Filed at February 18, 2010 under by Keys
Contact: Lee Schlesinger, 850-487-0554
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission FWC proposed draft rule amendments Thursday to provide more protection for bonefish, a premier saltwater game fish in Florida.”Bonefish are a tremendous Florida resource,” said FWC Chairman Rodney Barreto. “These proposed rules will strengthen our management approach to protect and preserve bonefish so that anglers can continue to enjoy fishing for this great Florida game fish.”The proposed rules would include all species of bonefish in the FWCs bonefish management rules to help ensure that all bonefish in Florida waters are protected, extend FWC bonefish regulations into adjacent federal waters to aid enforcement and enhance bonefish protection, and require that bonefish be landed in whole condition to help officers in the field identify bonefish and aid in enforcement of bag and size limits.
Since 1988, it has been illegal to commercially harvest and sell bonefish in Florida, and a daily recreational bag limit of one bonefish 18 inches or greater in fork length applies.However, there is a temporary harvest and possession prohibition on bonefish in Florida until April 1 as a precaution, because of possible impacts to fish populations that may have occurred from the recent prolonged cold weather in Florida. Anglers may still catch and release bonefish during the temporary closure, and the FWC encourages everyone to handle and release them carefully to help ensure their survival upon release.A final public hearing on these proposed bonefish rule amendments will take place during the FWCs April meeting in the Tallahassee area.
via FWC News – FWC proposes more protection for bonefish.
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Filed at February 15, 2010 under by Keys
Written by PP Rega
The unusually cold weather that struck Florida in January has killed at least 5 percent of West Indies manatees this year. That amounts to 280 in all.
What is the significance of this news?
* No more Manatee-ka-bobs
* McDonald’s can no longer sell “Big Manatee with Fries and a Coke.”
* Postponement of the Key West’s annual Manatee Look-a-Like contest.
* Manatee linguini is no longer on the menu in Tampa’s Cafe Roma restaurant.
* There’ll be fewer Manatees watching America Idol.
* The Manatee Olympic Association won’t be able to send its ski team to Vancouver
* Disneyland will have to cancel its Gay Manatee Convention
* The Miami violent crime rate will decrease due to fewer coke-head Manatees
* There’ll be fewer Manatees selling Girl Scout cookies in Fort Lauderdale
* There’ll be more room in the sea for Womanatees.
Printed from: http://www.thespoof.com/news/magazine/article_5889.htm
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Filed at February 10, 2010 under by Keys
By ROBERT SILK Free Press Staff
ISLAMORADA — In the late 1970s, Sam Wampler was tasked with finding a home base for a new Boy Scouts of America program that provided adventures on the high seas for scouts from around the country.
Wampler, at the time the camping director for the Boy Scouts’ Miami region, found the spot he was looking for in 1980 on the site of a rundown hotel at the southwest tip of Lower Matecumbe.
Two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand scouts later, Florida Sea Base has become a staple of the Boy Scouts of America and a key player in the economic life of Lower Matecumbe Key and surrounding islands.
“We are literally influencing families across this nation,” said Keith Douglass, the Sea Base facilities director.
Florida Sea Base won’t officially turn 30 until this summer. But on Monday the Lower Matecumbe institution was scheduled to hold its birthday party early to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America.
Wampler passed away seven years ago, but wife Sharon remembers that first year, when she guesses 1,000 to 2,000 scouts visited the base.
According to local lore, during the summer of 1980 Sea Base staff had to fend off patrons of the old Toll Gate Inn, who were unaware that the former brothel and seedy watering hole had been converted into a place that could safely be called, well, more wholesome.
Over time those Tollgate customers disappeared entirely and Sea Base flourished. New dormitories were built, as well as an administrative building and conference center. In 1982 the scouts acquired the 105-acre Munson Island off Big Pine Key. Then in 2001 the scouts opened the Brinton Environmental Center on Summerland Key.
All are used in the various Sea Base adventures programs, which include multi-day sails, dive training, fishing excursions and primitive camping on Munson.
According to Sea Base officials, today more than 10,000 scouts a year descend upon the Lower Matecumbe locale, which is one of only three High Adventure bases run by the Boy Scouts of America.
Douglass says all those people mean big dollars to the local community. The scouts often visit local attractions like Theater of the Sea and the Florida Keys History of Diving Museum. If their families come for a visit they stay at local lodges. And Sea Base does a lot of its buying locally.
“We spent over $30,000 in bait alone just last year and that’s all local,” Douglass said.
Meanwhile, Sharon Wampler says she can’t believe how big the Sea Base program has grown over the past 30 years.
“Sam is up there just laughing at the whole thing, happy about it,” she said.
rsilk@keysnews.com
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Filed at February 6, 2010 under by Keys
NOAA – 6 Feb 2010 10:00 EST
Outlook for the Atlantic, Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico…
Hurricane Whodat is predicted to make landfall on the South Florida coast in the vicinity of Miami on 7 Feb 2010 at approximately 2200Z (5:00 PM EST).
