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Repeal the 1995 net ban

Written by SUN contributor on . Posted in Letter to the Editor, Opinion.

As you present the facts about the mesh sizes of the gill net that releases the juvenile fish compared to the cast net that catches them, thus reducing the fresh from Florida fish being harvested; as you plead for the right of fishermen to make a living fishing full time as so many want to do, also consider this:

Before the net ban, mullet was 45¢ a pound in the round and today it sells for $3 a pound. Before the ban, twice a week a truck full of fish on ice – not just mullet but pompano, grouper, sheepshead, trout, mackerel, redfish – went by road to fish markets in Plant City, Riverview, Brandon, Live Oak, Lakeland, Orlando and many others. They were bringing fresh from Florida fish for working people to eat.

This does not exist today. Many shop for fish at the supermarkets. Are these fish fresh from Florida? For the past 20 years, much of these fish came from an island off the coast of Bangladesh where fishermen were kept as slaves. This was written up by The Associated Press. One man had not seen his mother for 20 years. There is a cemetery with 70 bodies. The companies were identified that bought the fish harvested for over 20 years by slaves. The fish were sold in our supermarkets. Look at the source of shrimp sold at Walmart. It is China. As one writer asked: Are your shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of Thailand? Not Fresh From Florida.

It is reported that 77% of what is sold in the restaurants as redfish is not redfish. How much of what is sold in our supermarkets is raised in ponds polluted with mercury or lead?

In Cortez, there are 12 places where one can buy fresh or cooked seafood. About 5,000 people come every day to eat at the restaurants. Most of them are tourists – people who can afford to pay the price. These are not the people who live in Florida and work in our hospitals, our 7/11s, our hotels, grocery stores and our auto repair shops. Most folks cannot afford to eat fresh from Florida seafood.

Repealing the net ban will give Floridians the opportunity to again eat fresh fish. The trucks will ride to fish markets. Fish with the Omega 3 is good brain food. I am convinced we could use some.

Dr. Mary Fulford Green

Cortez, Florida

Net ban at 25: Still stings, still opposed

Net ban at 25: Still stings, still opposed

Written by Cindy Lane on . Posted in Featured, Fishing, Outdoors.

CORTEZ – Red tide, blue-green algae, global warming, sea rise, sewage spills and oil spills combined don’t antagonize commercial fishermen as much as one single, 25-year-old subject.

On election day in 1994, Florida voters passed a state constitutional amendment banning Florida commercial fishermen from using gill nets.

The law made any commercial fisherman in the state an outlaw who used a gill net to catch mullet, as fishing families had done for generations.

Since then, they have lived the words of Winston Churchill: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never. In nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

One “enemy” is the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), which has so much power it is not legally obligated to extend due process of law to fishermen, says Ronald Crum, a Panacea bait shop owner who has a pending lawsuit against the state agency.

Next week, the case is set to come before Florida Second Circuit Court Judge Kevin J. Carroll in Tallahassee.

If Crum wins, he says it could be the beginning of the end of the net ban.

Net ban at 25: Still stings, still opposed
The Cortez Fishermen’s Memorial depicts a fisherman hauling in a gill net. – Cindy Lane | Sun

“If we win in the state court, we should finally have due process. If we don’t – and the FWC has argued that we don’t – we go to federal court with court rulings and FWC arguments that we don’t have due process,” Crum said. “How do you think that will look to a federal judge – Americans without any right to due process under the United States Constitution? The judge could eviscerate the FWC.”

The issue in the case is whether the FWC’s authority is constitutional or statutory, he said, adding that he believes it is statutory and subject to court rulings, which provide checks and balances on the agency.

Previous cases have indicated the FWC is immune from judicial rulings, he said.

No appeal, no amendment

A 2012 case ended in a stalemate.

Crum, the Wakulla Commercial Fishermen’s Association and mullet fishermen Jonas Porter and Keith Ward sued the FWC, arguing that its rules enforcing the net ban violate the equal protection rights of commercial fishermen, and cause the unwanted bycatch the ban is designed to prevent.

Leon County Circuit Judge Jackie Fulford found in favor of the commercial fishermen and lifted the net ban, ruling it a “legal absurdity” that FWC rules enforcing the ban allow small stretch mesh nets that catch and kill juvenile fish while prohibiting the larger mesh nets that let juvenile fish survive to reproduce.

Her ruling was appealed and stayed by the Florida Attorney General’s office, then reinstated, then appealed and stayed again before being reversed by the First District Court of Appeal, whose ruling the plaintiffs challenged at the Florida Supreme Court in 2014.

The high court declined to accept jurisdiction, ending the appeals.

Cortez commercial fisherman Mark Coarsey, the former president of Fishing for Freedom’s Manatee County chapter, which disbanded in March, led the local group for five years, working on the case and in other ways to regain and preserve the rights of commercial fishermen.

