Susan Cocking's Outdoors

Mini-season

Returning from vacation in Bonaire -- (that's ANOTHER story!), I arrived back in South Florida just in time for lobster mini-season.  Local experts said they weren't expecting much, including some of my dive buddies who had been scouting their hotspots prior to the July 30 opening. But an informal check of dive boats around Biscayne Bay on opening day showed a lot of people were getting limits or close to them. 

I like to dive with Pompano Beach freediver extraordinaire Jim Higgins.  He can catch lobsters more quickly in 15-20 feet of water than two scuba divers working together.  (Ask Patti Hanley if you don't believe me!)  Anyway, I don't want to brag (MUCH) but Higgins and I went out about 5:30 am  today (the second day of mini-season) and while I can't discuss where we went, I can tell you we had  our limit of 24 by 7:30 a.m.

Higgins is very serious about lobster diving.  He makes a living from commercial fishing, including freediving for lobster. Also, as a veteran surfer, he knows the nearshore waters of Broward County better than most.  It is because of careful scouting and plotting locations on a GPS that he gets lobsters almost anytime.

In 2005, right after the passage of Hurricane Katrina through South Florida, Higgins correctly predicted when the lobsters would "march" off Broward County.  We went diving and intercepted gangs of them in extremely shallow water -- bumping slowly along the sandy bottom in single-file lines of 20 or more.  It's a rarely-seen phenomenon that usually occurs around cold fronts and low-pressure systems, of which Katrina definitely qualified.  I have a wonderful color photo of the event hanging up in my living room.

Every year during mini-season, it seems like South Florida suffers an above-average number of casualties.  Sometimes, people get run over by boats, but a lot of times the fatalities are divers who treat mini-season like teetotalers do New Year's Eve -- a  once-a-year derby -- and then they don't dive again till next year.  It seems like some of these tragedies could be avoided if divers -- especially those over 50 -- got regular medical check-ups and also went for regular check-out dives.  When you haven't dived in a long time, sometimes you forget important things -- like turning on the air; dealing with strong ocean currents; and maintaining proper buoyancy.   Keeping in shape is also a really good idea.

Let's hope for a good, safe regular harvest season, which opens Aug. 6 and runs through March 31.  Remember-- it's not a derby; you've got plenty of time.

Attack of the leaping sturgeons

About a month ago, I spent some time along the Suwannee River in north Florida where a popular summer pastime is to watch sturgeon leaping into the air.  These huge fish, which are federally protected and resemble alligators with fins, come from the Gulf into Big Bend and Panhandle rivers during the summer to spawn. Here is the latest mishap of man versus fish:

Milton

brothers struck by leaping sturgeon

            Two brothers from

Milton

are the latest victims to get clobbered by a leaping sturgeon.

            Sam, 43, and Chris Parish, 25, were enjoying a leisurely morning of bass fishing on the

Yellow River

June 28 until a leaping Gulf sturgeon, estimated 5 – 6 feet in length, came over the bow and hit both men in their faces and upper bodies.  They escaped the encounter with minor cuts, scrapes and bruises.  The sturgeon ended up back in the river.

            Neither brother required medical treatment.

            Sam ended up with a cut over his left eye and a cut to his right forearm.

            “My wife said I should have gotten stitches to the cut over my eye but I didn’t.  It did leave me with the perfect impression of a pectoral fin in my right arm but it went away after a while,” he said.

            Sam said he was in the boat’s rear seat and the collision knocked him out of his seat and against the outboard motor.

            “If it hadn’t been for the motor, I’d have ended up in the river,” he said.

            Chris was operating the 16-foot boat and took a glancing shot from the sturgeon to the head. 

            The brothers said an elderly couple who were bream fishing saw the sturgeon strike them and came to their assistance.

            The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated the Gulf sturgeon population in

Northwest Florida

rivers in 2002 and 2004.  They placed the number of sturgeon in the

Yellow River

at 500 – 900 fish.  They estimated 2,000 sturgeon venture up the

Choctawhatchee

River

each spring.

            As scary as a single collision is on the Yellow or other Northwest Florida rivers, they pale in comparison to the number of collisions on the

Suwannee

River

.  In 2006 and ’07 one person was killed and 18 were injured on the

Suwannee

after being struck by the bony, armor-plated fish.

            Although a lot of suggestions have been offered, no one knows why sturgeons leap into the air.

            Gulf sturgeon can grow to 8 feet in length and weigh more than 200 pounds.  They are a protected species in

Florida

.

            To report sturgeon collisions, call 1-888-404-FWCC (3922).

