25 Years Infographic

25 YEARS OF CONSERVATION

Concerned about bonefish decline in the Florida Keys,

1997

Tom Davidson and a small band of Founding Members commit funds to research bonefish behavior and begin a tagging program.

Standing L – R: Joel Shepherd, Billy Pate, Raleigh Werking, Stu Apte, Jeff Storm Harkavy, Doug Hannon, Robert Humston, Chico Fernandez, Jack Curlett Seated L – R: George Hommell, Jeff Wilson, Tom Davidson

2000

2003

Bonefish and Tarpon

Bonefish and Tarpon Unlimited (BTU) holds its first meeting with 70 founding

BTU hosts its first Bonefish and

members. New projects are launched,

Tarpon Research Symposium,

including tarpon satellite tagging to gather

sponsored by Bass Pro Shops and the

migration pattern information along with further bonefish tagging to understand size, growth, and range of movement.

Photo: Aaron Adams

2008

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), which brings together 20 collaborating scientists.

Unlimited becomes

Bonefish & Tarpon Trust

and welcomes Matt Connelly to the board as President.

BONEFISH & TARPON TRUST - 25 Years of Conservation BTT broadens its geographic scope, expanding programs to the Bahamas, Belize, Cuba and Mexico. A new bonefish

2009

dart-tagging program in the Bahamas begins while BTT also successfully advocates for catch-and-release

2010

protections for bonefish, tarpon, and permit in Belize.

Pirates of the Flats, which later becomes Buccaneers & Bones, debuts on television and airs for 8 seasons, exposing new audiences to BTT’s mission and work.

Photo: Aaron Adams

2011

With BTT’s input and the support of anglers appearing in a series of public meetings, FWC establishes the Special Permit Zone and separates permit and pompano in fishery management.

Costa Sunglasses sponsors the new Project Permit.

2012 Honorees Lefty Kreh and Tom Brokaw.

BTT holds its first NYC Dinner and Award Ceremony, where Lefty Kreh and Tom Brokaw are honored for their contributions to flats fishery conservation.

Photo: Jordan Carter Photo: CameronLuck

2014

2013

BTT maps critical flats fishing

Collaborating with FWC and the angling

areas in the Florida Keys that

community, BTT helps to establish

help to guide management

catch-and-release regulations for

strategies of the Florida Keys

tarpon and bonefish in Florida.

National Marine Sanctuary and Everglades National Park.

Photo: Silver Kings

2015

2016 By providing data on bonefish spawning sites and home ranges, BTT plays an important role in securing the establishment of five new national parks in the Bahamas, and expanding a sixth.

BTT launches the collaborative Juvenile Tarpon Habitat Initiative to identify, protect and restore juvenile tarpon habitat in Florida.

With a grant of $1.5 million from the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), BTT undertakes the largest study ever commissioned in bonefish reproductive science.

In the same year, and with funding from Maverick Boat Group, BTT launches the Tarpon Acoustic Tagging

Jim McDuffie is named BTT’s first Executive Director, later President

Project—a five-year study that will rewrite the book of

and CEO.

what’s known about tarpon movements and habitat uses.

2017

As a founding member of the Now or Neverglades (NoN) coalition, BTT advocates for Senate Bill 10, which authorizes the southern reservoir to store, filter and move water south to Florida Bay. BTT meets with legislators, mobilizes support from its members, and contributes time, effort and funds to the coalition. That November, BTT hosts its 6th International Science Symposium & Flats Expo, which is a now a major event attracting 1,000 participants. Following Hurricane Irma, BTT raises more than $500,000 to assist Keys guides in partnership with the Guides Trust Foundation.

Data from BTT’s Project Permit drives an extension of the spawning season closure in Florida’s Special Permit Zone to include the month of April.

2018

In collaboration with Southwest Florida Water Management District and other partners, BTT completes its first tarpon nursery habitat restoration project at Coral Creek Preserve in Southwest Florida, designing the restoration and conducting preand post-restoration monitoring.

