Florida Goliath Grouper Protection Battle Lost

Thanks to overfishing, the Goliath grouper, slow-growing, and slow-to-reproduce, nearly became extinct off Florida's coast. But they were saved after the state declared them off-limits in 1990. On March 3, that changed.

Ignoring a preponderance of scientists, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission next year will annually issue 200 harvest permit tags for anglers to catch the fish north of Jupiter and 50 additional tags to harvest them from Everglades National Park waters. The fish caught must range between 24 and 36 inches, so the giants we divers love to see are still off-limits but allowing younger fish to be caught ultimately reduces the breeding population.

Sarah Frias-Torres, Ph.D., marine biologist, Fulbright fellow, and researcher on behavior and ecology of ocean giants, posted on Twitter that the decision "will start the path towards extinction.

"Scientific evidence shows the population cannot support a kill fishery, due to numbers of breeding adults going down, consistently, since 2016, existing stressors that kill Goliaths (red tides, cold fronts), and shrinking critical nursery habitat (e.g., fringing red mangroves, recent ecological collapse of the Indian River Lagoon).

"More than 90 percent of public comments submitted during previous meetings (fishers, divers, businesses) reject the proposed kill fishery because Goliath groupers are more valuable alive than dead, through the dive ecotourism industry.

"Due to high methyl mercury content in Goliath grouper, approving a kill fishery for human consumption endangers public health."

Why did the FWC do this? They caved to the sportfishing lobby.