FORT MEYERS, Florida (20 Mar 2003) -- Sluggishly prowling the offshore waters of Southwest Florida, goliath grouper look like blotched blimps with very big mouths. Scuba divers love to see them; underwater photographers love to shoot them; spear fishermen are wary of them because they've been known to attack speared fish; commercial and recreational fishermen are annoyed by them because they often grab hooked fish. And they can be found on virtually any structure off the coast — artificial reefs, wrecks and natural ledges. They are so abundant in local waters that some divers and fishermen say fisheries rule makers should allow a limited harvest of goliath grouper, formerly known as jewfish, which have been protected since 1990. But scientists say available data don't show that goliath grouper populations have increased enough to allow a harvest and are planning a statewide project, which could begin as early as this spring, to count the big fish. Fishing pressure in the 1980s, particularly by divers using explosive power heads, caused drastic declines in goliath grouper populations, so harvest was banned in state and federal waters in 1990 and in the Caribbean in 1993. "When I first started diving, jewfish were a rare occurrence," said Dan McGahey, former president of the Calusa Dive Club, who has been diving off Lee County for 16 years. "You'd see one and say, 'Wow, a jewfish.' Now you see them every dive. "From personal observations, and from what I continue to hear from the dive club, the jewfish population has exploded since the ban." Commercial grouper fisherman Al Burtoft of Pine Island is also seeing evidence of increasing goliath grouper populations. "We're catching them, more and more all the time," he said. "Nobody is targeting them. We're even changing the way we fish: I don't go around any wrecks anymore because I catch too many. And now I'm catching them on hard bottom and ledges where I didn't before." Spear fishermen and commercial offshore fishermen say goliath grouper have become so abundant that they're putting a huge dent in snapper and other grouper populations. A limited harvest of goliath grouper, they say, would benefit snappers and other groupers. "I'm all for it," said Roland Barron, a recreational spear fisherman from North Fort Myers. "They could issue limited permits, like moose hunts in Vermont. But they'd have to manage it very carefully because it wouldn't take much to bring the population down completely. "If it's done correctly, it could be a big shot in the arm for Florida's west coast dive industry: People would come from all over the world to bag a fish as big as they are." Scientists, however, say that goliath grouper are not harming other fish populations and that the goliath grouper population has not rebounded enough to sustain a harvest. | | Goliath grouper might be plentiful in Southwest Florida, but the rest of the state is another story, said Anne Marie Ecklund, a research fishery biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "They're recovering, not recovered," Ecklund said. "One thing people particularly in the Fort Myers area need to know is that the Ten Thousand Islands, Naples and Fort Myers is the historic center of jewfish abundance, so we'd expect recovery to start in your area. But we're not seeing it in other places. Recovery is occurring, but it's delayed elsewhere." Southwest Florida is such a goliath grouper hot spot because the area has the last extensive mangrove forest in the state, and mangrove forests are excellent goliath grouper nursery grounds. Scientists have counted 50,000 to 100,000 juvenile goliath grouper in the Ten Thousand Islands, said Chris Koenig, Florida State University research scientist. That might sound like a lot of new fish, but those are small numbers compared with other grouper species. A 15-square-mile area in the Big Bend produced more than 1 million gag grouper, Koenig said. "There are a lot fewer goliath grouper than people think there are," Koenig said. Koenig and Ecklund dispute claims that goliath grouper have knocked back snapper and grouper populations. Goliath grouper will eat other grouper and snapper, but their main diet, scientists say, is crustaceans and such slow bottom-dwelling fish as catfish, burrfish and stingrays. "There's an old saying in science: Correlation doesn't prove cause-and-effect," Koenig said. "Just because you have two phenomena going on at the same time, that doesn't mean one caused the other." Ecklund said fish counts show that more grouper and snapper are in places where goliath grouper are present than where goliath grouper are absent. McGahey disagreed. Before scientists consider a goliath grouper harvest, an accurate population count must be taken. Koenig and others have split the state into seven blocks and are preparing to conduct a visual survey of each, as soon as money for the project is available. Then the issue would be up to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "They would probably consider anything recommended through the scientific process that confirms the status of the population," FWC executive director Ken Haddad said. "But my sense is that we're still years from being able to even think about it. This is not something right around the corner." SOURCE - News Press |
