Casting an Undersea Safety Net

Out here, you can see nothing of the turbulence below. Ghost-like boats pass through the tropical heat mist. Otherwise, water and sky fuse into an empty horizon. Underneath, however, great oceans collide at this place, and America’s dreams for managing them too.

These waters off the Florida Keys mark the convergence of the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. They also mark the collision zone for age-old demands and New Age claims on the nation’s marine resources.

“This year may see the turning of the tide--the point when we can look back and say things began to change,” says Dan Basta, federal supervisor of the National Marine Sanctuaries.

What happens in Florida almost certainly will foreshadow government stewardship of coastal oceans from Cape Cod to the Channel Islands and beyond.

The idea is straightforward: Designate some areas of the continental shelf as wholly protected zones. No commercial fishing. No sport fishing. No spear guns. No shell collecting. No bottom dredging. No treasure hunting. No boat anchoring to tear up the fragile bottom.

In other words, small portions of America’s 12 National Marine Sanctuaries--the country’s underwater national parks--would actually be sanctuaries.

As envisioned, such havens will serve as nurseries for fish and other marine life. Brood stock will populate surrounding areas with bounty. These refuges will become protected benchmarks from which to measure the consequences of human pressures elsewhere. Both fishermen and conservationists will be served.

Were it so simple.

Billy D. Causey has devoted 17 years to the cause. As the superintendent of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, he is regarded through most of the Florida Keys today as the embodiment of the cause itself.

A jolly, jowly Texan, he splashes into these waters with the confidence of a seal. His log shows 20,000 hours underwater. That’s almost 2.25 years of his 56.

In a black wetsuit with his silver hair shimmering in bars of sunlight, Causey swims with the abandon of a seal too. He fins through the plankton-rich current, a sensation something like gliding through a light snowfall. He seeks the bottom, 55 feet below.

He is pointing. His arms sweep the scene like a symphony conductor reaching an allegro. Look. Look at this. And this. This too. Hurry, look over here.

It’s dizzying to follow. There are 35 species of hard coral on this pinnacle, 30 varieties of soft corals, 40 different sponges. Red corals beam as if they were plugged into a lighting system. Translucent purple sponges glow like frosted glass. Everywhere, creatures on the move: scowling, heavy-bellied groupers, spiny lobsters, tropical angelfish. A pair of seagoing amberjacks 3 feet long circle predatorily, their yellow eyes fixed as if they had never seen such a thing as a diver.

This site is called Texas Rock, a submerged bump on the coastal bank. The sandy islands known as the Dry Tortugas are 40 minutes away by boat--southernmost landfall in the continental states. Seventy-five miles to the northeast lays Key West, where the road and human congestion begin.

For a terrestrial analogy, you could think of visiting a remote, old-growth forest after spending weekends in a city park.

“This is the way things used to look,” Causey says, toweling off on the fantail of the sanctuary’s 53-foot research boat. “To me, this is the way it was when I came to the Keys in 1972. As the years went by, things degraded--but it doesn’t register until you come out here.”

If Causey has his way, this and 125 square miles of Tortugas Bank would be designated an ecological reserve sometime this autumn. To the south, an additional 60 square miles would be similarly protected.

Combined, the Tortugas would be the largest undersea preserve in America, and one of the biggest in the world. It would dwarf the existing patchwork of 23 near-shore preserves already marked out in the Keys sanctuary. America will join countries like Australia, New Zealand, Cuba, Kenya, the Bahamas and Mexico in setting aside part of their oceans as parks.

Size, though, is relative. Even with the proposed new reserve, only 4% to 5% of the total Keys sanctuary will be off-limits to harvest. Only 10% of the coral reef habitat will lay within the boundaries. In area, the no-take reserve will be just one-tenth the size of Miami’s Dade County; only one-third the area of Los Angeles.

Still, it’s not been an easy idea to sell.

