Special Permit Zone and spawning site closure for permit in Florida. To collect important economic information missing from the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, BTT and collaborators recently conducted an EIA in the region, determining that the flats fishery generates $45.2 million (USD) annually and supports 1,674 jobs. With this information comes more leverage for BTT and partners to improve the management of the flats fishery with the goal of ensuring its long-term health and sustainability.

BTT, CSF ESTABLISH FORMAL PARTNERSHIP

BTT and the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation are pleased to announce a formal partnership to collaborate on state and federal policies that enhance coastal habitats and marine fisheries. Leaders of the two organizations signed an MOU at the spring BTT Board of Directors meeting in Islamorada, Florida.

BTT LAUNCHES BELIZE PERMIT TAGGING PROJECT

One of the biggest challenges in conservation is determining which habitats are most important and should be prioritized for protection and restoration. Habitat use and movements by permit in northern Belize are knowledge gaps that BTT is working with guides and anglers to fill by launching a multi-year tagging program in collaboration with guides, fishing lodges, and the co-managers of protected areas in the region.

Left to Right: Dan Berger, Chair, BTT Government Affairs Committee; Jim McDuffie BTT President and CEO; Jeff Crane, CSF President and CEO; Carl Navarre, BTT Board Chair; Bill Horn, BTT Vice Chair. Photo: Pat Ford

BROADBENT FAMILY ESTABLISHES BTT ENDOWMENT

The William S. Broadbent Family of Vero Beach, Florida, has made a generous $100,000 donation to Bonefish & Tarpon Trust to establish the organization’s first endowment. Bill and Camille Broadbent have chosen to focus their resources on establishing an endowment at BTT because they view the permanency of an endowment structure to be the most efficient in creating funding sustainability and longevity at the organization.

This gift and strategy are in keeping with the Broadbents’ other philanthropic efforts; the family has established the initial endowments for the Montana Land Reliance, American Rivers, the Greenwich Land Trust, and the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation—all of which have gone on to become significant forces in their conservation communities. Bill and Camille are hopeful that BTT will continue its efforts in being a leading edge science-based organization.

BTT MOURNS THE PASSING OF FOUNDING MEMBER JOEL SHEPHERD

BTT celebrates the life of Joel Shepherd, who passed at the age of 83 on July 28, 2021, surrounded by his loving family. Twenty-five years ago, Joel was part of a small group of visionaries who founded Bonefish & Tarpon Unlimited. The Keys fishery we enjoy today is an important part of his legacy.

“Joel was one of six original founders of BTT, a tireless conservationist, a passionate angler, and one of the most interesting people you could share a skiff with,” said BTT Chairman Emeritus Tom Davidson. “The world and the environment lost a very special one with Joel’s passing. I will miss him desperately.”

Joel graduated from the University of Texas with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science in 1960. He went on to serve in Company C of the 156th Signal Battalion of the Michigan National Guard before beginning successful career as a business entrepreneur. Joel had a lifelong passion for the outdoors and especially enjoyed stalking bonefish, tarpon and permit on the flats of the Florida Keys.

He was a member of the Ocean Reef Rod & Gun Club and served as the President of the Card Sound Golf Club in Key Largo, FL, the Chairman of the Mariners Hospital Foundation Board of Directors in Key Largo, FL, and the Director of the Affiliated Boards of Baptist Health South Florida.

BTT HOSTS VETS WITH BASS PRO SHOPS

BTT was honored to team up with Gold Sponsor Bass Pro Shops and Operation WetVet to host a group of veterans for a special day of fishing in Tampa through Bass Pro Shops’ Fishing Dreams program. Despite less than ideal conditions, the veterans had a great experience—and even managed to land a permit! We

thank Anna Maria Charters and all the local captains who participated, as well BTT Gold Sponsor SweetWater Brewing Company and MISSION BBQ for catering the event. Most of all, we thank our veterans for their service and sacrifice.

Veterans and local captains landed a variety of species, including pompano, permit, and Spanish mackerel.

Joel Shepherd and BTT Past Chairman Harold Brewer.

Camille and Bill Broadbent with dogs Gus and George at the 26 Ranch in Geyser, MT.

THE PERFECT STORM

Florida’s water infrastructure is in dire straits.

BY ALEXANDRA MARVAR

Every four years, the American Society of Civil Engineers assesses the condition of bridges, dams, parks, ports, roads and other fundamental physical systems nationwide, and issues to America’s Infrastructure a letter grade. On this year’s report card, the United States earned a C- — not a score that inspires confidence. States receive individual evaluations too, and while Florida

was still awaiting its grade as of early July, it is expected to earn even lower marks. The Sunshine State ranks among the country’s lowest performers for drinking water—the ASCE estimates repairs and necessary maintenance would rack up nearly $22 billion. Nearly a quarter of its more than 1,100 dams have been deemed high-hazard status by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Outdated and inadequate water systems in communities

throughout the state regularly make their way into national headlines following prohibitive flooding, catastrophic sewage spills, pollution-spurred algae blooms, and the resulting largescale fish kills and manatee deaths.

“As in many other states across the country, Florida’s wastewater infrastructure is old, crumbling, and leaky” said Jim McDuffie, president and CEO of Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. “But the issues here are compounded by the fact that Florida is surrounded by ocean.”

Per data from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), crumbling or overloaded sewage systems have resulted in thousands of reported spills over the past five years, unleashing more than 1.65 billion gallons of sewage since 2015. That’s more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools of wastewater, and all the excess nutrients and heavy metals, fertilizers and herbicides, and pharmaceutical medications that come with them. These contaminants pour into waterways, and from most places in the state, they don’t have far to travel to the sea, where they feed toxic bacteria, kill seagrass and marine life, and further weaken an already struggling coral reef ecosystem.

“We’ve seen failures resulting in spills after major storms, for sure, but also under more routine, daily operations,” McDuffie said.

“Take, for example, the recent leaks in Fort Lauderdale.” There, overworked, decades-old sewer infrastructure led to six different sewer mane breaks, spilling some 230 million gallons of untreated water into neighborhoods, canals and the Tarpon River over the course of three months.

Florida’s water problems are both intertwined with and compounded by factors beyond control: like the state’s geology, with an ever-rising groundwater table thanks to sea level rise, and an eroding, porous, fissure-ridden limestone foundation that underlies most of the state; its geography, with 825 miles of coastline, regularly walloped by tropical storms; and its high urban density, which continues to swell. Ranked 22nd of the states by area, Florida is the country’s third most populous, more than doubling its population in the past 40 years.

And then, there is climate change: Even if Florida could get its infrastructure in check to meet today’s needs, warmer water temperatures, more frequent and intense hurricanes and more extreme king tides throw a wrench in the gears.

RISING WATERS

Florida’s water infrastructure issues are bubbling to the surface, particularly in the Florida Keys, where rising sea levels

Golf course ponds suffer from an intense algae bloom likely linked to fertilizers applied to the golf course.

Photo: Dr. Aaron Adams

in turn raise the groundwater table, seeping through cracks in streets, inundating sewers, busting open pipes and flooding neighborhoods. Climate scientists say these problems will only worsen. By 2040, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change median prediction on sea level rise for the Florida Keys is 10 inches, while NOAA predicts the Keys will see sea levels rise as much as 17”.

Accordingly, public officials recently committed to a plan to spend $1.8 billion over the next 25 years to elevate streets and install new drains, pump stations and other infrastructure to mitigate flooding. The strategy has a few holes, however, perhaps the most glaring being the absence of funding. Without it, officials say, whole communities may be lost to the water.

“Without a change in strategy, parts of the Keys will become accessible only by boat,” Kristina Hill, an environmental planner at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Guardian, describing a vision of canals and floating buildings, like those not uncommon in villages across the Amazonian floodplain. For boatgoing visitors, this possible eventuality doesn’t sound entirely apocalyptic but Hill warned there are other factors to account for: “The islands will gradually disappear into a higher ocean,” she added, “potentially leaving a ruined landscape of leaky underground storage tanks, old pipes, and flooded road segments behind to pollute the water.”

The local Keys government and the state of Florida put a billion dollars into modernizing the island chain’s wastewater system in the 2010s, but there is still much work to be done to ensure critical water quality in the productive waters surrounding the islands. For example, the Keys are still home to dozens of injection wells where sewage effluent is injected into the porous coral and limestone bedrock that underlies the islands. New studies demonstrate leakage from these old wells, with the fouled waters polluting famous angling locations. In fact, there are indications that sewage water injected into wells on Florida’s mainland travel long distances underground and bubble up by the Keys. These problems demonstrate that the Keys conversion of its old septics to modern wastewater treatment is just one necessary step to maintain water quality in and around the island chain. And water quality is critical to maintaining the Keys’ world class fisheries as well as the adjacent coral reef.

The birthplace of flats fishing, the Keys have hosted more world records for tarpon, bonefish and permit than everywhere else in the world combined. But this complex tangle of human and environmental factors have brought about dramatic population fluctuations—including a bottoming out of Keys bonefish in the 1990s—and scientists are still working to understand how it all comes together.

According to Dr. Aaron Adams, BTT Director of Science and Conservation, some of these factors occur hundreds of miles away, in places where the bonefish migrate or spawn. But this species lives the vast majority of its lifespan in the shallows, and a bonefish’s health—and the health of the fishery at large—is very much tied to what’s happening near the shore, especially in this critical habitat around the Keys.

“No one factor can be isolated,” he said, referencing the series of intensive, BTT-funded studies he has overseen of the environmental factors that might influence bonefish population trends. “Many factors interact, but water quality is certainly high on the list.”

An analysis of water contaminants in the canals leading into Biscayne Bay revealed the presence of heavy metals including arsenic and copper along with banned pesticide DDT—all products of agricultural runoff—leading the organization to make agricultural practices and impact a focus area.

And a later study yielded an even more alarming revelation: Some of the bonefish sampled in a recent study were carrying as many as 16 different pharmaceuticals in their systems, from Aspirin to opioids. It appears that drugs flushed down drains and toilets enter the wastewater stream and treatment facilities do not sufficiently remove these contaminants from waters that are released back into the environment in sewage effluent. Adams said it isn’t yet known just precisely how these over-the-counter and prescription antibiotics, antidepressants, pain relievers and hormones impact marine life, but researchers do know they can cause behavioral changes and cloud natural instincts in ways that could jeopardize survival.

These contaminants can do weirder things, too, he said, referencing studies in which the presence of hormone mimickers in rivers from the Thames to the Potomac were causing male fish to change genders and even develop ovaries.

In countries including Sweden, technologies have been put into play to filter pharmaceuticals out of the water supply, but in the U.S., Adams said, trace amounts of drugs aren’t caught by the standard water treatment systems we have in place, and to date, they are unregulated, flowing into coastal waters unchecked.

This map shows the many surface connections across large areas by canals and streams. All flow to the coast, carrying contaminants to the flats. Map: Miami-Dade County

This map shows the locations of known septic tanks in Miami-Dade County. Based on water table levels, 56 percent of the County’s septic tanks have less than 2 feet of dry ground at some time during the year, meaning that they are not properly filtering waste. A majority of septic tanks in the County are also on small lots in densely-developed north Biscayne Bay, where they are contributing to water pollution. Map: Miami-Dade County

THE SEPTIC PROBLEM

According to Adams, one key source of these contaminants is dysfunctional septic systems—and in addition to geological, geographic and climate factors, this is an aspect of Florida’s problematic water infrastructure that sets it apart. There are some 21 million septic systems in use in the U.S. today. In Florida, nearly one third of all households have septic—about 2.6 million statewide—making up more than 10 percent of the nationwide total.

Yet, these systems were explicitly not designed for densely populated, low-lying coastal environments like the vast majority of the state. For one thing, in order to function properly, septics need at least two feet of dry ground around their leach field. In Florida, especially on the coast, that dry ground is disappearing fast.

Take Miami-Dade County: According to the Miami Waterkeeper, more than half the county’s 120,000 septic systems are currently compromised. By 2040, as the water table creeps higher, that percentage is expected to increase to about two thirds. When these systems fail, runoff carries toxins into the nearby water supply, begetting the algal blooms, seagrass die-off and fish kills Florida is seeing more and more of.

THE ROOT OF THE ISSUE

When BTT was founded 25 years ago, the organization was intensely focused on research to understand a valuable

A flooded septic tank in Miami-Dade County. Photo: Miami Waterkeeper

Source: Miami Waterkeeper

recreational fishery showing signs of decline. Today, science is still the solid ground in which all the organization’s positions are rooted, but according to Jim McDuffie there is a growing focus on applying that research to rally for tangible change.

