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March 9, 2016

Community working group meeting

Fern Forest Nature Center

Coconut Creek FL

Staff:

Joanna Walczak, Francisco Pagan, Meghan Balling, Ana Zangroniz, Mollie Sinnott, Kristi Kerrigan, David Cox, Daron Willison, Kelly Montenero, Ann Weaver, Heidi Stiller

Attendees:

Andrea Graves, Jena McNeal, Dana Wusinich-Mendez, Greg Braun, Kathy Fitzpatrick, David Anderson, Mike Brescher, Nikole Ordway, Tom Warnke, Jim Moir, Erin McDevitt, Pamela Hopkins, Alex Sommers, Angela Smith, Dan Clark, Edwin Harp, Jane Fawcett, Lisa Micelli, Jeff Torode, Jennifer Peterson, Jim Bohnsack, Jim Mathie, Ken Banks, Kevin Muench, Mason Smith, Melodee Smith, Scott Scheckman, Stephanie Voris, Sara Thanner, Thomas Archer, John Coker, Joana Figueinedo, Mike Beach, Tony Grogan, Kara Muzia, Stephanie Clark, Kim Porter, John Hopkins, Rob Baron, Kurtis Gregg, James Byrne, Paul Davis, Brian Walker, Dave Gilliam, Irene Arpayoglou, Ed Titchenor, Kellie Ralston, Carl Liederman, Ed Pence, Frank Gidus, Chuck Collins, Bill Carey, Gary Jennings, Aledander Linares, Imelda Degraw

ACTION ITEMS AND GROUP DECISIONS WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED IN YELLOW

9:00 – Welcome, Review of Agenda and Introductions

Francisco P: Welcome and thank you for joining us, since your work in November we have taken the 68 RMAs and presented them to the community at 12 different meetings. With that I will kick off the start of the meeting. Welcome on behalf of CRCP staff and myself.

Heidi S: good morning, we will do intros for new faces, I am Heidi one of the facilitators with Ann Weaver. Our role is to keep us on time and stick to ground rules. We will review ground rules and talk about objectives, and do a round of introductions. One of our big objectives of today is to get feedback from community meetings and begin to review them. We will also have conversations about how we want to review that data. Planning team has worked really hard putting together an agenda which will get us started, but we will have a dialog about what we want to do moving forward. Also in April. At all of our meetings we take public comment but now we have expanded that because of increased public awareness to an hour, though we may not need all of that time. First we will ask hosts of community meetings to share perspectives on those events. We will get an overview of volume of RMA comment. We are thinking then we will spend time in small groups working on RMAs that don’t have a ton of comments. Then we will come report out to the whole group, which we have done before but we will check in with you. Public comment is 3:15 then tomorrow we want to talk about objectives for April and if we want to extend. Final logistical things, phones on silent, reminder not to eat outside, we also have to be out of here by 5 pm sharp. I will step now through group norms. Both the North and South CWGs originally came up with rules and we combined them when we started to meet together, --- go

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through ground rules. I want to check in and see if we are comfortable with November meeting minutes.

Jim B: Just please put page numbers on minutes. Heidi S: Will do, hearing no objections we will approve November minutes. For those that want to give

public comment, make sure that you do sign up. Everyone will get 3 minutes, if we get more than 20 people we may as for more concision. As we have new members today we will go around the room and introduce ourselves. Thank you all for being here. *group goes around with short introductions

9:20 - Recent or Upcoming Events

Heidi S: can community meeting hosts please begin by talking about, highlights from your perspective from the community meetings you attended.

Jane F: I hosted daytime in Broward and attended evening Broward and North Miami Beach. I was impressed with how DEP organized it. I could walk right in and understand what was going on. Excellent lecture by Francisco. People who attended were longtime residents, new people to the area, the younger generation, marine science students, everyone was very positive, the dot activity was really helpful gaining feedback. Evening meeting standing room only. Laurens presentation on zoning framework was positive with comments from city commissioner.

Alex S: I hosted evening meeting in ft. Lauderdale. I was impressed with sincerity of people. A teacher had brought a whole class, it was refreshing to see a whole group of young people who were interested and motivated to get something out of that session, it was not a rowdy groups, lot of concerned people there – watersports and fishing. I spoke to people with interesting questions. This showed it was a good system people were taking it sincerely and making a genuine effort to participate.

Tom W: I hosted a Northern meeting and it was at Delray Beach library. We had a room full of people I was impressed that people who attended were open minded. Nobody against whole process. Everyone had comments and questions. Once they delved in, they found out they really have spent a lot of time, process has been put together in a new way and is driven by the people, us CWGs who come from diverse backgrounds. I made it clear as host that the CWG members are driving process, nobody in Tallahassee, and not any agency. Everyone agreed that the reefs are in trouble and that the current management is not enough. Ocean access is important I was happy to have an article in coastal magazine that just came out “ocean ownership” people there seemed to be on the same page.

Jim Moir: I hosted second meeting in martin and it was well done. The sincerity comment strikes home with me. The process is correctly transparent. People there had special interests and concerns but the way the meetings broke down and let people go to areas that concerned them specifically was well done. The larger issues were of time and repetition which will work out. Martin County has a tradition of being engaged, a room full of usual suspects. I think they were pleased that this wasn’t a preconceived outcome that they were able to interact with the process moving forwards. The issues of lake O discharge often overwhelms all other issues. It was good to show people how these problems connect. I was very happy and appreciated the opportunity.

Heidi S: thanks for sharing thoughts and experiences. Now general recent/upcoming events Dan C: here one of the big issues that came up was the siltation from Broward county beach project,

we are currently doing segment two about 750,000 cubic yard truck hawl they will now stop for turtle season and pick up next year. We will go up but I’m sure we will see burial. Stay tuned as we get some big blows. People were concerned with clarity of water and status of the corals. I made some vials which I will bring tomorrow. Port everglades – there are little groups who look like they will get funded.

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I’m concerned we haven’t learned our lesson. I called Roy at NOAA to ask for studies that we can send to Washington. Roy said he was personally unaware of studies done. Rachel is working on suing them to make sure that this doesn’t happen again in Port everglades. Chief of ACOE sent out report saying lessons learned should be applied but they say there are no lessons. US House HB406 – share bill – this bill Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was on there raising hell in key Biscayne and no take there. There is a rider on the bill saying that the fed can’t do anything about no take adjacent to any state or territory unless the government signs off. That’s it for now.

Jim B: one of our advisory people Margaret Miller came back from Australia where she was working on assisted growth of corals – using animal husbandry to breed for resistance to disease. Idea is to try to breed them and install them out here.

Mason S: fish news – mutton snapper and hogfish – joint public workshops with south Atlantic council to get public input – mutton snapper = healthy pop. Not overfished. Quota has to be reduced. Working together with council to get consistency between state and federal law. Hogfish = restock – SEFCRI and keys is overfished status, will be rebuilt over ten year plan. Barracuda workshops in Februaru – recently did bag limits for barracuda. Prior to November 1 there was no bag limit. Now there is 2 fish per person 6 fish per vessel. However there are no size limits, so we are getting public input on that now. I don’t know the direction because input is mixed. Upcoming meetings - commission meeting in Jupiter we will be discussing mutton snapper. South Atlantic council having a meeting on this right now discussing hogfish and mutton snapper.

Dan C: barracuda just for recreational? What about commercial? Mason S: no that includes commercial Dan C: and hogfish Mason: haven’t gotten there yet Tom W: town of palm beach having a meeting on the 18th for the public to discuss the pros and cons of

groins removing the groins that are there and maybe those that have been there since the 1920’s . Also discussing if there should be a breakwater to protect the beach that has been eroded because of the Estee Lauder seawall.

o Dan C: I worked on that Estee Lauder thing out there – part of the problem is that the pier also works like a groin – shouldn’t be there just so they can have their golf course there.

Heidi S: I forgot to mention decision rules – so let’s review those. Formal votes = 75% to pass. Procedural vote = 62% to pass.

9:50 - Feedback from the Meetings and Online Comments

Francisco P: thanks again, I’m here to give a preview for all the feedback that we received through the community meetings and online. First started with 292 RMAs went thought process of editing, technical review – to 191 – then to 82 – then to 68 that we took to community meetings. As a reminder, this is what the group asked the community – comment card on screen. At the meetings we interacted with 512 community members – as a result we received 1941 comments total. We also had the dot exercise, here you see a summary of the education results, this only shows the relative support, and it’s a tool you can use for the prioritization later in April. We also received letters from different organizations and people. This is an overview of what you will see today. You will see the pie charts showing the distribution of answers for the first 3 questions, as well as all the comments. The colors will be green for support and red for oppose. We received a large number of feedback, although some received very many, while most received less than ten. These are the high interest RMAs. Those that

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received a high number of feedback and interest from the community. I will show you a quick overview of some of the results of these 9 before you go back to focus groups. This shows you how varied the response on the high interest RMAs are.

o Dana WM: you mentioned that there were almost 2000 comments received nationwide. At some point will we be able to see the breakdown of where the comments came from? the point of the community meetings was to get opinions from local reef users. What percent of the comments came from people who have never been here?

o Francisco P: Most info on comment cards is voluntary, although we have info from 4 county’s, we can give you a proportion of not local

o Jeff T: We are concerned with the comments that came from online. If they showed up you can consider them as local. I’d like to know what organizations and campaigns they are coming from, national campaigns etc.

o Daron W: I can tell you right now that about 300 comments reported that they were from outside the four county region, but some were from other counties nearby in Florida, not necessarily many from all over the country.

o Angela S: outside the state is still important because they are still reef users. I think it’s important that we included that. Because tourism is still factored in.

o Jim Moir: is there a breakdown which comment was multiple commenters, and which were on single RMAs.

o Francisco P: all the comments will be available to you and you will have to apply to the place you see fit. CWGs will be able to decide how best to use the information. Thanks to FOFR and Kind bars for providing snacks today and at CMS

10:20 - BREAK

10:35 - Additional Feedback Received by Agencies

Joanna W: Hi everyone, so we wanted feedback and we got feedback, good job – thank you to everyone who came out and supported community meetings, thanks to everyone who were conduits of information to and from your stakeholder groups. This is exactly what was intended and I thank you for your efforts. So today I will introduce some people who can help explain some feedback that was directed straight to Tallahassee. I asked that Tallahassee gurus from DEP and FWC come and help advise the process because I think it is important that we have their perspective from the leadership in Tallahassee especially as we look at the feedback and how best to incorporate it. I’d like to introduce Kevin Claridge the director of the FCO. Melissa Recks is the section leader of FWC who was a TAC adviser back when OFR was MOIP. They are here to give us an overview of the information they received directly to Tallahassee

Kevin C: I’ve met many of you, and lived in West Palm for a number of years where I met some of you before. We received additional comments directly to the agencies. But first I want to say thanks for all the hours everyone has put into this process. Francisco provided a good overview of the comments we have seen we’ve been soliciting comments for a while now. Some of the reactions we’ve received have been very positive on the RMAs and some of the comments we’ve received about the website and how to provide comments from an organizational membership. We’ve also gotten feedback from petitions where a couple thousand people have commented on specific RMAs. We will look at and include those in the statistics, you will have a chance to look at those in the feedback packages. Melissa will go into

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more details about specific RMAs but I wanted to give you an overview of the things that I’ve been hearing:

1. Incorporate feedback and concerns from stakeholders who have not been involved so far or who have been underrepresented in the process.

Jeff T: do we know why they were absent? To my knowledge, DEP has done a fantastic job of trying to get all stakeholder groups. You can’t get them to come to the table but when they jump in late it skews the process.

Melissa R: we are hearing from the public that was represented who feel like they were underrepresented. Just realize there are folks out there who feel like they were underrepresented throughout the process. People feel their voices weren’t heard and it’s not necessarily every fisherman’s fault

Alex S: it’s not that people don’t want to show up. it’s how things go. Chambers of commerce for instance are interested in the results but don’t want to be involved. They are reactive. As a result you’re only going to hear from groups like that once they have a problem with it. You’re going to get feedback from those groups and they aren’t going to take the response that they didn’t participate because they don’t participate but they want to have some input at some point.

Kevin: we will look at the options as a group for how to manage some of the comments that we’ve received.