Net ban at 25: Still stings, still opposed
Cortez commercial fisherman Mark Coarsey demonstrates how legal-size mullet are caught, while mullet too small to be caught swim through the mesh of outlawed gill nets. – Cindy Lane | Sun

For years, he demonstrated at the Cortez Commercial Fishing Festival how legal-size mullet were once caught in now-illegal gill nets, while mullet too small to be caught swam through the mesh, saving the resource, Coarsey said.

“Legal nets have lots of bycatch,” Crum said. “Ninety-eight fish die for every two that go to market due to the net ban.”

Last year, Coarsey appeared with several members of the group at a meeting of the Florida Constitution Revision Commission (CRC) in St. Petersburg, requesting that a proposed constitutional amendment be placed on the November 2018 ballot to reverse the gill net ban.

The CRC did not approve the amendment, leaving voters no opportunity to vote on the issue.

A bad taste

When the net ban went into effect in 1995, “I was 45 years old and looking for a job for the first time,” said James ‘Wyre’ Lee, of Cortez Bait and Seafood. “It was nasty.”

The nastiness, fishermen say, is that when scientific evidence of mullet overfishing was disputed, recreational fishing groups and environmentalists published a photograph of a dolphin in a net with the slogan, “Ban the Nets – Save Our Sealife,’’ the inference being that commercial fishermen commonly caught dolphins in gill nets.

Net ban at 25: Still stings, still opposed
Many Cortez fishermen cite the Bible as their authority to net fish. On a wall in the fishing village is a mural depicting Jesus walking on the bank of the Sea of Galilee, saying to two fishermen, Peter and his brother Andrew, “Come, follow me,” as they cast a net into the sea. – Cindy Lane | Sun

The photograph “was staged by a Florida Marine Patrol officer who was busted” a decade later, says Cortezian Mark Taylor, former president of the Organized Fishermen of Florida, who lost his wholesale seafood trucking business after the net ban.

Voters were misled, he said. For example, they did not know that Cortez commercial fishermen pioneered habitat restoration in the state by drafting a proposal to use funds from gill net permit fees to pay for two full-time employees at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

“We were devastated because we couldn’t use our nets,” said Mary Fulford Green, 94, whose family was one of the founding families of Cortez.

“That’s when the price of fish became prohibitive for ordinary people to eat,” she said. “If you can afford a $1,500-a-week vacation rental, you can afford a $19.95 shrimp dinner. Ordinary people can’t afford that. People on Social Security can’t afford that.”

“People didn’t vote in ‘94 to hurt commercial fishermen,” Crum said. “They voted to limit gill net fishing, but it’s overkill.”

Mark Coarsey

Fishermen ask Floridians to cast vote against net ban

Written by Cindy Lane on . Posted in Awards, Awards 2018, Community News, Cortez, Featured, Second Place, Special Sections.

Updated March 27, 2018

The CRC did not select the net ban proposal in its last cut for the November ballot.

CORTEZ – Nearly 25 years after Floridians voted to ban gill nets, commercial fishermen are asking the Florida Constitution Revision Commission (CRC) to let voters revisit that decision in November.

Cortez commercial fisherman Mark Coarsey gave the commission several reasons to place the issue on the ballot at a 10-hour public hearing on Tuesday, March 13 in St. Petersburg that drew 430 people speaking on proposals ranging from greyhound racing to oil drilling.

Second Place

General News Writing

2018

The net ban has undermined the state’s Fresh From Florida seafood campaign because Florida fishermen cannot catch enough fish to meet market demands without the banned nets, opening the door to more foreign seafood imports, said Coarsey, president of the Manatee chapter of Fishing For Freedom.

“The nets we are made to use are not commercially feasible,” he said, catching more unwanted juvenile fish than the outlawed two-inch mesh nets that let smaller fish escape.

mullet nets

He has demonstrated this with the two types of nets at the last two Cortez Commercial Fishing Festivals, where more than 500 people signed a petition to reinstate the banned nets, he said.

Frustrated that commissioners were looking at their phones during the two minutes allotted to him, Coarsey left his notes and spoke informally, making eye contact to regain their attention, he said later, adding that Commission Chair Carlos Beruff left the podium when Coarsey’s name was called. Cortezians vocally opposed Beruff’s planned development, Aqua by the Bay, across Sarasota Bay from the fishing village.

“Let the fishermen run the fishery,” Coarsey told commissioners. “They know what they need to do. They’re more environmentalist than anybody. That’s their livelihood.”

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcJ99XLWb1w[/embedyt]

 

“We need y’alls help. Every time we come up with an idea to get our nets back, they change the law,” he said, referring to Florida court cases on the issue that have been repeatedly decided and overturned.

