2015 sea turtle season proving dangerous for nests, volunteers

New Florida freshwater fishing regulations available

It’s been a tough sea turtle nesting season on both coasts of Florida. A small army of cops is still after whoever ran an all-terrain vehicle through five nests on Anna Maria Island in the Bradenton-Sarasota area on June 27. In Lauderdale-by-the-Sea in mid-July, a volunteer nest protector showed a pistol to a nest-wrecker who slugged the volunteer, captured his gun and fired a bullet into his rear.

The shooter, Michael Q. McAuliffe, 38, was jailed for aggravated battery and other offenses with no credit for defending himself. The man he shot, Stanley Pannaman, 72, of Tamarac, apparently will be okay. The gun’s only a .32 caliber revolver.

Criminal charges also await the Anna Maria nestwrecker — not just for five turtle nests destroyed but as well for the killing of three black skimmer chicks. The turtle violations alone can be punished by a $5,000 fine and a 5-year prison sentence for each nest.

Investigators with the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service, state Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) and the municipal police of Holmes Beach and Bradenton Beach are looking for video surveillance evidence showing an ATV in the area of State Road 64 and Cortez Road. They’re also asking the general public for tips to Wildlife Alert by emailing Tip@MyFWC.com or calling 888-404-3922.

They are not suggesting threatening anyone with a gun.

The Lauderdale-by-the-Sea case indicates that can escalate a confrontation to dangerous heights.

According to news reports, Stanley Pannaman and Doug Young, who is president of the South Florida Audubon Society, were monitoring turtle nests near El Mar Drive when they saw McAuliffe get off a bench, address them in vulgar language, denounce turtles and protectors and vandalize the fence of wooden stakes and yellow barrier tape around a nest.

According to news reports, Pannaman flashed his pistol, the three men engaged in slugging and wrestling, Pannaman lost possession of the gun and was shot.

He told the Sun-Sentinel that it could have been worse, because he usually goes around with a powerful .357 magnum.

Richard Whitecloud, founder of Sea Turtle Oversight Protection, said he regularly hears of turtle nest protectors being harassed, but they are not expected to carry guns.

Shrimp catch down

Is the price of shrimp way up yet? If so, blame the extraordinary rain and calamitous floods it caused in Texas in May and June. The harm includes an apparent reduction of the western Gulf of Mexico’s shrimp population.

According to NOAA’s annual brown shrimp harvest forecast, the catch between now and next June will be 42.8 million pounds from Texas and Louisiana waters. That’s a lot of shrimp, but far below the 54-year average of 56.5 million pounds.

May was the wettest month ever recorded in Texas, with as much rain as the state had missed during the fouryear drought it ended.

The resulting floods flowed into estuaries where young fish grow, drastically reducing the salinity they need, and pushed them out into bays. NOAA scientists monitor them in the estuaries, so they can’t be sure if the shrimp died or merely wound up in other locations where they might have survived.

NOAA is going with the more doubtful outlook. The harvest forecast of 42.8 million pounds breaks down to 24.8 million pounds between the west side of the Mississippi River in Louisiana to the Texas border, and 18 million pounds on the Texas side.

NOAA said 68 percent of the total U.S. shrimp harvest comes from the Gulf, and most of that from the Texas-Louisiana range.

Gray triggerfish

The minimum keeper size of gray triggerfish in Florida state waters has been raised from 12 inches to 14 inches fork length, conforming to rules already in effect for federal waters. The regulation took effect on July 9.

There’s a daily bag limit of two triggerfish from Gulf waters, but no limit for Atlantic waters.

Fishing forecasts

It’s hard to imagine a better information resource for freshwater fishing-doers than Florida’s quarterly region-by-region fishing forecast.

The latest edition, now online, doesn’t quite take your bait and hand-feed it to the big ones, but it does give you a ton of info to help you do it yourself.

It includes a selection of “top spots” for all species.

We clicked on striped bass and were reminded that the Sunshine State’s version, the sunshine bass, inhabits the Osborne-Ida chain of Lakes, easily accessible from I-95 in Delray Beach.

That system of small lakes and waterways anchored by Osborne and Ida is the southern limit of the sunshine bass’s range. They are stocked there at Clarke, Pine and Catherine (little lakes) as well as in Osborne and Ida.

The same group of lakes is the northern range limit of the butterfly peacock, better but erroneously known as peacock bass. Lake Ida, a public park, has a good launching ramp that also gets you access to many miles of canals with often excellent fishing.

There’s a lot more in the forecast than what to expect of fishing in July, August and September in the state’s northwest, north central, northeast, southwest and south regions. Need to find accessibility to the disabled? That’s in there. A statewide atlas of lakes? Got it. There are even bathymetric maps and lake by lake water quality data.

Our favorite feature is the boat ramp locator, which plots ramps on a map. You can switch from street to satellite view and zoom down to get a better idea of details such as street access, dock/no-dock, paved/unpaved, parking areas, culverts and bridges.

Start at myfwc.com/fishing/freshwater/sites-forecast.

Freshwater regulations

The 2015-16 edition of Florida freshwater fishing regulations is out, in print and online at www.myfwc.com/fishing/freshwater/regulations. There are some special regulations by location in each region. For example in the 10-county South region there are special regulations for Palm Lake in St. Lucie County, Caloosa Park Lake and Lake Okeeheelee in Palm Beach County, the northernmost lake of Tropical Park in Miami-Dade and Heritage Park Lake in Broward.

Look for limitations on the use of gasoline motors, required release of largemouth bass and six-fish bag limits on channel catfish.