Should fishing be allowed in mangrove estuaries?

[Wildcard]

Are there many or any commercial fishermen in the mangroves? I heard that the whole time I was comm fishing. Some twice a year fisherman would come in skunked and blame us. I always pointed out we caught plenty of fish in the same spot, maybe we were just better fishermen?

 

[CBulla]

No commercial fishing in the mangroves. There are plenty of guides who'll run you around the mangroves in flats boats, especially fly fishermen lookin to hook a snook, red or tarpon, but nothing on the commercial nature anymore. The only commercial fishing that ever occured back there was for mullet and that had been going on in this area almost 2000 years... the Caloosa Indians were mullet netting long before the Spanish made their way here in the 1500's.

Honestly, the fishing has taken a serious down turn in the last decade.. the biggest decline in the last 6 or so years with the thousands and thousands of dead fish killed by the red tide.

 

[Wildcard]

I rember netting there in 0007, it was much beter then.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

As others have said, water pollution and habitat destruction and the associated die off of seagrass and red tide explosions are all related and terribly destructive. Killing some fish does little to the environment compared to poisioning it, polluting it with plant nutirents, reducing the dissolved oxygen to near zero (at dawn), making the water opaque with algal cells and sediments, eliminating sunlight penetration, physical removal of mangroves, flooding the estuaries with polluted freshwater runoff from urban areas during rainy periods and starving the estuary of freshwater flow during droughts. These impacts are all easily observable processes, however the general public has no clue about them.

Sedimentation of these water bodies and contamination with pesticides and other toxic organic and inorganic compounds are also impacting the ecosystems. Fishing just ain't the problem, although I wish it were, because it would be so easy to remedy. Unfortunately the solutions are much more complicated and require complex technical, economic and political solutions that are very "expensive" to implement.

The estuaries and mangrove and salt marshes are the irreplacable nurseries for nearly all the sport and game fish, but the continued failure to control growth and reduce stormwater runoff and continueing to use the saltwater bodies as the disposal site for stormwater from developed areas furthers the degradation of the dwindling resources. It is simply money and greed and stupidity that are so detrimental.

In my opinion, the water management districts and local governments provide regulations that are weighted far too heavily to allow urbanization rather then preservation and it comes down to priorities: money and development versus environmental resources and quality of life for existing residents. After all, fish don't pay taxes.. people do, what government agency (and the politicians that manage them) is going to ignore the people with the most money?

 

[H2Andy]

Places where I could literally watch red fish and snook zipping across the flats and little holes under the mangroves where mangrove snapper were stacked and thick are now devoid of life. Even the mullet, no longer able to be gill netted, only by hand thrown cast nets, are down considerably.

will a cessation of fishing increase or drecrease the number of available fish?

when an ecosystem is already under strain, will relieving at least some of the pressure, such as fishing, help or hurt?

 

[ams511]

I was in South Beach over the weekend. The storm drains in Miami Beach empty into the bay. If you have been to Miami Beach lately you probably know there is not much green area to soak up the water and most winds up in the bay. Add to that any automotive droppings the rain washes away and you can see were the polution comes from.

The other posters are right that development is the main cullprit of the decline in the mangroves, however fishing does put some pressure on the fish also.

It would be nice if for every development that goes up lets say 1/2 of 1 % would go to offsetting the environmental damage. That would be a huge sum and go a long way to undoing the damage.

Also to the Kentucky lake guy. Look up Lake Apopka in Florida. It is a good size lake and everything was dead or dying not because of fishing but because of ag waste runoff from the big sugar producers. Even the gators were sick in that lake and gators have a very high resistance to disease.

 

[DavidPT40]

Well after reading everyones replies, I went and did some searching of my own. I believe that water quality degradation and fishing are both major causes of fish depletion. I found a study on refuges that contain significant amount of mangroves that told me exactly what I wanted to know. Heres the abstract below. Basically it says that refuges that arent fished contain 2 to 12 times the fish as refuges that are fished. And that these fish do end up swimming to other areas later on in life.

Abstract.—Approximately 22% of the waters of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which encompasses the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, have been closed to public access and fishing since 1962. These closed areas offer an opportunity to test the effectiveness of “no-take” sanctuaries by analyzing two replicated estuarine areas. Areas open and closed to fishing were sampled from November 1986 to January 1990 with 653 random trammel-net sets, each enclosing 3,721 m2. Samples from no-fishing areas had significantly (P < 0.05) greater abundance and larger fishes than fished areas. Relative abundance (standardized catch per unit effort, CPUE) in protected areas (6.4 fish/set) was 2.6 times greater than in the fished areas (2.4 fish/set) for total game fish, 2.4 times greater for spotted seatrout Cynoscion nebulosus, 6.3 times greater for red drum Sciaenops ocellatus, 12.8 times greater for black drum Pogonias cromis, 5.3 times greater for common snook Centropomus undecimalis, and 2.6 times greater for striped mullet Mugil cephalus. Fishing had the primary effect on CPUE, independent of habitat and other environmental factors. Salinity and depth were important secondary factors affecting CPUE, followed by season or month, and temperature. The importance of specific factors varied with each species. Median and maximum size of red drum, spotted seatrout, black drum, and striped mullet were also significantly greater in the unfished areas. More and larger fish of spawning age were observed in the unfished areas for red drum, spotted seatrout, and black drum. Tagging studies documented export of important sport fish from protected areas to fished areas.

http://afs.allenpress.com/perlserv/....1577/1548-8675(1999)019<0436:EOAEEN>2.0.CO;2

 

[CBulla]

will a cessation of fishing increase or drecrease the number of available fish?

when an ecosystem is already under strain, will relieving at least some of the pressure, such as fishing, help or hurt?