2. The 2nd generalization we’ve received is to defer those contentious RMAs and focus directly on those RMAs with broad community support which are more likely to be implemented by agencies. CWG must communicates any science used to develop these RMAs.

Kathy F: didn’t we do that? Jane F: We have it on the website, links to every single scientific article we used, and

we have scientists in the room. Angela S: top scientists in S Florida probably the US were involved. Melissa: not to say that the science wasn’t there – but maybe it wasn’t easily digestible. Jane F: I want to apologize if I sound contentious I’m not, I just want to respond

accordingly to clear this up. I would also like to request the CWGs that have worked so hard to respond to these concerns. If we are a transparent process I’d like to know what specific groups went to this. It was always our intention to look at public feedback and if an RMA isn’t popular the CWGs will be able to address that.

Ann W: just so you all know, we have a lot of time to learn about what they heard up in Tallahassee, then there will be time for Q&A

Jeff T: FWC asked me because I know a lot of fishermen, they said they didn’t want to participate because OFR has no regulatory teeth. So you know, it has been that all along. I’ve called and driven some here before to make sure they would make it.

Melissa R: Jane, you don’t need to apologize for your opinions or concerns. Its human nature to see how the process pans out and then respond. We know the reasons why they aren’t here. There have been communication failures, we are working on it. I’m certainly sensitive to the fact that you all have spent hours and years of your time on that.

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Greg B: I feel that 2 years worth of meetings that we went too were science and education. Are the educational presentations given to us available to us on the OFR site?

Meghan B: yes, every single piece of information you have gotten is available online. 3. RMAs should focus on coral and factors such as water quality that have agreed upon impacts

on coral health rather than fishing. Any fishing RMAs should have direct outlined benefits to corals.

Melissa R: you will have an opportunity to consider how to move forward with the contentious RMAs. So I want to give you some overview of those concerns. So you can think about this over tonight and tomorrow.

o E&O – agencies didn’t receive any negative comments but should be careful of existing funding and not pull from existing priorities.

o FDBOU – FWC has a history of maintaining healthy fisheries N-59: existing management tools are more effective at limiting gear biologically. There

is no evidence that this gear is an issue. Diving industry said that a prohibition would have a substantial impact on their economic sales.

S-8 Coral gardens: veiled attempt to create no take zone by different means. They are opposed to no take even if it is a part of coral gardens

S-65 World heritage / National Marine Sanctuary: recognize there are positive outcomes to these designations, but worried that there would be negative impacts to inviting federal government to manage and say that FWC does a better job. These designations will create another layer of bureaucracy. Oppositions to any restriction to access.

S-97 lobster bag limit: FWC does a great job managing lobster fishery. Those regulations were created to provide an incentive to push fishers up north of the keys.

o LBSP - strong support for these RMAs. Felt that addressing water quality issues would be the most effective way to manage reefs. I (Melissa) believe there is a lot of support for those which can make a huge difference in coral health

o LE – N-7 exam for fishing license discounts: like the idea for fishers to have the ability to

educate themselves. Concerned that ultimately that would result in less funding for FWC law enforcement, research etc.

Jeff T: that one was coupled with another RMA that increased the cost of fishing licenses in general.

Melissa R: right, but remember these will all be considered individually, and remember licensing is decided by the legislature so FWC doesn’t have a choice.

o MICCI – N-113: Eliminate Lake Worth port expansion – marine industry stakeholders felt that this would eliminate dredging activities that are necessary to maintain safety.

o N-146 MPA zoning framework: source of the strongest opposition. Majority of stakeholders are not opposed to no take zones especially during certain times of the year. Or considering special species that are considered valuable economically or ecologically. The people we heard from are opposed to using MPAs as a first choice management action. Some of the areas proposed are among the region’s most popular fishing sites, and would alienate those who care the most about the health of the reefs. It will create economic hardship in coastal communities. No

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fishing zones should be used sparingly. Should be accompanied by research and monitoring programs, so that their effectiveness can be monitored.

o OFR process should focus on corals themselves and the health of the reefs. Any fisheries management RMAs should focus on the health of the reef tract.

o Additions of these fisheries RMAs made the volume of RMAs difficult to review and prioritize. Kathy F: Who are these people – what is this group? Melissa R: CCA, ASA (KFF), Spearfishing community (not organization but organized response), WPB

MIA, things directed to us from the governor’s office Kathy F: I would ask you to keep in mind that you’ve been contacted by some specific groups. But we

have been doing this the whole time, I’ve received comments from legislators in support. Melissa R: any time I got comments I directed them to OFR website. Jim B: thank you for doing this. All those groups except one are outside this region, we have 1/3 rd of the

states pop in the states coast, 47,000 people. Are there are acknowledgements that the fishing atmosphere is different here? We have 14 times the fishing effort here than the rest of the state. So average for the state doesn’t work here.

Melissa R: stakeholders felt that there were agencies in place that felt like they were doing a good job. Joanna F: comments are to not focus on fishing, but on coral – are the people who commented also

saying that there is no problem with dredging? Because they said water quality, but I’m wondering if it’s the same people saying two things. Want to dredge, and to fish.

Melissa R: dredging concerns were from marine industries, not necessary specific to fishing. I didn’t hear those concerns from ASA, and CCA.

Jane F: I’d like to know specifically who went to the governors meetings. All OFR meetings are recorded and all information online.

Melissa R: if the governor’s office gets a correspondence that they feel is more appropriately addressed by an agency, they give it to them. So I receive it on his behalf. An email or letter which was redirected on behalf of the governor. I am not aware of a meeting where the governor himself was included in the process.

Dan C: the fishing industries always say FWC is doing a great job managing fish. What I am seeing is that FWC is not managing the habitat well. We have had a holocaust of habitat. Each time we go out I see 100 new freshly dead corals. I hate to see the whole take and no take thing kill management. We aren’t going to have the fish without the habitat. We are losing that habitat faster than ever before. And FWC is not doing a good job managing it. We are soon not going to have fish to argue over. Some dredging people would be quite happy to see the fishing industry kill the dredging process.

Melissa R: it is a valid point that FWC does not historically do a lot to manage habitat. – It is not within our regulatory ability. A lot of that is DEP. But we recognize that we have a roll and that we have to marry the process between managing the fish and the habitat they depend on. They are concerned (the fishermen) they are pressuring us. We have groups that are focused on that.

Dan C: if they had come to these meetings, perhaps that would have helped throughout this whole process

Tom W: there were a few comments that people request more research. From the beginning we have been based on research already been done. We could have asked for more research on everything. It can go either way, we want people to know that more studies is not the part of our process we are focused on action. I’ve heard over and over people who are conflating the expansion of the PB inlet with normal dredging to keep it open. People say it must continue to keep it open. But confusing that

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with proposed expansion of the entire inlet is a mistake. The RMA doesn’t have anything to do with routine maintenance of the inlet

Kevin C: I didn’t receive any comments on research. It seemed that the feeling was that people wanted action. I think we have come a long way on habitat I would be happy to have a longer conversation.

Jeff T: I consider the reef as an ecosystem, fish and habitat. They are clearly interconnected. I hear they want to try no take as a last resort, haven’t we been doing that for the past ten years? The history of bag and slot limits keep going down. Aren’t we at almost the last stage here? If it were perfect none of us would be here.

Melissa R: to clarify both FWC and stakeholders believe that it should be a last resort and the commission doesn’t think we are at last stage

Dana WM: I am concerned with the idea of setting aside contentious actions. Every RMA will be contentious with some audience (maybe not E&O). Alex made a good point that a lot of groups haven’t come to the table yet. Probably because they see this as a community process which will be taken up later by agencies. The list of interest groups you mentioned earlier and just one interest group, if we defer all RMAs that are contentious we will end up with not much. Are we being asked to react to these comments in a different way than we are being asked to review the others? I’m sure these people also submitted written comment as well. So it’s confusing why these comments are being called out specifically

Angela S: it seems like these are the comments that you are behind Melissa R: I am not here to advance FWC or DEPs perspective. I think the expectation was to give you

the presentation for the comments we received. They wanted to make sure that these outside comments also got to your consideration.

Kevin C: I just want to make sure that everyone understands how we received these and shown that these are priorities to act on. For the different policy perspectives that Mellissa and I have, it might be helpful in an advisory role.

Ken B: public comment usually comes from an extreme view either way. Late 90s there was a not take proposal off Broward county. Jim went to a ton of public meeting sand was abused by fishermen. If you walked out of those meetings and looked at the comments we got they were all very negative. So at the time we happened to be doing a socioeconomic study of recreational users of south Florida. The questions 1) do you support the concept of no take 2) do you support the concept of no take in your neighbors backyard 3) in your own. Every one supported no take. This was not a bias sample, this was surveyed at marinas, docs, etc. Keep your mind open and don’t kill it because of public comment.

Kevin C: the comments and discussions we have had have been very constructive. Angela S: part of the agreement of OFR was that we wouldn’t consider any outside petitions etc. the

odds that we as a group are going to accept petitions from the fishing lobbyists is very low because we didn’t try to get petitions from NGOs etc.

Dan C: did you actually have a meeting, who gave you guidance to come down here and give this presentation?

Kevin C: we did have in person meetings with some of the groups that Melissa brought up. I had a learning curve to find out what was going on here.

Melissa R: we were encouraged/directed by agency leadership to recognize that this is an important process, something we need to be involved in. My agency leadership thought that I was an appropriate person to come down.

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Joanna W: it was a natural process, there were meetings, they had these meetings in person and I felt it would be best if they came and explained it themselves.

Jim Mathie: if we didn’t want to take public comments into consideration than we shouldn’t have spent the last few months collecting information. I get it that there are extremes, there are groups that say they have the right to kill everything they want to kill. The extreme left says not to touch anything. The reality of a political process – we have to vote 75% in support. It’s the whole bell curve, you’ve got the extreme right and left and we will be somewhere in the middle and I advocate for that. But let’s not ignore the public comments that we’ve spent a couple months gathering.

Ann W: we need to start to talk about, in order to ensure that we have the best possible chance of moving RMAs into action that we come up with a plan moving forward that ensures that FWC and DEP can support us. We need to talk about our options for moving forward.

Jeff T: you mentioned on N-7 each RMA stand on their own. Each agency has to make a decision on all of these RMAs what’s the harm in allowing whatever we have so far move forward. Why kill it. FWC will kill it later anyways

Melissa R: these groups wanted to give you the reasons why they are passionate about certain things to think through. I think there’s a lot of recognitions with people I talk to within the fishing industry that this has been a long process and a lot of good stuff coming out of it. But the worry is that the contentious RMAs will overshadow the really good stuff. They felt like they could really get behind some of them if they figured out a better way to deal with those that haven’t gained community support for whatever reason.

Jeff T: thank god we didn’t think like that in the Florida Keys, or the Dry Tortugas wouldn’t have happened

Kathy F: are you saying they would not support the ones they find acceptable if they all move forward Melissa R: I don’t think that that is the intent, we just know from experience of things that people feel

strongly negative about Kathy F: the easy ones clearly move quicker because they are easy, but that doesn’t mean that you

don’t try for the hard ones too. We have to have support, we can’t do anything without support. Andrea G: I want to comment about place based – I appreciate you both coming because without

agency support and guidance that one won’t move forward. Our idea was to find a way to better manage SEFCRI region. When it was presented, there were places chosen. I think it was positive that the comments you shared are things we could agree with. I think it would help us to find out how we can move that particular RMA forward in a way that would make people feel more comfortable and letting them know that there will be a larger process

Dana WM: on N-146, the pie chart that Francisco showed us actually had a pretty split vote support and oppose. My personal experience at community meetings (of which I attended 4 out of 12) people came in the door with a lot of misinformation, especially about N-146 . I had many positive experiences talking to fishermen who came in shaking with anger and then when we walked through the actual RMA. I heard again and again “I could live with that” or “we need that”.

Ann W: we are going to spend most of April talking about these RMAs that got lots of comments both positive and negative. Now I want to move forward with what we will do.

Melissa R: I didn’t intent to imply that the feedback we heard was overwhelmingly negative reaction. I just wanted to relay the information from the people who contacted us. And that they had similar concerns. I would also say from my fisheries management experience, I would caution about pie charts,

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it gives a good pulse, but I don’t think that any of us really believe that those represent the people of SE FL those, represent people who engaged. I would look more at specific comments people gave.

