A federal fishery management council once again has moved forward with a plan that would allow rock shrimpers to drag trawling nets along a protected Florida seafloor and rare deep-water coral reef found nowhere else in the world.
Opponents said opening the Oculina Bank Habitat Area to shrimping will destroy one of the most environmentally important and fragile coral reefs.
The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council on June 13 chose its preferred of three alternatives to amend its fishing regulations, which would reopen a 16-square nautical mile area along the eastern edge of the northern extension of the Oculina Bank, just north of Cape Canaveral.
The other two alternatives were to take no action or to reopen a 24-square nautical mile area.
The council did not approve reopening the area yet. Before formally voting, it will hold two public hearings — one virtual and one in-person — but has not scheduled those dates.
Oculina Bank ivory tree coral reef in Cape Canaveral
The Oculina Bank, named after the slow-growing ivory tree coral Oculina varicosa, is a narrow strip of coral reef that runs from Flagler Beach to Fort Pierce. The reef is thousands of years old and habitat for species of grouper and snapper. The mounds stretch up to 100 feet tall in water as deep as 300 feet.
They are one to the best-studied deep-water coral reefs in the world and need protection from shrimping, which is a “major destruction of habitat,” said John Reed, a former research scientist at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, whose research helped the Oculina Bank become a protected area.
“We do not need more studies of the currents, sediments and impacts of trawling on deep-water reefs,” Reed told the South Atlantic Council on June 11 during its weeklong meeting. “This is all well-documented. Please vote for Alternative 1 (no action) for these proposed amendments. Bottom trawls have been banned from the OHAPC since 1985 and makes no sense to open up portions of the OHAPC now for allowable trawling.”
Trawling would leave “little buffer between the trawl nets and the high-relief coral mounds,” he told TCPalm.
Shrimping also would stir up muddy sediment that could blanket the reef, Reed said. Weights on the bottom of a general shrimp trawl net, which are meant to stay open to entrap shrimp, can penetrate nearly 6 inches into the seafloor, according to University of Miami research.
The council staff said the amendments are designed to reinstate commercial access to this “historically important fishing ground for the rock shrimp fishery” by creating a Shrimp Fishery Access Area where shrimpers can attain “optimum yield” while minimizing negative impacts.
The council in 2021 approved reopening a 22-square-mile area, but the Secretary of Commerce rejected it in 2022 because the proposal did not include “adequate analysis” that shrimping “would minimize adverse effects of fishing on essential fish habitat,” the secretary’s office stated.
The council oversees fishery regulations in federal waters of the Atlantic Ocean from North Carolina through the Florida Keys.
Tim O’Hara is TCPalm’s environment reporter. Contact him at tim.ohara@tcpalm.com.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Florida coral reef: Will fishing council let rock shrimp nets drag the rare Oculina Bank?
Reporting by Timothy O’Hara, Treasure Coast Newspapers / Treasure Coast Newspapers
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