I am passing this along to you guys. Some of you already know about it but they are collecting signatures and I figured the more the better. After all it is going to affect US in particular.
"New proposal about to take effect that could ban spearfishing in Biscayne National Park, need your help right away"
explanation as follows;
The South Florida Free divers club seeks your support on a very important matter that affects the spear fishing and the diving community of South Florida. The National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior (NPS) is developing a new fisheries management plan for Biscayne National Park.
Our club is very much in favor of protecting and preserving the natural resources and the marine life contained in the park’s waters, and historically has participated in many fisheries events to help the resources, but as a whole, we feel that the plan has been discriminatory and unfair towards the sport of spear fishing in particular.
Several NPS meetings have taken place and we have very little time (October 6) is the deadline before this could become another restriction.
Other ways we feel that would contribute are:
1) Mandatory boating license to operate a motor vessel in the park:
This would help in reducing the number of boating accidents, damage to marine life and less dependence on law enforcement.
As a frequent diver, we constantly witness the lack of diver flag awareness and good boating practices.
2) Mandatory training on fishing regulations:
Anyone with a fishing license can catch a fish, many people lack the knowledge about fish identification, legal size/quantity, etc. Proper training would help in reducing the decline in fish populations of many species.
3) More effective law enforcement:
Perhaps the most critical and important of all. Most of the time, the enforcement occurs at the dock and not on the water, like it was said in one of the meetings, “You don’t see a hunter shooting a buffalo inside Yellow Stone National Park ”. Key Biscayne National Park is a park and should have similar enforcement
4) Commercial fishing inside park waters:
Shrimp trawlers, lobster traps and other commercial fishing devices cause extensive damage to the sea grass and reef and impact juvenile specimens that depend on these areas to survive. This should be reduced or completely banned.
The proposed Alternatives 2, 3, 4, & 5 lack the data to support targeting spearfishing as the solution. Fisheries management data as pertains to spear fishing methods is needed; Scuba versus apnea. Trigger vs. sling. Fisheries data as compares spearfishing to line fishing to commercial harvesting (traps, drag nets, other).
The proposal to protect fisheries by limiting the fisheries method of spearfishing is lacking the data to indicate the impact on the desired fisheries (i.e., groupers and snappers) from spearfishing versus other methods; line, or commercial methods.
The proposed overview of Alternatives does not take into consideration the impact of each method to fisheries; To determine what method has the greatest impact to target fish near (or below) the minimum size; To determine which method has the greatest impact to species selectivity; To determine what method most impacts maims and mortally injures fish not boated. To determine what method had the greatest by-catch kill. To determine what method has the greatest overall impact to overfish.
The alternatives proposed (Alternatives 2, 3, 4, & 5) all target spearfishing with no support in the date. Besides, isn’t easier to enforce alternatives that treat each boat the same? Wouldn’t it be easier to tie up to a boat and simply count the number and size as limited rather than try and prove the location and method taken?
We would like to scrap Alternatives 2, 3, 4, & 5 as these are discriminatory against spear fisherman without the necessary date to support these alternatives
Please visit today the comments section of NPS and send your comments online as soon as possible:
http://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?parkID=353&projectID=23587&documentId=25004
