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Goal 2. Fisheries: Create and Teach Production and Management Techniques That Make Fisheries Sustainable and Competitive
The recreational fishing industry in Florida generates an economic impact to the Florida economy of over $2 billion. Approximately one million saltwater recreational fishing licenses are sold each year, of which approximately 40 percent are non-resident licenses. Non-resident recreational anglers create positive economic impacts in the local communities where the fishing activities occur. In addition to individual licenses, several thousand charter and party boat licenses are sold each year to saltwater anglers.
The commercial fishing industry in Florida generates annual dockside sales of $200 million. Approximately 14,000 individuals hold licenses to commercially harvest seafood in Florida. These individuals use approximately 8,000 craft in the harvesting sector.
Over 200 species of marine finfish and shellfish restricted species are managed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). These include a large number of marine ornamental species, mullet, spotted sea trout, sheepshead, blue crab, pompano, flounder, bluefish, black drum and others located within the state waters of Florida. For most of the individual species managed specifically by state agencies, not much is known regarding the status of the stocks (i.e., whether or not the stocks are overfished or overcapitalized). For the fewer species of federally managed stocks, more information exists regarding the individual status of the stocks and industry capacity. These species are managed on the basis of achieving specific stock status targets, which embody such parameters as biomass, recruitment, fishing mortality, sex ratios, length, weight and geographic distribution. The principal federally managed stocks and their stock status are king mackerel, Spanish mackerel, gag grouper, shrimp, stone crab, spiny lobster (all not overfished with no overfishing occurring); red snapper, vermillion snapper and red drum (all overfished with overfishing occurring); and red grouper (not overfished but with overfishing occurring).
Florida has the most active, diverse and progressive artificial reef program in the country. Florida’s artificial reef program is the only one in the Gulf and South Atlantic region that is not exclusively run by a state agency. Florida’s program is a cooperative partnership among local coastal governments, qualified nonprofit corporations, universities, FSG extension and the FWC. All but one of Florida’s 35 coastal counties have been involved with reef development, and since 1920 more than 2,000 documented public reefs have been placed in state and federal waters. Currently, 30-70 public artificial reefs are being deployed annually off Florida’s coast. As an example of reef-related economic activity, a 2001 study in southeast Florida reported that annual artificial reef-related sales expenditures totaled $1.6 billion across Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. These expenditures provided a total of $782 million in annual income for 26,800 jobs across the four counties. In 2002 the State of Florida established a 15-member Artificial Reef Advisory Board, which includes Sea Grant faculty and in November 2003, the state officially adopted its Florida Artificial Reef Strategic Plan to guide this program over the next five years.
The growing number of saltwater anglers and demand for high-quality seafood are placing increasing pressure on the marine fishery resources of Florida. Marine resource managers need to cope with these pressures with more effective management tools that will allow long-term, sustainable resource use. State and federally mandated resource management processes have placed more stringent legal and empirical mandates on the management process. New, innovative and effective approaches are needed to maintain critical habitats, manage resources and to evaluate the effect of management decisions on fishery resources and the people that use these resources.
The primary goal for the Florida Sea Grant investment in marine fisheries is to ensure the sustainable use of the marine fisheries resources in the Florida’s coastal waters. This goal will be achieved if the marine fishery resources are managed based on the best scientific analysis, to ensure that fisheries are managed to achieve maximum sustainable economic and biological returns from the fishery.
The audiences for fisheries education, research and extension include private industry, resource managers, conservation groups and the general public. Private industry includes those enterprises directly involved in the utilization of the fisheries. Recreational users are bait and tackle shops, charter boats, fishing guides and individual anglers. Commercial users include commercial fishers and fishing equipment retailers. Marine resource managers include the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic fishery management councils and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. These managers are located primarily in Florida, but effective management of the migratory nature of many marine stocks located in Florida’s coastal waters includes regional and/or national regulation. Thus, the management of marine resources in Florida is a responsibility shared by local, regional and national marine resource managers and conservation groups.
Primary products include journal articles, scientific and technical reports, and activities include workshops on fishery management concepts, technical presentations at professional meetings, advisory roles with state, regional, and national fishery management agencies, and direct involvement with user groups. These products and activities will allow for the dissemination of research findings and application of educational materials developed. The products and activities will be delivered by Florida Sea Grant-funded research faculty, statewide extension specialists, county marine extension faculty and Sea Grant communications staff. Research faculty will disseminate immediate research results, whereas the educational materials developed will be extended to the various user groups by the extension faculty and communications staff.
The primary performance indicators will be an enhanced status (i.e., not overfished or no overfishing occurring) of the fishery stocks toward which Florida Sea Grant funding was directed. This will result in a movement toward optimum yield. Such progress will provide for sustainable use and a non-declining share of the allowable catch by the various user groups included in the management process.
A. Develop models and related information to improve management and fishery forecasts (species with largest volume and value of landings)
- Determine critical biological structure and processes controlling the abundance, distribution and replenishment of fishery resources on recreational, food and marine ornamental trade species.
- Measure multi-species and multi-gear interactions and how these interactions can be modeled and considered in management strategies.
- Define responses of fishery populations to anthropogenic stresses and how these responses vary with environmental conditions.
- Predict the effect of ocean and atmospheric processes on stocks and management of the stocks.
- Assess and contrast new stock assessment models with older models including those used for stock complexes.
- Provide new and more accurate stock assessment models to fisheries managers and decision makers.
- Develop methods to provide for effective ecosystem-based management techniques.
