Technology may be harming Florida Bay more than it’s helping boaters, backcountry experts say.
“Now people buy a GPS before they buy a push pole,” said longtime flats guide Hank Brown. “They think it makes you an expert on Florida Bay.”
The GPS (global positioning system) devices commonly found on boats gives newcomers to the bay’s shallow waters false confidence, guides said during a Nov. 18 workshop on Everglades restoration.
One of the topics raised at the Tavernier event, sponsored by the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary’s Advisory Council, was the status of an update to the general management plan for Everglades National Park.
The plan could include sweeping changes to boating regulations for Florida Bay, most of which is within Everglades park boundaries.
Now it appears revised alternatives for Florida Bay will be released for review and comment in early 2009. A science report is expected to be released in December.
“They certainly have been taking their time,” said Islamorada resident Jim Trice, who spearheaded writing an alternative Florida Bay plan endorsed by many groups throughout Monroe County.
Professional guides and recreational anglers fear that rules intended to protect shallow grass flats from propeller scarring could ban motorized boats from large areas of Florida Bay.
“There is serious scarring being done out there,” Jerry Lorenz of the National Audubon Society’s Research Center in Tavernier said. “It’s become desperate. We need to do something baywide.”
Everglades park managers tend to agree, but proposals floated in mid-2007 encountered strong opposition. The most extreme of those suggested banning boat motors in large sections of Florida Bay, and in waters less than 3 feet deep.
“We got a lot of important feedback” during the 2007 review, said Fred Herling, supervising planner at Everglades National Park. “That all figured very strongly in our analysis. When the new alternatives are released, I think people will see how we incorporated some of the ideas.”
Guides contend that most of the bay-bottom damage is caused by inexperienced boaters racing through the bay on oversized vessels, following a path laid out by the electronic GPS navigation system.
But GPS often is not accurate enough to chart Florida Bay’s narrow and twisting channels, speakers said.
“Big boats leave big scars,” said Dave Boerner, an Islamorada Village Council member and avid fisherman.
While on a low-altitude flight over the bay, Boerner recounted seeing a boater stop in a channel.
“You could see the guy looking at his GPS, then he hit the gas,” Boerner said, “and he went right outside the channel.”
“There are more morons out there,” said Tad Burke, commodore of the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association. “They write a check for a boat that [manufacturers] tell them will go anywhere and they believe it.”
“We do not encourage GPS use” in the bay, said Rob Clift of the National Parks Conservation Association. “Some of the most important equipment out there is your eyes and a pair of polarized sunglasses.”
Brown said he knows well-intentioned boaters who “look at the GPS and then go hell-bent where it tells you to go. They bust out of the channel and leave prop scars a half-mile long.”
Some type of mandatory boating education for bay users or limits on boat size have been suggested.
Trice said he is concerned the park may propose “even more draconian measures.”
“There’s a massive group of people out there who don’t want any changes,” he said. “If you want to move them toward some type of new protection, you have to think big but start small, or you’re not going to get anywhere.”
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