Ironies Abound

Americans are accustomed to ironies from their government, particularly when it comes to conservation. Our national wildlife refuges are set aside as places to hunt wildlife. The Forest Service has long subsidized the clear-cutting of national forests. Rivers classified as “wild and scenic” gush straight from the power turbines of dams. Even by these standards, America’s underwater sanctuaries have been a parody of the word.

The idea of sanctuaries began in the 1970s and caught on in the 1980s. Coastal residents wanted protection against the spread of offshore oil drilling and the dangers of ship groundings. Congress answered the call. Sanctuaries were designated on both coasts and as far away as Hawaii and American Samoa.

You might say Congress was farsighted. It went beyond authorizing just oil-free zones and rerouting shipping lanes. Select areas, those with uniquely rich habitats or other important values, would be preserved forever. The ghost of Teddy Roosevelt had met Jacques Cousteau.

But Congress also compromised in classic fashion, including one of those “on the other hand” decrees. The sanctuaries had to honor local economies--i.e., the interests of fishermen and others who made their living from the coastal sea. Administration of the parks was not given to the Department of the Interior but to the most business-minded of Cabinet offices, the Commerce Department, and therein the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. This is the same agency whose fishery managers have long yielded to the will of commercial fishermen, even as they overfished one region after another.

In the end, conservationists got something they could call sanctuaries; yet the resource harvesters, fishermen, urchin dredgers, lobstermen, spear-fishermen and shell collectors carried on. Here and there, small areas were set aside as research zones or protected areas. But, by and large, the only significant change came from new lines on a map.

“All along this was a feel-good program by people who wanted to do well,” says outspoken sanctuary director Basta, who took control of the 12 undersea parks this year. “But it has been underfunded and over-promised forever.”

A Visit Undersea

Turn down the lights and roll a videotape.

You find yourself underwater off Southern California for a glimpse of the reality of sanctuaries. Research biologist Milton Love of UC Santa Barbara’s Marine Science Institute collected these images in a submersible.

First, a barren scene. Only a scattered few of the glowering rockfish for which the California coast once was celebrated. All are pint-sized. Then a second scene. Rockfish flourish, and big ones too.

The desolate first images came from the waters of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, where sport and commercial fishing is permitted and is popular. And the second part of the tape? It was filmed under a nearby Santa Barbara Channel oil platform, where fishing is not permitted.

From the fish’s point of view, which location would be regarded as sanctuary?

The public, it seems, sees things much like the fish do. The conservationist organization SeaWeb recently polled Americans. A majority said that bottom-dredging tropical fish collecting and commercial fishing are not compatible with marine sanctuaries.

“The very practices that are going on now with virtually no restriction are the very things that people don’t want there. They’re the reason people favor protections,” says SeaWeb’s research manager Lisa Dropkin.

Now, President Clinton’s desire for a legacy as a preservationist has infused the marine sanctuary program with new money, energy and resolve to win local consensus for no-take reserves. In just one year, the agency’s budget has nearly doubled, from $14 million to $26 million. And $10 million more is proposed for 2001.

As Basta frequently points out, this budget for “the final defense of the marine resources of this country” is still less than the cost of an F-18 fighter. But at least he can add: “We’re getting serious.”

In addition to the Keys, three other marine sanctuaries are pursuing the same long process: the Channel Islands, Gray’s Reef off the coast of Georgia and Stellwagen Bank at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay. Next in line are California’s three other sanctuaries: Monterey Bay and the twin San Francisco offshore sites of the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank.

Success in these places will likely hinge on the outcome of events during the next few months in the Florida Keys. Not only has the process been underway longest in this 1,700-island chain, the regional stakes are higher and the pitfalls deeper. In these waters, the nexus of conflict flourishes as nowhere else. Almost everyone in the Keys has a firsthand claim to the ocean--either through harvesting of resources, or tourism or development. Owing to its self-image as a haven for loners, the Keys are also easily divided between those who are permanently suspicious of federal action and those who dread the future without it.

