Organizing mooring buoys in Biscayne, a safety priority

         By ARNOLD MARKOWITZ
            Waterfront Times Columnist
         MIAMI — Listening to Mark Lewis describe boater raft-ups in Biscayne National Park might convince you never to go there on weekends. If you have a suppressed rowdy streak, it might make you think what fun it would be to go anyway, just once, to see what you’re missing.
         “On a Saturday or Sunday there are so many boats out there by 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon and the beer’s kicking in and fights start,” said Lewis, park superintendent.
         “We can’t even get rangers in there to break up a fight or rescue the individual who got injured. There should not be so many boats there that they can’t get in and do their job.”
         Lewis was trying to make a case for organized, limited fields of mooring buoys at Stiltsville, Sands Cut and other locations in the park — with anchoring allowed only in the field at Billy’s Point near the southern end of Elliott Key.
         “The intention is to put in as many buoys as we reasonably can, and to let our officers get in there when they need to,” he said.
         Other than strictly managed mooring fields, the plan adds squawk-proof improvements to the park. The best is an almost-fence of “pencil” buoys surrounding east Featherbed Bank, one of the worst examples anywhere of harm done by propeller scars and groundings.
         It’s an easy solution to a major problem, and should have been done in the 20th century. It will disqualify all alibis for running aground there and allow Featherbed to begin re-growing its seagrasses.
         The plan also adds long-needed navigational markers and informational signs (park boundaries, manatee protection zones, etc.), an enhanced Marine Heritage Trail of reef shipwrecks for divers and park regulation notices at Crandon Park and Black Point marinas.
         Hallelujah. Hugs and kisses for all of that.
Public enjoyment:
         As for mooring buoy fields with strict limits, the plan presented by Lewis and his resource management chief, Elsa Alvear, will sharply curtail rafting, beaching and anchoring at Sands Cut, the Coral Shoal area in Stiltsville and other popular locations, with limits not yet determined.
         It will greatly increase the number of mooring buoys — there are only 23 now in the whole park and boaters are not required to use them — at inshore gathering spots and along the offshore Marine Heritage Trail of historic shipwrecks.
         When all the buoys are in use, other boaters will still be able to anchor but at some specified distance from the moorings, Lewis said.
         He was talking to an audience of skeptics, worried that they will arrive some day next winter to find all the buoys occupied, one boat to a float and many more competing for next-in position.
         It’s easy to envision what that could mean on a typically crowded summer weekend.
         “I think the plan goes too far,” said Juan Badel of Miami. “It’s going to keep out quite a few people. There’s hundreds of boats in the Sands Cut area. All the buoys are tied up and what are you gonna do?”
         Good question. What do you do, wait in line? Where? Who gets the next vacancy?
         It wouldn’t take many beers to brew a fight in that saltwater saloon.
         “If you put up these mooring buoys and there’s no law enforcement there, they’ll be anchoring all over the place,” Rod Dickinson of Coral Gables predicted.
         He had a point too. Existing regulations allow only one boat per buoy, forbid rafting at buoys and require 100-foot spacing between vessels that are anchored or beach-grounded on sandbars. In practice, exceptions rule and rangers have trouble getting to the interior of a boat jam.
         Lewis faced these issues at public meetings in Florida City and Miami, on consecutive August evenings. He didn’t find any easy answers between Tuesday and Wednesday.
He reminded people (about 40 in Florida City and 30 in Miami) of the National Park Service’s dual mission to keep the park open for public enjoyment while preserving and protecting its natural resources.
         “Quite honestly it’s hard to do both of those things at the same time,” he said. Some of this stuff is going to be a challenge. There will be changes and modifications that need to take place...If this isn’t the right solution I’d ask you to help us figure out what the right solution is.”
         The planning schedule calls for consideration of public commentary, which closes Sept. 3, followed by further revisions. A “decision document” should be published some time next winter.
         The plans don’t directly address fishing issues, one of the concerns raised when the idea for mooring fields was first put before the public last July. We were against designating fields so large or so numerous that they effectively prevented fishing.
         Indirectly, the plans presented in August foretold little interference with fishing except for the reasonable prohibition of anchoring at mooring buoy fields, especially those over the reef shipwrecks on the Maritime Heritage Trail.
         That feature has been out there along the reef line all along, undermarked and underutilized. Six shipwreck sites are designated as archeological resources, but only three have mooring buoys, no more than five at any site.
         The rest are hard to find, and all are vulnerable to breakage by anchoring. Fishing-doers do that, not knowing what their anchors hit. Divers do it too, dropping and hauling and looking below until they find the wreck. In the plan’s current mid-development stage, it envisions mooring buoys at all the sites, set in hard-bottom grounds next to but not within the shipwreckage.
Public comment closing:
         Better yet, the park will promote the Maritime Heritage Trail as a diving destination. Interpretive information, maps, dive cards diagramming the shipwrecks and underwater guide signs will enhance the experience.
         With anchoring forbidden on those sites, fishing boats will have to troll or drift over the wrecks if their fish-finders find fish there. There’s little cause for complaint with all the close-by patch reefs close at hand and available for anchoring.
         One thing we don’t like is the National Park Service’s too-short window for public comment, 30 days ending on Sept. 3. Unless you’re already familiar with it, you’d better hurry to look it up online (see Up close), read fast and make to-the-point suggestions.
         Someone in the Miami audience last month suggested that the buoy plan’s enforcement costs might be paid for by selling ads on the buoys to local businesses such as outboard engine mechanics.
         Why didn’t anyone think of that before? For even bigger bucks, how about buoys proclaiming Sperry Topsiders the park’s official deck shoe and Mustad or Eagle Claw the official fishhook? Think of Yamaha and Mercury bidding frantically for rights to call themselves the park’s official outboard engine.
         Of course you’re too sophisticated to fall for such marketing stunts, but plenty of people do.
         Not Superintendent Lewis. “It’s an interesting idea, but I’m old school” he said, not even smiling.
         An interesting idea indeed. Thinking even larger, imagine a Jumbotron-style scoreboard screen flashing at every launching ramp:
         “Biscayne National Park, presented by Budweiser. Please drink responsibly.”

Up close:       To review Biscayne National Park’s latest plan for mooring buoy fields, the Maritime Heritage Trail of shipwrecks, navigation and info markers, go online to http://parkplanning.nps.gov .          From the drop-down menu, choose Biscayne NP.          A list will appear. Scroll down to “Mooring Buoy and Marker Plan” and click on it. This presents a brief summary of the plan. Look in the left margin and click on “Open for public comment.”          There you’ll find links to the draft environmental assessment and to the presentation given at public workshops in August. Both contain extensive details.          When you click on one of those links, you’ll see a brief description, a comment link (upper right) for your own ideas and a link to the report itself. Notice that the plans are in the detail stage. Detail-specific suggestions and criticisms should be submitted. The last day for public comment is Friday, Sept. 3.          You can also send your comments: Biscayne National Park Attn: Mooring Buoy and Marker Plan 9700 SW 328th St. Homestead, FL 33033