Wrong? On which point was I wrong? What I am saying has been proven by experiments that were much larger scale than your own (see links at bottom).Originally Posted by aquaman
No idea what was done? Oh, you mean the "4 corners" with 100 reef balls on each corner arranged in a square approximately 1.5 miles apart? These wouldn't happen to be concrete cones deployed by Stevens Towing company, that are about 0.7m top diameter, with a 1.22m base diameter and 0.91m height with 20m openings looking like swiss cheese, would they? Or by "no idea" are you referring to fishing the opposite corners and then comparing them to the unfished corners using tagging (measuring site fidelity), and video surveillance? Do you guys still use the camera with the little red dots on it spaced 2 inches a part so that you can get accurate length data of fish swimming by?
Reefs congregate fish? Wow. Totally blew my mind with that one!!! I want the guy's job that made that sort of ground breaking discovery! Just kidding. I knew what you meant. You are rehashing the "attraction vs production" argument on artificial reefs. I told you guys the same thing 10+ years ago. Of course habitat produces. SCDNR's "Area 5x" were just a small scale experiment compared to others already out there (steinhatchee, suwannee, Alabama reef program, etc). I'm sorry, but A5x were just DNR pet projects and the only thing it did was convince you guys of research that had already been done. I've seen video from the sites, and I've got a logbook full of numbers of not so well known spots that could give them a run for their money. Sure, they had fish on them, but AGAIN, it's NOT because they were "MPA's". It's because they were secrets. How do I know this? Because they have never been MPA's. You can't say "We proved MPA" when they weren't MPA. Now that they are MPA, they will be "compromised" 10x what they are now. Do you not think that the existing MPA's are not "compromised"? That's ridiculous. I've seen both recreational and commercial guys planted in them many times. All SCDNR is doing now is publishing the numbers to spots only a few of us had in our books. Do you know the difference between an MPA and a "secret" spot? MPAs are not secret. That's it...
The reality is, that these spots are the pride and joy of the reef program and DNR got into a panic when they found out that they were "compromised". I know this because it's irrational to think that these tiny little spots are going to make a measurable impact in the South Atlantic when we literally have hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of contiguous miles of "ledge", and thousands of square miles of "inshore" (of the ledge) stuff scattered about.
The correct move would have been to mimic the Alabama reef program. They have THOUSANDS of man-made reefs, built up with private capital. That's what happens when you let capitalism do it's thing... And the runner up idea (if that was too dramatic for Martore) would have been to mimic the Steinhatchee reef program. Either of these are better alternatives than to make an unnecessary checkerboard of fishing\no-fishing zones, that CANNOT and WILL NOT have any meaningful enforcement.
SUWANEE - Suwannee Regional Reef System
http://taylor.ifas.ufl.edu/marine_suwannee.shtml
Steinhatchee Fisheries Management Area
http://taylor.ifas.ufl.edu/marine_sfma.shtml
I think it's a shame why fisheries scientists still can't even figure out why "virgin stocks" of red snapper in the GOM were fished out in the late 1800's with only 2 million lbs of annual catch. So fished out, boats were travelling from the pan handle of Florida all the way around the gulf down to the yucatan to find fish. Fast forward to 2015 and the sustainable TAC is over 11M pounds for the GOM... With one small difference, tens of thousands of reefs, oil rigs and other man-made structure. The population of red snapper is 5x what it was before the first man caught. Yet, the answer is still always "tighter limits and more MPAs". Unbelievable how blind federal "fisheries science" is...
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