New super coming to Biscayne Park

Quick: There’s still time to comment on mutton snapper

Who says there’s no such thing as climate change? Not Margaret Goodro, a National Park Service superintendent who’s about to experience it for herself. Goodro is moving from Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in southern Alaska to Biscayne National Park in South Florida.

Goodro replaces Brian Carlstrom, who left Biscayne last November for a headquarters job in Washington. Since then, Biscayne has been led by interim supers. Goodro is due here in late October.

Although she grew up in Tacoma, Wash., where her family was in the commercial fishing and logging businesses, and she began her career in county and state parks up there, Goodro knows what hot weather feels like. She’s had land management jobs in the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“I have noticed that my wardrobe gets much smaller in the hotter climates,” she said in an interview with the Tacoma News Tribune.

With this latest transfer, her territory also gets much smaller. In Alaska, her Lake Clark bailiwick covered about 4 million acres including the Bristol Bay watershed where the signature fish are sockeye salmon.

Down here, she’ll be in charge of 173,000 acres, of which 95 percent is water over Biscayne Bay bottom and offshore reefs. She will be responsible for protecting a 10,500-acre offshore marine reserve, recently created and still controversial. There are endless water quality issues. No other national park is so near to so densely populated an area as Miami and its southern suburbs.

“Growing up in the Puget Sound, I love to be near water, so I am very excited about moving to this rare tropical park,” Goodro said.

Mutton snapper rules scheduled

New mutton snapper regulations are scheduled for enactment this month by FWC and the federal South Atlantic and Gulf Fishery Management Councils.

The federal public commentary period was closed on Aug. 19, but the Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) is encouraging continued input until its Sept. 8 meeting in St. Augustine. Commissioners will consider staff recommendations to raise the minimum keeper size for mutton snapper from 16 inches to 18 for both recreational and commercial catches.

The pending rule keeps the present daily bag limit of 10 snappers, but would limit muttons to three of the 10 fish. Some organized sport fishermen think that’s unnecessarily restrictive for the state of the fishery.

Dale Walker, president of the Tropical Anglers Club in Miami, said members support the higher minimum size limit, but they hope to convince commissioners that the bag limit for muttons can be five a day without adversely affecting the population.

They’ll also ask for a possession limit of a two-day snapper catch instead of one day. That would keep offshore fishermen legal when they return from long weekend voyages to the Bahamas and Dry Tortugas.

Walker said his group supports proposed spawning season closures at locations where snapper congregate for mass spawning, such as Western Dry Rocks near Key West.

Other changes affect commercial fishing for mutton snapper. The rule that now has a harvest limit of 10 fish per person per day in May and June would be replaced by an April-May-June limit of three muttons per day in Atlantic state waters. Another establishes a 500-pound commercial trip limit for the rest of the harvest season, July through March.

Progress possible on new Everglades facilities

Update on Everglades: The National Park’s latest effort to attract a concessionaire to create new overnight lodging and other visitor facilities at Flamingo worked, although it isn’t clear yet how well it worked.

As Waterfront Times reported in June, an attempt three years ago to replace the hurricane-wrecked facilities was a failure. There wasn’t much interest. The deadline to submit proposals was extended, but nobody responded with plans that met National Park Service criteria.

This year, NPS made the prospect more attractive by offering a fast-track repayment of construction costs, from $5,350,000 up. A July 13 deadline was established for proposals, but was extended to Aug. 16.

Bad again? Apparently good, said Justin Unger, who is Everglades’ deputy superintendent: “We had several questions from prospective offerors, and it is standard practice to give them a few weeks to modify their proposals once we post the answers.“

The questions were technical, concerning things like how the precast concrete modular cottages in the project have to be attached to their concrete pilings. Answer: by embedding steel plates in both the modules and pilings and welding them together, not merely nuts and bolts. It’s not the sort of thing a non-serious prospective concessionaire would ask.

“ I will take the fact that there were meaningful questions as a good sign for now,” Unger said.

The original facilities at Flamingo were flimsily built, but most of the cottages had been rehabilitated and were considered sturdy when Hurricane Wilma happened in 2005. The cottages were wrecked by the storm surge from Florida Bay. The new facilities will have to conform to the state building code.