Scott S: was it clear to the people who spoke to you that these are recommendations, do they understand the process? And is there anything that we can do to help educate them?

Kevin C: there is a learning curve, the charter, the representation. Melissa R: the people who came to us at the beginning now definitely understand the process. They are

trying to figure out now how best to interact with the process. Greg B: I’m glad we had this conversation – I want to make sure that the people who came to you are

aware that these RMAs are already the result of the input of the people who represent their constituencies. They may feel that a person representing them wasn’t here. There has been give and take and those are the ones who were strong enough to move forward. I’m appreciative that the people who are here today because if they aren’t here it will indicate that they feel they have more political sway than actual meaningful interaction.

Kathy F: you said earlier that DEP might not be able to support us moving forward? What is that about? Ann W: I shouldn’t have said that I apologize.

12:05 – Vote on How to Review RMA Comments

Francisco P: Copies of everything we received will be there at your focus area tables for your review today. You will have both comments and letters to read and consider. This is a lot of hard work, and we understand that. This all takes time, we have explored different options for you to think over and discuss how to move forward. The process that you started 2 years ago can by satisfactorily resolved.

Angela S: what’s is the filming going on and who are you guys? Tony Grogan: owner of spearboard.com fisherman – filming and recording the meeting which I am

entitled to do according to Florida statute. Francisco P: so here are some options for you all to consider moving forward: 1) refine RMAs that are in

need of minor tweaking in March and April 2) consider options for handling RMAs that are of high interest. Some may be archived because they have high negative feedback and cannot be tied back to coral ecosystem health. 3) can also decide to extend the process if necessary.

Alex S: there is something missing here – I think the ultimate responsibility of this group is to pursue to public interest. Determining public interest is far more important than special interest. Everyone owns public land and what’s offshore. Individuals and groups and other users of that are using public resources, and have their own special interest in doing so. We all own the fish and the reefs. I think what is best for the public interest needs to be considered. If it’s not in the public interest, that’s the dominating reason for why anything should be archived. Ultimately the question is, is this in the public interest.

Pam H: I’m curious about why we aren’t prioritizing RMAs according to which ones make the biggest difference. We are trying to protect the reefs.

Heidi S: in the fall you all did prioritize according to benefits as well as cost and feasibility. That lens of what is the highest benefit is what is being discussed.

Francisco P: all the points I’m presenting in these few slides are options, I know you still haven’t looked at all the feedback, this is just in preparations, so that you can brainstorm and discuss what the best way to incorporate that feedback is.

Jane F: RMAs all had to pass a quality checklist and then be reviewed by experts in the area. So I take exception with the “cannot clearly be tied back to ecosystem benefit” we’ve already proven there’s a

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direct link to the ecosystem. Some things got through that I didn’t vote for, some things that I wanted got archived, but 75% of this group agreed with that 68 that are here now.

Jim B: we need to consider public comment – our criteria is that it had to be beneficial, acceptable cost, and feasible. We need to go through our process to find out what’s most effective, and feasible.

Jeff T: I would caution the group to look at comments and make sure they aren’t based off misinformation because I’ve seen a lot of it

Tom W: need to consider short and long term feasibility Jim Moir: Some of the more drastic RMAs may become more significantly important later. Mason S: ecosystem benefit – it was mentioned that everything had to pass a quality check – I thought

that the quality check was more object verb – was there really a scientific comparison. But the SEFCRI stuff was where the scientific feedback was given. My question is, this option to decide whether or not it is clearly tied back to ecosystem benefit, if that was chosen, would that bring in another panel.

Meghan B: the quality check was – verb, object, and statement of benefit. Had to demonstrate some direct benefit to the reef ecosystem.

Joanna W: the feedback we received is based on the perception of the information presented they may not have gone back to the tier 1 and 2. Maybe this is as simple as combining the statement and the goal statement.

Heidi S: because we have 59 RMAs that don’t have tons of comments, we would like to get working on those. We know we have 9 with a lot of comment. We would like to give you time to mull these questions over before you make a decision about how you plan to deal with those RMAs. So we wanted to present that option to you all and see if that makes sense and if you think that works.

Erin M: not as FWC just as me – if the ultimate goal of this group is really implementation – I think it’s great to have the input of these other groups. We could take the time and work through these sit down with these groups and make a compromise that everyone can work with now. Or we can wait and finish OFR and then go through that process after. Either way, they will be at the table to talk during implementation

Kathy F: I agree with Erin, I think we will probably have to do both. I agree with the concept of getting the easy ones off the table. If we move forward, we have to say there’s been a public process and that we’ve tried to work out. The reality of the long term goal is that it’s something we really need to deal with.

Tom W: the comment about input from the public – that option has been available at all our meetings over the years and online. I want everyone to know that those comments are available online and we get reminders to review them. Today we will have access to the most recent comments. The end game, I want people here today to relay back to their constituents that all this information is online. And it’s not just the process that we want to take to Tallahassee, it’s a process that we want to help the reefs.

Jeff T: Erin made a good point would you rather do it here of FWC. Here is more palatable than trying to go without them to FWC. FWC already feels that MPAs are a last resort, the fishing industry knows that they don’t have to come to the table because the end result is going to FWC until the mindset of the commission changes or we get a new governor it’s not going to change. If we do bring them into the process now, are they going to have an open mind or are they going to stick to their positions.

Jenny P: a lot of these RMAs are going to take work now and a lot of effort. We’ve got an excellent team of individuals and we should take the opportunity to take these and work on them, get them in the best shape we can before we roll them out. Maybe there’s good suggestions on tweaking the

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boundaries or changing our approach to make them more bearable. We have a huge bibliography available. There’s been a lot of science in this process and we need to get people to understand that.

Dana WM: I’m worried that people are starting to sound like it is the whole package, each of these are distinct RMAs which will have their own path forward whether governmental or not. I don’t want some specific RMAs that a some of groups are against to make it so that we have to sacrifice everything else.

Erin M: perception is reality – and they may make their opinions based on those RMAs they really oppose

Dana WM: I hope that the groups that SEFCRI will be working with in implementation will understand that this is about doing what’s best for the ecosystem – that everything doesn’t get discredited because of these 2 RMAs.

Kathy F: what’s our time schedule for deciding this Heidi S: big picture, the plan was to consider all public input and finalize RMAs and prioritization and be

done at the end of the April meeting. Now we are talking about the volume we’ve received, and if we think we can stay on schedule. We drafted, for this meeting to work on the easy RMAs. Then tomorrow we will come back and discuss how to best handle those RMAs that got a lot of comment. We wanted to give you the night to mull that over.

Kathy F: yes, and if we start working on the easy ones we will understand the timeline for the rest. Greg B: I think there is validity on both of these angles. I’m visualizing a spreadsheet with all RMAs

showing how easy it is. It would give us and the public a good rationale for why we are focusing on the ones we are.

Jenny P: can we have the prioritization as we look at these. Maybe of those easy ones, we can do the high benefit ones first.

Angela s: have we already agreed on extending the process? Because if we are ending in April, we should work on the contentious one first.

Scott S: curious to hear about the idea to defer the contentious ones. If there are some that will slow us down, what is the process to defer and how to we bring in the stakeholders in so that this process doesn’t get clogged again.

Heidi S: that for you all to decide Kathy F: maybe this afternoon we can just jump in there and see what we are working with? Ann W: Heidi and I looked at all the processes for things we’ve done before. We decided maybe the

best way to go through them is to go through those easiest RMAs this afternoon and tomorrow morning and save the high comment ones for next time. Tomorrow afternoon we would report out changes we made and the group as a whole agrees or doesn’t. Finalize them for March. Then in April we could work with those 9, and prioritize them as a group together. Those who aren’t voting members today, please go sit in the audience section. Vote: is it okay to work on the 58 in March, and the other ten in April. If you are abstaining from the vote please stand: 0 we have 28 present. How many agree with that plan? 25 votes. We will work on the 59 non-contentious RMAs this month in small groups, try to get through as many as possible today.

Jim B: question how exactly will we be responding to these comments? Francisco P: you will break out into focus area groups, review and revise the RMAs and you can respond

to each comment directly. Your facilitator will help with this and you can make changes to the RMA at your discretion.

Kathy F: can there be consideration given before we end these 2 days. I think we need to think about some way to contact or interaction with the powerful groups that are not in agreement with us.

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Erin M: I have a suggestions – maybe the audience should introduce themselves because many representatives from the concerned stakeholder groups are here.

Melissa R: please do that after lunch because many just left. Dana WM: looks like tomorrow we will be voting on the process forward and if it changed. I don’t know

if in deciding to push the contentious to April we are going to discuss different members? Jim Mathie: that’s the way this whole process has been – sometimes you’re not there for a meeting,

and votes happen where you aren’t there. Hopefully giving people an extra month, these ten that we need to sort out, will give us more time for folks to get their input.

Dana WM: no my question is will we have to consider new members? Joanna W: Part of the feedback that we gave to those in Tallahassee – based on people who feel that

they have been underrepresented – should we allow them to fill seats that are open for example – CCA does have a seat on the working group but the representative was not able to visit. It is technically their right to assign an alternate to that seat. We understand that without context and background this is a challenge.

Kathy F: can we vote again at the end of the day? About if we want to table those nine in April? Andrea G: middle option was to extend the OFR process, is there a thought of how to do that or would

we have to come up with it? It seems overwhelming to come up with it. The only thing I can think of would be to work in side groups.

Heidi S: yes you all would have to come up with how you wanted to go about that. Sara T: is there anything in the charter about forfeiting your seat due to lack of involvement?

3:30 Public Comment

Heidi S: each person gets 3 minutes, please introduce yourself and leave comments until the end Jim Bohnsack: I’m here as a private citizen and member of CWG. Over 6000 hours we’ve put into this.

I’d like to recognize some people, by offering you the blue marble. Carl Sagan – cherish the place we call home. Astronaut getting further and further away from earth, finally turning into something no bigger than a blue marble. This is what the earth looks like when you’re out in space. The blue marble movement: your voice, your planet, is in your hands. One to Scott Sheckman for FOFR. Brian Walker for the maps and going way beyond what they were asked to do. Heidi and Ann for all their work. You are encouraged to give them out to people who do good for the planet. Last person Joanna Walczak. CWG members you put your neck out and you’re here for a cause. Thank you for all the work you’re doing.

Chuck Collins: Thanks to our facilitators you all do a great job. Background on myself. My first career was with Walt Disney on the dive club in 1974, truly enjoyed that. I’ve seen changes in coral reefs and impacts we’ve had on them. We are all here to accomplish same thing. I then worked with DEP in the keys before the sanctuary and during implementation of sanctuary. Arrested a lot of people for selling coral, worked on groundings, promoted to regional director in 2004. Oversaw all of SF for FWC. I saw effects of water and everglades water into Lake O and IRL. We’ve totally screwed up this system. I am now executive director of MIA PBC. All these organizations are good and do good work and want the same thing. I want to stress that we are all special interest groups. It’s good to be special interests. Listen to these comments carefully they are important. My concern is for you all to focus on things that government isn’t already focusing on. Focus on coral reefs, let go of the fisheries because those are being regulated by FWC. Focus on direct impacts of coral, things that aren’t being addressed. With the brain power and knowledge in here you can come up with great solutions. A lot of it boils down to

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money and getting it done the right way. Be focused and work with agencies, listen to them because they make much better partners than adversaries.

Kelly Ralston: thank you for letting me come I’m the Florida fisheries policy director for the American sport fishing association, a trade association, our members are companies and organizations and not individuals. We represent thousands of individuals. Our industry generates over 8.6 billion dollars annually and supports over 80,000 jobs to anglers. The success for the sport fishing industry is directly depends on the health of our natural resources and we support those efforts. The tagline for keep Florida fishing is clean water, abundant fisheries and access to both. We appreciate your efforts here You may not know that anglers are great conservationists and generate 40 million dollars each year to support conservation efforts. Our fisheries are in good shape, FWC monitors and conduct independent abundancy studies of fisheries. They are also poised to respond rapidly should regulatory adjustments become necessary. No species managed by the state is overfished with the exception of hogfish which is currently being addressed. The issue is not fishing but rather water quality. We support your recommendations in these areas and encourage you to focus your efforts there. We appreciate the extensive time and effort that has gone into OFR. However we have specific concerns about the lack of fishing voices. Over 2100 signatures and organized letters have come in from our association which was not involved in the numbers you see in the feedback summaries. We are concerned about the disregard to FWCs input and are alarmed to see no FWC representative at FDOU. If your goal is to see these recommendations implemented we suggest you listen to this input. there are proven methods of achieving abundant and healthy fisheries without restricting access.