This shift is especially necessary when problems so sprawling, convoluted, and politically entangled as Florida’s water infrastructure issues have such a make-or-break impact on its recreational fisheries, McDuffie said.

“We never imagined that BTT would be walking the halls in Tallahassee or in D.C. advocating for wastewater infrastructure, but that’s where we’ve landed,” he said. “Our research has again pointed to a serious concern—a threat to flats species. What does it all mean? How are we going to affect change? It means very little unless we’re able to use our research, in this moment, to influence policy.”

BTT has been successful in recent efforts to tackle conservation issues at a policy level, McDuffie said, moving the dial to protect Florida’s recreational fisheries. The organization successfully advocated for the passage of bonefish and tarpon catch-andrelease regulations. A permit research project, funded by Costa Sunglasses, led to an extension of the closed harvest season to protect spawning permit and the subsequent seasonal no-fishing closure of Western Dry Rocks, the most important spawning site for flats permit in the Lower Keys. BTT’s work on juvenile tarpon habitats has led to changes in habitat restoration strategies by government agencies. And in the ongoing effort to restore the Everglades, BTT advocated aggressively for the authorization and funding of the new southern reservoir and fast-tracking of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Project plan.

McDuffie said what BTT is learning in its research about the impacts of Florida’s failing water infrastructure is framing a new priority for the organization, which includes a call for septic conversion and sweeping modernization of sewage systems. But it won’t be a quick fix. Truly solving the problem will require not only a reconfiguration of priorities by residents and leadership, but the

notable issue of some tens of billions of dollars in expenditures, per an estimate by the American Society for Engineers.

As the anticipated costs mount, the can gets kicked down the road: “Repairs to failing systems, septic conversion, and modernization have been somewhere on the to-do list of state and local governments for years, but there’s always something else higher on the list,” McDuffie said. “Septic tanks are underground. So were those decades-old pipes that burst in Fort Lauderdale—out of sight, out of mind. Competing priorities and a problem largely out of public view explains, in large part, why very little has been done.”

This caliber of change never happens in a straight line, McDuffie said, but today, he feels optimistic. Last spring, the Florida Legislature passed, and Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law, the Wastewater Grant Program, which will allocate $500 million in Federal funds over the next five years as well as $116 million in recurring dollars from documentary stamp revenue. This is in addition to $500 million appropriated at the governor’s request for climate resiliency planning, which McDuffie said offers additional opportunities to address water infrastructure needs.

PILING ON

As if the wastewater treatment challenges aren’t enough in their own right, the effects of longstanding policies in how Florida deals with other types of nutrient-laden water are also coming home to roost. This includes stormwater runoff, which although partly addressed is still a major issue. And runoff of nutrients from fertilizers used in agriculture and residential neighborhoods. But perhaps the notable recent impact of poor past policies is the spill of nutrient-laden water in Tampa Bay.

Just this spring, the waste storage facility at Piney Point, along the shore of Tampa Bay, suffered a failure. To prevent a total collapse of the earthen dam that holds untold millions of gallons of contaminated sludge and water, which would have inundated nearby neighborhoods, upwards of 200 million gallons

A fish kill in Miami’s Morningside Park in 2020. Source: Miami Waterkeeper / Photo: Katherine Mikesell

A dead tarpon during a red tide event on the West Coast of Florida. Photo: Capt. Tommy Locke

of contaminated wastewater was pumped into Tampa Bay at Port Manatee—a discharge sanctioned by the Florida DEP. The director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program compared the impact to that of dumping approximately 100,000 bags of hardware-store fertilizer into the bay over the course of several days.

Not long after the Piney Point discharge—which contained high levels of nutrients—upper Tampa Bay began to experience a red tide that has grown in size and intensity. Although a direct cause and effect between the discharge and this red tide occurrence will be difficult to determine, it’s rare for red tide blooms to begin and remain in upper estuary waters. Ultimately, six Gulf Coast counties would be affected by what has come to be known as a “Florida red tide”—so called for the red color of the bloom’s signature toxic organism Karenia brevis—which makes the water unswimmable, causes respiratory distress in humans on land, and kills fish. After a prolonged red tide event in 2018, state agencies reported cleaning up thousands of pounds of dead marine life. The red tide in Tampa will forever be linked to photos of front-end loaders dumping thousands of pounds of dead fish into dumpsters along Tampa Bay beaches. There is still a long way to go on many fronts, but McDuffie sees a sea change taking place.

“I think there’s greater understanding today that the state’s future across every sector will depend upon how well we deal with these issues,” he said. “There’s also a greater commitment, galvanized by harmful algae blooms, red tides, fish kills, closed beaches, and the increasing recognition that lost juvenile habitats are impacting fish populations. We need to nurture that commitment and help translate it into action in Tallahassee and DC. From our own mission perspective, it’s no over statement that the future of a multi-billion-dollar recreational fishery may be at stake. We can’t afford to lose it.”

Alexandra Marvar is a freelance journalist based in Savannah, Georgia. Her writing can be found in The New York Times, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine and elsewhere.

An algae bloom impacted Biscayne Bay in August 2020.

Source: Miami Waterkeeper / Photo: Adam Cohen

A sewage spill at Oleta River State Park on Biscayne Bay. Source: Miami Waterkeeper / Photo: Greg Clark

creatures of habit

Acoustic telemetry is rewriting the book on what is known about the movements and habitat use of the Silver King, enabling new conservation approaches.

BY MONTE BURKE

Tom Evans, the owner of many fly-fishing world records for tarpon, began fishing in Homosassa, Florida, in 1976 and has pretty much fished it every year since, missing only three years during that time. Because he is a seeker of world records, Evans has been a keen observer of tarpon behavior in Homosassa and, in fact, kept a meticulous logbook full of notes detailing every day he spent on the water there for 24 of those years. Among the most striking revelations from his observations and logbook, particularly in the earlier years, is just how predictable the behavior of the tarpon that migrate through Homosassa was. Every year, the tarpon would show up right around the same date, starting with a slow trickle and eventually becoming a fullon downpour. The fish would remain in the area—laying up, rolling, traveling in strings, forming daisy chains, sometimes heading out into the Gulf of Mexico and then coming back in—for roughly the same amount of days. And then they would leave at around the same date. There was even a single fish—nicknamed “Spooner” for a distinctive chrome spot on one of its gills—that Evans and other anglers and

guides saw on the flats of Homosassa Bay for decades. The tarpon that Evans observed seemed to move, from year to year, in a somewhat repeatable fashion, either because of instinct or adaptation.

The other striking revelation of Evans’ observations and logbook is just how precipitous and momentous the collapse of the Homosassa tarpon fishery was, starting sometime around the early 1990s. Though one can certainly still find a decent amount of tarpon there today, the great historical run, when there were thousands and thousands of fish around for much of the month of May, no longer exists, and no one really knows where that body of fish went. Of course, this, too, may suggest some sort of repeatability—that the tarpon, for whatever reason, left Homosassa and then began to “repeat” the new behavior. **

The types of observations that Evans and others made in Homosassa (with the exception of annually spotting an

Tarpon migrating through the Florida Keys.

Photo: Ian Wilson

individual fish, like Spooner) are common throughout the inshore portions of the migratory range of tarpon, from Latin America to the Gulf of Mexico and up the southeastern Atlantic coast of the United States. Though anecdotal in nature, they are solid and useful. Guides base their seasons on them. Clients plan their fishing trips around them.

Soon, though, the evidence for the manner in which tarpon move may not be solely anecdotal, thanks to research funded by Bonefish & Tarpon Trust (BTT) and spearheaded by BTT Research Fellow Dr. Andy Danylchuk and Dr. Lucas Griffin of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Danylchuk and Griffin, along with BTT and a handful of other scientists, have produced a research paper that details a four-year tracking study of 200 adult and juvenile tarpon that demonstrated that, yes, the migratory movement of tarpon is, for the most part, repeatable. The paper has been submitted for scientific review.

Danylchuk and Griffin’s research has some significant implications for tarpon angling—anglers and guides may be able to better understand their quarry. But, more important, it may also help with the conservation of the species and, perhaps, help prevent what happened in Homosassa several decades ago and what, alarmingly, appears to be happening in the Lower Florida Keys right now.

lacking. We know much more about the life cycles, spawning routines and general movement of, for instance, tuna, salmon, cod and orange roughy than we do of tarpon. Research funded by BTT on tarpon movement patterns is a big step in gathering more information about the species.

Danylchuk, Griffin and BTT began the ambitious tarpontagging program in 2016. With the help of fishing guides in places like Apalachicola, Tampa, Charlotte Harbor, Indian River Lagoon, Georgia, South Carolina and the Florida Keys, they were able to place acoustic telemetry transmitters in some 200 adult and juvenile tarpon (the biggest tarpon they tagged was 165 pounds; the smallest was 10 pounds). The acoustic tags allowed scientists to track the tarpon for a much longer period (five years) than a satellite tag (a month or two) would, and allowed for more frequent location “pings,” thanks to the various receivers set up in coastal waters. (Danylchuk, Griffin and BTT were able to get shared information from receivers operated by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, among other entities.) The drawback of the acoustic tags is the range—when the tarpon swim into deeper waters, they are usually unable to be tracked. Still, with the large number of receivers along the coast, a pattern of movement can be ascertained.

Tarpon have never been a commercially viable food fish, and because of that, scientific inquiry into the species is seriously

In the Florida Keys, the study tracked more than 50 fish. Of that group, 10 were juveniles. This collection of fish exhibited some interesting habits. They migrated to the Keys after the winter, arriving from multiple spots—Miami, Cape Canaveral, Tampa and the Everglades among them. Some of the fish would

Tarpon are a major component of Florida’s recreational saltwater fishery, which is worth in excess of $9 billion annually. Photo: Silver Kings

stay in the Keys for a week or two and then suddenly leave, with the next detection a few days later in Georgia or South Carolina, before heading back to the Keys and migrating north along the coast. One fish they tracked did multiple migrations and then went to the Chesapeake Bay until the early fall before moving south again. “What we found was that these fish traveled incredible distances, more than we ever thought before,” says Griffin.

The tagging data demonstrated that the adult tarpon stayed in the Keys between 40 and 60 days on average, and that none of them stayed there year-round. (Some of the juveniles, did, however, appearing to join in some of the migration and then stopping in the middle of it, as if learning how to migrate in increments). According to Griffin, what this suggests is that the Keys are a hub for tarpon, an important area they use as a staging ground before they spawn in deeper water.

But what prompted the tarpon to arrive in the Keys when they did? To get that answer, Griffin cross-referenced the arrival data with lunar cycles, sea-surface temperatures and what’s known as the “photo period,” which is the amount of sunlight during the day.

The entire population of fish arrived in the Keys when the seasurface temperature was between 78 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit in April and then left when the temperature was between 80 and 84 degrees in June. But when Griffin looked at individual fish, he discovered something interesting. “We wanted to see if an individual fish arrived in the first week of April one year, would it do it again the next year and the year after that?” says Griffin. “The answer was ‘yes.’ We saw that individual fish were incredibly repeatable when it came to their arrival,” he says. While the temperature might influence migratory movements, “the photo period at the individual level, and not temperature, is the likely driver of arrivals.” This makes some sense since temperatures fluctuate dramatically and would be harder to time, of course.

So what does this mean for anglers? For one thing, it means that if you fish for tarpon in the Keys around the same time every year, it’s likely that you are fishing over the same body of fish. And that knowledge—and relationship with the fish, really— comes with some stewardship obligations, especially given the importance of the Keys to the tarpon life cycle. “If anglers aren’t careful, they can have a direct impact on a certain body of fish,” says Griffin. Being careful means playing tarpon as quickly as possible. It means moving if sharks are in the area being fished. It means handling all caught tarpon with care.

It also means that habitat—which is under pressure now from water quality issues, dying seagrass and lack of proper freshwater flow in the Everglades—needs the necessary attention. Given the lack of funding or, really, care from government agencies (which assumes that catch-and-release fisheries are regenerative), most of the responsibility for tarpon is placed in the hands of those of us who target them as a sportfish.

variable in terms of how they move. “They’ll be there even if it’s cold and blowing 30 miles-an-hour,” says Collins. “They’ll just hunker down then in the channels and not swim the shallower water. But there always comes a time when that big push comes and they start to swim.” Says Ponzoa: “The fish definitely come in about the same time, starting to show up on the outer ridges of the Gulf. When we’ve had three to four days of good weather, we start looking.”

All three guides agree that the population of fish from the Middle Keys to Key Largo seems stable. The tail end of the season has appeared to thin a bit in terms of numbers, according to Collins, but, all in all, the fish and their movement have remained fairly predictable.

