Brevard leads state with 98 manatee deaths

Certain fish can now be fileted before returning from the Bahamas
Statewide, no cause of death could be determined for 119 recovered bodies and 31 that were not recovered.

The best thing that can be said about Florida’s recent report of manatee deaths in 2015 is that it could have been worse. The statewide total of 405 known cases isn’t as bad as some past years, like the 830 reported in 2013. Next came a dramatic drop to 371 in 2014.

Down again, up again. Fluctuation is the rule. There’s one predictable constant: a safe bet can almost always be made that Brevard County — the Cape Canaveral area — will lead the state in manatee fatalities, unless Lee and Charlotte counties on the southwest coast combine for more.

The pattern held in 2015, when 98 of the state’s dead manatees were discovered in Brevard. That is 24 percent of Florida’s total. Lee County (Fort Myers) and Charlotte (Punta Gorda) had a combined total of 78 fatalities — 60 of them in Lee. In some years, the Lee-Charlotte proportions are reversed.

The counties are counted separately, but their geography makes it practical to combine them here. They share common waters, principally Charlotte Harbor, and the fatalities are attributed according to whether the dead are discovered on one side of the county line or the other. It’s rarely if ever possible to know where a manatee died or was killed, relative to where it was found. Discoveries are sometimes timely, sometimes not.

Decades of low speed zones and increasing public concern for manatees have reduced human blame for deaths to unremarkable levels in many areas, but boating accidents still kill sea cows. The numbers can be high enough to make you wonder if boaters are being careful, or if enough fish and wildlife officers are on the water in some places.

For example, almost a third of the 78 fatalities in Lee and Charlotte were attributed to boat strikes when causes were determined. No other human causes are listed there, although it doesn’t mean there weren’t any. Lee and Charlotte had 25 undetermined causes, including six carcasses that couldn’t be recovered for necropsies.

Boat strikes (86) and other human causes (11) were blamed for just under 24 percent of the statewide deaths. Five were killed in flood gates and canal locks (three in Glades County on the west shore of Lake Okeechobee), 91 were born dead, 18 died of cold stress (a third of those in Brevard County), and 44 died of natural causes.

Statewide, no cause of death could be determined for 119 recovered bodies and 31 that were not recovered. That’s 37 percent of the state total.

In the four southeast counties, 46 manatee deaths were reported — 17 in Miami-Dade, 13 in Broward, 10 in Palm Beach and six in Monroe (the Keys). Boat strikes were blamed for six, with three of those happening in the Keys.

The Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Commission process for compiling the annual report is tedious — a fact, not a criticism. Monthly updates are a couple of months behind timely. The annual report is posted around the end of August for the prior year.

To delve into the data more deeply, see the FWC website, Myfwc.com, and enter the phrase “manatee mortality” in the search box at the upper right. You’ll then find links to the annual reports since 1974, detailed in-county data searches and this year’s monthly reports through July.

Family day at the IGFA

Here’s a great way to get your kids into fishing and hook some tips that will improve your own skills and knowledge: Go to the IGFA’s family fishing clinic, which is free, on Oct. 1.

Fish in the property’s ponds with tackle and bait they’ll lend you. Take lessons from Mercury Marine’s pro staff. Attend inshore fishing seminars. Win raffles. Eat hot dogs and such.

Does this announcement look familiar? That’s because it was made before, but the event was rained out in August. Don’t let that happen again.

If there’s a downside, it’s this: The clinic doesn’t happen often and it lasts only three hours, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The IGFA is in Dania Beach alongside I-95, between the Stirling and Griffin exits, and next door to Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World. For street navigation purposes, the address is 300 Gulf Stream Way.

Showing kids the parks

Speaking of kids, the National Park Service is making a special effort to get them mixed up in that nature stuff, which too many of them don’t know too much about. Imagine thousands of shrieking small people, 9 or 10 years old, in your favorite national park, zipping amok in sneakers with wheels in their heels. We know a few spots with enough pavement and flooring to do that, but we are not authorized to comment on sensitive info.

Surely we jest. Apart from the nobility of showing fourth-grade school children our national parks, free of admission fees until next Sept. 1, the NPS program called “Every Kid in a Park” comps the fee for as many as three adults per child. NPS also tells us that 80 percent of the U.S. population lives in urban zones and a lot of them lack easy access to “outdoor spaces.”

If that means they’re too poor to get into national parks the regular way, free passes for fourth graders and their adults might be just the ticket.

It’s not just about national parks. All across the nation there are a couple of thousand national thisses and thats — seashores, forests, historic sites, nature preserves, wildernesses, monuments waiting to be knighted as parks and other public lands to explore and appreciate.

In Florida there are 18 places for your kids to take you with their free passes. Our favorite, because we never heard of it before, is the Mud Swamp/New River Wilderness, trapped inside Apalachicola National Forest. The river is reputed to be good for paddling, the swamp for getting devoured by mosquitos or maybe a bear.

This is the second year for Every Kid in a Park. If you’ve experienced it before, you’ll find some changes this time on the website. Teachers and community leaders can look up educational activities, field trips, info in Spanish as well as English, and print out passes for their classes. There are trip planning links and other internal tools. Begin online at www.everykidinapark.gov.

New rules

Important new fishing regulations are going into effect in Florida. Here are some highlights:

FWC enacted changes in mutton snapper rules to raise the minimum size from 16 inches to 18, and to allow a daily bag limit of five per person instead of a proposed limit of three. The aggregate limit for all species of snapper remains at 10 per day. Previously, it was legal to use the entire 10-snapper quota for muttons.

The Commission, meeting at St. Augustine in September, heard requests to close bottom fishing at Western Dry Rocks during snapper spawning season. Commissioners didn’t take action, but agreed to keep the proposal in consideration. Western Dry Rocks is about 20 miles southwest of Key West.

They also imposed an early closure on greater amberjack in the Gulf to match a closure in federal waters because NOAA estimates that the catch quota for the year had been exceeded. For the rest of this year, amberjack that are caught in the Gulf must be released.

Fishing-doers coming back to Florida by boat from the Bahamas now can fillet dolphin, wahoo and reef fish before returning, instead of having to wait until they arrive. The state rules now match the federal. You can fillet the fish but not skin them, so wildlife officers can verify the species. Two fillets will count as one fish.

For further verification, you’d better have valid Bahamian cruising and fishing permits. All hands must have valid passports with current Bahamian stamps and travel dates. Before crossing the borders to state waters, you must remove hooks, leaders and other terminal tackle from your rods and reels, which have to be stowed. No fair stopping to fish once you cross the line.

Finally, be sure to comply with both U.S. and Bahamian bag and possession limits. You’re expected to know the rules and be prepared for strict enforcement.

The FWC extended the season for red snapper fishing in state waters of the Gulf of Mexico by seven days to make up for fishing time lost to Hurricane Hermine. Before the storm, the season was scheduled to be open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays to the end of October.

The extended season goes into November on these weekend dates: 5-6 (Saturday-Sunday), 11-12 (Friday-Saturday) and 25-26-27 (Thanksgiving weekend).