Tony Grogan: I am the owner of spearboard.com largest website for spearfishing and diving. I was asked to be on the group, but I am a working person, and your meetings are during the day. If they were evening meetings, people like me could attend. I asked for FWC records on consumptive fishing. It is not a big growth like others like Jim have said. The growth in fishing licenses, lobster permits. The analysis shows that since 2002 we were 9% of the total licenses in FL. Recently it has been as low as 6%. In terms of total numbers, this is only 100,000 or so across the entire state. I am trying to analyze the data to find out exactly how many lobster permits and fishing licenses are in the area that you guys are interested in. it looks like about 3000 in the Palm Beach area. This is an area that is fundamental to understand what the fishing effort has been. Before you make recommendations in those two areas, you really should find those numbers. Some people said what about the science. I think the science you’re using is flawed. It’s all volunteer work, there are certain points, protect aggregations for goliath groupers, common snook, grey snapper, goliath groupers are already protected, you don’t need an MPA to do that.

Ed Pence: diver underwater photographer interested in what’s going on – donate time to Tony Grogan. Tony Grogan: Do no-take preserves benefit corals? Though the preserves benefit fish, there was no

evidence that it helped corals. So where there is already effective fisheries management the closing of areas to all fishing would generate reductions in overall catches similar to the areas that are closed. So if you implement no-take zones, you will only reduce no-take zones and I know some MPA thinking was based on things that TNC put forth, and some things in the island that really aren’t relevant because they aren’t well managed. Those are poorly managed fisheries, FWC does a fantastic job managing these fisheries. How many fish are really overfished? There’s only one right now. Like the barracudas limitations people realize there is a need to protect that. So the process in place is fine we don’t need another layer of federal bureaucracy. Reefs where marine reserves cannot be implemented, seasonal

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closures, bag limits and size limits, can work. These other tools that FWC or SAC use, those seem to work.

Jane F: I will speak to you as a citizen, I have been diving in this area for 45 years, I was taught by my parents for a very long time to always respect and protect oceanic diversity. every time we are diving, we see corals dying. I think our local coral reefs are a treasure. I don’t see the barracudas that used to be lined up. We don’t see diadema, the clean conch, less and less tropical fish. I am not an agency person, or a scientist, I am a diver and I see corals dying at a distressing rate. I was distressed to see the 300 year old corals and pillar corals decimated. I do a lot of diving in Lauderdale by the sea the disease there was atrocious. I’m not saying that we have all the answers but we definitely need to do something. I think we need to do anything that we can, find some middle ground where we can support one another. I hope that we see a definite change in our local coral treasures. We need to do something

Kara Musia: I’ve been diving here 10 years, martin county resident. I’ve seen differences on the reefs that I used to dive on and they are now gone. I do advocate for the MPAs I’ve seen firsthand how they can be effective. Like Jeff said earlier we need to think of the ocean as a whole ecosystem. Protecting with and MPA will likely allow for water quality issues to be addressed as well. in martin county we have huge issues with lake O discharge, if that water was flowing into an MPA maybe we would have a greater ability to do something about it.

Kurtis G: I am a contract employee with NOAA fisheries service, here speaking as a private citizen. I think it would be beneficial to share some of the science and data that were used to get the RMAs. Reef fish management on the federal level has a very broad scope. There has been very little work done here in SEFL, but there are 2 studies that were done focusing on this area. One was funded as a LAS in 2011 jerry Ault and Eric Franklin did an assessment of fisheries dependent data landings data from charter, head boat and commercial fisheries. They documented a long term decline, a decrease in landings in the commercial sector. Head boats landings declined as well as the number of trips they went on. Recreational fishing – numbers of fished stayed pretty constant but size of the fish got smaller. These are some things that tip us off to challenges with the reef fish populations. A couple recommendations from that assessment suggested that a spatial management approach would be appropriate to offset some of these challenges. The other thing was to do a fishery independent baseline assessment. Done in 2012 with funding from FDEP CRCP to get the thing moving. And NOAA funding study design, in partnership with local county governments. All groups put together, vessels, divers, and time. What we found out there swimming around are a ½ inch smaller than size limit. That’s not a function of water quality, that’s a function of extraction. Hogfish distribution has been truncated at the size limit. There are still some larger but they are a lot fewer than the rest of the curve indicates than should be there. When people criticize this process and say there wasn’t science or that the science wasn’t done here, that’s incorrect.

Kim porter: local diver and environmentalist – here to talk about beach nourishment. We’ve watched our beaches get nourished and watched the sand reach out to the hard bottom seeing our reefs get diseases as a result. I’m here today to ask you to find a happy medium that is going to protect our buildings and serve our reefs. Our reef is a treasure that we can’t just let bury under tons of sand. It belongs to our future generations, today we are doing a lot of harm to our corals. I have rescued corals and do GPS tracking maps and I document sick and diseased corals, I volunteer a lot of my time underwater with my camera to document the process that’s going on. Today we have a major beach nourishment that’s going on, dumping tons of sand on our beaches this sand will get onto our reef, and

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I’ll be there with my camera to document it. There’s nothing we can do to stop this nourishment that’s going on now, but hopefully next time there’s nourishment on the agenda, we can stop and say hey last time we did this we killed everything. So let’s not do this again. Right now we have stuff happening because there is a lack of data about where the sand goes once we nourish the beaches. We will educate people this time. We ask for you to find another way to make all parties happy.

Dan Clark: regarding the science. I’m no scientist I’m a diver, been diving here since the mid 70’s so about 40 years. As far as the science, FWC is not managing things fine. I don’t remember the last time we saw a doormat hogfish. We used to see them all the time especially out on the wrecks. Barracuda, FWC finally stepping in but I’m afraid this is a reactive thing, it wasn’t until they noticed that these species were gone. Other species like parrotfish people are targeting now because they no longer have other fish. The goliaths we did something about because there’s a real push to open goliath grouper fishery back up. You can wipe out a whole generation in one swoop out there. In the keys, you say there fisheries aren’t better even though there’s no take. But a lot of things have gone on in the last 20 years in the keys. Water quality problems, climate change, diseases, there are a number of things getting worse which make it hard to judge impact of no take. I believe there is good science to document. But there needs to be better fisheries management. They seem to be unable to protect habitat. There is a huge disease outbreak, and you know what FWC did? They bought a freezer to put coral samples in. they aren’t analyzing them. Is FWC doing a good job? Yes, on somethings yes perhaps, but we can do better. To come in here and bash the science I’m afraid the whole thing about take and no take right now we have no management on these reefs. I’ve seen one side played against the other before. We need a management plan, without it, special interest, not just fishing but port dredging etc. they just wiped out half the bay in Miami with port of Miami dredge and want to do it again in port everglades. Even with management in not sure we can save it. I met a fishermen in Palm Beach he told me he has people call him who want to go reef fishing. But he won’t take them reef fishing because they won’t catch anything they won’t be happy.

Frank Schmidt: local captain and scuba instructor for 25 years, vice chair and I want to congratulate everyone in the room. You are making a dent. I have been to about 3 fishing clubs and spearfishing clubs and I was preceded by something about this. Allowed me to have nice conversations about thank goodness someone is doing something. At spearfishing club you do hear about N-59 the nice kickback is about a change that came out. As far as divers are concerned, limit their take per day to two or three fish per day. The advantage is that divers are selective, and they will be more selective when they know they can only take 2 out. When you hit mutton and hogfish spawns you take two, not 5 or more.

Lisa Micelli: I am here to speak about our corals. I’ve lived here in ft. Lauderdale for 46 years. The corals are dying, the fish are disappearing. So I came up with my company stoked on salt to help bring awareness to what our Florida reefs need and bring together volunteers. Our corals are in need of our awareness. I got my daughter certified last year and was so excited to show her staghorn etc. but all there was disease, and plastic bags. I watch divers spearing corals right in front of me. We aren’t against each other, we play in the water you play above the water. We see fish disappearing, we see the corals. Its money and tourism, people come here to fish, to dive, and to soak in our beautiful sunny ocean. There’s beach nourishment going on so our whole first reef is covered with sand. Something needs to be done to give us these areas so that we can bring the coral life back. Because without healthy corals you won’t have lobsters, schools of fish. It is important for the beach cleanups. It is hard to do these cleanups because towns want permits, look what we get for just 2 hours of cleaning up. There is more help and protection we need to strengthen the penalties for violations. I am going to

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continue this year, and if you buy an SOS tee shirt you’re going to purchase our buckets our garbage pails.

4:15: Process Discussion Continued

Ann W: now that you all have seen the amount of comment and the way we have it organized, do we want to talk about approaching some of these tomorrow, rather than pushing them off to April. Agenda for tomorrow, we have 1:50 to continue looking at RMAs in your focus areas. Then we will discuss process after April. Then we will begin to vet RMAs that have comment incorporated with the larger group. We could begin looking at those with lots of comments

Dan C: we did pretty well, I think we could finish in an hour in our group. Meghan: we got through 5 we would do 3 tomorrow. I don’t know that we can organize 900 comments

before tomorrow Jim B: you can just give us a sample. Ann W: okay so tomorrow we can start to look at those bigger RMAs. There were lots of comments, so

should we do that as a large group or small group? The three that we don’t have organized data for is N-59, N-146, and S-97. So we could have an hour to finish small groups and then have as much time as is left over to dive into those with more comment. If you want to do that please stand up, the alternative is to fine tune and get those moving: 25 vote yes. So we will continue to work on as many RMAs as we can get through tomorrow.

Dana WM: can you clarify what the actual voting is? Ann W: just for accepting changes that the small groups have made. Heidi S: let’s hear from the tables of how they are doing Jane F: education and outreach is done Mollie S: LE has 5 left Ann W: tomorrow morning those of you who have completely finished and reviewed letters, sit with

another group. When all groups have finished we will start voting on accepting changes to RMAs. Dana WM: I think the outstanding question is the 3 that FDOU has that received a lot of comments is

that for our group or the whole group to tackle. Ann W: the whole room will at some point but if you want to you can start. Dana WM: we have 8 that are not high comment and 3 that are high. Tomorrow we have to finish 3

that are not and 3 that are high comment Ann W: so we will have to be flexible tomorrow – when you come in you will continue to review RMAs

with low comments, then the letters, then if there are still other tables working join them. Then once all tables are done we will either take votes on RMA verbiage changes or we will start to talk about the high comment RMAs. At 10:45 there will be an hour of public comment at 11:45 lunch

Heidi S: I think the question for the group – all the high comment RMAs except N-146 are assigned to a focus area, so do they take a first run at those or do we talk about all 9 of them as a full group.

Joanna F: there may be groups without many questions so maybe we can just join them and help? Melissa R: I thought that earlier today there would be a vote with how to deal with the high comment

RMAs and now it sounds like you’re doing it now Heidi S: it seems that we have made enough progress that we might be able to get to it tomorrow. Kathy F: trying to figure out time management for the group, it sounds like there will be one or two

groups that need more time. Heidi S: so two options – do it in small group first then large group or just straight to large group.

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Scott S: now that we have seen some of these comments- are they very similar comments where we can see them in chunks or can anyone speak to that

Daron W: we didn’t have enough time with our staff to go through those hundreds of comments. It came down to the hard task of trying to bin them. It became an issue with the binning because many of the comments are off topic.

Scott S: so how would we look at them if they aren’t organized Daron W: you would have to do the same process of looking at each one but that this time they would

not be organized. Dan C: because there are so many comments – many of them could be form comments that we could

group together. Ann W: maybe we will have the groups who finish early begin binning them Daron W: well some of them are copy pasted and of course you can bin those together, but you can

imagine that for the paragraphs that people wrote that they are really hard to categorize. Tom W: I think out of fairness we should deal with each comment separately even if they are identical. Ann W: yes they will be read and if they are duplicated it will be noted how many of the same

comment there were Kathy: the first thing that we need to do is pull all the off topic ones out. Daron W: one at a time is unfortunately the only way to give each comment the thought that they

need. The only RMAs that we didn’t create that report for are the 3 at the top. Ann W: so those three we can’t talk about tomorrow Daron W: well really we can it just won’t be organized as well. Dana WM: one of the public comments earlier was asking why we don’t have FWC at FDOU, it was a

good question, so can we have Mason at our table tomorrow. Mason S: fine with me Mollie S: just letting you know that leaves our table with only two people. Ann W: so when other tables finish help LE.