This extremely powerful hurricane is expected to produce damaging Shockey waves and Category 5 Brees. Reports from shipping indicate that this unstoppable storm has blown a huge flock of Cardinals all the way to Arizona, and that it has sunk a replica Viking longboat, the Brettigfarvren.
Predictive damage estimates are unavailable at this time, but they are expected to be significant. Livestock, in particular young horses, will be in severe danger of being decimated. All interests in and near the Miami area are advised to prepare for a storm surge of catastrophic proportions as Hurricane Whodat begins to arrive in approximately 2 days.
Hurricane Warnings extend from Key Largo North to Ft. Lauderdale. Hurricane Watch extends from Key West, through out the Florida Keys, to the Palm Beaches on the East Coast.
Residents of New Orleans, Louisiana and Indianapolis, Indiana should pay close attention to this EEE (Extremely Exciting Event).
Next advisory 07 Feb 2010 at 1500Z (10:00 AM EST).
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Filed at February 5, 2010 under by Keys
1. You have a power worm dangling from you rear view mirror because you think it makes a good air freshener.
2. You wedding party has to tie tin cans to the back of your boat.
3. You call your boat “sweetheart” and your wife “skeeter.”
4. Your local tackle shop has your credit card number on file.
5. You keep a flippin stick by your favorite chair to change the tv channels with.
6. You get 40 to life because your teenager asked you to buy a jet ski.
7. You name your black lab “Mercury” and your cat “Evinrude”.
8. Bass Pro Shop has a private line just for you.
9. You honeymooned in Islamorada – ALONE.
10. You have your name painted on a parking space at the launch ramp.
11. You have a photo of your 40 lb. grouper on your desk at work instead of your family.
12. You consider viennies and crackers a complete meal.
13. You think MEGABYTES means a great day fishing.
14. You send your kid off to the first day of school with his shoes tied in a polomar knot.
15. Your wife wears green lipstick so you’ll kiss her more.
16. You think there are four seasons – Pre-spawn, Spawn, Post spawn and Hunting.
17. Your $30,000 boat’s trailer need’s tires so you “borrow” the one’s off your trailer house.
18. Your wife tells you she is feeling “frisky” but you don’t know what she means until she explains she wants to spawn.
19. You trade your wife’s van for a smaller vehicle so your boat will fit in the garage.
20. Your kids know it’s Saturday – because the boat is gone.
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Filed at February 2, 2010 under by Keys
By ADAM LINHARDT Citizen Staff
Two Bay Point men were sentenced to a year in prison on charges that they conspired to poach lobster, a judge ruled Monday, closing the last chapter on two illegal lobster harvesting cases that snared eight people.
John Buckheim, 23, and Nick Demauro, 24, both apologized to federal Judge James Lawrence King, their friends, family and wildlife officers.
“I acknowledge and take full responsibility for what I did,” Buckheim said. “I was young and stupid and I’m not implying that I’m old or wise now, only that I’m heading in the right direction. … I’m sorry for this major mistake and you won’t find me in this position again.”
Demauro told the judge he had “taken everything for granted.”
Both men pleaded guilty in October to harvesting lobsters by diving on illegal artificial habitats, called casitas, primarily in the Content Keys area north of Big Pine Key, from July 2008 through October 2008, according to court documents.
The judge granted U.S. Attorney Thomas Watts-Fitzgerald’s request to delay their prison sentence 100 days so both men can continue their work removing as many as 600 casitas from Florida Keys waters. The judge ordered both to surrender to corrections officials on May 12.
The judge also allowed both men to resume legal commercial fishing immediately upon their release from prison, despite the prosecutor’s recommendation that both be prohibited during the two years of supervision that is to follow their release.
Miami defense attorneys Bruce Alter and Steven Potolsky urged the judge to consider the defendants’ ages, their clean criminal histories and their desire to make amends as mitigating factors at sentencing, but the prosecutor was unmoved, painting the men as astute fishermen who knew the risks involved.
“These were not youths who stumbled into this,” the prosecutor told the judge, describing taped conversations between the two men, and the hundreds of casitas they fished.
Buckheim and Demauro worked for David and Denise Dreifort of Cudjoe Key at one time. The latter were sentenced in July for spearheading a large lobster poaching ring that involved four other people, in a separate but related case. David Dreifort was sentenced to 2¬½ years in prison in July. His wife was sentenced to seven months in prison. Prosecutors found thousands of lobsters at one of their homes on Lookdown Lane last year.
Buckheim and Demauro began their own illegal operation after their stint with the Dreiforts, and they sold lobster to a Stock Island seafood company in 32 separate incidents for a total of $45,974, records say. The company has not been charged in the case, the prosecutor said.
Both men were warned by David Dreifort to cease their operation after he was indicted, but they continued, the prosecutor said. Federal agents began visual and electronic surveillance of Buckheim and Demauro during the larger investigation that involved the Dreiforts, reports say.
Both pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement in which prosecutors dropped two charges that could have added at least 10 years to their sentences.
alinhardt@keysnews.com
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Contact: Lee Schlesinger, 850-487-0554
