Southshore Manatee Zones Fail to Protect Manatees
By CAPT FRED EVERSON

Christmas Eve 2007 was unseasonably mild, calm, and cloudless. Capt. Tom Rinehart and I left the dock at the mouth of the Little Manatee River where I keep my boat. On the north side of the river there’s an unmarked channel that leads out into the bay, and the speed limit here is 25 MPH. The marked channel on the south side of the river is posted at idle speed. Guess which side the manatees use most. Every morning I watch them as they come past the dock, sometimes the only thing that gives them away are the circular paddle marks on the surface to mark their passage. 

We leave the river and get on plane one we cross the oyster bar.  The marked channel out of Bahia Beach is posted for safe normal operation, but either side it’s idle speed only all the way out to the six foot line, and therein lies the problem.

During the winter months when north winds and minus low tides prevail, you will not find many manatees on the flats – none that are alive, anyway. Sea cows require considerably more water than what is most often found in the zones the state and county have posted these past few years. The week after New Years, for example, much of the posted manatee zone between Apollo Beach and Mangrove Point was high and dry all day.

Christmas Eve we headed for Apollo Beach, travelling outside of the line of poles posted along the manatee zone. We are 30 yards off the edge just south of Mangrove Point when I encounter the first group of manatees. I take the boat off plane and narrowly avoid a collision.

“I guess they can’t read,” I remark to Tom.

I steer the boat farther away from the poles and get on plane again, this time 50 yards off the edge of the zone, but it’s not far enough. There are more manatees, and it’s cloudy and they are hard to see in the deeper water. Four more times I have to come off plane, well outside of the marked zone. This is nuts. My 17 foot skiff is mildly powered with a 90 hp engine, and I’m running 3000 rpms which I guess is equivalent to 25 mph, and I have narrowly missed four groups of manatees.

As a fisherman, I always keep a close eye on the water throughout this stretch, not looking for manatees, but for cobia, which are much smaller. I can usually spot the mantatees in time, but what about the guy in the 32 foot canal boat running 50 mph and who is not apt to be watching the water with a critical eye? The point is this, the state and the county have concentrated boat traffic exactly where the manatees are, especially true with the extreme low tides of the winter months. Of all the options to make the water safer for manatees, in this case it would have been infinitely better to leave well enough alone. I’m sure the delineations of the manatee zones were done with the best of intentions, but they are not doing what they are supposed to do, which is protect manatees. In fact the effect is quite the opposite.

To make matters worse, the county has issued 25 permits to fishing guides and commercial fishermen that allows them to run on plane inside the zones. I called and asked if there was any limit to the number of permits to be issued. Nope. I also asked about the enforcement over the past 18 months by the county. To that point, 45 warnings and 7 citations had been issued. How’s that for a deterrent?

What is the flats angler poling his skiff or running his trolling motor in the manatee zone supposed to think as captains and crabbers with permits zip by him on plane. Does this make any sense? In the Keys, the rules are for everybody, without exception, and they enforce them. Should we not take the same approach here?

This view is not apt to be popular with the people holding the permits, but so be it. Even if the zones do not protect the manatees as they are supposed to, keeping boats on shallow grass flats to idle speed has to be a good thing for sea grass, and even better for fishing.
There is a reason you don’t see tower boats on the redfish tours. Running over redfish on plane is a bad business, and makes them very hard to catch – a primary reason that redfish on Tampa Bay are so spooky. And with gas at $3+ per gallon,  poles and trolling motors are certainly a more economical choice.

Fishing is supposed to be about patience, but it has become a search and destroy mission on Tampa Bay with 160 fishing guides in tower boats and fishing guide wanabees cruising the flats on plane looking for fish. It’s bad behavior, and shows little respect for the flats environment, or other fishermen.

I don’t know what the solution is for the manatees, but the first thing would be to level the playing field and apply the rules to everyone. That would be a good start.