March 10, 2016

Community working group meeting

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Fern Forest Nature Center

Coconut Creek FL

Staff:

Joanna Walczak, Francisco Pagan, Meghan Balling, Mollie Sinnott, Kristi Kerrigan, David Cox, Daron Willison, Ann Weaver, Heidi Stiller

Attendees:

Andrea Graves, April Price, Jena McNeal, Dana Wusinich-Mendez, Greg Braun, Kathy Fitzpatrick, Nikole Ordway, Tom Warnke, Jim Moir, Dan Clark, Edwin Harp, Jane Fawcett, Lisa Micelli, Jeff Torode, Jennifer Peterson, Jim Bohnsack, Jim Mathie, Ken Banks, Mason Smith, Melodee Smith, Scott Scheckman, Sara Thanner, Thomas Archer, John Coker, Joana Figueinedo, Mike Beach, Tony Grogan, Kara Muzia, Stephanie Clark, Kim Porter, John Hopkins, Rob Baron, Kurtis Gregg, James Byrne, Paul Davis, Brian Walker, Dave Gilliam, Irene Arpayoglou, Ed Titchenor, Kellie Ralston, Carl Liederman, Ed Pence, Frank Gidus

ACTION ITEMS AND GROUP DECISIONS WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED IN YELLOW

9:00 Welcome Back

Ann W: thank you all for coming back, as you all know yesterday we voted to change the agenda a little bit. Start with intros and review then back to small groups working on RMA comments. If you have finished take time to look and respond to letters. If you are don’t with that please sit with other groups. FDOU is working on some of the ones that have lots of comments so you could also move there. We will have public comment then have 1 group report out on the comments and how the group reacted and any subsequent changes to RMAs. Once the changes to RMAs have been explained we will ask questions, then vote to accept changes or not. If not accept changes it goes back to original RMA. Then there will be a talk about future direction of OFR. We will have a list of the options you all mentioned and have time to discuss other options you have. We will vote on that. Then discuss high comment RMAs. We don’t know how much time we will have for that. There were something like 1900 comments that came in, the last comments came in on the 4th, and today is the 10th. There was also a weekend in there and DEP staff was able to compile 65 of 68 of those RMAs but couldn’t get to all of them. If we do get to those it just means that they will not be nicely packaged like you have seen.

Jim B: we need to have some discussion before April. Those are too big to leave off until then Ann W: okay we will give it our best shot Heidi S: during our OFR direction discussion we can talk about that. You are having that discussion a

little bit in the letters, and we can pull up the spreadsheet and look around it. Jane F: I second Jim’s concern. We also need to discuss potential new people that may be added to the

group. I’d like to know when we will have a vote, because someone can’t be here this morning but will come to vote this afternoon.

Ann W: okay that will be this afternoon. DEP and FWC want to give you a brief RMA feedback overview on the feedback that they got so I’ll turn it to Francisco

9:15 - RMA Feedback Overview

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Francisco P: I want to point out the differences between the comment card you have seen yesterday and all the extraordinary comments we received. The pie charts only show the comments online and in hand writing. But remember we received feedback in letters from private citizens and organizations. It is also important to see the petitions that we have received. From ASA, KAF, FRA. Total, almost 2700 people signed petitions referring to certain RMAs. Which you can see listed here. We created a tool to organize this by RMA to be able to see which RMAs were called out. All your coordinators have these at the tables. All the RMAs listed here are of high interest. This feedback package was with you yesterday and today and are part of the feedback you need to review. Thank you for your effort

Kevin C: DEPs coastal office. This is the opportunity that we discussed yesterday to listen to the stakeholder groups. We wanted to make sure we shared the numbers so you all get a big picture view to be considered. I want to make sure you have the right numbers for your consideration. We want to make sure that we have the right folks – appropriate representation at the table. There has been some confusion who can sit/return. So as we look to dig into more contentious RMAs it’s important to make sure we have good representation at the table. We will have that conversation later.

Melissa R: we and Mason specifically made an effort to reach out to the fishing effort. We didn’t get to all of them. They are still really interested in this and some of them didn’t know they were still allowed to show up. These people originally had seats and still do. They are still interested even though they haven’t been involved recently. We were interested to engage those people, not new people who haven’t been a part at all. We will work with you all to figure out how to get everyone up to speed. Those people who haven’t been showing up have missed information. But I’d also like for you guys to think about how you may have missed the information that they were mean to bring to the table. We are talking about this because we will have time between now and April and if those people want to come back they do have that right. Think about that when you discuss the meaning full RMAs . We would like to see more fishermen in the room, not because we are trying to sway the process, we have a lot of respect for the work that you’ve done and we want the community to respect it too. So if we can get the fishing industry back at the table we think there would be better chance that this is accepted. We aren’t trying to sweep in from tally and tell you what to do, we want to push for the right representation.

Nikole O: in the beginning I wasn’t able to show up and I’m a dive representative I was constantly bombarded with emails saying that if I didn’t show up I would be replaced and I was always copied on emails keeping me up on what was going on.

Melissa R: the people we talked to do say they still get emails they did know it was going on. But they thought they had found someone else sitting in their seat. They didn’t understand that they could have come back and participated.

Sara T: I take offense to the comment that the community is not behind it. This is a CWG and the people here are the most passionate, we don’t have the loud voices and financial dollars to back it. I don’t want the fishing community to overwhelm the community voice that is present.

Melissa R: I didn’t mean to suggest you don’t have community support. I live in a political world and I would comment that I suggest you be wary of the political world. I’m not saying the fishing community has more value, but they do have value and they are politically powerful so let’s see if we can engage them now. And get that support to get this process as successful as possible.

Jeff T: when everyone came in we had alternates too. If they couldn’t make it why couldn’t they send their alternate? I’m not buying that. In a perfect world we could say you didn’t follow the rules so you’re out. But we all know that if we don’t include them they are going to squash the process. I don’t

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think it should always be representatives of these big political alliances. They don’t speak for the people. Not a figurehead from a big political organization.

Jane F: second what Jeff said. I am happy to welcome fish people back, I’ve been to 20 meetings, I don’t get paid to come. It sounds like an excuse to me, and if they come how long to we want for them. Are they coming in April. In the last hour they are swooping in and that to me doesn’t fit well to the.

Kevin C: maybe there’s a piece of the process that can be added in to try to get them here Jane F: any OFR person that filled out an App. They are still welcome back even if they haven’t been

here for a year. But they need to get here and get involved. Let’s just get it done. I’m not voting to extend the process back after 2 years to wait for fishing folks to come

Tom W: I’d like to know how many people are here in this category, 2 or 5. We’ve got a quorum here already. If those people thought that they had already been replaces. They are assuming that that happened without notifying them. Which is a huge stretch. Every one of those people still get every notice and ask for every meeting. How can we reach out to make sure they know more than we already are? The way that’s phrased is important they should know that there has always been a place for them at the table. It’s hard to get those people up to speed and if they can’t do that themselves then it’s difficult for us to provide all of that. They are welcome and ill shake their hand and thank them.

Joanna W: we are in, if the general consensus is that we want to get these people back at the table. Credit to Meghan, and if we can get FWC to help we will try our best.

Melissa R: we will try our best to help with that as well Meghan B: to answer your question there are 4 fishing seats open. There are inconsistent private

business seats open. Kathy F: if were going to try to fill the seats we shouldn’t just focus on fishing let’s try to get everyone

back. Dan C: this is not a new process this has been going on for years. Some of us have been doing this

process for ten years. This isn’t new, it’s been a long process and it’s really frustrating that we are here 12 years later and the fishing industry comes in a throws a wrench in. and we don’t have enough time to get our act together. There’s not enough reef left.

Nikole O: there’s tons of people in this room who fish and it has been represented. Everyone here uses the resource.

Jim B: my job is to promote fishing. I think our fishing has been thrown under the bridge because of ignorance and stupidity. When they come in instead of saying they just don’t like it I’d like to ask if they agree that there has been some decline in fisheries. And what do they need to do about conservation. Conservation is not a punishment, it is necessary. They need to come in with an open mind. We need recognition that there are issues.

Mason S: I can’t imagine them not wanting to do that. The fishing public is incredibly engages in fisheries management they are just opposed to specific tools.

Jim B: I’m going by what I see in the comments. Kevin C: how much education was there about steps to take before MPAs? Dana WM: we spent the first months hearing hardcore science about our ecosystem about fisheries

independent studies. Then we heard about management approaches, currently being used in Florida and elsewhere in the world to deal with the same problems we have here. We were exposed to all the data including the marine planner

Mason S: I disagree that we heard everything. A lot of the case studies were about marine zoning. But there wasn’t much attention paid to fisheries. No presentations getting into the details about how

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fisheries planning can work. And that might be why there aren’t a lot of RMAs about fisheries specifically.

James B: we went through and made presentations talking about resources here, conditions, why those conditions are how they are. Different spatial and non-spatial management options. Then we created management recommendations which went through SEFCRI team and TAC back to the WG. Back to the SEFCRI T&T. There were case studies shown to explain how to use marine zoning because CWGs were struggling to create an MPA framework. It was already a suggestion. The case studies were not shown to drive it toward that decision. The decision had been made and they needed the science to see how it was done.

Melissa R: Would you all be opposed to mason bringing a presentation in April with other case studies of different management strategies to give a perspective about where these fishermen may be coming from. They are not anti-conservation, they want big fish too and fish for their kids.

Ann W: we have an hour and a half to talk about this this afternoon. I’ve added Melissa’s suggestion to the list. We can vote on this this afternoon. In 45 minutes we have to go to public comment. We are eating into our time to deal with comments.

Jane F: this bothered me last night. I think Kevin and Melissa are great and I’m happy you’re here. I didn’t get my question answered about the governor’s office meeting. We are very transparent you can know anything. I don’t feel informed about how you two got into this process. You guys are here so there must have been some meeting with special interest groups that got the ear of the governor.

Melissa R: we are not here because of the governor. We are here because FWC has been a part of the process always. We were contacted by special interest groups and private citizens. When we hear from stakeholders that they are concerned, we try to be responsive.

Jane F: And DEP? Kevin C: I’d have to find out where the original call came from that triggered this but we did get

contacted from DEP leadership or the governor, American sportfishing association, marine industries of palm beach

Jane F: the people who are so upset, I wish that they would come to us. I feel like we’ve been hurdled over. We’ve been jumped over by large organized special interest groups that not once came to the 20 meetings I’ve showed up to.

Kevin C: we live in a policy world and we came down to work with you guys to help with these understandings

Ann W: I don’t want us to spend a ton more time defending the OFR process, because all of us are familiar with what’s been done. So please hold your comments at lunch.

Jeff T: I’m sure that everyone in this room, if they thought FWC process was working we wouldn’t been here. Everyone is aware of the tools and what they do. But a lot of us don’t believe they are working in this particular area. Not that they don’t work in other areas. But here with increased pressure we are out-fishing our resource. We are open to other ideas and masons presentation but I’d also like to see the historical data of important edible species. On what FWC has done over the years. FWC does a good job and are way understaffed. I think this group understands what you’ve been doing.

April P: one of my biggest concerns has been where the area is and who’s enforcing it. If we could put that info into the spatial planner it would make more sense to folks. To be able to see where enforcement lies.

Jim Mathie: Skip Dana is in I just chatted with him he will come in April. I do believe it’s tough for the people making a living fishing to spend time at meetings during the day. We have to understand that

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about the fishermen. They rely on the fishermen to speak for them I would encourage us to include everyone no matter where we are in this process. In order for this to work we do need to get to this middle ground.

Dana WM: In response to Francisco’s presentation. It wasn’t clear if there was an ask there that we consider these all equally. But I think we can have confidence in the fact that those that showed up via comment were directly attached to the RMA. The accurate information was in front of them. However I’m concerned to be asked to consider the petitions because I saw many online that were based on summaries of RMAs from the group’s perspective. Which may include bias that informed people’s decisions to sign.