All three guides, though, also agree that there is something potentially catastrophic going on with the large population of tarpon that used to swim each year from Key West to roughly Big Pine Key. “There’s a big body of fish missing,” says Ponzoa. “They used to come in on the northern reaches of Big Pine, from Sideboard Bank coming west. That area, all of the channels and basins, used to fill with these tarpon. But we can’t find them anymore.” Says Collins: “Something has majorly changed down there. Key West Harbor is not loading up with fish. The tarpon used to lay up in Seaplane Basin, but they don’t anymore. Something has happened. There’s been a mass exodus.”

Because he’s based in Key West, Gable has been a firsthand, almost daily, witness to the change. “We started to see something about six years ago, small changes to the fishery and its patterns,” he says. “There were fewer fish traveling the traditional migratory routes. Some tarpon started coming in perpendicular to the shore as opposed to swimming parallel to it. And now, they seem to be gone for the most part.” Gable says that, for now, he still has a bit of a tarpon-fishing season each year in his area. But he’s scared it might not last for much longer. “If we continue the rate we’re on, I think we’re going to lose this fishery completely,” he says.

Tarpon are an ancient species, dating back, in current form, around 50 million years. During their time on earth, they have survived the extreme heat of the early Eocene Epoch, the extreme cold of the Pleistocene’s ice age and a massive die-off of the earth’s large animals that happened 13,000 years ago. They also, as individuals, can live to an old age—radiometric dating indicates that they can live to up to 70 or 80 years. They have proven to be highly adaptable.

They can certainly become habituated to human behavior— the fish that are fed daily by tourists at Robbie’s Restaurant and the fish who appear to purposely stay in the “no-fishing” zone at Bud & Mary’s Marina in Islamorada certainly illustrate that.

It makes some sense that if tarpon can become conditioned to the food and safety that humans provide them, they can also become conditioned to any human-caused sign of danger or discomfort.

The conclusions from the acoustic telemetry study jibe fairly well with the folks who spend much of their time on the water, in constant contact with these tarpon: the tarpon guides. Scott Collins and Albert Ponzoa, out of Marathon, and Don Gable, out of Key West, all agree that the fish show up in the Keys generally around the same time each year. Weather, though, can be a

Tarpon have also disappeared from certain of their oncefavorite spots in the world. Port Aransas, Texas, was a famous tarpon-fishing destination in the 1930s and 1940s. At the height of its popularity, hundreds of tarpon were caught and killed during every day of the season there. Water quality issues also plagued the area around that same time. By the 1950s, the Port Aransas

fishery was no more.

In Homosassa, though the fishery remains, it’s merely a remnant of what it used to be. Killing fish wasn’t the culprit of the decline. But boat traffic (Homosassa exploded in popularity once word got out about its big fish, and 20 boats on the water per day quickly became 100) and environmental degradation (decreased flow and more pollution in the freshwater springs that drained into Homosassa Bay) are the more likely culprits. This was a population of fish that repeated its behavior, perhaps for centuries, and then suddenly stopped, most likely from humanimposed conditions.

The causes of the missing population of fish in the Lower Keys—which Griffin says were part of the impetus for the tracking study—remain a mystery. But, again, most likely, it has something to do with us. Perhaps it’s the dying seabed in Key West Harbor? Or the pollution? Or oil spills? Or maybe it’s simply too much cruise ship, pleasure boat and jet ski traffic in the area? Tarpon migration has everything to do with maximizing “growth, survival and reproductive success” as Griffin writes in his paper. Human interference can get in the way of any or all of those things.

We may never know for sure why tarpon appear to have left the Lower Keys. But what’s become clear from Griffin and BTT’s new work is that humans and tarpon are in this together. And we need to focus increasingly on ways in which we can hold up our end of the bargain.

Monte Burke is The New York Times bestselling author of Saban, 4th And Goal and Sowbelly. His new book, Lords of the Fly: Madness, Obsession, and the Hunt for the World-Record Tarpon, is available now. He is a contributing editor at Forbes and Garden & Gun.

Tarpon swimming across a flat scarred by a propeller. The number of Keys flats classified as “severely degraded” due to propeller scarring has increased 90 percent over the past 20 years. Photo: Ian Wilson

The opportunity to sight-fish for tarpon during the annual migration draws anglers from around the world to the Florida Keys. Photo: Silver Kings

As rebuilding efforts continue in the aftermath of one of the region’s most deadly hurricanes, East Grand Bahama serves as a gateway to an even slower recovery process: the restoration of red mangrove forests in the Northern Bahamas.

It has been two years since Hurricane Dorian made landfall on Abaco and Grand Bahama, and in that time residents have been trying their best to get back to some form of normalcy. Dorian hit in September 2019, leaving behind billions of dollars’ worth of damage in its wake—and that does not begin to compare to the human lives affected and lost.

As members of the East Grand Bahama community continue to rebuild, just off the coastline lies a dead forest on the flats, a ghost of what was. These flats once housed vibrant mangrove forests that were home to a variety of birds and fish. These mangroves were the cornerstone of a fragile ecosystem and

acted as a refuge and nursery for animals of both the land and sea. Between Abaco and Grand Bahama, Dorian severely damaged or destroyed 69 square miles of this vital ecosystem.

Culturally speaking, Bahamians have lived off of the ocean since our forefathers were brought to the islands. With seafood being such a bedrock to Bahamian culture and mangroves supporting so much marine life, it would only make sense that locals would want to help revive and conserve such a delicate ecosystem. Grand Bahama lost 74 percent of their mangroves while Abaco lost 40 percent. This kind of loss creates longlasting ripple effects within the country, not just these specific communities.

A year ago when the topic of mangrove restoration was raised, it seemed like a daunting task. With so much going on in the world at the time, no one could deny that the project at hand would be a difficult one. But despite the many challenges,

From The Roots Up

Cultural Resilience

and the Northern Bahamas Mangrove Restoration Project

BY ASHLEIGH SEAN ROLLE

more than 10,000 mangrove seedlings have been planted since December 2020 for Bonefish & Tarpon Trust’s Northern Bahamas Mangroves Restoration Project. This crucial work was done in partnership with Bahamas National Trust, Friends of the Environment (FRIENDS), and MANG Gear, a Florida-based apparel company.

Transporting and raising mangrove seedlings requires a great deal of planning and care. Donated by MANG, thousands of seedlings were transported from Florida, delivered to nurseries in the Northern Bahamas and then planted in the devastated flats in the Northern Bahamas. Additionally, many seedlings have been collected and grown here at home in the Bahamas, in three nurseries setup on Grand Bahama and Abaco. This ambitious, multi-year project has many moving parts and relies heavily on community stakeholders to make it happen. One way to mobilize community members is through hosting planting events.

So, how are areas most in need of restoration identified?

“The planting sites were chosen based on what was there before compared to what remains,” explained Justin Lewis, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust’s Bahamas Initiative Manager. Choosing a specific site partly depends on the pre-Dorian presence of adult red mangroves versus dwarf red mangroves. “Although we have only one species of red mangroves in the Bahamas, we see two different forms; the dwarf mangroves that dominate the flats, grow slowly, usually don’t get taller than chest high, and rarely produce seeds (propagules), and larger, seed-bearing mangroves that tend to grow next to blue holes and along creek edges with consistent water flows to provide more nutrients than found on the flats.”

Mangrove restoration has a higher chance of success when the seedlings are planted in areas that naturally support seedbearing mangroves. This is because mangrove growth rates are

Volunteers planted more than 4,000 mangrove seedlings in East Grand Bahama at a community planting event on May 8, 2021. Photo: Nick Roberts

higher in these areas, so the seedlings have a better chance of growing more quickly and becoming large enough to produce propagules. These propagules are then carried by currents to the flats, where they contribute to natural recovery. It’s for this reason that Roemer Creek on East Grand Bahama was chosen as the site for the project’s first community planting event. Roemer Creek contains sediment that promotes growth of seed-bearing mangroves, and the channel that runs through it enhances the dispersal of seeds to surrounding impacted areas.

On May 8, 2021, more than 60 volunteers, students, government officials and bonefish guides met at McLean’s Town in East Grand Bahama at the Government Dock, a gateway to other islands and cays in the Northern Bahamas for many generations. Planting event attendees were then ferried by several boats driven by local guides to the north mouth of Roemer Creek, eager to lend a hand in restoring mangroves that directly support East Grand Bahama’s iconic flats fishery and help buffer McLean’s Town against storms.

“Work like this is important—without mangroves I would basically be without a job,” said Livingston Tate, a bonefish guide from Sweeting’s Cay who helping to engage the angling community in the project. As a resident of East Grand Bahama, Tate has a vested interest in seeing his communities bounce back in every way imaginable. His boat was among the three vessels ferrying participants from the mainland to the planting site.

After breaking off into pairs, the volunteers were sent out into the flats, each armed with a bucket filled with seedlings and a shovel. One member of the pair was instructed to dig the hole into which the other inserts the seedling. Simple enough, right? Not necessarily. For those less familiar with this landscape, moving through the mudflats is like maneuvering through quicksand, and watching the volunteers partner with one another to plant individual mangroves seedlings was both a hilarious sight and yet a heartwarming one when you realized just how much effort and care it takes to move from one spot to another.

Mangrove seedlings sprouting at one of the nurseries on Grand Bahama.

Photo: Nick Roberts

Local bonefish guide Leroy Glinton (center), Sweeting’s Cay Chief Councilor Sherwin Tate (second from right), and Bahamas Ministry of Tourism officials Martha Rolle (left), Aulenna Robinson (middle), and Erica Laing (right) participated in the project’s first community planting event on May 8.

Photo: Nick Roberts

“From the initial test planting we’ve done to the first community planting event, everyone has been a volunteer, everyone has been pitching in from the local community,” said Lewis, underscoring the importance of community engagement to the success of the project. “That’s the basis of this project—to have the community involved, trying to give back to their island, trying to get the Northern Bahamas back on track.” As Lewis speaks, one can recognize that this is such a critical aspect of the project: having local residents take ownership of a project in which they have the greatest stake.

It’s impossible to traverse the waters of the flats with any kind of grace, but Jewel Beneby, a science officer with the Bahamas National Trust, definitely moves through them with a determined force. “Everyone should care about what happens to the mangroves and about this entire restoration process,” she said as she planted the final seedling in her bucket. “Mangroves are one of the keys to climate resiliency in Small Island Developing States.”

She’s more than right. Beyond acting as an incubator for new marine life and a vital habitat that support biodiversity, mangroves diminish the power of hurricanes, and as climate change continues to be a threat to Small Island Developing States, storms are becoming more frequent, more powerful, and more deadly. It would be a gross understatement to say that mangroves are merely important: They hold the potential to be lifesaving. “What we’re doing out here is more than just community service,” said Beneby. “It’s helping jumpstart Mother Nature after something so key to our climate resilience was torn away.”

With 10,553 mangroves planted to date, community members have played an integral role in the project’s success. It could be seen in the busload of students that took

the hour-long drive from city center Grand Bahama to East End in order to participate in the inaugural planting event. Rachelle Manchester, an 11th grader at Bishop Michael Eldon School, describes herself as someone who not only loves the environment but wants to see it thrive. Rachelle is a student who is not new to environmental advocacy, and has done volunteer work with movements like Save the Bays, a Bahamian movement dedicated to fighting unregulated development and environmental degradation. “I’ve always been interested in getting out there and dealing with Mother Nature,” Manchester said. “This event was the first time I had seen the mangroves

Bonefish guide Livingston Tate transports volunteers and mangrove seedlings during a community planting event.

Photo: Nick Roberts

BTT Bahamas Initiative Manager Justin Lewis and Kyle Rossin, MANG’s co-founder and CEO, unload mangrove seedlings for planting on East Grand Bahama.

Photo: Nick Roberts

since the storm and it was honestly just devastating. I’m really happy I can do my part. “

Educational outreach has also been a key component of the project. BTT has been working closely with FRIENDS on Abaco to integrate mangrove planting in their summer activities. During their camp this year, the kids in Abaco are projected to plant more than 1,000 mangroves on their home island.

As eager as we may be to see the mangroves restored to their former glory, the steps that are being taken now are only introductory ones. The Northern Bahamas Mangrove Restoration

Project indeed will be a project that’s playing the long game. As Lewis indicated, it will be years before we begin to see the mangroves as vibrant as they once were, welcoming a plethora of fish, lobster and bird species into their fold and doing their job to fight off the force of powerful waves by acting as a storm break. That is why it is important that we do our job, by planting, educating and volunteering our time to ensure that we help Mother Nature as much as she helps us. By volunteering time and effort to mangrove restoration, Northern Bahamians have decided to bet on themselves and their futures, ensuring that their children are able to reap the benefits of decisions made long before they were born.

