Save our Jewfish, aka Goliath Grouper news...
- Thread starter The Chairman
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OP
Seriously?
OP
Any Jewish divers watching this thread that would prefer for the Goliath Grouper not to be called a jewfish?
OP
When the name first changed, the synagogue in Key Largo circulated petitions that they do not change the name of Jewfish Creek. I signed it as I felt the same way. The name change was a solution in search of a problem, that it created in the process. They're the baddest assed fish on the reef. Anyone who's ever been gronked by one won't soon forget that they rule down there.
100days-a-year
Contributor
So much koolaid on both sides of the renaming. There's a lot worse animal names out there both common and scientific. I use them interchangeably depending on the crowd. Old guys ( anyone older than me) occasionally don't even know it's changed.
OP
I've run into many a newbie who didn't know the original name and yes, a few who didn't know they were the same fish. I grew up calling them Jewfish and got my first gronk at the tender age of 17 off of Ponce Inlet. We were hunting flounder, and I spooked one, only to see this big boy dash in and swipe him from me. It took my breath away, however, it was following us, so I swam at it to scare it away. My bad. My ears rang for a few days. I give them wide berth now and watch closely when I'm spearing. They are the pirate lords of the reef.
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It was called the jewfish for a long time. Who really knows how it got that name, there are many stories. Apparently, the American Fisheries Society received some complaints about the name for many years. The Committee on the Names of Fishes changed the name to goliath (as in huge or gigantic) grouper in 2001.
The goliath grouper has been protected in the US since 1990. The limited fishing by permit, being discussed in this thread, started in 2023 with a season of March 1-May 31.
After a 17 year hiatus, I started diving again in 1997. I did not see my first goliath grouper until 2004 while diving with Ocean Divers in Key Largo. I am a pretty old guy, will be 70 in January, but have always known it as goliath grouper. I changed my Florida diving from the Keys to the SE (Boynton Beach, Jupiter, and Palm Beach) in 2009 and bought a townhouse just north of Boynton in 2011. I now have just under 1300 dives in the area including 129 on the Castor and quite a few on the Jupiter and Palm Beach goliath grouper sites. I would like to be optimistic that we will be seeing goliath grouper for the rest of my diving lifetime and beyond.
MG-111
Castor
OP
The best I've heard was the original name was "Jewel Fish" because of the blue sparklies on its face. But like the alligator, someone's accent morphed into Jewfish. Alligator was originally el ligator, which is lizard in Spanish. (I might have spelled the Spanish wrong... I'm not formally trained in that language even though I was born in Columbia.)
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