Scientists Point to Overfishing

Scientists say this: Of seven grouper species in the Florida Keys sanctuary, five are overfished. Seven of 13 snapper species are overfished. Each season, every spiny lobster that reaches legal size in Florida is taken, all except for a few who hole up in small protected patches of reef. The queen conch, of conch-fritters fame, has been so exploited that it is seldom seen. Only belatedly has it been given protection against harvesting.

In this, the Keys are hardly different from other sanctuaries. An independent audit by the congressionally chartered National Academy of Public Administration concluded that one or more stocks of fish are “very low” in all the sanctuaries as a result of overfishing.

Even in the relatively unspoiled Dry Tortugas, the government reports that the average grouper now weighs only 9 pounds, compared with 22.5 pounds in the past.

Billy Causey has seen both sides of the preservation argument. A onetime oil rig diver in the Gulf of Mexico, he moved to Florida in 1969 and established a business with his wife collecting tropical fish for the aquarium trade. That put them on the side of fishermen and others who believed they were the rightful stewards of the sea.

“We had very high ethics, I want to say. When we raped the reef, we did it gently,” he says, laughing. “Like many people at the time, we believed the ocean was an endless source of bounty.”

Causey opposed the first plan to create a small sanctuary around a reef known as Looe Key in the Middle Keys. It was one of his favorite dive spots. Like other locals, he felt a park designation would draw national attention. The small reef area would be overrun by hordes of strangers.

Within a decade, though, Causey had become a convert--even though, yes, Looe Key is now a magnet that draws divers from throughout the Eastern Seaboard. “I realized there was potential for good management in an area where a complex social and economic system depended on a complex marine environment.”

In 1983, he became the manager of Looe Key sanctuary. He remained superintendent as the sanctuary expanded until it now stretches in a vast crescent from the waters south of Miami all the way out past the Dry Tortugas--3,674 square miles of coastal ocean.

Among marine conservationists, Causey holds a place of esteem for his determination to forge an alliance between preservationists and fishermen.

The idea is not so improbable as it sounds. Attitudes have changed in Florida. The environmentalist crusade to restore the Everglades is aimed, in part, at curtailing pollution in coastal fishing waters. In 1994, voters approved an amendment to the state constitution outlawing gill net fishing. Signs posted at marinas in the Keys now champion catch-and-release trophy fishing of inedible species. Commercial fishermen have supported closures for some species in some spawning areas.

Still, Causey’s first attempt to establish a large no-take preserve ran into a wall of opposition. Opponents in the Keys, financed by the anti-government “wise use” movement, campaigned against federal sanctuary protections and triumphed in a 1996 nonbinding referendum, 54% to 46%.

The sanctuary went back to the drawing boards. Under a new proposal, commercial fishermen, lobstermen, charter boat captains and others were given an expanded voice in the deliberations about no-take areas. A series of hearings on the proposal this summer will lead to a final environmental impact report and then federal regulations next year.

Causey says he is now counting on support from a majority of leaders in the fishing industry throughout the process.

“I think Billy is being optimistic,” says Andy Griffiths, a Keys charter boat captain. For a year, Griffiths served on a citizens advisory group charged with trying to plot out acceptable boundaries for a no-take refuge.

In the end, Griffiths supported the pending proposal, but only grudgingly and with knowledge that fishermen colleagues were flatly opposed. He remains dubious whether refuges will actually serve as a replenishment zone for game fish. “We felt that if we didn’t do something now,” he says, “then we’d face a much larger regime later.”

Karl Wickstrom, who speaks for recreational fishermen as publisher of the magazine Florida Sportsman, bitterly opposes the refuges. “We share a goal with environmentalists: We want to see high abundance. Why lock us out? You can accomplish these same goals with strict limits, even closures if necessary--all the coastal waters should be treated like parks. And you can fish in national parks.”