The restoration project doesn’t just represent the fight for climate resiliency. It also speaks loudly to the undercurrent of the resiliency of a people who have lost everything other than cultural pride and passion. It speaks volumes to the ways in which they are willing to fight for cultural preservation within their communities through environmental restoration. It’s the fight that most island states are facing, and it’s one that many Northern Bahamians have now been thrust into. The willingness, however, to rebuild in every facet of the word, is the reason why soon enough, green will replace grey and life on the flats will be restored.

Ashleigh Sean Rolle is a Bahamian writer who calls Freeport, Grand Bahama, her home. She writes for the site 10th Year Seniors, where she regularly shares her opinion on everyday Bahamian affairs. She is a contributor for Huff Post. Her work has also appeared at CNN.com.

Volunteers plant mangrove seedlings amid the destruction.

Photo: Nick Roberts

Volunteers Michelle Hunt, Sabrina Winter-Stuart, and Danielle Hunt. Photo: Nick Roberts

A FLAT-OUT MYSTERY

The Search for Bonefish Pre-Spawning Aggregations in the Keys Intensifies

BY T. EDWARD NICKENS

Captain Rick Ruoff was running late, a not-unusual circumstance when the fish were biting and he was a long way from home. With angler Bill Levy on the bow, he was making the 20-mile trek from Key Largo to Islamorada, deep into an early 1990s November afternoon. It was calm and he was in a hurry, so he ran a bit offshore, in some 15 feet of water. “I took a course straight down the beach,” he recalls, “and I saw these tails zipping out of the water in front of us. I said to Bill, Holy hell, what is that? And it was a ball of bonefish. Thousands of them, tumbling like a bowling ball. The bottom fish would come up, and the top fish would go down.”

Ruoff eased up to the school, and Levy cast and almost instantly had a fish. Then he hooked another. Ruoff backed the boat away to keep from disturbing the school, and said to Levy, “Let’s just sit here and watch.”

He and Levy watched the bonefish boil at the surface for nearly an hour, until the falling sun prompted the men to head for port. Ruoff, who has guided for 52 years, shakes his head at the memory. “It was incredible,” he says. “I had not seen anything like

that before, and I haven’t seen it since. But boy did I get a good look then. And I feel pretty honored to have seen it just once.”

At the time, Ruoff wasn’t certain what he’d witnessed. But now he knows what stopped his skiff cold that late November day. It was a pre-spawning aggregation (PSA) of Florida Keys bonefish, a phenomenon that has been shrouded in mystery for decades.

Ruoff’s story—and a double handful of similar recollections told by other long-time Keys fishing guides—has helped refocus a project essential to Florida Keys bonefish conservation: The search for bonefish pre-spawning aggregations in the Florida Keys. The project will expand in the fall of 2021, combining technology with guide observations in an effort to solve one of the most intriguing mysteries on the Florida flats: Where do Florida Keys bonefish spawn?

The answer is a missing link in the scientific understanding of what is known about Florida Keys bonefish reproduction.

Recent research has provided tantalizing clues, including four probable PSAs reported by fishing guides. Two years ago,

BTT scientists outfitted Keys bonefish with acoustic transmitters to track their initial spawning migrations. “On a full moon they swam as many as 30 miles,” says Dr. Ross Boucek, manager of BTT’s Florida Keys Initiative. “One fish tagged at the Content Keys migrated 45 miles through the backcountry out to the reef. The fish was last detected at depths greater than 110 feet, presumably on its way to spawn offshore. Not only are we narrowing down the areas where to look, but from the tracking information, we’re also getting a clearer picture of when to be out in the water at these sites. This is a great foundation for the work that will unfold over the next three years.”

Based on findings in the Bahamas, scientists know these movements are the opening act in the full drama of the spawning season, and that bonefish gather in huge aggregations that could number in the thousands before heading to deep water to spawn. Over a decade of hard work, BTT scientists interviewed guides to identify possible pre-spawning locations, sampled bonefish hormones and eggs to estimate peak spawning times, and tracked fish from their home ranges to spawning areas.

The results? At least seven PSAs have been identified and three protected by the Bahamas through national park declarations. But despite intense scientific scrutiny—and within the context of their impassioned pursuit by anglers—the locations of these spawning areas in the Florida Keys, if they exist at all, have been an elusive target. While a years-long effort in the Bahamas has identified multiple PSAs in that archipelago, finding these critical sites in the Keys has involved decades of dead ends. Now, thanks in large measure to the support of Keys guides, BTT is taking the Bahamian playbook of oral history, acoustic monitoring, spatial analysis, and hard-boiled detective work to a new level on the southern flats of the Sunshine State. And time is of the essence.

“Discovering these spawning sites is the first step to learning what stresses our bonefish may face when they spawn in the Keys,” says Boucek. “Once we find these sites and identify stresses spawning bonefish face, we can work through advocacy and education channels to fix problems and ensure our bonefish can spawn. This will ensure a sustainable population.”

Pinpointing these locations will also connect other pieces of

A bonefish school in the Florida Keys. Photo: Tyler Bowman

the puzzle, beginning with a greater understanding of how much of the Keys bonefish population is a result of local spawning in the Keys versus larvae drifting in from neighboring countries.

“Finding spawning bonefish in the Keys will answer the questions conclusively about where Keys bonefish come from,” says Carl Navarre, chairman of the board of BTT, who believes documenting spawns will fill gaps in our knowledge left by ocean modeling and genetic analysis. “And if we’re able to find spawning bonefish, and track them like we have in the Bahamas, it will give us a tremendous amount of information on how to better protect them and manage the fishery.”

What makes the timing of this project so perfect is a mix of new technology and old-school sleuthing. As Florida Keys bonefish numbers crawled out of the basement over the last few years, acoustic telemetry technology has matured, and the meteoric rise of drone technology and its applications in the science realm have given researchers new ways of looking for fish aggregations. For the cost of a single hour in a helicopter, BTT could purchase a drone and use it whenever needed.

And critically, there’s been a shift in how anglers in general and flats guides in particular view the role of science in informing fisheries management. BTT has worked strategically to deepen relationships with the flats guiding community around the Caribbean. When Navarre was elected a board member in 2017 and then board chair in 2020, he brought to BTT a deep connection to many Florida guides. A former guide and founding director of The Guides Trust Foundation, one of Navarre’s early signature projects began in the fall of 2020 when he reached out to a few dozen Florida Keys guides to engage them in a cellphone app project to report on the population health of bonefish, tarpon, and permit in the Keys. That initiative, Navarre recalls, “gave us plenty of useful information, but it also opened up lines of communication and started building relationships with guides.”

That is fundamental to the search for bonefish PSAs in the Keys. This past spring, Navarre reached out again, and he and Boucek interviewed seven guides with international reputations

to kick off the search for the spawning areas. Between them, Timmy Klein, Harry Spear, Mark Krowka, Rob Fordyce, Bob Branham, Eddie Wightman, and Rick Ruoff have some 200 years of experience on the water. Those guides, as well as others in the Lower Keys, listed 19 different areas where they had seen bonefish PSAs, most occurring in the 1980s and 1990s when Keys bonefish populations were particularly healthy.

Hearing the reports, Boucek was stoked. “In some cases, four or five guides had seen fish at the same place,” he says. As word spread, more guides called in. At two different sites, guides reported seeing bonefish aggregations where there had been similar reports decades earlier. “That was very exciting,” says Boucek. “Those were reports from the same place, during the same time of year, and in the same moon phase where groups of fish had been reported 30 years earlier. Those PSAs were there for a time, and then for years there were no reports at all. Now it seems they are showing up again.”

With the Keys experiencing a significant rebound in fish large enough to spawn, the time for a dragnet approach to discovery seems particularly ripe. In the fall of 2019, BTT tagged 30 bonefish between the Marquesas and Biscayne Bay to begin analyzing possible migration routes to suspected PSAs. Boucek honed his drone-flying skills through dozens of test flights over open water. In the next phase, BTT will be testing a new generation of acoustic tags that will reveal the maximum depth attained by tagged fish, which should help pinpoint the dates when bonefish spawn since they only head for deep water to spawn.

With the excitement comes a renewed sense of purpose. No one knows how long the current bonefish revival will last. “We can’t say if this is a sign of good things to come,” says Boucek, “or if this is an anomaly. We don’t know if they’ll be around in five years. With so much uncertainty, there is an urgency to find them now.”

Dr. Ross Boucek (right) implants an acoustic transmitter into a Keys bonefish. Photo: Ian Wilson

Here’s how it will work: Pulling together all the available data, BTT has assembled a short list of 11 locations for further scrutiny, and now the cat-and-mouse game begins. Starting this fall, Boucek and a small team will run BTT’s 22-foot Pathfinder to a suspected location during the full and new moons, and fly a drone in a grid search pattern from noon to sunset. “The expectation is that the aggregation should get more organized and be more visible at the surface the closer you get to sunset,” says Boucek. The team will search for two days on both the full and new moons, from November to May. Boucek figures there is still plenty of room for trial and error in the process, but with each passing month the target areas should come into greater focus. “It’s like catching lightning in a bottle,” he explains. “We think we have the bottle. We just need the lightning to show up when we have it in our hands.” Bonefish don’t spawn on every new or full moon, and weather conditions have to be right to run the boats at long distances at night.

Navarre doesn’t discount the difficulty of the undertaking. “This is not an easy thing to do,” he cautions. The process in the Bahamas, he notes, unfolded over many years. The Keys search, he figures, could take five years or more. Or the search team could get lucky. “But one thing that will drive success in the Keys is an outreach program for guides,” he continues. “They need to know exactly what we’re looking for and have ways to contact us immediately so that we can have teams ready to go at the drop of a hat.”

And if the PSAs can be found, and the spawning areas identified, opportunities for conservation can become much more

focused. At this point, any management prognostications are premature. What’s most important is for the science to close the circle on the long search for Florida Keys bonefish PSAs. First, Boucek and his team have to catch lightning in the bottle. Carts and horses can wait.

In 1970s and ‘80s, Keys guide Eddie Wightman knew of more than a half-dozen places on the ocean side of the Keys where bonefish would school in groups of 500 or more fish. It was always during colder weather; he could nearly predict when they would show up. He’d run his boat upwind and pole down to the mass of bones, trying to point his angler in the right direction.

“I would tell my client: You see that giant cloud shadow?” he recalls. And he would wait till their hat bills pointed true.

“The cloud shadow,” he would say, “is the bonefish.”

Those were bonefish PSAs; Wightman and others are sure of it. And somewhere off the Florida Keys, the cloud shadows may still lie on the water. No one knows what draws the bonefish, what ineluctable prompting pulls them towards the deep chasms that drop off the flats. Perhaps it’s a certain sort of ocean floor upwelling, or some subtle ocean current or gyre that spins just offshore. But the fish respond to something: They stream over the flats for hours, in wave after wave. A school of 50. A school of 200. Minutes later, more. The aggregation builds into a mindboggling mass until the school makes its move to deep ocean, and dives hundreds of feet below the surface to spawn.

An acoustically tagged bonefish is released.

Photo: Ian Wilson

There could be many somewheres-out-there. Or there could be none. But there is now, for the first time, a strategic means to find them.

“There are very few opportunities for discovery on this scale,” says Boucek. “The thought of finding something that people haven’t observed for over 20 to 30 years is exciting, and even more so when you consider that it could have meaningful conservation implications down the road.”

He’s quiet for a moment, considering the next phase of the search.

“And what’s amazing is that they are hidden in plain sight,” he says. “My office looks out over the water, and for all we know, one could be right there.”

An award-winning author and journalist, T. Edward Nickens is editor-at-large of Field & Stream and a contributing editor for Garden & Gun and Audubon magazine. His latest book, The Last Wild Road, published by Lyons Press, is available now. Follow him on Instagram @enickens.

Keys bonefish moving across a seagrass flat. Photo: Tyler Bowman

Whether you’re exploring freshwater fly-fishing locations with our on-property helicopters in New Zealand and Patagonia or targeting bull reds and tarpon in Louisiana or South Florida aboard the Outpost Mothership, one thing’s for certain — with Eleven Angling’s collection of owned and operated lodges and motherships, you’ll be on fish, from sunrise to sunset.

