Editorial: FWC sport fish discussions just a few days away

BY MARCY SHORTUSE - I’ll bet you weren’t prepared for another tarpon column in the end of November, but it’s time again for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to meet on December 5 and 6, this time in Apalachicola, and one of the items on the agenda is to talk again about whether tarpon should be considered a sport fish.

With all the arguing that went on from April through July, some probably breathed a sigh of relief when the season was over. But this is an issue that never really goes away ... at least not anymore.

For those of you who might not remember, a sport fish designation for tarpon is being considered by the FWC. That would mean that the tarpon can no longer be possessed. No more purchasing of kill tags, no more excessive handling of the fish. They would be catch-and-release only.

That would also mean no more weighing. With a sport fish designation you could still take a brief bit of time to measure your fish, but you have to keep them in the water. No more posing with fish held high (not that it’s easy to hold a 150-pound slimy tarpon over your head, but I suppose some could), no more glorified money shots for some of the tournament promoters. You catch it, you do a quick release and you let it go.

At the December meeting the FWC will discuss conservation measures creating game and sport fish designations for not only tarpon, but other species such as marlin, sailfish, bonefish and permit. Around these parts, though, the attention is on the silver king.

Organizations such as Save the Tarpon have been formed and have hundreds of members, all intent on making sure that the tarpon population we have now doesn’t dwindle even more by the time our children and grandchildren are old enough to enjoy catching them. The not-for-profit corporation has some backers with names that many recognize: Lefty Kreh, Bill Curtis, Tom McGuane and Flip Pallot. They believe in promoting stewardship, using conservative and ethical fish-handling techniques and, above all, preserving the fishery.

There are other groups of tarpon anglers as well, and some within those groups believe that no harm is currently being done to the tarpon population. The Professional Tarpon Tournament Series, headed up by Joe Mercurio and Gary Ingman, are part of that genre. The PTTS did decide in September to stop dragging and weighing tarpon during their tournaments, but the jigs they catch/snag tarpon with and the fishing methods they employ (relentlessly chasing pods of tarpon instead of using the traditional drift method) have not been called into question by the FWC.

At least not yet.

The history of this argument goes back a long, long way. The Boca Grande Fishing Guides Association stopped weighing tournament fish a decade or two ago. Capt. Mark Futch, a member of the BGFGA, said, “The fishery has declined in the last few years for several reasons, even after the BGFGA stopped gaffing, dragging and weighing tarpon in the tournaments. Most of the fish being killed were large females. That type of fishing is very significant in the destruction that has happened here. We haven’t had a hill tide in four or five years now ... it has gone away.”

The BGFGA unequivocally supports the FWC measure of game and sport fish designation for tarpon, to be sure. Because their livelihood depends on it.

This year has been a more controversial year than most. This tarpon season brought protests to the beach and lots of media coverage. For the first time a meeting was tentatively set up between traditional fishermen and other groups such as the PTTS.

It didn’t happen, and here’s why.

While Ingman said he would love to hear anyone’s opinion on the subject at hand, there were others who realized it was a moot point. Futch summed it up.

“We just thought we had nothing to gain by attending the meeting,” he said. “There was no one of any authority there, after all this trading back and forth. It’s gone beyond words. That’s all it is.”

There really is no definitive proof that fishing methods can chase tarpon away, or that a specific type of jig is intentionally used to snag tarpon and not to catch them legitimately. In the case of Port Aransas, Texas, for instance, no scientist has come up with a finite answer as to why a place that used to be as tarpon-packed as Boca Grande Pass now has few of the regal fish. And no one can really definitively prove why our tarpon population is nowhere near as prolific as it was 20 years ago.

Tarpon are prehistoric creatures. Prehistoric creatures that are still around today are here because they have great instincts. Instinct is learned through generations of experience. For instance, when an object is headed toward your eye, your instincts tell you to snap your eyes shut. When someone throws something at you, your instinct tells you to duck. You don’t have a choice, it’s just what your body does. When generations of fish are subjected to abnormal danger and discomfort for generations, when they are no longer allowed to perform their natural instinctual functions because of an external source, their survival mechanism might kick in and they could possibly change course for another direction.

Whether that happened in Port Aransas, where all the tarpon disappeared one day, or whether it would happen right here in Boca Grande Pass is debatable, sure. But the instincts that have kept tarpon from going the way of the mastodon were formed somewhere, and they are strong. They wouldn’t still be around if they weren’t.

Mote Marine Laboratories and Bonefish & Tarpon Trust have been conducting studies on juvenile tarpon in the mangrove wetlands of Wildflower Preserve. They are checking on the numbers of the baby tarpon, where they go, what they eat, and when they leave the inland estuaries to head into the Gulf. Why are they doing this? For many reasons, but one of them is to find out whether fishing pressure changes tarpon behavior. If scientists are doing the research, they have acknowledged the possibility.

According to a press release from Mote, “Although the recreational tarpon fishery of Charlotte Harbor is still a quality fishery, it is not what it once was. As stewards of this natural resource, we need to make every effort to protect it. We do not want to repeat the travesty of Port Aransas, Texas. Port Aransas was considered the tarpon capitol until the fishery collapsed in the 1960s. It has never recovered.”

I know it’s a long drive to Apalachicola, and I understand there won’t be a lot of people who make the trip to the December FWC meeting in support of the game fish designation. But education of the public and acknowledgement that there is, indeed, a problem, are the first steps we need to take in making sure that the tarpon are still here for future generations.

For more information on tarpon, here are some web sites that are very useful. Even if you don’t fish, understand that tarpon are a very vital part of our ecology in Florida, and that losing more of them would be an avoidable disaster. And we’ll let you know what happens at the meeting.

• mote.org (search “tarpon”)
• wisegeek.com/what-is-a-tarpon.htm
• bocagrandechamber.net/news/rich-history-priceless-future-the-tarpon-of-boca-grande-pass/
• savethetarpon.com
• myfwc.com