BTT restores August Creek in East Grand Bahama—the first such project by the organization and a Photo: John Rohan

demonstration site that will guide future creek restorations.

A long running project to genetically analyze thousands of bonefish fin clips concludes, providing scientific evidence of bonefish population connectivity across the Caribbean.

With Now or Neverglades partners, BTT secures federal authorization of the Everglades Reservoir to provide 240,000 acres of dynamic water storage, reducing harmful discharges and sending an

2018

average of 370,000 acre-feet of clean freshwater south from Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades and Florida Bay.

BTT documents the first complete track of a bonefish spawning aggregation, logging a dive to a depth of 450 feet—a first not only for bonefish,

Photo: Nick Roberts

2019

but a first for science, by recording a shallow water species diving to 13 times the atmospheric pressure the fish experience on the flats to spawn.

BTT collaborates with partners to raises $400,000 to assist Bahamian guides and lodges in the wake of Category 5 Hurricane Dorian, the worst natural disaster in Bahamas history.

Photo: Cameron Luck

BTT maps 274 juvenile tarpon habitat locations from information submitted by anglers. Scientists groundtruth sites in 11 Florida counties, finding that 62 percent of reported nursery habitats have some level of degradation requiring conservation action.

2019

2020 Photo: Dr. Jon Shenker

Scientists achieve the world’s first spawn of captive bonefish, producing new knowledge that will greatly enhance efforts to conserve bonefish in the wild. With data from its Tarpon Acoustic Tagging Project, BTT successfully advocates for a new regulation in North Carolina making tarpon catch-and-release in state waters.

Photo: Nick Roberts

BTT launches the Northern Bahamas Mangrove Restoration Project to plant 100,000 mangroves in a 69-square-mile area impacted by Hurricane Dorian, making it the largest effort of its kind in Bahamas history.

2021 As a capstone achievement in Project Permit, BTT successfully advocates for a seasonal closure of Western Dry Rocks, identified by BTT scientists as the most important spawning site for flats permit in the Lower Florida Keys.

Subsequent research identified unsustainable loss of angled permit at the site. The closure spans the months of April through July, the heart of spawning season for permit and mutton snapper.

Photo: Dr. Jiangang Luo

Photo: Wyler Gins

BTT completes tagging in the Tarpon Acoustic Tagging Project with 200 transmitters. To date, BTT researchers have recorded more than 500,000 tarpon track detections across states—valuable information that will help improve fishery management and conserve habitat.

A three-year study by BTT and Florida International University (FIU) discovers pharmaceutical contaminants in the blood and other tissues of bonefish in Biscayne Bay and across the Florida Keys. The findings underscore the urgent need for Florida to expand and modernize wastewater treatment facilities and sewage infrastructure statewide.

Results are announced in multiple venues in Tallahassee.

2022

Photo: Dr. Aaron Adams

Joining with partners, BTT advocates for Federal support of coastal and estuarine systems, sustained Everglades restoration, and passage of the 2020 Water Resources Development Act, turning back efforts to slow EAA Reservoir construction.

2020

BTT completes an economic impact assessment of Mexico’s flats fishery, determining that the resource generates $55.9 million (USD) annually and supports more than 1,600 jobs. The study will help make the case for improved fishery management along Mexico’s Caribbean coast.

BTT supports Everglades restoration and the recommendation by Governor DeSantis to spend $660 million in the next budget to continue critical projects.

BTT is awarded a $250,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which is matched by funding from the State of Florida, to begin planning two coastal habitat restoration projects in Rookery Bay on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

2021

In collaboration with leading fishing guides and lodges, BTT launches a campaign to educate anglers on the optimal way to handle bonefish to help increase survival rates and conserve healthy populations.

BTT commits $600,000 to fund a multi-year monitoring program at Western Dry Rocks and three other critical permit spawning sites in the Lower Florida Keys over the next three years. The project will ensure that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has sufficient data for evaluating the effectiveness of the April-July permit spawning season closure enacted in 2021.

2022