ELEVEN ANGLING

Clockwise from left: Brown trout like this are plentiful at Eleven’s Southern Hemisphere lodges — Cedar Lodge on the South Island of New Zealand and Rio Palena Lodge in Chilean Patagonia; tarpon putting up a fight in the Everglades aboard the Outpost Mothership; another picture-perfect day at Rio Palena Lodge.

becoming The Borskis

BY MONTE BURKE

Artist Tim Borski. Photo: Mill House

There are, by my count, approximately 10,385 stories about Tim Borski, the Islamorada-based artist/fly-tier/naturalist/ homme amusant. My favorite among the select few that are printable in a family publication involves a baseball card.

It goes something like this: When Borski was 16 years old, he lived in a cabin in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, in the central part of the state. Though he was in school, much of his energies were focused elsewhere. Whenever and wherever he could, Borski, along with some of his friends, hunted grouse, woodcock and ducks and fished for smallmouth bass and brook trout, slaking a seemingly insatiable thirst for anything outdoors. On occasion, the boys tried to slake another thirst as well.

One late afternoon, after a day spent tramping through the woods, Borski and his buddies decided to go to a bar in Stevens Point. Borski, however, did not have a fake ID, which would have been his ticket in.

But he did have a plan, one that displayed an early penchant for audacious creativity. At the door of the bar, when asked by the bouncer for ID, Borski first delivered an impish grin. And then he reached into his pocket and handed over a Chili Davis baseball card.

The bouncer looked incredulous as he stared at the picture of the great Jamaican-American baseball player. “Man, this is a baseball card,” the bouncer said. “And, man, you’re not even black!”

Without missing a beat, Borski replied: “Yeah, but ask me how many RBIs I had last season.”

The bouncer shook his head, smiled, handed the card back to Borski and let him in.

From his childhood to his early 20s, the 12,700-acre Buena Vista Marsh, just a few miles from Stevens Point, was Borski’s playground. He hunted its grasslands for birds and fished its spring-fed ditches for brook trout. “I spent so much time there,” he says. “It is such a great place.” It was also, as the name suggests, his first true panorama, something he would realize later in life that was of some great importance to him.

After high school, Borski worked in a couple of factories—one produced pre-made fireplaces and the other produced furniture. “I

Tim Borski’s studio. Photo: Tim Borski

was a terrible employee,” he says, a recurring theme in his life. At one of the factories, Borski had a boss who had been there for 27 years. One day Borski asked him about his salary. “The guy was only making $1.65 more an hour than I was,” says Borski. “The next morning I went to the local arts university and applied for a student loan. I had no idea what I wanted to do other than not work in a factory.” He took a class that was “basically Watercolor 101” and thought: “This fits me.”

He would never finish his degree at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. One nice April day, after a long Wisconsin winter, Borski went fishing on a nearby river and caught a boatload of smallmouth bass. “I was so excited to get back out there again the next day,” he says. “I went to bed early that night, woke up and called work and coughed and said I couldn’t make it and grabbed my rods. Then I opened the door and there were nine inches of snow on the ground. I just lost it.”

Borski says he went immediately to his bank, took out all of his student loan money and then bought a round-trip plane ticket to Miami. “I’d read about bonefish in my dad’s old Sports Afield magazines,” he says. “I decided that I was going to catch one or go broke trying.” In Miami, he called around to tackle shops to try to find a bonefish guide. Everyone told him he had to book the famous Bill Curtis. As luck would have it, Curtis had a cancellation one day and took Borski out. “I struggled all day long, but Bill got me a bonefish right at the end of the trip,” says Borski. “I just couldn’t believe how far and how fast and long that fish ran. I was blown away.” That night, he says, on the way back to his hotel room, “I stopped at a 7-Eleven to buy a six-pack of longnecks and ripped up my return ticket and threw it in a green dumpster.” It was 1983 and he was 23 years old.

The next day, Borski got a job stocking shelves at a Toys “R” Us. “I caught the same kid trying to steal something three times and thought, ‘this isn’t the job for me,’” he says. He then applied for a job at an arts and crafts store run by a woman named Pat Oblak. “I had to take a lie detector test for the job,” says Borski. “The first question was ‘have you ever smoked pot?’ and I said, ‘um, noooo.’” He got the job anyway, and worked four days a week and spent the rest of the time fishing in the Keys, first under the bridges for tarpon and snook. “I just fell in love with the big vista of the Keys,” he says. “I live for wide-open spaces.”

It so happened that Pat’s husband, Frank, was a fairly wellknown fisherman. Frank had injured his back fighting a tarpon and sold Borski his fly-tying material. “I had never tied a fly before, but Frank walked me through some of the basics and away I went,” says Borski. “That fit me, too.”

Borski with a permit on fly. Photo: Tim Borski

Borski’s famous Captain Korn’s Grizzly Bone-er. Photo: Tim Borski

One day in 1986, Pat introduced Borski to a Keys fishing guide named Randy Towe. Towe looked at some of the flies Borski was creating, took him tarpon fishing with a fly for the first time and then offered him a job at his new tackle shop, World Class Outfitters. Borski accepted the offer and moved to the Keys. “I was a terrible salesman, but I got to meet all of the players, like Chico, Flip and Lefty,” says Borski.

He lasted about four years there and says he realized that the gig was up one day when he was approached by Towe’s wife in the shop. The Towes’ golden retriever shop dog had been mysteriously losing the hair on its tail. “Randy’s wife looked at me and said, ‘the vet says the dog doesn’t have mange,’” says Borski. “And then she handed me the vet bill.” Borski said he had indeed been snipping off the dog’s hair to use for his squid patterns.

By this time, though, the greater fishing world had taken notice of his flies, which were known not for their “true-to-life” designs, but for their impressionistic bugginess. His first commercial pattern was a bonefish fly named the Captain Korn’s Grizzly Bone-er. (“I really wanted to see the word ‘boner’ listed on a fly at a fly shop,” he says.) Other flies, like the Bonefish Slider, No-Name Shrimp, Critter Crab and the Chernobyl Crab soon followed, and were carried by many fly shops in south Florida. Jimmy Buffett once called Borski to order some flies for a Bahamas trip. “I told him I was going to tie his flies on some shitty hooks,” says Borski. “He asked me why. I said ‘Margaritaville.’” (Borski ended up tying them on good hooks, anyway.)

As Borski neared the end of his tenure at World Class Outfitters, the fishing rep, Raz Reid, convinced him to pitch his patterns to Umpqua Feather Merchants. And by the time he left that shop job, he was earning royalties from Umpqua on several patterns. His favorite remains the Chernobyl Crab. “It’s so versatile,” says Borski. “There are so many different ways of tying it. And it catches everything. I get photos from all over the world—Lars from Norway with a halibut, some guy on the Ponoi with an Atlantic salmon taken on a pattern without the lead eyes. I’ve caught carp in Lake Michigan, smallies in Wisconsin and big brown trout on the Missouri with it.”

With his commercial tying days behind him, Borski took a job as a caretaker at a Craig Key home owned by a prominent doctor named Gene Coin. It was then that he went all-in on another of his passions: sporting art.

Borski had been painting ever since his interrupted stint in college, but while working for Towe, he began to get serious about it, and his pieces were picked up by fishing tournaments as auction items and prizes. After taking the job as a caretaker, Borski started to expand his repertoire, working on bigger canvasses for his paintings of fish (bonefish, tarpon and trout are some of his favorites), birds, snakes and other wildlife. His paintings— acrylics, which he paints inside in the summer, and oils, which he does outside in the winter—are known for their contemporary colorful boldness. “A

lot of sporting artists do it straight up,” says Borski. “I paint what makes me happy, and I bend the rules as far as I possibly can. Sometimes I go too far. In the business, we call that a Frisbee piece. I just rip the paper off the board and Frisbee it into the yard and start over.”

Borski sells his art through his website. Prints go for around $75. His finished oils cost as much as $3,000. “I think he’s immensely talented,” says Bob Rich, the chairman of Rich Food Products, who owns many Borskis. Sandy Moret, too, owns some Borskis and has hung and sold some of his artwork at his shop, Florida Keys Outfitters.

There are some obvious parallels between Borski’s flies and art: They are both designed to attract, and they both intend to do so in an impressionistic, suggestive manner. His style—in the fly-tying and art worlds—has been influential enough that he has spawned some imitators, which may be the greatest compliment of them all. **

After graduating from Duke University and getting a journalism degree at the University of Indiana, Jill Zima moved to Florida in search of work. That search eventually led her to the Keys. There, she had a friend who was a fireman. The fireman also knew Borski and decided that he and Jill would be a great match. He badgered both of them incessantly about going on a date. But neither Jill nor Borski was interested in a blind date. “We eventually did it, but just to shut the fireman up,” says Borski.

The fireman set up the date, instructing Jill to go to the Safari Lounge in Islamorada and “look for a guy with a ponytail,” says Jill. “But when I arrived, there were three guys at the bar who had ponytails. So I just sat there. And then in walked this wonderful cute guy with a ponytail and I was like, ‘that’s the one.’ And he was.”

The couple dated for five years, and then got married (they’ve now been together for nearly 23 years). They had two children,

Josef and Gus, and became deeply immersed, as a family, in the Keys. Jill worked for nearly 25 years as a journalist, at places like the Key West Citizen and the Free Press, and now is the executive director at the Islamorada Community Alliance, a website that reports on civic life. Islamorada, Jill says, was a great place to raise a family. “The schools are exceptional and the community is safe and we all look out for one another.” She remembers one Sunday when she and Borski dropped off eight-year-old Josef and four-year-old Gus at Sunday school…but there turned out to be no school that day. “The boys just decided to walk home,” she says. “When we got home, we had three or four messages from neighbors asking us, ‘did you know your little blonde boys are walking alone on the Overseas Highway?’”

But maybe more than that, Islamorada and the Keys offered an upbringing completely immersed in the natural world. The Borskis did everything outdoors together, from going to the beach, to hunting pythons in the Everglades, to fishing. “The boys know all the names of the fish and reptiles and birds around here,” says Jill. “It’s just innate to growing up here.”

Because of Borski, fishing was, of course, the most dominant family activity. He was completely smitten with Keys fishing. He says that for his first two decades there, he fished close to 325 days a year. He quickly moved on from the early bridge fishing and began to explore Florida Bay, becoming particularly fond of the no-motor zones. “I have a bunch of stuff back in there,” he says. “I would bring along a tent and live off of PB and J’s and water.”

Borski began taking his kids along when they were very young. “We grew up sitting on the boat, watching dad fish,” says Josef, who is now 21. “And then we began to fish with him.” Josef, says Jill, has become a “clone of Tim. He loves anything to do with fishing.” Josef is currently studying entrepreneurship at Florida Gulf Coast University, and has already started on what he says will be his post-college career as a fishing guide. Bonefish, he says, is his favorite species, but he has a soft spot for tarpon. He caught his first on a fly at age 11, and landed a laid-up 174-pounder—his biggest— fishing with his father and the guide, Tim Mahaffey, in 2020.

Gus and Jill Borski. Photo: Tim Borski

Gus, though he enjoys fishing and loves the Keys, has been bitten by the bug of wanderlust. “He wants to see the world,” says Jill. The seemingly limitless expanse of the Keys helped inspire that disposition. The 18-year-old recently spent a month studying in Spain and graduated from high school in 2021. He will attend Florida International University to study international business. **

Borski says that if he has a guiding principle in his life, it’s that everything he does has always revolved around hunting. “By ‘hunting,’ I mean looking for something specific, going about the search correctly and then finding it,” he says. “There’s a great reward in this.” This holds true for him when it comes to fishing, or creating a new fly pattern, looking for snakes or sitting down to paint.

To a certain degree, this is also the guiding philosophy of the entire Borski clan. Jill has spent her career hunting for great stories. Josef hunts for fish. Gus hunts for adventure. And the Keys, in one way or another, have made that hunt possible for all of them.

Monte Burke is The New York Times bestselling author of Saban, 4th And Goal and Sowbelly. His new book, Lords of the Fly: Madness, Obsession, and the Hunt for the World-Record Tarpon, is available now. He is a contributing editor at Forbes and Garden & Gun

A Borski bonefish.

Josef Borski with a tarpon landed in the Keys. Photo: Tim Borski

Flats Without BorderS

BY CHRIS SANTELLA

BTT fosters co-management efforts in Belize and Mexico.

If there’s one word that sums up Bonefish & Tarpon Trust’s approach to conservation, it would have to be collaboration.

“We never try to tell another non-governmental organization (NGO) or government agency what to do,” explained Dr. Aaron Adams, BTT’s Director of Science and Conservation. “Instead, we seek out partners and offer our scientific and domain expertise to help those partners achieve conservation goals.”

This approach has been fruitful in Florida and the Bahamas. Now it’s being applied to further flats conservation initiatives in the western Caribbean.

