Coastal Services Center

Hundreds of careless drivers are destroying sensitive marine habitat in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. These drivers are running their boats aground on coral reefs and seagrass beds, and coastal resource managers there are addressing the problem using education, outreach, enforcement, and restoration.

"The issue of boat groundings is a huge one in the Florida Keys," says sanctuary Superintendent Billy Causey. "The main lesson we've learned has been the importance of education and outreach as the major tools to use here. It all starts with getting the public to understand the importance of the resource, and its role in the marine environment and coastal communities in the U.S."

While prevention is the goal, he says, when a grounding is reported, a detailed protocol is followed to assess the damage to coral or seagrass communities. Under federal and state statutes, boaters responsible for injuring a sanctuary resource may be subject to civil penalties and fines, which may be used to help restore habitat or prevent future accidents. Innovative restoration techniques are used to help restore the resources.

The Growing Problem

When even a small vessel runs aground, slow growing coral can be killed or displaced, or seagrass beds may suffer prop scars that don't just damage seagrass leaves, but can dig up the seafloor and damage or destroy the entire root and rhizome of the plant. This type of damage may take years for coral or seagrass communities to recover from, if they recover at all.

Since the sanctuary's designation in 1990, efforts such as the installation of a Racon navigation system and the implementation of an Area To Be Avoided have been largely successful at keeping tankers and other shipping vessels away from sensitive habitat, says Mary Tagliareni, Florida Keys education and outreach coordinator.

Hundreds of recreational boaters, however, run aground every year. Most of the groundings cause fairly minor damage, she says, but the cumulative impacts of so many incidents cause severe habitat degradation.

Tourist Traps

Educating boaters is challenging for the sanctuary, Causey says, because many of the incidents are caused by vacationers in the area who are either renting a vessel for the day or who trailer their boats in from another area. "We have 28,000 registered vessels in this county alone and that doesn't include the 10,000 boats trailered in every year. We also have close to 50 boat rental operations where anyone with a credit card and of legal age can rent a boat. You don't have to have any experience."

According to Tagliareni, 502 groundings were reported in 1994, and that number rose to 612 in 2000. "Does that mean we are having more groundings?" she asks. "Not necessarily. More people are reporting incidents because they're more aware and have been educated." An increase in the number of boaters on the water may also be responsible for the increase in reported groundings.

Citations issued to boaters from January 1, 1997, to December 31, 1999, show that 43 percent of reported groundings were caused by people who live outside the state, and only 17 percent were caused by people who reside in Monroe County, which abuts the 2,800 square nautical mile sanctuary, she says.

One of the primary ways the sanctuary is reaching these visiting boaters is by working through boat rental businesses. The sanctuary began its boater education program in 1995 when it used grant monies to produce a video to be shown to customers in marinas before departure. Tagliareni says the video is now used in Coast Guard Auxiliary classes and has been produced in Spanish.

Rental companies also are provided with a checklist of boater information to go over with customers, as well as a sticker to go on all the rental boats explaining what to do if their vessel is aground or in shallow water, and providing safe boating tips.

Another prevention effort, explains Tagliareni, is Team Ocean where a group of about 50 volunteers mans three boats during busy summer days to answer questions and divert boaters heading for shallow water over the reefs. In 1998, the volunteers prevented 46 reef groundings.

This figure becomes more impressive when the numbers of coral and seagrass groundings are compared. Citation data showed that 68.2 percent of groundings occurred on seagrass with 32 percent on coral. With this information in hand, Tagliareni says, "we realized people thought of seagrass like the grass in their front yard . . . We needed to do an awareness campaign about why seagrass is important."

The Seagrass Outreach Partnership was formed in 1999 by a group of federal and state agencies, local guide associations, and commercial fishermen to take on the seagrass issue, she says. During the first year, a Seagrass Awareness Month was declared in the county and a community awareness "tool kit" was put on CD-ROM that includes press releases, activities for children, images, logos, and a PowerPoint presentation. In 2000, the campaign was taken statewide.

Response and Restoration

While the sanctuary's list of related brochures and outreach products is extensive, so are the enforcement and restoration efforts after a grounding occurs. Harold Hudson, a Florida Keys coral reef restoration biologist who is known as the reef doctor, says enforcement officers patrol the sanctuary and respond when a grounding is reported. If an incident is serious or if a boater is injured, the Coast Guard will also be called. If resources are damaged, citations may be issued that carry fines of $150 up to $10,000 a day.

To determine the fine and restoration area, Hudson says a damage assessment team conducts an initial inspection of the grounding site. A Global Positioning System unit is used to detail and measure injuries, and aerial photographs might be taken. Site attributes are transferred to a geographic information system and a detailed map is produced. Statistical analysis and modeling based on monitoring of other grounding sites is used to predict recovery rates. This information is used to determine the monetary compensation that will be required of the responsible party.

Then they call in the reef doctor and other restoration specialists. Hudson says he devotes most of his time to developing new techniques and strategies for restoring reefs that have been injured during a grounding. He has developed his own quick-setting underwater cement used to reattach corals, and is an expert at re-creating the shape and texture of reef foundations using limestone boulders and mortar.

"We have these beautiful things that we all love to dive on, photograph, or just contemplate, if we're not swimmers, and to just know are there," Hudson says. "These resources are important to all of us and are truly a national heritage. The sad reality is that many people who come down here to view these beautiful things are woefully unprepared to navigate our waters."

He adds, "There are plenty of seagrass beds in other parts of the U.S., and plenty of coral reefs in other areas of the world. Groundings aren't just a problem in the Florida Keys."

For more information about efforts in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary to address vessel groundings, point your browser to www.fknms.nos.noaa.gov. You may contact Billy Causey at (305) 743-2437, or Billy.Causey@noaa.gov, Mary Tagliareni at Mary.Tagliareni@noaa.gov, or Harold Hudson at Harold.Hudson@noaa.gov.