DRY TORTUGAS, Gulf of Mexico — Fifteen scuba divers
exit the stern of the Irene C with a giant stride and become the first people
to officially enter the largest underwater preserve in the USA.
The divers descend slowly to a thriving coral reef 60 feet
below the surface. This remote and western extreme of the Florida Keys is bustling
with more than 100 species of fish, including bluehead wrasse, blue tang, bicolor
damselfish, stoplight parrotfish, yellowtail snapper and black grouper. Although
the reef appears healthy, many of the larger species are smaller than what divers
here would have found 10 years ago.
But then, until a few days ago, the area would have been
teeming with commercial fishermen and sport anglers. The larger, commercially
valuable species would have been on their way to the markets.
Today, the horizon is empty except for seabirds, small
choppy swells that rock the Irene C, and thunderheads that characterize the
gulf in summer.
On
July 1, a federal law took effect closing off all fishing in a 90-square-mile
tract of open ocean called Tortugas North, and a 61-square-mile tract called
Tortugas South. You can visit Tortugas North if you can reach it by boat and
know how to dive. Tortugas South is closed to everyone except the scientists
who need to be there to study the fish.
The two sections make up the largest region of U.S. coastal
waters ever designated by federal law as a no-take zone. If the closures are
successful, the bustling and colorful reefs of the Dry Tortugas will remain
that way, and the fish populations, and sizes of the adults, will return to
the way they were before humans took their toll.
"This is the equivalent to establishing Yellowstone National
Park," says Billy Causey, manager of the Florida Keys National Marine Santuary.
"This is really the beginning of creating a new wilderness for the ocean."
A simple ribbon-cutting ceremony on the surface Sunday
aboard the 54-foot Irene C belies nearly 10 years of efforts by Causey and members
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration working with six other
government agencies, hundreds of commercial fishermen and thousands of local
residents leery of further intrusion by the federal government. NOAA's Florida
Keys National Marine Sanctuary has been attempting to preserve bits of reefs
and habitats for a decade in the face of sometimes violent protests by locals.
Sanctuary personnel even felt intimidated to wear their blue NOAA shirts to
the grocery store.
This is after all, the land of Hemingway, 18th century
pirates and sun-weathered conchs who have declared the Keys their own republic
and who still earn livings with old-fashioned hand lines, herring bait and glass
minnows. One fisherman in the Tortugas greeted the NOAA vessel with a rude hand
gesture on Sunday.
"One of the things about the Tortugas is that it was a
lot like the wild, wild West," says Causey, who spearheaded the effort to establish
the no-take zone. "This has been a place where people can get out of sight and
out of mind. That's one thing we have had to be aware of as we started working.
... It is an area that is very remote, and people have been able to go about
their business without a whole lot of interference."
But Causey says many of the commercial fishermen who have
been here for decades helped to decide how and where to close areas of the new
preserve.
"We applied a lot of science to this project, but most
of it was social science," Causey says. "We treated the commercial fishermen
as the professionals they are."
Commercial fisherman Peter Gladding was one of the users
of the region who made a tough personal decision to close his own most productive
fishing spot — Riley's Hump in Tortugas South.
It is where seven species of commercially popular grouper
and five species of snapper aggregate in massive spawnings after migrations
from up to 150 miles away. Fishermen have known that different species can be
caught in huge numbers while spawning and that their cunning has taken a toll.
Just before diving into the warm blue waters on Sunday,
Jim Bohnsack, reserve fisheries biologist at NOAA's National Marine Fisheries
Service, highlights two decades of research for the other divers aboard the
vessel. "We've shown clearly that there has been a long decline in commercially
valuable fish," he says. "What it boils down to is that for the first time in
history, humans have the power to catch more fish than nature can produce."
At the spawning grounds on Riley's Hump, water currents
make a long counterclockwise arc that carries fish larvae into smaller spinoff
currents, called gyres. Fish have learned through evolution that the currents
are ideal for producing the largest numbers of offspring. The gyres also concentrate
nutrients that feed the larvae. After about 30 days, the minnows are carried
out into the larger currents and spread through the gulf and throughout the
Keys, as if they were on a conveyor belt from nature's fish factory, Bohnsack
says.
"Fishermen in the past could find out where fish are spawning
and go in and clean house," says Laddie Akins of the REEF Environmental Education
Foundation. "It is good for business in the short run, but we all know the fisheries
are collapsing."
REEF is among the groups that have contributed valuable
data to document declines in the fish population.
But Gladding stood up at local meetings and stated that
fishermen needed to protect the spawning areas and allow fish an opportunity
to repopulate.
Standing up for conservation does not come without a cost.
Last Thursday, after returning from a week of fishing at sea, Gladding was assaulted
by another fisherman for his stances on fish conservation. Gladding suffered
a badly broken ankle and was hosptialized. Gladding's wife, Mary, said the assault
was related to another stand he had taken on banning fish traps that kill large
amounts of fish indiscriminately. But she seemed proud that her husband has
taken a role of leadership among the fishermen.
"Pete has an amazing knowledge of the Tortugas and has
been fishing there for 28 years," Mary Gladding says. "He just offered his input
on areas like Riley's Hump that they were good areas to close. Today there is
a lot of machinery and technology that has made it easier for people to catch
bigger numbers of fish. This was just one good way of giving fish a chance.
We have a 21-year-old kid working for us now, and he would like to have a future
fishing. Something like this might be the only way."
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Gone: Fishing in the Tortugas (7/2/2001)