“Our approaches in Belize and Mexico are similar—science, education and conservation,” said Dr. Addiel Perez, BTT’s BelizeMexico Program Coordinator. “Science, of course, concerns fieldwork, like tagging programs. Education includes dialoguing with a wide range of stakeholders—including guides, lodge owners, other NGOs, university science departments—anyone with an association or interest in flats fisheries. It also includes communication through social media. Conservation entails encouraging governments and NGOs to include flats fisheries and

these areas’ unique needs into their management strategies.”

Though big-picture conservation approaches are similar, onthe-ground operating realities in the two countries are somewhat different. “Belize gives NGOs in different regions the ability to co-manage protected areas,” Perez continued. “Mexico, on the other hand, still manages most of its protected areas through governmental departments.” Despite these differences in management, collaboration with co-managers, governmental institutes and community groups is key to further conservation goals.”

Highlighted below are some of the recent collaborations BTT has embarked upon.

SARTENEJA ALLIANCE FOR CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT (SACD)

The Sarteneja Alliance for Conservation and Development (SACD) is a community-based NGO in the fishing village of Sarteneja, in the Corozal District of northeast Belize. SACD promotes the conservation and sustainable use of marine resources in the region, with a focus on Corozal Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, which it co-manages in partnership with the Forestry Department. SACD’s efforts are split between two primary program areas: natural resource management (which entails research and monitoring as well as surveillance and enforcement) and education/engagement/outreach (which focuses on bringing a better understanding of the value of healthy ecosystems to local communities).

“The Corozal Bay Wildlife Sanctuary is

Mangroves in Belize. Photo: Dr. Addiel Perez

estuarine in nature,” said Joel Verde, Executive Director of SACD. “It’s really part of an interconnected system of protected areas—Bacalar Chico to the east, Hol Chan to the south and the Manatee Sanctuary (Santuario del Manatí) on the Mexican side, in the North Lagoon. The goal, of course, is to have a functional role that supports the entire system.” SACD signed on to the comanagement agreement for the sanctuary in 2012. But though the area was protected on paper, there was no enforcement presence to put protections into practice. The enforcement challenge is a reality in many protected areas—not just in Belize, but globally. In the case of protected areas in northern Belize, one of the issues is that bonefish and permit are incidentally caught in beach traps that are used in the commercial fishery. SACD and other co-managers are working to reduce the capture of bonefish and permit, which were protected as catch-and-release in 2009 (bonefish have been protected as non-commercial since 1977).

“The commercial and subsistence fishermen are traditional users of the resource, and have been harvesting bonefish for generations, even before bonefish were protected and before the area was established as a wildlife sanctuary,” Verde continued. “They use the meat for empanadas and fish ball soup, which is considered a delicacy. Though it’s illegal to harvest bonefish in Belize, changing the practices and customs of the traditional people is really a sensitive issue. This meant that we needed to work closely with the communities. The intention was never to change the people’s way of life or create conflict with them. This would’ve done more damage than good.”

Instead of strict enforcement, Verde and his team began working with the fishermen to explore processes that could lead to more sustainable harvest mechanisms. “We wanted to gain their trust and engagement, to show them the possibilities of doing the right thing,” he added. (Catch assessments showed that bonefish were mostly harvested as by-catch while fishermen

were pursuing other species such as black snapper, barracuda and mojarra.) “Fishermen are now releasing bonefish more frequently, partly as a result of enforcement, partly from a better understanding of their value alive, and not just because we are saying you can’t harvest them. Our sense is that if fishermen take the risk of keeping a bonefish, it’s for their own consumption, and not for the black market.”

Hence, BTT’s work to collect catch data for science and its collaboration with the angling community has helped conserve the area’s bonefish.

It’s not a great surprise that SACD has begun working with BTT; after all, Joel Verde and Dr. Perez grew up in the same town and attended school together. “I knew of some of the research that Addiel was conducting around San Pedro (Ambergris Caye),” said Verde. “We shared interests in terms of sportfish protection in Belize and how it might relate to our work in Corozal Bay.” BTT is currently working with SACD to conduct a sportfish tagging program, combined with citizen science, to reach a better understanding of the connectivity between the various marine protected areas in northern Belize; permit are the primary focus of the current tagging program. BTT is also providing training on the positive impact of tourism-related activities, such as catchand-release fishing, to people in the community and SACD staff. “We are now working on a more formal system for continued collaboration for the protection of these key resources,” Verde added.

TURNEFFE ATOLL SUSTAINABILITY ASSOCIATION

Turneffe Atoll is the largest and most biological diverse atoll in the Western Hemisphere, comprising approximately 30 miles by 10 miles of reefs, back-reef flats, creeks and lagoons, mangroves

Guides in Xcalak, Mexico, search for permit on the flats. Photo: Patrick Williams

and more than 150 islands. The Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve (TAMR) was officially established in 2012 as Belize’s largest Marine Reserve. The Fisheries Department, within the Ministry of Fisheries, Forestry and Sustainable Development, is responsible for the oversight and management of all Marine Reserves in Belize, including TAMR. The Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association was established in 2012 to co-manage the reserve. Their activities include enforcement of reserve regulations, fisheries management, and communications.

“TASA’s mission is to manage strategies that will sustain Turneffe Atoll for the long-term,” said Delonie Forman, Business Developer with TASA. “To achieve this goal, we need to have a clear idea of what the various habitats within the reserve hold in terms of spatial characteristics and animal life. We have many visitors that come to Turneffe to sport fish, dive and participate in other eco-tourism activities. We wanted to find a way for tourists to engage in an interactive way with our conservation efforts and the science behind them.”

Scientists collect bonefish to tag with a net. Photo: Dr. Addiel Perez

An angler hooked up on the flats of Turneffe Atoll. Photo: T. Edward Nickens

TASA struck upon the idea of recruiting visitors as citizen scientists to gather information important to developing a management strategy. “We are currently engaging with our tourism stakeholders who bring visitors to Turneffe in order to structure a citizen science program in which the visitors are able to participate actively in science,” said Valdemar Andrade, TASA’s Executive Director. “We aim to ensure that the data collected becomes available to the many scientists that we work with to help guide TASA’s adaptive management strategies.”

“We are training TASA staff to use interviews to gather data to create spatial maps of fisheries and development activities along with Coastal Zone Authority and Institute, which will be used to guide management strategy moving forward,” Perez added. “TASA and BTT are partnering with other fisheries and habitat experts from Belize to flesh out the program.”

“Addiel has been very responsive in helping to bring this program into reality as he understands the nature of the interface with fly fishers,” Andrade added. “This innovation in tourism product provides the visitor with the power to partner with us at TASA and contribute while enjoying Turneffe.”

ASSOCIATION OF SPORT FISHING OF CAMPECHE (MEXICO)

“One of the biggest challenges we face in sport fish conservation in Mexico is for guides and anglers to use good handling and release practices,” Perez shared. “If the fish don’t survive when they’re released, the fishery won’t be sustainable. We’d love to get Mexico to the level of Belize in terms of fish handling and release practices, but it’s been a challenge— partially because of the language barrier.”

But thanks to initiatives led by the Association of Sport Fishing of Campeche, word is beginning to spread in the northern Yucatán.

Campeche, on the northwestern side of the peninsula, is a major nursery ground for tarpon. The mangrove lagoons, stretching over 50 miles, are considered the region’s best place to chase “baby” (5 to 40 pound) tarpon. Ramon Zetina, a marine biologist who works as independent research/consultant in

Campeche and also guides fly anglers for Tarpon Bay, explained how a better understanding of catch-and-release practices is coming to Campeche. “Back in 2012, there was a decline in baby tarpon, and some of the guides and the owner of Tarpon Town raised some money to engage Dr. Aaron Adams to conduct a study. Dr. Adams and biologist Rafael Chacón came and conducted a workshop, showing us how to tag tarpon and explaining what biometrics to gather. I coordinated the data processing, and eventually handed it off to Dr. Adams.”

In 2018, one of Zetina’s friends at the sport fishing association, Tomás Nava Benítez, recalled the tagging seminars, and suggested a similar workshop on responsible catch management—why you shouldn’t hold a tarpon by the jaw, be careful of the gills, etc. “I prepared the seminar and Tomás invited guides and anglers from the sport fishing association to attend,” Zetina continued, “using BTT guidelines, government mandates, U.S. laws and México’s official norms of sport fishing as guidelines and examples. I repeated the seminar in 2019 at the invitation of Tomás, at the annual fishing expo he organized. Many people from outside the guide community (local and regional anglers as well as high school and college students focusing on sport fishing and biology) attended. Addiel has provided guidance, and we hope to work more with BTT in the future.”

As we go to press, another initiative is under way. In Punta Gorda in southern Belize, BTT is working with the flats fishing community and Copal Tree Lodge to develop a flats fishery conservation education strategy. BTT also partnered with Dr. Leopoldo Palomares, the Secretary of Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture in Yucatán, Mexico, to conduct an economic impact study on the value of sport fishing for the region. The study shows that the Yucatán’s Caribbean coast flats fishery generates $45.2 million (USD) annually and supports 1,674 jobs. “This information should help improve the management of the flats fishery and ensure its long-term well-being,” said Perez.

Chris Santella is the author of 21 books, including the popular “Fifty Places” series from Abrams. He’s a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Trout

Dr. Addiel Perez releases a tagged bonefish. Photo: Dr. Addiel Perez

A juvenile tarpon landed in Belize. Photo: Dr. Addiel Perez

Enter the Giant

ANDY DANYLCHUK

LUKE GRIFFIN UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

DR. STEVEN COOKE CARLETON UNIVERSITY

Imagine turquoise waters shimmering as the skiff slowly creeps along a flat covered with a kaleidoscope of habitats. The sun beats down in between popcorn clouds, which provide periodic relief from the tropical heat but also become mildly frustrating when their moving shadows trick your mind into seeing fish. A small ray glides over a sandy ribbon of bottom off the bow—you inhale deeply and begin to decompress. After taking in all that is around you, the 12-weight fly rod in your hand reminds you why you are actually here.

As you recalibrate your senses and adjust your gaze, a few slices of darkness cruising in the distance catch your eye. In the periphery, your suspicion is confirmed by the outstretched arm of the guide behind you, pointing like a needle on a compass towards magnetic north. After reminding yourself to breathe, you quickly check the fly resting between your fingers to make sure it’s ready for a streamlined presentation. You take a moment to ensure the fly line is organized and nested at your feet. The skiff firmly but stealthily adjusts course. As the distance closes, you remind yourself that these aren’t bonefish or permit you are after, but something bigger. If you were in the Florida Keys, these would likely be Silver Kings; however, you are halfway around the world on a remote atoll in the Indian Ocean—you have entered the domain of Giants.

Over what seems to be minutes, but in reality is only seconds, the squadron of giant trevally, also referred to as GTs, GEETs, or Gangsters of the Flats, are within range. Two are silver with dark mottling, while the third is almost black. Guides have theories about different color morphs of GTs, and how these fish move among flats and neighboring atolls, but few have been confirmed by science. Even from 50 feet you can see their large eyes, sloping blunt heads, and the other smaller flats fish fleeing from the potential ensuing threat; signs that the Giant plays a dominant role on the flats. With a quiet “Now” from the guide, you load your rod and deliver a large streamer that lands off to the side of the lead fish. It does a sharp turn, looks at what you’re offering, and gives you the middle fin before peeling away. Could it have been the presentation? The fly? In a conversation with your guide, he comments about how some GTs get hook-shy as the season progresses. Maybe that was it, but the rest of the rat pack is still within sight. Before you have the chance to think, your guide abruptly says, “Pick up quickly, shoot towards the trailing fish, and strip as fast as you can when the fly hits the water…strip, strip…faster, don’t stop.” From here on, everything is a blur. As the GT hits the fly, it turns 60 degrees, kicking up massive spray and attempts to remove the rod, reel, and line from your hand as it rockets away. You manage to clear the line and aggressively

DR.

AND DR.

An angler wades the expansive flats of St. Francois Atoll in search of GTs. Photo: Dr. Andy Danylchuk

set the hook a few times to ensure it doesn’t come unbuttoned. After several heroic runs and successfully redirecting the runaway bus from crossing over sharp coral rimming the flat, the GT is boatside. The guide leaps into thigh-deep water to grab onto the fish, gloved hand over the sharp keels right before tail (a.k.a. caudal peduncle), other hand resting just behind the head in between the pelvic fins. You join to get a closer look at the Giant in all its glory.

The Giant has entered your life and that experience will create a fervor for more. Giant trevally, Caranx ignobilis, is a member of the jack family, residing in the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific. Although GTs spend time on shallow flats, they can also be found in the deeper waters associated with ocean-facing reefs. Just like many flats species we target as recreational anglers, the amount of science done on GTs lags behind the list of questions, theories, and hypotheses related to their populations, their movement patterns, and how resilient they are to being caught, handled, and released.

