At a public meeting, officials presented five options for park management, and then passionate comments started to fly.
Boaters, anglers and even pilots were passionate in offering their opinions at a packed public meeting Tuesday in Miami on the proposed general management plan to guide Biscayne National Park over the next 15 to 20 years.
Park officials posted maps in the rear of the meeting room detailing each of five alternatives, which include new no-motor and slow-speed zones and a marine reserve where fishing, spearfishing and lobster catching would be prohibited. The park’s preferred alternative calls for a 10,500-acre no-take zone covering coral reefs just north of Caesar Creek and east of Hawk Channel out to the park boundary where waters are 60 feet deep. Anglers, divers, paddlers, boaters and conservationists gathered at the maps, pointing and asking questions.
Then park superintendent Mark Lewis opened the public comment portion of the meeting with a defense of the marine reserve.
“If we had been doing a good job, when you go out on the reef today, you would see the same fish you saw 25 years ago. And you don’t see that today,” Lewis said. “This is our draft plan of how we can do it better.”
Predictably, recreational anglers assailed the plan for shutting down access to a public resource.
“I just caught a world-record mahogany snapper in the [proposed marine reserve] and submitted it to the IGFA for review,” said Ovidio Verona of Miami. “The fish are on the reef. You are closing a large part of the reef where the fish are. You close it, it’s gone. We won’t get it back.”
Captain Russell Kleppinger blamed poor water quality in the bay and a lack of enforcement of current fisheries laws for the park’s condition.
“You look at the reefs, they’re dead. The water is crap. The grass isn’t healthy,” he said. “I think it’s water quality. All closing off a bottom fishing area is going to do is hurt the economy and local businesses. The key is education and enforcement. Make us pay for a license to use the park and less people will screw it up.”
Added Kathleen Elliott of the Mahogany Youth Corps: “We need some limits on commercial fishermen. We have to do the law enforcement. We have too many people out there harvesting anything that moves. We need to pay for the rules and regulations we already have to be enforced.”
Personal watercraft riders took to the podium to plead for lifting the decade-long ban on their craft in park waters in the name of safe travel.
“We’re not asking to fish or go inside the park,” Jeffrey Thomas said. “We just want to go through the Intracoastal Waterway. Banning us is like prohibiting motorcycles on the Turnpike.”
A similar request came from several seaplane pilots, who want a zone where they can take off and land.
“We draw six inches of water. We’re much safer than most boaters, but yet we are restricted from being able to land in Biscayne National Park. We have to sight-see from the air,” pilot Luis Otero said.
Several speakers asked park officials to adopt the most restrictive management alternative, which would double the size of the marine reserve and add an access-by-permit-only area in shallow waters north of Black Point.
“Alternative five should be the chosen alternative,” said Lee Buckner of the South Florida Wildlands Association. “You are managing a collapsing ecosystem. The park can support larger fish and more types for all users to enjoy.”
David Puittinen, a former commercial shrimper and lobster trapper from Cutler Ridge, urged an even larger marine reserve than proposed in any of the alternatives.
“That marine zone should be everything on the north side of Elliott Key for five years,” he said. “Right now, people coming through the park are not educated.
“You need to close it out, get the shrimpers and lobster guys out of there. Where’s the hog snapper? Where’s the red grouper? You need to take it farther than you have.”
Two more public hearings were held on the plan last week in Key Largo and Florida City. The public comment period is open through Oct. 31. Park officials said they expect to have a final document ready by early 2012. Comments can be mailed to Biscayne National Park, Attn: General Management Plan, 9700 SW 328 St., Homestead, FL, 33033, or submitted online at www.parkplanning.nps.gov
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