- Establish protocols for data development that would enhance modeling and decision making with respect to commercial and recreational fisheries management, industry capital investment, market change and environmental fluctuation.
B. Determine social and economic impacts of fishery management strategies
- Determine preferences and acceptability by individuals, industry groups and communities of various regulatory techniques.
- Document economic, social and cultural impacts of regulation and policy, including effective methods for outreach, education and enforcement, on both consumptive and non-consumptive users of marine resources.
- Define methods for implementing adaptive management strategies.
- Define innovative economic and social management strategies and determine how these strategies would cause change in participants among fisheries, including the effects on the commercial and the recreational for-hire charter, for-hire head boat and individual fisher sectors of controlled access to a fishery.
- Conduct demand and supply analyses to measure changes in economic values resulting from alternative uses of fisheries resources.
- Measure the effects of new management strategies on fishing behavior and practices and develop protocols for their implementation.
- Refine empirical techniques that can measure the market and non-market value of fish stocks allocated to alternative uses.
- Develop coupled regional growth and fishery utilization models that consider changes in environmental quality, technological change and regulatory policy that allow for the description and prediction of fisheries structure, conduct and performance industry over the next decade.
- Evaluate the precautionary approach, the burden of proof and the use of ecocertification as an incentive for fishermen.
- Develop collaborative projects with stakeholders within the fishing community that extend innovative management plans.
- Assess the impact on food and non-food fishery markets resulting from changes in global competition, ecological awareness and other factors influencing the behavior of domestic consumers.
C. Minimize bycatch
- Identify, evaluate and extend fishing behaviors and gear that will reduce bycatch and bycatch mortality, including mortality from catch-and-release fisheries.
- Assess the impact of bycatch on stock-recruitment.
- Develop bioeconomic models including demonstrating savings resulting from economic incentives, better technology and effort allocations to bycatch reduction.
D. Define the role of essential fish habitat in ecosystems and their management
- Define and develop quantitative measures for habitat assessment, comparisons and monitoring related to fish stocks.
- Develop models that can be used to determine the impact of potentially damaging practices to critical habitat, the level of the damage and the resulting population responses.
- Compare the impacts on fish stocks of non-fishing control areas and fishing areas.
- Determine recovery rates and stages for stocks in disturbed and undisturbed areas.
- Continue to develop and evaluate artificial habitat as a powerful management tool to enhance fish production and divert negative impacts from natural habitat.
- Assess the costs and benefits of marine protected areas as a tool to address management objectives.
- Assess the prevalence and impacts of invasive species and emerging marine diseases on marine fishery resources, implications for impacted stocks and methods of control.
E. Measure the effects of fishery stock enhancement practices
- Develop procedures that will maximize the benefit from hatchery releases into the wild by considering optimal release tactics, effects of releases on catches, ecological and genetic effects of cultured organisms on wild stocks especially protected species and effects and contributions of released stocks on stock biomass and spawning potential.
- Measure the success or test the concept of using marine protected areas to enhance habitat and stock enhancement techniques.
- Assess the economic costs and benefits of stock assessment programs.
F. Teach new and innovative ways to manage fisheries and evaluate the effectiveness of management decisions on resources and user groups, using the results of research projects and information developed through the Sea Grant extension program.
- Increase the interaction among fisheries managers and scientists in Florida and countries sharing common fisheries problems.
- Continue a comprehensive marine resource economics program on the value and optimum utilization of fisheries resources, including educational programs for the stressed shrimp industry.
- Participate in the national, Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic regional fisheries extension programs, including focused effort on the charter boat fleet.
- Design with other Sea Grant programs in the Southeast U.S., an educational program on ethical angling for the purpose of enhancing fisheries conservation.
- Conduct analysis and educational programs that relate to deployment and economic development/tourism aspects of using large ships as artificial reefs, local deployment of small habitats (under docks) and the overall fish enhancement and habitat aspects of artificial reefs.
- Analyze and conduct educational programs based on the perceptions from regulatory managers and recreational fishers from ethnic and diverse backgrounds.
Florida Sea Grant operates in the overall realm of scarce funds. Priority program efforts focus on those research and outreach activities that provide the greatest contribution to achieving the measurable goal. Thus, program effort will not be directed toward activities that are already being addressed by existing agencies and industry organizations (i.e., product marketing, large-scale data collection, routine ecosystem monitoring, etc.). Research and extension efforts will no longer be directed toward a fishery stock and related user groups when management objectives are achieved and maintained on a continuous basis. Rather, Sea Grant will focus on those “cutting edge” issues that are currently not being addressed by resource managers and industry and that if addressed would further advance fishery management in Florida toward the goal of long term sustainable use. Species with the highest volume and value of landings (or potential to lose the volume or value) and under the most biological or economic stress will receive the highest priority.
Accomplishment of fishery goals requires maintaining a critical mass of research/extension faculty who can effectively address the problematic topics concerning fishery management in Florida. This includes specialists in the fields of marine economics, fishery management and recreational fisheries. In addition, maintaining a viable off-campus faculty well-trained in fishery management issues is vital. Additional off-campus faculty are needed in some counties of the state where no funding exists for positions and in some counties where one faculty member may be covering multiple counties. Currently, two faculty members are devoting part-time outreach efforts to recreational fishing. Funding is needed to expand this to one full-time position.
Approximately 18 percent of Florida’s almost 17 million people are Hispanic and a large number of them speak only Spanish. Both federal and state resource managers indicate a high priority in bilingual educational materials for Spanish speaking fishers. A bilingual fisheries communicator is a high priority.
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