In late 2017, discussions with Keith Rose-Innes and Devan Van der Merwe from Blue Safari/Alphonse Fishing Company began to reveal an opportunity to work collaboratively to fill some of these knowledge gaps about GTs and to use science to hone the already impressive code of conduct used by the company for how their clients and guides interface with GTs, as well as the other species they target. Given that the Alphonse Fishing Company has near-exclusive access to the fishery, limits the number of rods per day, and meticulously records catch data in collaboration with the Island Conservation Society (ICS; a Seychellois non-governmental conservation organization with an office on Alphonse Atoll), our scientific minds began to swim with the opportunities to better understand these Giants. Specifically, we began to draw up the blueprints to study their movements, how these Giants respond to catch-and-release, and whether we can detect changes in their movement patterns in response to angling pressure. This last point—essentially trying to get at the question of carrying capacity of angling on flats—was something we had been wanting to do for decades, but had struggled to find a location where such a study was possible. Until now.

Excited by what we could do and how it could contribute to the conservation of flats fisheries, our team from UMass Amherst and Carleton University partnered with the Island Conservation Society, the Seychelles Fishing Authority, and Bonefish & Tarpon Trust (BTT) to write a proposal for funding from Seychelles’ Conservation and Climate Adaptation Trust (SeyCCAT). Why, a bonefish angler and BTT supporter from the Bahamas might ask, is BTT involved in a project about GTs in the Seychelles? It’s

because BTT is interested in better understanding how fishing pressure influences the fish we pursue on the flats. We need to know the Fishery Capacity, which is the amount of fishing effort that a fishery can support while maintaining a high-quality fishery,

Dr. Andy Danylchuk surgically implants an acoustic transmitter into a GT.

Photo: Sport Fishing Television

A “pet” GT equipped with an acceleromter logger. Photo: Sport Fishing Television

Florida angler Alex Lovett Woodsum with a Seychelles GT.

Photo: Pierre Joubert

such as high catch rates, large fish size, and intact habitats. After receiving the award, it was time to amass the necessary resources, ship them halfway around the world, and launch the fieldwork in October 2018.

A large part of this project entails using acoustic telemetry to track the movement patterns of GTs, both before and after select flats are temporarily closed to angling. There is also an offseason during the relentless SE monsoon from May-August when high winds and rough seas dramatically reduce fishing pressure. The near shutdown to fishing because of COVID-related travel restrictions serendipitously added another window of time during which angling pressure was considerably reduced. For the telemetry, we deployed an array of 70 autonomous acoustic receivers located inside the lagoons and rimming the oceanside perimeter of the atolls, allowing us to test questions about site fidelity, home ranges, movements among habitats, and connectivity among the atolls in the Alphonse Island Group.

During the first few months of the study, small acoustic transmitters (tags approximately the size of an AA battery) were surgically implanted in GTs, many caught by guests of the Alphonse Fishing Company, that then sent out uniquely coded ultrasonic ‘pings’ detected by the receivers. To date, we have surgically implanted acoustic tags in over 70 GTs ranging in size from 20 to 50 inches in length and have amassed over 900,000 reliable detections that are being analyzed following each successive download of the receiver array. Preliminary results have already helped settle one of the guides’ suspicions showing that there is movement of GTs among atolls, yet the number of individual GTs that have ventured back and forth has been relatively low. Data has also demonstrated that GTs definitely have a home range, but some span both the flats and deeper oceanside waters of the atolls, while others are more contained in a specific habitat. Regardless, most GTs are quite faithful to a territory, providing some merit to the idea that considerable angling pressure on a particular flat may evoke changes in GT behavior. To further validate this, we are currently analyzing the receiver data from before and after area closures to determine

if changes in angling pressure can be detected in the way GTs occupy flats.

To complement the acoustic telemetry, GTs caught for this project have also been implanted with PIT tags (the same type of chip that a veterinarian puts in your pet) to provide an indication of capture history for each fish. Guides are trained to insert the PIT tags, and each guide has a reader that can detect and store the tag ID, so even if a GT doesn’t get the surgically implanted acoustic tag, it still gets a PIT tag so other data, like recaptures, can be collected. As of the end of the last fishing season, over 400 GTs were PIT tagged, with 14 of them being recaptured; 9 pet GTs that frequent the Alphonse lagoon (considered ‘pets’ by the guides), and 5 non-pet GTs. Of the non-pet GTs recaptured, all have been within the same area of initial capture, further highlighting relatively high site fidelity, and the need to understand how angler activities on flats may influence their ecology, movement patterns, and catchability.

The third component of the study is quantifying how capture and handling influences the behavior, activity patterns, and mortality of GTs following release. For this, we are capitalizing on the pet GTs in the lagoon of Alphonse Atoll, and using accelerometer logger tags (think of a Fitbit for a fish) that are strapped to the base of the tail (a.k.a. caudal peduncle). Data from this aspect of the project will provide insights into what elements of the angling event impact GT swimming performance and post-release behavior— information that can directly inform the best practices for catchand-release used by the Alphonse Fishing Company.

As Giants enter the minds and hearts of more and more recreational anglers, our multifaceted research project will provide scientific evidence that will inform the conservation and management of GT fisheries in the Alphonse Island Group, as well as throughout the Seychelles. Our project also offers an excellent example of how collaborations that include resource users, nongovernment and government agencies, and university scientists can come together to rapidly mobilize funds and resources to execute research that fills knowledge gaps aimed to improve the future of our beloved flats fisheries.

Angus Forsyth, Alphonse Fishing Company guide, scans a GT caught by Keith Rose-Innes for a PIT tag. Photo: Alphonse Fishing Company / Brian Chakanyuka

Through the Guides Conservation Captain Q&A

Livingston Tate

Sweeting’s Cay, East Grand Bahama

Who taught you how to fish and how old were you?

My dad taught me how to fish, and I was like four or five years old. My father was a fisherman and he loved the water. We were always around the water and boats, so that’s really what I grew up doing.

What makes Grand Bahama’s waters special?

Grand Bahama is great because we have like 700 miles of flats here. We don’t have to be on the same flat every day; we might fish on a flat today for bonefish and then a completely different flat tomorrow. And ours aren’t just ordinary flats. We get the shrimp, the crabs, and the stuff the bonefish just love to feed off of. So, that’s what I think plays a big role in the success of our flats.

You experienced first-hand the destruction caused by Hurricane Dorian. How did that impact your life as an angler and as a Bahamian?

Well, the hurricane had a real impact in the Bahamas and really disrupted a lot of people’s lives. Not just me, but a lot of people in the Bahamas. At the end of the day, our whole futures depend on working and taking care of our families. Hurricane Dorian knocked everything out. Everything out. No work, we couldn’t get out there and do fishing. I’m a fishing guy—I love fishing—but I couldn’t do that. We didn’t have no guests, and tourism is the most important industry in the Bahamas. We had no power, no water, no anything…. Hurricane Dorrian knocked everything out. Everything… our homes… everything gone. That shook us, and I believe it shook the world. It was horrible.

How did you come to be involved with BTT’s Mangrove Restoration Project? Why is this project important to you and to the Bahamas?

I got to meet a gentleman by the name of Justin Lewis (BTT Bahamas Initiative Manager), and he called me to let me know that BTT had started to plan a replanting with other partners. He explained it to me and he asked me if I wanted to help. And of course I said yes, because mangroves play such an important role in the fishing industry here. With all of those mangroves destroyed, we had a lot of problems in our country. So if we could find a way to start planting those back, that could play a big important role not just for me, but for the generations to come. I was more than happy to get on board. So, the other captains and I, we got everything together to take the mangroves on the boats and then to the flats, and I told him about the tides and everything, and how we needed to get there at certain times like high tide versus low tide. And that’s how we started. It will have a big, big impact on the Bahamas. It’s a great thing. If you look at the mangroves and how they were destroyed by the hurricane, your heart will shake, and you’ll realize how important it is.

Tell us about some of your other work with BTT. How did you contribute to the BTT tag-recapture research to identify the home ranges of bonefish?

I worked on that with BTT for a few years, and for the bonefish research we went around from flat to flat to check them out. At certain times, the bonefish get into these big groups, like right now, and those big groups are spawning. They’re mating. They assemble a pod and go flat to flat. They’re moving fish—you could see some here today, and by tomorrow they’ve gone a couple of miles away, sometimes as much as 20! So, working with them, it taught me a lot. It taught me about how bonefish work, how they move, what they feed off of, and how they work in mangroves. I learned a lot.

What’s one piece of advice you’d give to an aspiring angler?

As an angler and a captain, what I always tell a first-time angler is to be patient. Just be patient. I will walk you through, you know, don’t worry about it. There will be mistakes, but don’t worry. We will work on it together like a team, and I’ll be your coach. We’ll take our time, and I’ll show you how to do it right. One thing a lot of anglers think the first time is that they’ll just get it, but then they get frustrated because they can’t do it just the way you showed them. But the one thing I always tell them is not to worry and to be patient. Eventually they get the line maybe ten [feet], fifteen, and then twenty and thirty in one cast, and then, woah—forty feet easily! And when they get the right feel, or even a fish, they start hollering like a child again and start getting excited. So, me, I love to be patient with my anglers because I feel it’s the right thing to do and that’s the right approach. Don’t get frustrated. The bonefish are there, but you cannot put them on your fly. Everything will fall into place, you know?

What makes for the best day on the flats?

Ah, my favorite kinds of days with my guests is when I know that we enjoyed ourselves, we communicated, and we maybe cracked a joke or two. That we got to know each other, you know? We sit down and maybe have lunch and have a real conversation. That communication is key. And with that communication, at the end of the day you see smiles—he was happy, she was happy, and that makes me happy! As long as it’s not a spring tide!

What’s your go-to bonefish fly?

My go-to bonefish fly is a simple fly. It’s a Gotcha. The reason why I love gotcha flies is because—and you might wonder why—I’ve been fishing on the south side and caught bonefish. I’ve been on the north side with the same fly and caught bonefish. It’s a really, really good fly for both areas. You can fish all around our island, and with a Gotcha fly you can do it!

Livingston Tate

Ogden M. Pleissner (1905-1983) | Jimmy’s Pool on the Restigouche, 1938 oil on canvas, 24 1/4 by 36 1/4 in. | SOLD Feb. 2021 for $240,000

Mark Susinno

Bonefish & Tarpon Trust is pleased to recognize Mark Susinno as the 2022 Artist of the Year. A renowned painter and passionate angler and conservationist, Susinno specializes in game fish and fly-fishing scenes.

“I moved to the Florida Keys in the early 2000s and redirected my passion for collecting sporting art from trout to those species found on the flats,” says Bill Legg, who chairs the Artist of the Year Selection Committee. “A friend and also a collector of fishing oriented art introduced me to Sandy Moret, who at the time had an art gallery in his old Florida Keys Outfitters location. The painting that jumped out at me was a wonderfully rendered barracuda about to attack a red fly. It was my first of Mark’s paintings and now adorns a wall next to one of his tarpon. I love his work.”

Born in Washington, D.C., Susinno grew up in the Maryland suburbs of the nation’s capital until moving to Brooklyn, N.Y., to attend Pratt Institute on a merit scholarship. Upon graduating with highest honors and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting in 1979, Susinno went to work as a torch-cutter and truck driver for a scrap metal and dismantling firm in Brooklyn. Following a twomonth cross-country road trip, he left NYC in 1982 and relocated to Maryland, where he continued to dabble in artistic pursuits while working at various non-art-related jobs, including as a fabricator of bulletproof doors.

A turning point in Susinno’s career came in 1985, when he won the 1986 Maryland Trout Stamp contest and decided to concentrate on art professionally. Since then, he has specialized in painting underwater depictions of freshwater and saltwater game fish and scenes of fly-fishers pursuing their quarry. Susinno’s passion for angling informs his art.

“I’m a fisherman and that fact affects how I approach making

paintings of game fish,” he says. “I enjoy suggesting the sense of light and space of the shallow-water aquatic environment, but I also feel the need to present the fish themselves such that they are recognizable to the average fisherman, who is most familiar with how a fish looks when it is out of water. When painting fish (either in oils or acrylics), my main focus is on creating an interesting abstract arrangement of shapes, colors, textures, and patterns, which I hope will also convey a more or less convincing impression of an underwater scene.”