Melissa R: I would caution about not giving equal weight to every comment because the way they were received. Everyone who commented had perspectives and bias

Jeff T: but they were based on misinformation, that’s very different. Kevin C: in fairness to those who did contact me I said any mechanism to get the comments to us

please do. Mason S: One way to look at it is not necessarily in particular to the area. Keep in mind there aren’t a

lot a people who don’t find that particular management tool acceptable. It’s not just a petition, we hear it all the time. There was a SEFCRI funded survey reaching out to lots of stakeholder groups. Only 16% supported the idea of no take from that survey. There was support that something needs to be done. Jeff’s idea is really good, talking about bag limits would be good to see overtime because that does play into pressure. It would give us the ability to see what we can do. We have very highly valuable species with a high bag limit. Like mutton snappers and grunts some without any bag limit. If the goal is just to improve fish biomass it would give people a good idea of what’s out there to accomplish those things

Kurtis G: an important point is that OFR is not a fishery management process it’s a coral reef ecosystem management process. The data presentations that the CWGs got shows that we don’t have the large body fish, the size distribution is truncated right at the size limit. One of the most effective measures according to case studies is the use of spatial management. To have the opportunity to keep those populations growing. We recover reef fish populations here much slower because we lack those large spawning fish.

Dan C: I didn’t propose or support these RMAs because I knew this would happen. I was afraid that when we went there all the talks would be about fisheries and not about the habitat. You can replace fish stocks in 5-10 years but these corals will take hundreds of years to come back if they ever do. I was mad when they put this out out front because now we aren’t talking about habitat.

Jim Mathie: he used that same argument with N-59 because I think I can present a good argument that that needs to go away.

Dan C: now we have people coming down from Tallahassee giving us an ultimatum Jim B: why do we have refuges like this fern forest on land? We haven’t done it in the ocean because

we are living under the lie that everything is okay. They do it on land and if they didn’t there wouldn’t be any hunting areas. Mutton snapper wasn’t saved because of a bag limit it’s because they closed the spawning aggregation. There are hundreds of species of fish, about a hundred are financially or recreationally important. Only ten they’ve actually looked at.

Mason S: it is entirely a fish thing, I’ve done an extensive amount of work trying to solve the disconnect between protecting reefs, ecosystems, or what. Research shows that no take zones do not benefit corals. I’ve got dozens of studies. If we do go down that path we need to say that this is about fisheries

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and go down that path or try to answer the question even better. The vast majority of papers do not show benefits to corals.

Irene A: I think we are here to review comments regardless of how these got to us and we need to move forward with our schedule

Sara T: I think fishing interests and no take is overshadowing the entire purpose of this. I think the reef ecosystem needs a holistic approach. It’s not a holistic management without a spatial framework we can piecemeal it. And I don’t want the small fraction management tool within this to overshadow the whole objective.

Jeff T: I wholeheartedly disagree with mason on no take not effecting corals. In the keys there have been huge differences since the sanctuary designations have protected certain areas. Like sombrero reef. They are all interconnected.

Dana WM: on the social science about what the pop of SEFL says about MPAs and no take zones – Mason highlighted a study from 9 years ago. More recently NOAA did a national coral reef monitoring program one aspect of which is social science. We ask pops about perceptions of coral reef health. When asked specifically about 12 different management strategies – with no take zones less than 10% disagreed with that. This is not stakeholder groups but the residents of that area. Showing there actually is public support for these types of management strategies. I’ll send it around.

James B: indicators of coral reef health. One of those agreed upon worldwide is fish abundance. This is an indicator of reef health. You can’t look at just the corals without the fish. That is not scientifically valid. That cannot get lost here. We don’t want what happens in Mexico, the empty forest. We have to look at it holistically.

Melissa R: I would like to suggest that you consider that you vote to adopt these instead of vote to knock it down. I suspect it won’t make a difference how the vote turns out. I think you should all give those RMAs a fresh look and make sure you have 75% vote to keep them. I think there’s a difference in the bar.

Ann W: to be clear before I ask them to vote on this – are you talking about when they accept the verbiage today?

Melissa R: what happens if the small group doesn’t propose any changes, does it come to the floor for a vote?

Heidi S: no because it has already been accepted by 75% Melissa R: yes but that 75% was before you got comments from the public Dana WM: to clarify, my understanding of the plan for the process, we spent 2 years widdling down to

68 which are our recommendations. The plan was to review all comments, take them into account in two steps. Making modifications according to comments, and deciding to reprioritize according to comments. But that nothing is coming off the list

Melissa R: so I was just confused. And I think there is benefit in saying that we reviewed all the 1000s of comments and the CWG voted to move forward with each RMA. The alternative that I think your expecting is that that would be the prioritization.

Ann W: so the question is do we want to vote on every single RMA to keep it. And do we want to allow the group to propose to archive RMAS.

Kathy F: when you see these comments April you will see that many comments are N/A or redundant. April P: my concern is that I can’t comment on different RMA focus areas. Heidi S: all these comments will be online as well once staff has the capacity.

10:30 – Break

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10:50 - Public Comment

Tony Grogan: I am a diver, spearfishermen, citizen scientist, volunteer work with goliath grouper, lionfish, sharks, mote marine lab, Dr. Jim Lacosia, Dr. Kris Conig considered leading goliath grouper scientist. When you have 3 or 6 minutes to make your point and you have people come after you who rebut those points, it’s not enough time. You have all heard a huge outcry from fishing community about fishing related RMAs. There is support for the other 60 ish RMAs. We all want the same thing, a better ecosystem, we want fish unlimited. But what I see happening here, there are 3 or 4 dominant personalities, a major underrepresentation of fishing, which is their fault and they will be asked back. But we just heard that all of these RMAs will be put forward. Some RMAs are more important than others. I asked Dr. Conig about optimal size of no take zones. He said if you make no take zones too small they won’t work, they need to be 100 sq. miles or more. So if you guys are proposing to shut down the entire reef not just 20-30% 60-80% you might want to consider expanding your RMA to a larger area which I don’t think which will go over very well. You can argue that this is all done by people online I encourage people on spear board to comment. If you do a dismissive approach to the comments that will be the end it’s not right. You may claim you’re the community but you’re really not. I’m a major diver, I don’t take many fish but I want the right. The massive closure from blowing rocks to Juno pier to protect goliath grouper. There is going to be a take. The big grouper are poisoned with mercury. I am anti goliath grouper take until it’s justified scientifically. The idea in the 1000 island area where spawning is good. The 36 inch might be the limit. It would probably be a tagging program. SAFMC and gulf council. You guys are using the excuse of trying to protect the area. We want to know what spawning pop you’re protecting. Show us where the spawning aggregations are within the areas of consideration. You have to apply the science in a way that makes sense. Having small closed areas along the area do not work

Jim mathie: I am here as a writer of two books asking for your help. Catching the bug – out of the 1 st edition sold 2000 of them. If you have any good stories about catching lobster I’d like to include those stories into the next edition. Chiefy is going global, instead of FL specific, I’d like to hear stories all over the world. Secondly, N-59 brought me back to the table. I would encourage you to look at the over 500 fairly thoughtful comments. I would encourage to get rid of that and focus on the important things which is the MPAs. What I want to do is give this book to my good friend Dana. Some people don’t understand why spearfishing is good. It’s the most personal type of fishing. So Dana I’m going to give this to you and autograph it and hope that you read it before April. Ill alert you to April 23 and 24 which is blue wild, about all watersports and fishing and diving. A great event if you all are interested in coming.

Nikole Ordway: speaking on behalf of myself as a person I’m part of a working group, I’m probably the youngest WG member on the team and I’m concerned that we are looking at these stakeholders without including a youth voice. We had 60 s Broward HS students attend and they had a lot to say. Many supported E & O this is their future, we are discussing them here are they aren’t here. I’ve watched people who I am close with say that they have been watching the decline for decades and we don’t understand why it’s taking too long. We see on social media marine debris, poor water quality etc. I feel like there is no hope, what can we really do cleanups, sustainable seafood, it seems like it’s never enough. These RMAs aren’t laws or rules they are recommendations. When this comes out of this room it goes forward to the agencies they can say no or yes, we will work with what you’ve brought forward. I feel really defeated in this process because it seems like it’s all about talking and not

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about doing. So from the youth voice I want to make sure that the whole ecosystem gets to be there in the future

Charles Berkely: native to Broward been diving and fishing since I was in kindergarten. Speaking for about 100 people in my club. Went through the website I spent about 15-20 hours putting together comments on the RMAs one at a time. You wonder why you don’t have enough pushback feedback input or other stakeholders. My opinion is that this is a smokescreen. The problem is not diving and fishing. Its polluted runoff, freshwater dumping, if those things had been cleaned up we wouldn’t be having this conversation the reefs are dying not because of boat anchors or spearing, it’s because of other stuff you wonder why you’re not getting additional feedback, it’s not getting to the people. Optics, 75% vote – optics why are you concerned with public opinion. Seems like you are trying to hide something. Where did 75% come for public optics. Someone said MPAs, SE Florida’s not ready for this yet… we know where this whole thing is going. Someone said as soon as you say no take zone the fishermen are going to run in and stop this stuff, you bet they are because this isn’t the problem. There’s a lot of things I’ve been pro. I want my letter submitted to the record. You want the UN involved in this? You talk about environmental extremists. You may think you represent the population here, you don’t. I spent 20 hours I want my letter on the record.

o Jane: his letter is already on every table so we got that thanks Carl Liederman: I know that you hear a lot today about what you should or shouldn’t do about areas

under discussion. I’d like to talk about the process. But first id like to remind you all that you all took civics many years ago. We try to be a democracy. Democracy is a system of government by the whole pop of a stare or org. one of the key elements is that there is active participation. The second definition. The definition of hypocrisy – false appearance of virtue or goodness while concealing the true character. OFR has moved forward to create their visions about how the reefs should be managed. While there are many recommendations that the groups I represent support, there are several that we cannot. I will continue to comment on the process used. You cannot have democratic process without the inclusion of all parties. I’ve been involved with fisheries for years and I didn’t know who these fishermen were. You found 3 fishermen who support your proposals but what about the rest of the 3 million people who purchased fishing licenses in FL. There are members on your panel who work for the federal government who have been pushing this agenda for 30 years. There are members on your panel who participated in closures in California. The federal government already controls over 2.5 million acres in the state of FL mostly in the south. This is essentially closed access to much of the areas for fishing boating and hunting as well as general recreating. People in our state are not in favor of giving any more land or water to the federal government. Democracy or hypocrisy – do we reboot the process and attempt to engage all stakeholders in a democratic process or attempt to resolve the differences in an alternative manner.

Stephanie C: somebody said that people come here because they have nothing better to do – I want to thank everyone who comes to OFR meetings and does not get paid. People who rearrange their schedules, take time off work because they think this is worth it. Also those who come after work to give public comment for 2 years of this 12 years if you count SEFCRI – there was a fishermen in our group who came and participated. The conversation included what small area would they be willing to be able to give up.

Dan C: My focus is the coral reefs and the habitat themselves. We saw this summer a huge outbreak of disease. This summer has been the worst we have ever seen. After dredging we see diseases too. It’s like when you get a cut it opens you up to infection. The truck haul project they are doing in ft.

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Lauderdale I sued years ago to try to stop them from dredging the area where some of the last barrier reef lives. They are now doing truck haul which is better, thank you Broward County. Dead is dead and buried is buried. They are putting 750,000 cubic yards of material on that reefs. This is that truck haul material, this is what it does to the water. Good quality sand settles out quickly. This is a problem because there is tons of silt being put on these reefs with the truck haul. The corals are dying. If a coral has been dead for more than a week it already has algae on it because the water is so polluted. There’s a lot of people making money moving coral around for coral nurseries. Dredge material will turn the water to milk for a couple of days. I don’t want to see the distraction away from the habitat. Quote for Raegan – when they shelved the disease issue FWC is buying a freezer for samples – this should make fishermen mad, all of us – we could find that smoking gun, we have a lot more knowledge than we used to have – quote – to at back hoping that someday, someway, someone, will make it right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last, but he will eat you.