Minimal to none - On any given weekend, even busy weekend, I can take you in a plane over head and would have no problem remembering the number of boats you actually see back in the or around the mangrove estuaries. The greatest majority of people who fish back there are catch and release with the occaisional take home fish if its in the right size limits and regulation dates to keep. Aside from that you literally have to have a flats boat to get into the backwaters where the fishing is anyway. I have never been in more than 3.5' of water back there at high tide, low tide thats about 6" (3' tidal exchanges), 4-4.5' in natural tidal channels up against the mangroves. Since there is only a 40 or so minute high tide window, many people never even venture back since they hit bottom so quickly. The scarred up grass beds where folks have powered through to cut 1/4 mile off their ride (but increased travel time 10 minutes now) are clear evidence of just little draft you need to get back. Incidentally that scarring can be seen overhead for years... it takes a LONG time to grow back.

Mound Key (click on the name to go to a Google Satellite image) was the Washington DC of the Caloosa Nation - the magrove estuaries that the OP speaks of are visible in this frame and more so if you zoom out a little bit. You can see how shallow it really is. If you zoom in around the island you can see the scarring in the sands around the island. Yes, it is really that shallow.

I used to fish everything from San Carlos Bay south to Bonita Bay area..now a days its more like drive by.

Well after reading everyones replies, I went and did some searching of my own. I believe that water quality degradation and fishing are both major causes of fish depletion. I found a study on refuges that contain significant amount of mangroves that told me exactly what I wanted to know. Heres the abstract below. Basically it says that refuges that arent fished contain 2 to 12 times the fish as refuges that are fished. And that these fish do end up swimming to other areas later on in life.

Abstract.—Approximately 22% of the waters of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which encompasses the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, have been closed to public access and fishing since 1962. These closed areas offer an opportunity to test the effectiveness of “no-take” sanctuaries by analyzing two replicated estuarine areas. Areas open and closed to fishing were sampled from November 1986 to January 1990 with 653 random trammel-net sets, each enclosing 3,721 m2. Samples from no-fishing areas had significantly (P < 0.05) greater abundance and larger fishes than fished areas. Relative abundance (standardized catch per unit effort, CPUE) in protected areas (6.4 fish/set) was 2.6 times greater than in the fished areas (2.4 fish/set) for total game fish, 2.4 times greater for spotted seatrout Cynoscion nebulosus, 6.3 times greater for red drum Sciaenops ocellatus, 12.8 times greater for black drum Pogonias cromis, 5.3 times greater for common snook Centropomus undecimalis, and 2.6 times greater for striped mullet Mugil cephalus. Fishing had the primary effect on CPUE, independent of habitat and other environmental factors. Salinity and depth were important secondary factors affecting CPUE, followed by season or month, and temperature. The importance of specific factors varied with each species. Median and maximum size of red drum, spotted seatrout, black drum, and striped mullet were also significantly greater in the unfished areas. More and larger fish of spawning age were observed in the unfished areas for red drum, spotted seatrout, and black drum. Tagging studies documented export of important sport fish from protected areas to fished areas.

http://afs.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1577%2F1548-8675(1999)019%3C0436:EOAEEN%3E2.0.CO%3B2

Yes - that area has been 100% shut down. That area is also known as NASA Kennedy Space Center and Cape Cannaveral Air Force Station. There is no other development there and what there is, well, its pretty much the same era as KSC. The next closest population centers other than small towns are Daytona to the north and Kissimmee/St Cloud and Orlando to the west 35-50 miles. Development won't really happen there because the real estate was shut down before it started.

Conversely our estuary areas here (Cape Coral, Pine Island, Sanibel, Fort Myers Beach, Bonita Springs, Cayo Costa, Charlotte Harbor, etc.) have all got building of some sort on them. Even Cayo Costa, 50% of which is a state park, has development on it. In fact, until you get south to the 10,000 Islands there is no real sacred wildlife zones on the water except manatee speed zone, and even then its a battle. For some perspective on that, do the aerial views of those areas and look at how much of the waterline has sea wall, etc., on it. Now, take away ALL of that and imagine it with mangrove coverage and you can start getting a perspective for how much as been removed.

Some folks are so undereducated I have heard quoted on TV by someone interviewed "Those manatee don't even belong here, they are from West India... the Spanish brought them over with the slaves. They should just ship all the manatee home." - No I'm not kidding!