Roger WILLIAMS
There’s been a lot of talk, mostly On Nov. 8, 1994, the day 50.8% of voters gave “Walkin” Lawton Chiles, the incumbent, a slim victory over challenger Jeb Bush in the race for Florida governor, 74% of voters did something even more remarkable: They passed a constitutional amendment requiring the state to ban entanglement nets — so-called gill nets — used by commercial fishers.
It took effect beginning the following July, 25 years ago. The rancor in the fight between the commercial fishing industry that resisted the net ban and the sports fishing industry that promoted it remains alive today.
Florida Sportsman, then the biggest magazine in the Sunshine State, pushed hard for the amendment. So did a number of outdoor writers for the state’s newspapers, including Byron Stout, almost 10 years into a 34-year gig at The News-Press in Fort Myers, where I worked as a government reporter.
A fourth-generation Floridian, a Vietnam veteran and an extraordinarily gifted writer, Mr. Stout is the subject of this week’s Florida Weekly lead story.
He was outsized in his influence on the net ban, in part because he wrote columns both for Florida Sportsman and the paper of record on the southwest coast, where countless tourist anglers came to fish and spend countless tourist dollars, every year.
In those days commercial fishers were harvesting mullet and mullet roe in upwards of 20 million pounds per year from inshore waters in the gulf and on the Atlantic coast, including in the Indian River Lagoon.
They could make thousands of dollars in a single December night netting mullet heavy with roe, which was almost worth its weight in gold on Asian markets. The commercial fishing families were long established in the business.
Joining them each winter season were visitor netters — campers — hundreds of people transporting boats and nets from points north. They bought Florida licenses, then scooped as many mullet as they could from local waters.
So, while commercial fishers resisted the ban, sports anglers strongly favored it, including Mr. Stout.
Entanglement nets were seen as a primary cause of species decline, not just of mullet but of species that depend on mullet, a base fish and food for redfish, sea trout, Spanish mackerel, snook and others.
Not only did those species sometimes end up in the nets of mullet fishers, their numbers were declining with the mullet, anyway.
But sports anglers were viewed as takeadvantage rich guys who didn’t depend on fishing for a living and just wanted things their own way.
Those attitudes haven’t changed entirely. Neither the fight nor the rancor are gone. Lawsuits exist to this day aimed at altering the net ban.
But the fishery it was designed to salvage improved. Unfortunately, now it remains at deep risk from the devastating effects of red tides, blue-green algae and variously sourced dirty water created by Floridians who may never put a net or a line in the water.
And Byron Stout remains, in my mind, the champion of a messy good.
It isn’t a good he was ever entirely comfortable with. He saw nets merely as tools, which might easily have been regulated. They weren’t. Some people lost their livelihoods.
Nevertheless, his work and that of a few others salvaged a part of Florida that could have been lost forever — and remains threatened but alive for us.
Reflecting recently on that history, Mr. Stout said that by 1994, commercial fishing lobbyists had successfully shut down 17 proposals to state officials designed to regulate fishing and stop overuse.
Then along came the net ban.
“At first I was skeptical, believing that what amounted to a gear rule was not worthy of constitutional reform,” he said.
“That was before I learned Florida’s constitution was rife with rules as niggling as the size of pens in which pigs could be raised. Eventually I took up the cause, which became increasingly bitter as many commercial netters, sometimes from generations of fishermen, envisioned the end of their way of life.
“For my part, every column I wrote on the matter was in defense of fish, not (against) fishermen. But that was a distinction never acknowledged by commercial interests, whose arguments eventually devolved into anonymous phone calls and threats.”
Including a threat on his life.
“The net ban was a landmark case in Florida environmental history. But the system still needed fixing. An appeal process and a governor and cabinet more likely to make lightly considered decisions on the basis of emotional pleas rather than on science, still stood in the way of sound fisheries management.
“So the recreational community rolled out another constitutional amendment drive (taking effect in 1999) that would combine (several state environmental agencies). The new agency, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, would have the constitutional authority to create new law under due process, without approval by the cabinet. Those laws would go immediately into effect, but be subject to subsequent appeal through the courts. That drive left Florida’s fish and wildlife management to well established principles guided by science.”
It came with a cost, for Mr. Stout.
“I have always deeply regretted the enmity, even the hatred by the commercial fishing community that I earned by writing against entanglement nets, which are not inherently bad for the fisheries in which they’re used. Nets are just tools, easily regulated. But under the all-or-nothing terms taken by either side, my choice had to be with the fishes.”
And later, “promoting the unification of fisheries and wildlife management under constitutional authority is among the most important contributions I ever made to my home state and fellow residents.”
His voice in print created that contribution.
“I tried to treat that voice like treasure,” he said — “easily lost if frivolously flaunted.” ¦
Leave a Reply