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Old 07-31-2017, 09:51 PM   #8
jfjf
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Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Palm Bch County
Posts: 11,256
Re: Goliath grouper workshops scheduled in Florida from July 31, 2017 to October 18,

I attended the meeting today in Lantana (Palm Beach County), Attendance was good with probably 100 plus people and an overwhelming majority were tree hugging divers who were strongly against ANY harvest of any type.

There seemed to be very few fisherman and even less spearfisherman, zero individuals identifed themselves as commercial fisherman and I found the FWC presentation to be quite biased against the take of GG.

There was basically two options, continued complete ban or a limited tag system take of 100 fish per year for 4 years with an attempt to collect biological data and funds from a harvest (should one be approved). It was clear that this was a state proposal and would only be applicable to State waters.

The last third of the meeting was an interactive poll conducted of the audience using electronic "clickers" to vote on various multiple choice questions, with the resulting polling data displayed immediately after each question. About 80% of the people were recreational divers, about 80% were against any harvest and one lady held up a picture of her favorite "pet" jewfish (who she had named). This was a clear crowd pleaser and generated a good bit of applause. They made an emotional plea not to kill her pet.

It is almost laughable, when you consider that one of FWC's objectives is to promote the activity of fishing and hunting.

We heard crap from the audience indicating that there are no more jewfish than there were 15 or 20 years ago, that there are NO jewfish present on any of the reefs (except for the spawning period) and assertions that lionfish are a terrible threat to the reef and jewfish control them, so we must not remove any jewfish.

The FWC proposal was a limited take with a slot size, 100 tags sold per year, a season closure to correspond to the spawning cycle and a ban on fishing in the vicinity of spawning aggregations which were identified on their graphics.

Nobody could explain why you would prevent fishing near a spawning aggregation site, when the aggregation was not present. Plus the logistics of finding all the sites, and identifying them and then enforcing the geographic restrictions seemed impractical and poorly thought out. A seasonal closure is simple, easy and effective to protect the actual spawning events - a no brainer... but a geographic closure over multiple sites is something entirely different.

We also heard that people would pay hundreds of dollars to see a jewfish one time, so this was extrapolated to a grouper being worth many thousands of dollars alive (and very little dead). Of course we all know that taking 100 jewfish from the entire state of Florida would be undetectable relative to the populations and would not preclude the tourist diving opportunities.

It is interesting to note that the proposed means of take would be hook and line and NO SPEARING and when asked why, they mumbled something about "not sporting" etc.

I found the theme quite biased, with the staff representing the fish as "slow growing" when the fish were reported to reach sexual maturity in just 3-6 years.

There was also a big deal made about determining the maximum possible age of a jewfish, with the oldest reported as 37 years or something... They didn't really explain how or why the potential that the fish could live to be 50 years old made a big difference in the population, but they seemed to latch on to this issue as critically important.. Of course their proposal to allow a slot size harvest would potentially provide age data from ear bones, but probably wouldn't capture the oldest fish - since the slot size was not near as big as we commonly see the fish.

There was also some discussion of mercury content, but data was presented in a very superficial, biased manner and no attempt was made to compare the data with published data from other species. The crowd was quite convinced that jewfish were poisonous to eat - so why kill them .. "you savages" LOL. We even heard that the jewfish meat generated from the recreational harvest would end up in the commercial fish markets and poison the unsuspecting public with mis-labeled meat laden with huge concentrations of methylmercury.

You fisherman or spearos who think it might make sense to thin the heard -- need to make your voices known. The sentiment was overwhelmingly anti-harvest.

Last edited by jfjf; 07-31-2017 at 10:30 PM.
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