Combined, the economic study, fishing area maps, and new
regulations have helped to make the flats fishing community
an important player in conservation in the Florida Keys.
This will greatly enhance the efforts of those in the Keys that
have been advocating flats conservation for years, and
provides a platform for launching more projects to address
the challenges in the Keys.
Science for Conservation
One of the unknowns in the Keys has been
the whereabouts of juvenile bonefish? In
recent years, there haven’t been many
sightings of juveniles (bonefish about 6”
long). In contrast, in interviews with
longtime guides and anglers, we’ve been told
about numerous places where they used to
see juveniles.
We’re now applying what we learned in the
Bahamas to target areas in the Keys that
should hold juvenile bonefish. The first year
of sampling resulted in no juveniles, the
second year we captured a few. We’ll be
repeating these efforts annually, and
comparing the Keys results to the Bahamas as we work to
determine the extent that problems with juvenile habitats
may be contributing to the decline in the Keys bonefish
population. Please let us know if you see juvenile bonefish!
With a lack of juvenile bonefish in the Keys, a logical
question is—to what extent are juvenile bonefish coming
from spawning that occurs in the Keys vs spawning that
occurs elsewhere? We know that bonefish spawn in deep,
open water, and that once the eggs hatch the larvae live as
plankton in the open ocean for an average of 53 days. To
what extent do these larvae ride the currents back to their
parents’ home range vs drift down-current to other
locations? Although all conservation has a local component,
if Keys bonefish are being spawned in other locations, then
conservation in those areas is important as well.
To address this important issue, we’ve launched the Bonefish
Population Genetics Study. This involves anglers and guides
collecting fin clips from bonefish, which we use for genetic
analysis. With this approach, we hope to determine how
bonefish populations in the Keys are related to bonefish
populations in other locations, like Cuba. And we’re doing
the same thing for tarpon (though we take a scale instead of
a fin clip) because the same question applies to them. If you
fish for bonefish or tarpon we can use your help.
We’re also funding a project that will bring together decades
of data on water quality, seagrass, and bottom organisms
(the bonefish prey community), and match that against
fishing patterns of guides and anglers over this same
historical time period. Was there a spatial pattern to changes
in the fishery that links these factors to the bonefish decline?
Was there a particular time period in which more drastic
changes occurred, and did this coincide with changes in
the fishery?We’re also funding a project that is looking for evidence of
the impacts of pollutants, such as mercury, on bonefish.
Mercury and other contaminants can cause genetic
mutations that can be passed on to future generations and
might impact fish survival, reproduction, and growth. If the
study detects such mutations, it will give us a direction to
pursue an important issue.All of these projects are helping us to figure out the causes
for the bonefish decline. Once we figure out the causes, we’ll
work with collaborators to develop fixes. But we’ll also need
to be ready to help give the bonefish population a boost.With such a small population of bonefish, it may be
necessary to give the bonefish population a boost toward
recovery. The best way to do this is with a hatchery, used in
the same way as was done for striped bass during their
recovery—a few years of stocking to give the population a
boost, and then step back and let the system do its thing.
The problem is, we don’t yet know how to spawn and raise
bonefish in captivity, but we will soon be starting the
important research needed to figure this out.More to Come
We have many more projects ready to come out of the chute,
all designed to give us the understanding we need to fix what
is wrong, restore the fishery to the level that it once was, and
to keep it that way for the future. Please watch the BTT Blog
for updates, http://www.btt.org/blog.