Killing a Dream

Alas, they want to ban me from the place (not because I represent a threat to the fish populations).

No, the plan is to ban you, too, and everyone else.

“Well, it's packed with fish,” exclaimed Editor Jeff Weakley when he got home a few days ago from the Dry Tortugas National Park. “Packed.”

As described in this issue, Jeff and compatriots caught snapper, grouper and all manner of other species in this hard-bottom utopia around Loggerhead Key, place of the office boy's idle dreams.

And yet this low-pressured park region is about to be placed off-limits through a scheme hatched by the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and reluctantly okayed by park authorities and a misled Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The huge No-Fishing Zone, spanning some 50 square miles, is being slipped through largely because not so many people make the long trip there. Most won't notice.

So lock ‘em out, goes the bewildering logic.

Normally, of course, extreme restrictions are imposed because there is a depletion, or threat, or overfishing. Not in this case. The Park's very success as a non-commercial bountiful haven is being used against the public. The closure would be a sad precedent for national parks, which allow and actually encourage family-level fishing.

Approval by the governor and cabinet is all that's needed now to grease through the Tortugas Park ban, which is based on the flimsiest of science and emotional speculation.

Even so, by golly, there is a glimmer of hope. Without burdening you with a labyrinth of detail, the ban approval requires three of four votes. Ironically, two of those votes come from gubernatorial candidates Attorney General Charlie Crist and Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher. Both have expressed displeasure at banning family-level fishing in the park.

Should they stand firm, the No-Fishing Zone plan will go back on the shelf with other plainly bizarre ideas.

Then maybe Vic and I will get down there for some peaceful jigging in that water of dreams.