Gary Jennings: I work for ASA manager of KFF initiative, goal to make sure that FL anglers have clean water, healthy fisheries and access to both. FL is the fishing capital of the world. Currently FL 80,000 jobs bringing 8.6 billion dollars in economic activity, we want to keep it that way. The way to do this is through sustainable fisheries management, ensuring clean waters, and access. We believe FWC has done a great job, many species have recovered. Anglers are conservationists and put money where mouth is. 40 million $ from licenses and taxes went to FWC monitoring and enforcement efforts. Special interest came up yesterday a lot in a negative context. But most of us have a special interest in protecting our Florida reefs doesn’t make us bad, makes us passionate. FL anglers are passionate enough to have 2200 of us to say no to MPAs and national marine sanctuary status. That’s a significant number that wasn’t even mentioned yesterday. Any voting or discussions yesterday about those RMAs need to be re-voted on taking into account those numbers. We have seen what federal management has done, state agencies are much more nimble than FED and have ability to manage fisheries. We appreciate your time and fee like you are neglecting to use resources right in front of you. Yesterday two biologists were placed at the law enforcement table instead of at FDOU. Use the considerable talent you have here. Coral reefs true enemy is water quality. Let fisheries management people know your fisheries concerns and then go about their jobs. As for fisheries groups coming to the table late, OFR Was funded to protect coral not to add another layer to fisheries management. We found the comment process awkward and cumbersome so we had concerned Florida anglers sign hard copies in petition. Yesterday someone said to give us a sample of the comments, I say no, I say let them all be heard. Thank you for your time and dedication, together we can both protect our Florida reefs and keep Florida fishing.

Frank Guidace: director of habitat and environmental restoration for CCA supports healthy fisheries and habitats including our coral reefs. When appropriate has supported a number of spawning seasonal closures in the south Atlantic and gulf of Mexico. CCASs mission is focused on scientific approaches to sound fisheries management present and future gens to enjoy the resource. Within these parameters CCA supports angler access. N-146 propose up to 24 areas that will in some cases ban fishing up to 20-30% of the reef tract. CCA does not support the establishment of MPAs unless they are scientifically based have stated goals, and that they are the last resort. CCA does not support MPAs as a first step management tool while CCA is opposed to making no take no fishing zones or sanctuaries, CCA asks that fisheries managers consider protect spawning aggregations by limiting time and closures if warranted by stock assessments. S-65 NMS for entire FL reef tract. Unnecessary designation of authority over sovereign wasters to federal agency. Sanctuary process is cumbersome. A potential

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positive RMA with possibly negative consequences, N-7 to offer reduction of license fees. It would be optional over 16 years of age establishment of optional online education for boaters is acceptable as long as it doesn’t effect funding for FWC. CCA is concerned that a reduction of license fees were imposed, funds to protect fisheries were reduced it would negatively impact the resources the RMA was meant to help. It also ignores the fact that those under 16 are not required to buy a saltwater license. CCA opposed N-59 as it proposed to ban spearfishing on SCUBA. This is a gear restriction within the type of restrictions considered by FWC. CCA is unaware of any problems associated with this gear. S-54 – UNESCO designation for reef tract. CCA does not oppose recognition of our resources but opposes any restrictions to our access to our resources. Those decisions best left to FWC and FL law. CCA concerned with the process used OFR meetings were weekday meetings and the comment process by computer may be efficient for OFR but may be cumbersome for those without computer skills. Our overarching concern is another layer of government or no fishing zones where other fisheries management have not been tried.

Tom W: documentary being released on a weekly basis showing impacts to coral reef systems – ahead of the tide – online on YouTube free, ten 5 min segments, up to segment 7 . Shows impacts to coastal areas because of sea-level rise coastal construction, access to those area’s we are all interested in access. One of the messages is that our public access to those reefs is denied when we are fished out. Our right to experience those reefs are taken away when reefs are destroyed.

Ray Rocher: full time fishing guide for 36 years dozens of billfish tournaments in SE FL and own a charter boat wife and I own a tackle business for 15 years. My father and I are both Miami natives and wife and 3 children. Deep ties to marine environment. Interested in seeing improvements. Greatest threat is not fishing activity but pollutants. I keep live bait at my docks. I’ve lost over 2000$ worth of bait in the past two weeks because of someone washing their boat with bleach. I have 5 pens holding live bait in adjacent slips. I explain this because people need to understand how toxic chlorine is. Downwind of Virginia key outfall all I smell is chlorine. How many millions of gallons of toxic waste is pushed through these pipes each year. Here is enemy number 1 to marine life. Polluted water from Loxahatchee and Colucchahatchee. In 2007 I ran a boat for several weeks in Australia. They showed me no fishing zones I had to avoid. I asked how they came about, they said they started as few small areas grew as large zones, no zone had been reopened don’t be shocked if they try to make them near you some day. There are some fisherman who support closures, they have enjoyed fame and many types of riches of the sea, how did they enjoy these things, they had access. I’m pleading for the removal of the fishing bans from your recommendations there are many options before we reach that level. I am not against saving our reefs or preserving fish, I want those things. Fishermen are good stewards of the ocean that they enjoy. Every year FWC tries hard to create laws to keep the resource. fish stocks are increasing DEP should focus on the removal of pollution, establish no anchor zones and let FWC continue path toward quickly reacting to fisheries needs in state water. Pollution is the biggest threat to marine life, not fishing please exclude restrictions from your plan.

Scott S: CWG member founder of FOFR supporting refreshments today excited to be here and see so much participation. Happy to see interest in what we are doing because I think we all want the same thing. Healthy productive reefs for the future and however we use those reefs. FOFR has excited things coming up at the 1 year mark. This year we are hoping to help with bleach watch training program and what we have in mind ways to support the org.

James B: there is an event coming up March 29 TNC where I work is hosting an event in Coral Gables looking at making communities safer with nature. Role of natural ecosystems play in reducing the

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threat of natural disasters to people. And how nature can be incorporated in engineered solutions. Free event you can register. Partner with Red Cross and engineering solutions who do risk modeling. Ch2 and hill engineering firm and Miami Dade County. For those who don’t want to drive down it will be live streamed and I’ll send down email with info.

Dan C: Tortuga festival coming up – I forgot to bring it up important for enforcement anchoring is always a problem there.

Joanna W: we heard feedback that I wanted to make clear. We wanted to show you how many names were represented by those letters. So we modified the table that shows the number of comments received from general OFR process, those from online petitions etc. and individual letters if they didn’t tell us how many people were represented, without signatures. The same 9 or 10 that were priorities before are still up there, this is just informational intended to help you if you haven’t read all the letters yet.

Francisco P: this is all in the feedback package for your review. Sara T: especially for fishing interest – we’ve heard multiple times that you think water quality is a huge

issue, how many comments did you write in support of LBSP. How many letters did you write to the governor about that? Because I haven’t seen the volume on LBSP.

Francisco P: some of those letters have mentioned support – on the tool you will find that some of the letters are also stating support.

Greg B: as a representative of LBSP RMAs we did get letter of support for LBSP. Many of them from the folks that recognize this is the big problem. Political climate is such that it is not reasonable to expect that LBSP activities will be shut down no matter how hard we push. So we have to do a variety of things to help the problem. We can’t deal with any of these in a vacuum. We have to take incremental steps on all fronts toward this goal.

Heidi: we are going to work in small groups if you finish we will ask you to join other groups and work with them on those RMAs.

11:45 - Small Group Work

12:15 - Lunch

12:50 - Small group work

1:30 - Report Out

Dana WM: are we voting on incorporating new changes black and white? Kathy F: changing intent is subjective. Some things that we think won’t change the intent might not be

the case for others. Ann W: we will go one by one and ask the group if they agree to changes in intent and title.

MICCI Report Out

Daron W: All MICCI RMAs supported by Miami Waterkeeper. o N-114: Comments on RMA positive. No changes.o N-117: Comments on RMA positive. Proposed changes accepted.o S-1: comments on RMA were positive. Changes accepted.

Daron: wording says volunteers would do it but they would have to assume liability o S-100: RMA did not change. 3 of 4 comments positive.

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o S-101: 9 comments mostly positive (all but 1) Comments were addressed in the RMA. NO changes.

o S-102: Changes to 2 pager suggested. 6 comments all positive or not sure. Changes are the result of a post it comment to consider partial mortality and mitigating success criteria. Language added to address this comment. Changes accepted.

o S-103: did not have changes. 9 comments mostly positive. o S-104: no change to RMA. 11 comments mostly positive. Opposing comment was

misinformation. o S-106: 5 comments. NO changes. o S-107: 9 comments all positive, called out in Mike Kennedy’s letter. One comment was

integrated in to language. New language includes specific species. New language accepted. o S-108: no change to RMA. 6 comments all positive or not sure. o S-114: one comment resulted in a change. Comment opposes RMA. Change language to

mechanism to apply lessons learned including a review panel annually or following construction projects. New language accepted.

o S-116: 7 comments mostly positive. No change to RMA. o S-120: 9 comments all positive. All addressed. No change to RMA. o S-124: 7 comments mostly positive. No change to language of RMA. Only opposing comment is

that it is a waste of time and money. o N-113: called out in 3 letters, mentioned by WPBFC but indicated that it could be duplicative.

CWG felt that the issues were not being addressed and took measures to separate actions that are already happening. CWG not responsible to monitoring water quality. CWG clarify that the RMA is in response to USACE ort expansion not maintenance dredging. Called out in Mike Kennedy letter as already being addressed. CWGs content that just because it has been authorized does not mean that it will happen. Comments mostly supportive. Some comments reference other RMAs. New language and changes accepted by the group.

FDBOU Report Out

Meghan B: o S-8: coral reef gardens called out by KAF, MIA PBC, CCA, because worried that it would result in

no take zones. CWGs noted that the RMA does not indicate any associated no take zones. CWG propose to change “artificial reefs” to “natural reefs”. And there would be no fishing or diving regulations associated with this RMA.

Jenny P: I would recommend deleting the whole bullet point Changes accepted by group

o N-70: restore estuarine habitats – important for coral preservation, currently not happening enough. MIA called out because already being regulated by two agencies. 22 out of 23 comments supportive. No recommended change to language of RMA

o S-86: ban live mounts of shark species – opposed by MIA PBC CWG response – live harvest does not equal live mounts. Measuring in the water is meant to apply here to shark species to reduce mortality.

Mason S: some charter fishermen consider a live mount a replicative amount. It appeared to them that this was meant to ban the practice of releasing a fish for a

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replicative amount. So maybe if there is a better term than live mount, natural mount. Or I don’t know.

Ann W: so it sounds like the first 3 words of the title need to change James B: there are some that are legal to harvest and that’s fine, but it is meant to ban

the practice of bringing the shark to the dock to mount then throw the carcass in the water.

Melissa R: I’m not aware of a term that can be used but it sounds like you could use some language that says ban catching for the sole purpose of mounting with no intent to retain catch.

Jeff T: we have to make sure that taxidermy is not acceptable to level the playing field between charter boat captains.

Jim B: this is an original skin the other is out of a fiberglass mold. So you don’t need the actual skin.

April P: according to language from online we could use “ban catch for the purpose of taxidermy”

Joanna F: why don’t we keep the original language and just put the details in the rest of the document, or parenthesis in title

Ann W: can we send this back to the WG to work on this in April to make it clearer. o S-2: mooring buoys – supported by FRA, CCA, MWK. Largely supported and no changes to RMA

suggested. Counties attempting to coordinate and make buoys cheaper in bulk. Group accepts no changes to RMA

LBSP Report Out

David C:o N-1: educate public on LBSP – 100% positive comments. Generally RMAs with negative voters did

not comment in opposition. Letters stated a blanked support for LBSP with the exception of the golf course RMA which I will discuss separately. No changes.

o N-116: coordinate and implement living shorelines. Modification to language of title – intent of RMA remains intact, just verbiage change. Comment was about working waterfront – ensure they are not adversely impacted. Added “ with the agreement of property owners”

Jim B: do property owners own the area? David C: they do have the riparian right to build out Ken B: property owner of the property being modified Paul D: insert the word riparian in front of property owner 19 agree on wording change

o Ann W: we are out of time so we need to talk about OFR moving forward.