Over the course of his career, Susinno has added twenty more fishing stamps to his list of credits, including the 1991 First-of-State Pennsylvania Trout/Salmon Stamp and the 2005 First-of-State Texas Freshwater Stamp. Since 1987, Susinno’s limited edition prints have been published primarily by Wild Wings, L.L.C. His work has also appeared in Field & Stream, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Sporting Classics, and in Lefty Kreh’s Advanced Fly Fishing Techniques and Ultimate Guide To Fly Fishing.

An ardent conservationist, Susinno uses his artistic talents to support the fresh and saltwater fisheries that inspire his work. “I have donated art to many nature-related conservation organizations over the past three-plus decades, and I would encourage lovers of wildlife art to donate to their favorite organizations as well,” he says. “This becomes more and more urgent as some corporate interests turn government away from its role as protector of the environment, leaving non-profit nongovernmental organizations as the last line of defense.”

Susinno’s love of fishing and the need to gather reference material have taken him around the world, from Alaska to Labrador, Scotland to Florida. Susinno’s wife, Roxanne, is also an avid fly fisher and accompanies him on many of his excursions. They reside in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Mark Susinno at work in his studio. Photo: Mark Susinno

A Grand Slam of works by BTT Artist of the Year Mark Susinno: The Silver King in Beast, foraging permit in Entourage, and the Gray Ghost in Puff of Mud

Predators and Prey Understanding shark depredation in our fisheries

If you’ve been tarpon fishing in the Keys, Boca Grande, or Tampa Bay, you’ve likely had at least one run-in with a shark in the last few years. Maybe you found your fish unexpectedly bitten off at depth by an unseen shark, or a great hammerhead has gotten up close and personal with both your fish and your boat. Hooked fish can be relatively easy targets for foraging sharks, which are likely attracted by the sounds and electromagnetic signals of a fight. In a way, it’s all about a cost-benefit analysis; it uses less energy to catch a struggling fish that seems hurt than to chase down one that is healthy and free swimming. Why wouldn’t a shark choose to go after an easy meal?

At first, it might have been exciting to see a rare predation event, but after the fifth, tenth, twentieth time, you’re fed up. As one guide put it in a recent survey on shark-angler interactions run by our lab, “I often fish the Tortugas and we’re forced to fish around the sharks. They make us move from areas within minutes where in the past we’ve fished that same spot for hours. It’s like they know boats equal food.” Shark depredation, the full or partial removal of a hooked fish by a shark before it is landed, is reportedly increasing in U.S. recreational fisheries, including the tarpon fishery. However,

accurately quantifying depredation is quite difficult, especially in recreational fisheries where anglers are decentralized, plus there is no official system in place to report when a depredation event occurs.

But in Bahia Honda in the Keys, where tarpon aggregate in large numbers, it doesn’t take long to hear stories from guides and anglers about how their catch is chased down and chomped by a great hammerhead before it is landed. Given that this is likely a tarpon prespawning aggregation site, high depredation rates could pose a significant threat to tarpon stocks. Similarly, with some shark populations still on the decline, simply removing sharks from the equation is also not an option, especially given the important role they play in marine ecosystems.

To better understand the factors that contribute to depredation, our collaborative team from UMass Amherst and Carleton University began using a multifaceted approach in 2019 to study the depredation of tarpon by sharks in Bahia Honda. The first part of the project uses three different but complementary tagging techniques to quantify the site fidelity of great hammerhead sharks to Bahia Honda, and whether they synchronize their movements

GRACE A. CASSELBERRY AND DR. ANDY J. DANYLCHUK UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

to match those of their potential tarpon prey. Great hammerheads caught under or near the Bahia Honda Bridge are tagged with color-coded numerical cattle tags attached to their dorsal fins to allow for visual identification, either by researchers observing the angling action, or by guides and anglers. This helps determine how frequently depredation is actually occurring in Bahia Honda and whether the same sharks are repeat offenders.

From an observation station on the old railroad bridge in Bahia Honda State Park, armed with high-powered binoculars and an umbrella to beat the heat, a scientist observed nearly 400 tarpon hook-ups from 55 boats over the course of the 2019 tarpon season. Just over 25 percent of hooked tarpon were successfully leadered and released, while at least 15 percent were eaten by sharks, either while on the line or immediately after release. The rest of the tarpon spit the hook or broke the leader.

Two dorsal-tagged great hammerheads were spotted eating hooked tarpon in Bahia Honda, while another was observed herding a school of free-swimming tarpon on the flats near the Seven Mile Bridge. However, the vast majority of feeding sharks were untagged, indicating that while this behavior may be learned,

many great hammerheads likely come to Bahia Honda to feed on free-swimming tarpon, taking advantage of hooked tarpon while in the area as part of their normal prey pursuit. Preliminary results show that longer fights and the more tarpon jumps increased the likelihood of tarpon mortality. A tarpon that jumped two or more times within the first 10 minutes of the fight had a much higher probability of mortality than a tarpon that jumped fewer than two times in the first ten minutes of the fight. The likelihood of tarpon mortality also increased significantly for fights over 20 minutes long.

Great hammerheads in our study are also being tagged with acoustic transmitters to determine whether the same sharks frequent Bahia Honda year after year, whether their movement patterns align with that of tarpon also tagged in this area, and how far these sharks travel between tarpon seasons. In addition to a cluster of acoustic receivers deployed in Bahia Honda pass that allows us to look at the finer scale movement patterns of both the great hammerheads and the tarpon, our project relies on a vast network of receiver stations in the Florida Keys, the Gulf of Mexico, and along the east coast of the United States. To date, preliminary results show a mix of movement patterns for greater hammerheads that are caught in Bahia Honda

Tarpon feeding in Bahia Honda Channel. Photo: Pat Ford

Channel. While some remain in the Florida Keys year-round, others make long-distant migrations north in the summer, only to return to Bahia Honda the next season, very similar to tarpon. In 2020, the team began satellite tagging great hammerheads to learn more about where they go when they are not present within the acoustic array. The vast majority of sharks tagged in Bahia Honda during this study are large, mature, female great hammerheads. It is very likely that Bahia Honda is a feeding ground critical to reproductive biology, just like the tarpon, with the added benefit of a free lunch served by anglers.

Collectively, the dynamics of what’s happening among sharks, tarpon, and recreational anglers in the Bahia Honda Channel is complex and is of great conservation concern. However, depredation is not unique to Bahia Honda, or even the broader Florida Keys, and it is important to put local issues in a broader context. As such, we conducted a nation-wide survey of coastal anglers and guides, including those that frequent the Keys, about their interactions with sharks. Results from this aspect of our study show that depredation is happening regularly across the east coast of the US but is particularly frequent in Florida. Nearly 150 guides and 400 anglers responded to the survey, with 77 percent of respondents having experienced depredation at least once while fishing recreationally. Among guides, 75 percent reported that depredation had increased dramatically in the last five years and 87 percent had experienced depredation with clients. Half of guides felt that depredation had a negative effect on the fishing experience for their clients.

With more people out on the water than ever before, and no historical data to quantify depredation rates in the past, it is difficult to know if depredation really is increasing or if there are just more opportunities for these encounters to happen. Regardless, it is important to work to minimize depredation to keep our fish stocks healthy and fisheries sustainable. In addition to modifying fishing practices, this could include testing shark deterrent devices for recreational fishing, which are currently in development, in areas where depredation is frequent. As responsible tarpon anglers, we need to find ways to sustainably compete with the natural predators in the ecosystem.

Acoustic telemetry data collected from a tagged great hammerhead shark show seasonal use of the Lower Florida Keys and connectivity between the Keys and Gulf of Mexico. After being tagged in the spring, the shark migrated north, where it was detected by acoustic receivers near Tampa Bay during the summer, and returned to the Keys in late fall. Points represent locations where the tagged shark was detected on receivers, scaled by the number of detections and color coded by the number of days since the shark was tagged.

A great hammerhead feeds on a tarpon. Photo: Jenni Bennett

Grace Casselberry affixes a tag to a hammerhead’s dorsal fin.

Photo: Dr. Luke Griffin

8th Annual Florida Keys Dinner and Circle of Honor Inductions

After a long year apart, angling legends, industry leaders, and BTT members and friends reunited at the Cheeca Lodge & Spa in Islamorada, Florida, on April 22 to induct Captain Bob Branham and the late Captain Bill Curtis into the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust Circle of Honor. Capt. Braham was introduced by lifelong friend, author Carl Hiaasen, and Capt. Tim Klein. Chico Fernandez and BTT Advisory Council member Pat Ford shared remarks about his friend and mentor, Capt. Curtis. The event benefitted the BTT George Hommell Florida Keys Habitat Fund.

The BTT Circle of Honor recognizes legendary anglers, guides, and conservation leaders who have made significant contributions to the conservation of bonefish, tarpon, and permit. It is housed in the Florida Keys History & Discovery Center in Islamorada and features an annually rotating exhibit on those honored along with educational content about the significance of the flats fishery.

“It’s fitting that these two pioneering guides of Biscayne Bay are now enshrined in the Circle of Honor,” said BTT President and CEO Jim McDuffie. “Not only did Captain Branham and Captain Curtis help establish South Florida as a world-class fishing destination, they also played an integral role in conserving the resource and building BTT into the effective organization it is today.”

A Fort Lauderdale-area native, Branham began his fishing career in local canals and running a part-time flats guiding business with help from his fellow honoree, Curtis, an established guide who sent Branham his overflow business. Branham later left

his day job to begin guiding full time in 1981.

An early proponent of banning nets in Biscayne Bay, Branham joined the board of the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association, and soon became a well-regarded liaison between its members and BTT, engaging guides in the organization’s conservation and research efforts. As a member of the BTT board, Branham has donated his time in support of BTT’s tarpon tagging expeditions and bonefish spawning research.

Innovator, prolific guide, and passionate conservationist, Curtis was born in eastern Oklahoma in 1925. He piloted F-7s for the Army Air Corps during World War II, had a successful career as an advertising photographer, and then had a life-changing encounter with bonefish on the flats of Miami’s Biscayne Bay in the early 1950s. By the late ‘50s, he was guiding anglers to bonefish, tarpon and permit.

As his reputation grew, he received the attention in 1960 of then U.S. Interior Secretary Stuart Udall and Commerce Secretary Luther Hodges who hired him to guide them in the Bay. From that fateful trip, and under Curtis’ subtle conservation influence, momentum built to establish Biscayne National Park, protecting the Bay’s fish-rich waters from what would have been a disastrous petroleum refinery on its shores. Noting a decline in bonefish populations in the bay in the 1990s, Curtis helped found Bonefish & Tarpon Unlimited, which later became Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. Curtis is credited with developing the first poling platform for flats skiffs in the 1970s, and created the Bimini Twist fishing knot. He passed away at age 91 on October 24, 2016.

Author Carl Hiaasen introduces longtime friend Capt. Bob Branham (right).

PHOTOS: DAN DIEZ

The Herman Lucerne Biscayne Legends Classic

Anglers and guides convened in Miami on July 7-8 to compete in the inaugural Herman Lucerne Biscayne Legends Classic, benefitting Bonefish & Tarpon Trust. This unique event is designed to build awareness of the complex issues threatening Biscayne Bay and promote the science-based solutions to address them—all while spurring a new kind of tournament format that combines education, advocacy, and great fishing.

2021 Honoree Capt. Bob Branham and presenter Carl Hiaasen.

BTT Advisory Council member Chico Fernandez, Jim Wiborg, BTT Board member Chris Peterson, Nelson Fonseca, Krissy Hewes, FWC Chairman Rodney Barreto, and Jasiel Morales.

Tina Sherron, Paul Vahldiek, Mary Barley, and Noah Valenstein.

Yvon Chouinard and Andy Mill

Grand Champions Capt. Steve Friedman and angler Ivar Bolander.

BTT Founding Member Jeff Harkavy, Advisory Council members Chico Fernandez and Pat Ford, and BTT President and CEO Jim McDuffie. Fernandez and Ford accepted the Angler / Guide Award on behalf of the late Capt. Bill Curtis.

Make Clean Water And Healthy Flats A Part Of Your Legacy.

Consider making a planned gift to Bonefish & Tarpon Trust to ensure the health of the flats fishery for generations to come.

Learn more by visiting: www.btt.org/donate/legacy

Photo: Pat Ford

YELLOW DOG IS PROUD TO SUPPORT BTT AND THEIR EFFORTS TO PRESERVE AND RESTORE FISHERIES AND HABITAT. AND WHEN IT COMES TO TRAVEL LOGISTICS AND PLANNING FOR THE WORLD’S BEST DESTINATIONS, YOU KNOW THAT YOU’RE IN GOOD HANDS WITH YELLOW DOG.

BECAUSE FLY FISHING TRAVEL IS WHAT WE

Pocket Water