            

Diving opportunities

Summer is the time of year when wimpy South Florida divers finally decide to get into the water following a nearly half-year hiatus.  There are literally hundreds of wrecks to explore throughout Miami-Dade and Broward waters.  Palm Beach County is the place to go if you're anxious to observe a sea turtle up close.  The Keys never fail to delight -- whether you take a plunge on big wrecks like the Spiegel Grove, Bibb, Duane or Augustus Busch  or one of the countless coral reefs from 20 to 90 feet deep.  Mini-season comes up July 30-31 when residents and visitors alike engage in hand-to-hand combat with recalcitrant crustaceans.  If lobster tackling is not your thing, you can always head north to the Big Bend area to pick up bay scallops.  That's like plucking berries off a tree rather than dragging meerkats out of holes.  In August, the coral spawns around the full moon and Key Largo is ground zero for the underwater voyeur.  Hint:  star corals are much more interesting to watch getting it on than the branching corals -- probably because there are more of them.  And if you really, really want a change of scenery, you could always head north to the inland caves near Gainesville and Tallahassee.  The water temperature is always right around a chilly 70 degrees, but it feels really refreshing when you emerge into 100-degree heat.  And you don't even need to take a shower!  Happy diving.  For us wimps, the season usually ends right around Halloween.   

The rescued bear.....part two

Celebrity bear moved to zoo

A 375-pound black bear that captured worldwide attention when a wildlife biologist rescued it from drowning during a capture attempt will spend the rest of its days in a zoo.

On July 7, less than two weeks after the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) captured and relocated the bear for the third time, the animal turned up again in a residential area at

Horseshoe

Beach

in

Dixie

County

. The bear had traveled 110 miles from the spot where the FWC had released it in the

Osceola

National Forest

.

At first, the bear’s captors did not realize it was the same one that dashed into the water when hit with a tranquilizer dart at Alligator Point in June. The bear, known to the FWC as “Bear W007” probably would have drowned if FWC biologist Adam Warwick had not pulled the animal back to shore during the operation. A bystander’s photograph of the rescue ran in news media all over the world.

Tim Breault, director of the FWC’s Division of Habitat and Species Conservation, said three unsuccessful attempts to relocate the bear to keep it away from populated areas led officials to conclude the bear cannot remain in the wild.

“The bear has learned that populated areas are an easy source of food from garbage cans, barbecue grills, pet food and, in some cases, deliberate feeding by residents,” he said. “The potential threat to human safety from this bear is too great to allow it to continue to venture into populated areas. This is not a pleasant decision for us to have to make, but it is what happens when people feed bears or other wildlife.

“The only alternative was to euthanize the bear,” Breault said, so FWC officials contacted more than 20 zoos and other qualified facilities in a last-ditch effort to find a home for the animal and spare its life. All but one of the facilities said they could not take in such a large wild animal.

Wildlife Rescue and Rehab Inc. agreed to take the bear Wednesday morning. They have made arrangements to have the bear kept at the Hardee County Animal Refuge.

The FWC receives roughly 2,000 calls regarding bears each year. In cases where the bear does not demonstrate aggression and has wandered into a residential area for the first time, the FWC usually captures and relocates the animal to a remote area. In about half the cases, the relocated bear turns up in a residential area again, and in about a third of the cases, the bear visits populated areas repeatedly.

“These captures are potentially dangerous for the bear and for our staff,” Breault said, “but we try to give them a chance to remain in the wild before we have to make the decision to have them permanently removed or put them down.”

For more information about bears in

Florida

, and how to live safely in bear country, visit MyFWC.com/bear.

-30-

HPC/CR

Deja vu all over again

Watching the ABC television series, "I Survived a Japanese Game Show" gives me a certain sense of the familiar. I have never been to Japan, nor have I ever been a contestant on a game show.  But I bore witness to that country's perverse sense of humor nearly ten years ago when the ocean waters off Key Biscayne became a set for the grand finale of a very bizarre quiz show.

In "Trans America Ultra Quiz", Japanese contestants had to survive multiple rounds of traveling the U.S. and answering questions for a chance at a grand prize.  This grand prize was supposed to be a beautifully-decorated houseboat in South Florida.  After the final elimination round, the ecstatic winner sat in a studio watching the unveiling of his/her new home.  Then suddenly, it blew up.

Ha ha ha.

And that's what happened, sort of.  An unnamed barge, tricked out with cheesecloth and paint to look posh on the outside, was towed out to 70 feet of water off Key Biscayne.  A Homestead pyrotechnics company rigged some charges to make it look like it exploded.  But really it sank because of four holes drilled below the waterline.  It's now an artificial reef.

No word on what happened to the poor sap who "won" it.  He probably would have preferred to dress up in a bug suit and get stuck to a Velcro wall.