Fishery experts say the evidence is convincing: No-take zones produce more and larger fish, and these creatures venture out and make for better fishing in nearby waters. A recent study by the National Marine Fisheries Service at Cape Canaveral found that game fish were 2.5 times more abundant there than elsewhere. Some species were more than 10 times as numerous. The reason? These waters have been a de-facto “no-take” zone since 1962 to keep intruders away from the Kennedy Space Center.

“It’s a no-brainer,” says Steven L. Miller, director of the National Undersea Research Center in Key Largo.

Wickstrom and other fishermen say that coastal fishing is on the upswing not just in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral but everywhere in Florida as a result of the 1994 ban on commercial gill netting and a tightening of coastal limits by state fisheries managers.

Making a Splash

After a rest, Billy Causey again splashes into the choppy water of Tortugas Bank.

Fifty-two feet below is a verdant garden of corals and fish. For a third dive of the day, he chooses the shallow wreck of an old French windjammer, the Avanti, one of innumerable ships that foundered in these treacherous waters during these last 500 years to be homesteaded by coral, spiny lobsters, nurse sharks, giant jewfish and droves of other life forms.

The underwater is rejuvenating. Divers frequently say it. Only by escaping telephones and the other noises of life does one realize, again, the arresting bliss of quiet. With weightlessness, one is momentarily but unequivocally released from the worldly burdens above. Passing through the membrane of its surface, the ocean is no longer an abstraction. The greater part of the planet reveals space and scale enough to moor a whole fleet of hopes.

“Incredible! I don’t get nearly enough of this anymore!” Causey enthuses as he hoists himself back into the boat.

The sea is the single reason to visit, or live, in the Florida Keys--at least when compared to all the reasons not to: the fearful congestion on the two-lane hopscotch of bridges that connect the islands, the inflated costs, the long seasonal threat of hurricanes and the difficulty of escaping them.

Three million or so people visited here last year and made tourism a $1.2-billion industry. The Keys are the only place in the continental U.S. where a highway brings you within wading distance of tropical reefs. Scuba divers and snorkelers now outnumber recreational fishermen, and boaters are as dense as shorebirds. The most heavily dived locales in the world are within short boat-rides of the Keys.

Causey feels the weight of not only preserving the coastal sea but the economy built around it. He frequently walks the aisles of the Winn-Dixie supermarket, giving locals a chance to pull him aside and speak their minds. “What I’m hearing in my Winn-Dixie polls is that people want something done. They want a place where the fish will be in the future.”

But even if the local tide of opinion runs his way, Causey is not so fortunate when it comes to larger pressures on sanctuary waters. Rising ocean temperatures, coastal pollution and disease have beaten down fragile coral reefs, as have countless thousands of boat anchors and the clumsy kicks of snorkelers and divers.

Battery acid that flushes into a storm drain in Chicago or fertilizer runoff from Kansas ultimately wash over the Keys. Forty percent of America is drained through the Mississippi, whose waters then ride the currents of the Gulf of Mexico down the coast of Florida.

Against such vast forces, the concept of designated refuges can seem less a revolutionary thought than a diminutive one.

But as Causey envisions it, this is only a start. The planned no-take reserves off the Dry Tortugas will become living advertisements for the need for even more protected areas along the coast. In March, the Clinton administration announced that it wants to place 20% of America’s reefs in reserves by 2010--a plan that presumably would double the size of no-take zones in the Florida Keys.

“I believe strongly that it’s not too late for coral reefs. There’s going to be a lot of research when we get this reserve,” Causey says, his hand sweeping the horizon to mark the site. “During that time I’m confident that support will fill in behind this, so there will be a lot more enthusiasm for this idea in the future.”

*

Times researcher Anna M. Virtue assisted with this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Sanctuaries or Not?Since 1972, the federal government has designated 12 marine sanctuaries in fragile coastal waters. But regulations still allowed dredging and fishing. Now, a proposed no-take zone off the tip of Florida would go much further in protecting habitats. Other sanctuaries see the Florida proposal as a test case for expanding no-take zones to their areas.

Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration