The boating news is dismal, as it always is when the state publishes its mid-year report of accidents and deaths at the beginning of June. There were more of both last year than the year before, and this year the problem is highlighted by the Village of Key Biscayne’s current attempt to regulate weekend crowding and grounding on the Mashta Flats.

A new town law imposes a no-motor zone, but it can be enforced only on about one-fifth of the territory — 12 acres in the island town’s jurisdiction. The rest, 47 acres, is state property. Miami-Dade County also has some jurisdiction there.

If that makes enforcement seem impractical, which it is, the village council knows it but felt it had to ask for help. The mayor and chief of police attended the Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) Commission’s June meeting in Fort Myers to do that.

State law doesn’t let the FWC act as quickly as a village council, but commissioners agreed to help the key find solutions and promised some enforcement help in the meantime.

The village law is pretty minimal. It requires that motorboat drivers turn their engines off on the flat, where two not-so-grassy patches are exposed at mean low water and the depth is 1 to 3 feet in the rest of the area.

If you don’t know the Mashta Flats by name, you may know them by sight. They’re marked by flashing red marker 4 and red day marker 2 at the northern end of the Cape Florida channel. It’s a popular party spot, mobbed on weekends and holidays. We counted 96 in an aerial photo the Miami Herald printed. The picture didn’t include all of them.

“What we’re hoping for is the continued presence of the FWC on weekends. We need your help,” police Chief Charles Press told the commissioners. “We can’t do it alone. Without some strict enforcement, we’re going to lose this battle. It’s costing lives and changing lives forever.”

Press and Mayor Frank Caplan called the situation an emergency, with the flats boat-packed so densely at times that the town’s marine patrol can’t get through the crowd. Press said his own daughter is still recovering from injuries suffered in a boating accident in the area.

The day before they met with the FWC, the Key Biscayne Council enacted its ordinance, adopting a sense of urgency from the chief.

“It was so insane at the sandbar over Memorial Day weekend that the boats couldn't get out of the way from each other,” he told the council. “We were overwhelmed with the amount of boats that were there. There were calls that we could not get to.”

The trouble sometimes spreads up the key’s western shore to a spot informally called Nixon Beach. President Richard M. Nixon used to spend some vacations in a house there, on Bay Lane. The place has long since been replaced, but a concrete helicopter pad that was built for his use still stands. The Key Biscayne Yacht Club is a short distance north of there.

According to news reports, in the past two years the Mashta Flats-Nixon Beach area have experienced three boating deaths, two life-changing injuries, 15 reported boat accidents and 156 citations issued. Considerable damage has been done to seagrass by powerboat propeller gouging.

FWC’s annual report of boating accidents says there were 62 boating fatalities in the state last year, with 38 of the deaths attributed to drowning.

Florida-wide, reported accidents were up from 704 in 2012 to 736 last year. The 62 deaths were seven more than the previous year, but far below a record. The worst year in the past 10 was 2005, when 80 people died from boating accidents.

The leading cause of accidents? Inattention by boat operators, the FWC said.

For a comprehensive report on Florida boating accidents in 2013, plus comparative charts for previous years, go online to http://myfwc.com/boating/safety-education/accidents/

Battling lionfish

Pumping up pressure on Florida Public Enemy Number One, the FWC now has a smartphone application, Report Florida Lionfish, that you can use to report lionfish sightings and catches at sea. Knowing where they are will be useful for planning all sorts of offensives, from commando raids to full-blast invasions.

FWC staffer Amanda Nalley said, “The new Report Florida Lionfish app includes educational information on lionfish and safe handling guidelines, as well as an easy-to-use data-reporting form so divers and anglers can share information about their sighting or harvest with the FWC. App users also can take and share a photo of their catch. These photos may be used in future publications or social media efforts.”

Even better, she demonstrates how to use the app in a video promising an interactive “Lionfish Control Team” T-shirt to the first 250 people using the app to report lionfish sightings.

An interactive T-shirt? Right, the logo on it comes to life when you aim the app at it. See Nalley’s demo here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwxL70RT4Ls.

If you don’t have a smartphone, you can still report lionfish sightings with a computer, starting at the www.MyFWC.com website. Click on saltwater, then recreational regulations, then lionfish.

For even more encouragement to lionfish vigilantes, the FWC in June enacted new regulations:
● Allowing the harvest of lionfish when diving with a rebreather (otherwise forbidden), which recycles air and allows divers to remain in the water longer.
● Allowing participants in approved tournaments and other organized events to spear lionfish or other in- vasive species in areas where spearfishing is not allowed. Permits will be required.

And the award goes to ....

Two of our more-than-deserving Florida fish and wildlife wizards are cuddling awards that would cause many of us to feel like heroes if we won the equivalents in our own fields.

Parades? No, but let’s close our eyes and loudly cheer as we imagine sea turtlist Anne Meylan and snook guru Ron Taylor grinning and waving from open limos behind a loud marching band on the Fourth of July.

Meylan’s honor is a Lifetime Achievement Award, given by the International Sea Turtle Society for her contributions to research, management and conservation of sea turtles. Her work was the basis for “critically endangered” status given hawksbill turtles by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Meylan got involved with sea turtles in 1979 when she was a University of Florida zoology student and joined a research expedition in Costa Rica. She works at the FWC’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute in St. Petersburg, and does turtle work all over Central America, the Caribbean and Bermuda.

That news is a few months old now, but it’s timely to report it in concert with the recent (mid-June) declaration of World Sea Turtle Day and Sea Turtle Week by NOAA Fisheries.

You can learn a lot about sea turtles and how your federal government is sticking up for them, on NOAA’s website here: www.fisheries.noaa.gov/stories/2014/06/6_13_14sea_turtle_week_2014.html.

If you know much about snook, it’s likely that most if not all your knowledge came from Ron Taylor or someone in his research outfit at FWC. They are the ones re- sponsible for the regulatory adjustments that have helped the snook population to recover from the cold weather disaster of January 2010.

It’s no surprise that Taylor is getting the American Fisheries Society’s William E. Ricker award for resource conservation.

Florida saltwater fishing-doers know him best for his snook work, but he’s also being recognized for his research on king mackerel, black drum, red drum, sword- fish and spotted seatrout.

He will receive the award next month in Quebec City, Canada.

Taylor joined the FWC in 1975 and started working on snook in ’82. Like Meylan, he also gets around — Costa Rica, Mexico and Australia. He also helped to organize the Pan American Forum for the Conservation of Snook.

New acting superintendent at Everglades

Everglades National Park is getting its second acting superintendent since the retirement of Dan Kimball. This one is Bob Krumenaker, presently the super of Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, on Lake Superior at the northern tip of Wisconsin.

Krumenaker, in the National Park Service for 37 years, has been in charge of Apostle Islands since 2002. At Everglades — and Dry Tortugas National Park as well — he will replace acting super Shawn Benge on Aug. 4. Benge will return to Atlanta and his job as deputy director of the National Park Service’s southern region.

Acting superintendents serve 120 days unless a permanent super is appointed sooner, said Everglades-Tortugas spokeswoman Linda Friar.

“The NPS goal is to have no more actings but to have the next superintendent follow Bob Krumenaker's time here,” she said.