The Cape Romano shoals, a Florida gulf coast seabird mecca, are on the brink of becoming a Critical Wildlife Area — further formal recognition of their natural history as no place for humans with more money than birds, but not as much sense.

 

The cape, about nine miles south of Marco Island and around the corner from Goodland, is best known now for a crumbling manse made of six concrete domes, built in the early 1980s by an oil magnate named Bill Lee. Erosion by tides, currents and storms turned his Morgan Beach home site into a shoal.

 

Lee wasn’t the first to waste a fortune that way. A decade before, home sites along the narrow beach were bought by people who didn’t know that new channels were cut through it randomly by strong currents sweeping around the tip of the cape. Nature gave them time to finish construction before sweeping away the sand from beneath their houses. Thump, down they went.

 

The cape, already part of the Rookery Bay National Marine Estuary Reserve, is a spring and summer nesting site for three species of seabirds — the least tern, which is a threatened species; the black skimmer, a species of special concern; and Wilson's plover.

 

Florida’s fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is considering the Critical Wildlife Area designation in order to reduce human intrusions that inhibit nesting activity.

 

The designation will place the entire bar off limits during nesting season, which usually begins in early to middle April and lasts until mid-August, sometimes later. The birds decide the details.

 

Less restrictive status for the shoals, and the unofficially named Second Chance sandbar, has not been entirely effective in achieving those goals.

 

Volunteers for the Estuary Reserve routinely stake and rope off most of the sandbar, leaving the ends accessible to boaters. The site is popular — perhaps more because of the dome house ruins than the birds nesting, but human intrusion is believed to spook seabirds in nesting season.

 

Biologists have noticed that as human activity increases at that time, nesting activity decreases.

 

Two public meetings about the plan were conducted in Naples, late in June. If you missed those, follow up online at myfwc.com/conservation/terrestrial/cwa for how critical wildlife areas work. Questions and comments can be emailed to the coordinator: carol.rizkalla@mfwc.com.

 

 

Does the notion of keeping small fish and letting big ones go feel weird? Freshwater fishing-doers will have to get used to it, for that is the future of bass fishing in Florida.

 

Its part of the state’s Black Bass Management Plan which aims, among other things, to recover the prestige lost long ago to California where the Florida strain of largemouth bass grows larger than it grows here.

 

Here’s the reasoning: Being caught, kept and eaten stops bass from growing. That’s not so bad if the fish we keep are shorter than 16 inches, because there are plenty of those. When big ones are released, they will continue breeding and replenish the supply of smaller keepers.

 

So the plan being considered by FWC is to change the minimum size requirement for largemouth keepers from the present 14 or 15 inches (depending upon location) to zero. The daily bag limit would be five fish, and only one could be 16 inches or longer.

 

Upstate Florida has other species of black bass — Suwanee, shoal, Choctaw and spotted. Those would have a 12-inch minimum size, and catchers would be allowed to keep only one of 16 inches or longer. A stretch of the Chipola River in North Florida would be made a catch and release zone for shoal bass.

 

Where more than one species of black bass can be caught, the daily limit would be a total of five fish, not five of each species.

 

The draft proposal was developed by FWC staff and university researchers, along with thousands of responses from public surveys.

 

FWC quoted one of the researchers, fisheries professor Mike Allen of the University of Florida: “I think it’s the most progressive regulation for black bass in the USA.”

 

To see if you agree or disagree, the plan is available for review on FWC’s website at this address: myfwc.com/ fishing/freshwater/black-bass/bass-regulations.

 

You can read a short summary or the entire plan and background material there. When you’ve learned all you like, there’s a link for adding your comments to those already in the tank.

 

“We will keep the online survey open, and the next meeting will be February 2016,” FWC staffer Bob Wattendorf said. “We will report and accept additional input between now and then. If passed, the rule goes into effect July 1, 2016.”

 

 

Loggerhead, green and leatherback turtles are nesting again in Dry Tortugas National Park, 68 miles west of Key West. A loggerhead that biologists named Sally, after U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, is wearing a satellite tag that lets her be tracked all the way from the Bahamas, where she set sail — sort of — in the spring.

 

Sally the turtle also carries an accelerometer — a computer chip that monitors her motion as well as the course of her voyage.

 

Two student interns, paid by a grant from the South Florida National Parks Trust, are working at Dry Tortugas to track nesting. You can see what they see by visiting the web pages of seaturtle.org at www.seaturtle.org/tracking/?tag_id=129486 where you can also follow another loggerhead and two hawksbills.

 

 

Effective July 1, Florida has new regulations for commercial lobster diving statewide and gag grouper fishing in most of the Gulf.

 

Gags are governed regionally in an attempt to get stock populations balanced. Thus July 1 is the end of harvest season for the Panhandle counties of Franklin, Jefferson, Wakulla and Taylor, and the season’s beginning for the rest of the Gulf. It lasts until midnight, Dec. 3.

 

Monroe County (the Keys) is considered the Atlantic coast for this regulation’s sake.

 

The minimum keeper size is 22 inches total length, with a daily bag limit of two fish per person. Even if there are more than two people on the boat and everyone catches a lot, only four fish altogether can be kept by the group.

 

Although size and bag limits are the same, if you catch gags in federal waters and your port is in Franklin, Wakulla, Jefferson or Taylor County, while the season is closed there, you can take the fish ashore but you must stow your tackle and not stop the boat while running through state waters in that area.

 

State waters of the Gulf extend nine miles from shore.

 

How are you supposed to know exactly where you are? No guessing, no excuses. Precise boundaries are illustrated with GPS waypoints online at this address: myfwc.com/news/news-releases/2014/march/27/gaggrouper.

 

The rules for commercial lobster diving extend a moratorium on new license endorsements. The moratorium was set to expire July 1.

To avoid diminishing the industry and to let new operators into the business, valid existing endorsements can be transferred. The licensed holder of an endorsement no longer has to be aboard the boat, as long as it’s properly licensed. Outdated language in the qualification requirements has been removed.

 

More details on the commercial dive regulations can be found here: www.myfwc.com/fishing/saltwater/commercial/spiny-lobster.