2:30 - Break

2:45 - OFR Moving forward

Heidi S: unfortunately we have 20 voting CWG members and we need 22 to vote. So we cannot vote, but we can still discuss. Ideas: welcoming currently absent members – we discussed that today and it sounded like everyone wanted everyone to join in the conversation. Another idea: to extend past April – right now we are only scheduled through April. We still have to go through every RMA and prioritize

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so that you know the work load. Also: we need to discuss if the group will want to archive RMAs at this point. Possible presentation in April, case studies, bag limits etc. Ann will flipchart for us if we come up with new options.

Jenny P: we have a ton to do in April and not enough people to vote on extending. Those that are interested in learning about masons presentation could we have a webinar so that we have that before the next meeting to not take time?

o Group likes that idea. Except Mason: agrees it would save time but doesn’t know how webinar would work. Also worried about effectiveness.

o Jenny P: it would be live but recorded so that anyone who wasn’t able to make it could watch. o Kathy F: for scheduling if we can put it as far off as possible before April meeting. o Greg B: please include in that both fisheries and shellfish and those receiving benefits from no

take areas outside of our region. o Joanna F: spoke about getting new members up to speed. Maybe they should have to watch

something about marine protected areas. Not sure if previous presentations have been recorded. If they have to see them before they come.

o Heidi S: it is my understanding that all presentations are available online, but we would have to discuss how to make that available

o Francisco P: all the material would be provided and we would be sitting down with them in person

o Kathy F: who is them? o Meghan B: shows low and intermediate attendance CWG members. These are the individuals

who could be rejoining us or designating an alternate. o Mason S: many Toledo is interested in joining back in April. Scott Fawcett is also interested. Ron

Messa I believe is no longer in the area. o Kathy F: is N and S designation going away?o Heidi S: yes, one group nowo Dan C: isn’t Lee also involved in the snook foundation. o he had a health problem and disappearedo Jane F: when we look at attendance it should be people who more recently haven’t come as

well as those that haven’t come historically. So Rebecca Johnson and an elementary school teacher I can’t remember exactly. I don’t agree with whoever can fill the seats. I think a significant effort should be made to get the original.

o Heidi S: per the charter they have to be primary or designated old or new alternate. Need to discuss if it is okay to bring in new CWG members vetted by the vice chairs as other were by April. The charter currently allows them to designate new alternates. Alternates do not have to be vetted through the process. They can only vote if the primary is not present.

o Kathy F: so we have given up on having the academic seat because of logistics. o Joanna F: can it be a retired teacher? o Meghan B: there were two academic seats that used to be filled but are no longer. They didn’t

designate an alternate except a few. o Heidi S: those people would have to do applications because there is no existing primary for

those seats

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o Greg B: I think we should ask DEP to try to reach out on that front because they may be able to fulfil scientific needs.

o Jane F: magnet school at S Broward was identified my Mitch C and we would probably have his name in attendance from Broward and N Miami meeting.

o Jenny P: if they need people in education they could reach out to grad students because they may have more time and do internships in the field etc.

o Andrea G: Lee Shepherd if he can’t be reached on the original applications there may be another private business who was already selected. May be easier than starting from scratch

o Dan C: one of Lee’s businesses was creating habitats for snooks o Andrea G: he came quite a bit in the beginningo James B: clarifying the academic seats it was academic affiliation elementary to university there

was no designation. They were chosen based on interest and qualifications not what level they taught.

Heidi S: so let’s talk about timing, we only have 2 more days scheduled: need to finish reviewing the RMAs we finished 22 today, 46 more to look at next time. Vote on changes to RMAs. Look at the 9 that have many comments which we may do all as large group or some as small some as large. Must revisit prioritization based on all comment received to move RMAs up and down with priority ranking. LE has 1.5 RMAs left to work on.

o Mason S: are you asking us if you want to extend past April right now? o Heidi S: yes, and what’s the best way to do that? Add one day in April, 2 days in May, another 6

months? o Andrea G: if we extend will our facilitators be available to help us? o Ann W: we are not sure yet. we both think scheduling-wise if we did 3 days in April we could do

that but o April P: is there anything in the charter about proxy voting. o Joanna F: it will be easier to have 3 days but we won’t know until the first day of April. If we do

less talking more doing we could do it. o Kathy F: as much as it kills me to think that we might have to extend, we want to get this right.

But three days sounds brutal.o Tom W: clarification – we already have a prioritization so in April this is really just a review. o Heidi S: right so this is just prioritization review because we do already have. Does anyone have

concerns about doing that? None o Dan C: I don’t see us getting through all this in 2 days obviously and three days in a row is really

hard. I think we need to add another month and two day session to get through it. o Kathy F: I think we have to be realistic about prioritization review. We are inviting new people

in, they have opinions and we want to listen to them, it’s going to be harder than it seems. o Dana WM: I want to get an idea if there’s a significant number of CWG members who would be

okay with extending and be able to come in May. o Heidi S: does anyone have conflict with that?

Nikole O: I may be having my baby late May. o Kathy F: doesn’t have to be May, but definitely need to extendo Jeff T: we aren’t going to do this all in 2 days so we will definitely need to extend. 3 days in a

row will not work however.

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o Scott S: can anything be done over the phone or web, do we physically need to meet? o Dana WM: if some of the time is taken in small groups, maybe small groups can meet and finisho Greg B: I’ve got a procedural problem with that. Up until now we have been very transparent

and open, now that we are under more of the public’s eye I would hate to meet in small groups where they might not be aware of the public meeting.

o Tom W: I think on the agenda for discussion we need to decide how the process will wrap up and move forward. We can survey what dates everyone is available for new meeting

o Joanna W: meetings would have to be fully publically accessible. I would advise against it for logistical issues.

o Jenny P: I’m wondering if there are some RMAs we can all decide don’t need to be reprioritized. Maybe done through a doodle poll “did public comment change your opinion of where this RMA should be prioritized”

o Heidi S: so you would get the handout with original prioritiaztions – there are 4 bins of RMAs by benefit and then within those they are ranked 1,2, 3, and 4 based on cost and feasibility. So the question is do any RMAs need to move up and down within their bin.

o Jenny P: if as a group we can decide we don’t need to move some then we can solidify those. o Daron W: the only thing that worries me is that the prioritization in inherently is in comparison

between RMAs. So to keep it a prioritized list you have to keep some above others. Keeping some while you move others doesn’t actually work because if you move one you must move the others. Maybe there is a way around that, we were talking about keeping it within their bins.

o Heidi S: so it could be as simple as – do we feel comfortable with the RMA prioritization as it is today.

o Daron W: I would just say because they haven’t had the chance to see all the comments yet, they actually cant make those decision on all the RMAs yet. Maybe for the 22 that we have worked on, but if the basis for moving them around is on comments they haven’t been able to review. I will put RMA comments online separated by RMA and email CWGs and other relevant parties letting them know comment is available.

o Tom W: I’m sure at the beginning of the April meeting we will need to vote on the schedule, but that is not up there yet.

o Heidi S: I think we will have to do emails about that meeting because it will need to get on calendars before that. We will probably have to do a hypothetical doodle poll – if we extend what dates are you available

o Jena M: any emails that come up after this meeting before April meetings we need to be strong in our wording that we need people to be here. We absolutely need 22 members present to vote. So strong language in emails going forward.

o Scott A: agree with Jena, or bring alternate if you know you can’t attend all day. We haven’t began working on those top 4 RMAs yet? And how will we approach those?

o Heidi S: it seems that by default we will be addressing those 9 tough RMAs as a full group because the rest of the focus areas are complete. In April we will need to review the rest of low volume RMAs.

o Kathy F: when you do the schedule for the first April meeting, can we go right into reporting out. Without a chance to start a lengthy discussion

o Heidi S: yes we can try to facilitate that.

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Heidi S: is it possible at this point to archive RMAs?o Jim M: yea let’s kill one of them right away and move on and get to the real important stuffo Kathy F: I think if we are going to review all RMAs, all actions should be on the table. o Dana WM: understanding how the process for that would work, a large group discussion,

someone would recommend to archive the RMA then there would be a discussion, then would need 75% vote to archive.

o Tom W: also allow the possibility to move something to a low priority o Jeff T: while I agree with archiving, I find it to be a slippery slope. I think there needs to be

criteria for why we would archive, not just because they don’t like it. o Scott S: is there are a possibility to defer and not archive?o Kathy F: I understand the slippery slope concern, but if 75% of us want to archive something, it

should be archived. o Heidi S: so in April we need to vote on archiving, and vote on extending. o Greg B: procedural question, we’ve gotten a lot of letters, some of which were addressed to

DEP, has there been any response provided to the people who sent these in. Some of the letters obviously had a lot of thought and consideration. Some of them had misinformation. At the very least I think we need to send a letter to all those people a thank you and please continue to stay involved. For misinformation I would ask that staff respond with corrections to those.

o Kathy F: can we put DEP staff in the position of responding to those things? o Joanna W: process wise DEP would not feel comfortable responding because we can’t respond

for you. We can help but you would be the ones to send it. o Dana WM: at FDBOU at least we have been responding to each comment. So we have

addressed many of those concerns but if there was anything to do with process maybe DEP could do that?

o Joanna W: so you guys are writing responses to each comment but in terms of formal response how would this happen.

o Ann W: I would put a link online with those responses from CWGs o Jane F: I do think it’s appropriate if addressed to FP or MB it would be good to say thank you

and explain that the letter was reviewed by CWGs. If we go the step further to provide CWG responses then maybe a link could work

o Jim Mathie: yes I think if they took the time to write a letter a generic letter should be sent to acknowledge and maybe the link. But I don’t think that we need to address misinformation. Because it seems like just more work for everyone, staff and CWG members.

o James B: I would suggest and volunteer that the SEFCRI vice chairs handle that. make a form letter

o Joanna W: to clarify we did acknowledge thank and respond to any letters we received.

LBSP Report Out

David C: only changes to the title require a formal vote, all others can be discussed and approved hereo N-120: ban plastic bags - no changes, with unanimous supporto N-69 provide incentives to restore wetlands – all supportive comments. SFWMD wanted to be

changed from lead agency to other agency. Modifications approved

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o N-71: maintain pollution monitoring – no written comment for the negative. Concerns for funding. No change to RMA.

o N-75: free pump out stations to boaters – comments included rather see money spent elsewhere. No changes to RMA

o N-78: reduce pollution from septic/storage tanks: generally supportive comments – no change to RMA. SFWMD said that this was not in their purview, septic tanks are dept. of health.

o N-8: educate public about ecofriendly yard maintenance. Fully supportive – no modifications. o N-82: reduce impacts of storm water drainage – supportive comments. No change to RMAo N-94: develop green club cert for golf courses – superintendents of golf courses said they already

have it, through DEP. CWG said this is self-policed, group added language for BMPs and replaced “reduced” to “eliminate” adverse impacts. Over 300 golf courses in FL and only received comment from 8. Will discuss changes in April

o S-110: eliminate over beach discharge of water. High support. No modifications to RMA. o N-97: implement LBSP reduction at pollution hotspots. Supportive comments – no modification

made. o S-25: encourage closure of wastewater outfalls by 2025: group wants to get more information on

legislative/regulatory process, how this would work. Question on strong enough wording. Not enough information to edit. Need to revisit.

Greg B: regulatory process by which outfalls would ask to extend past 2025. Dan C: I worked on that bill, it would have to go through the legislature and pass a bill. They

could be doing this as we speak. But it would have to go through a subsequent bill. Kevin C: would have to go through committee and subsequent processes Tom W: I believe there is already a deadline that they put in place. The last bill that was

passed added ten years to the deadline. Dan C: it wasn’t ten years, there’s a planning process, reporting. If they are still discharging

there. Tom W: the intent of the RMA is to make the process shorter, which is why more

homework needs to be done. Ann W: so this RMA is intended to make this process faster Greg B: right now it’s worded that public officials be discouraged to ask for extensions. We

feel that is too weak but not sure we can say prohibit because we don’t know the legislative process.

Tom W: last extension was granted because they said it was too extensive. Ann W: sounds like we need to revisit in April Kevin C: I can reach back into the agency and see if there was any action and get the last

copy of the bill. o S-28: support everglades flow restoration: popular RMA 14 comments all supportive. No

modifications to RMA. Jim B: I am discouraged by the lack of avidity on the supportive ones. How we interpret this

concerns me. Greg B: the way to fix this would count the letters as advocates but that would mean we

would have to count the negative ones too.