The net ban was put back into place after appeals with influence from recreational fishing groups and activists with political interests, Nathaniel Anderson, of Fishing For Freedom’s Manatee chapter, told commissioners.

“The legislation was written without using due process or utilizing science-based research,” violating the civil rights of fishermen, he said.

The net ban was passed illegally, having been placed on the ballot using false information, Anderson told commissioners.

Florida voters approved the ban in 1994 after a highly publicized media campaign showing dolphins and sea turtles caught in what were purportedly Florida commercial fishermen’s nets, disputed at the time and later disproved.

Commercial fishermen in Cortez and throughout the state say they have struggled ever since to continue making a living on the sea.

Navigating constitutional waters

Navigating the process of getting the issue on the ballot is not easy, Coarsey said. Fishing For Freedom had to create a proposal, “Protecting Florida’s Traditional Fishermen and Restoring Sound Science and Best Management Practices to Florida’s Fisheries,” which crosses out every word of the net ban amendment, Article X, Section 16 of the Florida Constitution, entitled “Limiting marine net fishing.”

And then there is the politics.

“We were told when we walked in the door that we should have talked to each commissioner first to get put on the agenda,” he said. “We were asked who we are sponsored by. We’re fishermen, we’re not paid politicians.”

The public hearing was the final one before the CRC begins meeting this month to decide which proposals to put on the November ballot.

Once every 20 years, Florida’s Constitution provides that a 37-member commission be created to review the Constitution and make proposed changes for voter consideration. The CRC meets for about a year around the state, identifying and researching issues before recommending changes.

At least 60 percent of the state’s voters must approve a Constitutional amendment to make it law.

Gill net ban, Florida Constitution, Article X, Section 16

“Limiting marine net fishing”

“The marine resources of the State of Florida belong to all of the people of the state and should be conserved and managed for the benefit of the state, its people, and future generations. To this end the people hereby enact limitations on marine net fishing in Florida waters to protect saltwater finfish, shellfish, and other marine animals from unnecessary killing, overfishing and waste.

For the purpose of catching or taking any saltwater finfish, shellfish or other marine animals in Florida waters:

No gill nets or other entangling nets shall be used in any Florida waters; and

In addition to the prohibition set forth in (1), no other type of net containing more than 500 square feet of mesh area shall be used in nearshore and inshore Florida waters. Additionally, no more than two such nets, which shall not be connected, shall be used from any vessel, and no person not on a vessel shall use more than one such net in nearshore and inshore Florida waters.

For purposes of this section:

“gill net” means one or more walls of netting which captures saltwater finfish by ensnaring or entangling them in the meshes of the net by the gills, and “entangling net” means a drift net, trammell net, stab net, or any other net which captures saltwater finfish, shellfish, or other marine animals by causing all or part of heads, fins, legs, or other body parts to become entangled or ensnared in the meshes of the net, but a hand thrown cast net is not a gill net or an entangling net;

“mesh area” of a net means the total area of netting with the meshes open to comprise the maximum square footage. The square footage shall be calculated using standard mathematical formulas for geometric shapes. Seines and other rectangular nets shall be calculated using the maximum length and maximum width of the netting. Trawls and other bag type nets shall be calculated as a cone using the maximum circumference of the net mouth to derive the radius, and the maximum length from the net mouth to the tail end of the net to derive the slant height. Calculations for any other nets or combination type nets shall be based on the shapes of the individual components;

“coastline” means the territorial sea base line for the State of Florida established pursuant to the laws of the United States of America;

“Florida waters” means the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Florida, and any other bodies of water under the jurisdiction of the State of Florida, whether coastal, intracoastal or inland, and any part thereof; and

“nearshore and inshore Florida waters” means all Florida waters inside a line three miles seaward of the coastline along the Gulf of Mexico and inside a line one mile seaward of the coastline along the Atlantic Ocean.

This section shall not apply to the use of nets for scientific research or governmental purposes.

Persons violating this section shall be prosecuted and punished pursuant to the penalties provided in section 370.021(2)(a),(b),(c)6. and 7., and (e), Florida Statutes (1991), unless and until the legislature enacts more stringent penalties for violations hereof. On and after the effective date of this section, law enforcement officers in the state are authorized to enforce the provisions of this section in the same manner and authority as if a violation of this section constituted a violation of Chapter 370, Florida Statutes (1991).

It is the intent of this section that implementing legislation is not required for enforcing any violations hereof, but nothing in this section prohibits the establishment by law or pursuant to law of more restrictions on the use of nets for the purpose of catching or taking any saltwater finfish, shellfish, or other marine animals.

If any portion of this section is held invalid for any reason, the remaining portion of this section, to the fullest extent possible, shall be severed from the void portion and given the fullest possible force and application.

This section shall take effect on the July 1 next occurring after approval hereof by vote of the electors.”

 

 

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