Mark Howell's - "View From the Hill"
Sunday, July 25, 2010
A Bunch of Rattlesnakes

By Mark Howell

'A bunch of rattlesnakes is what they are," declared County Commissioner Mario Di Gennaro.

Speaking at the annual membership meeting of Reef Relief last week, he was referring to BP.

Mario sits on the government's oil-spill economic recovery task force and the BP claims committee and he had more to say. "BP is not our friend. They never were our friend and they never will be our friend. I fought with BP. They thought we had no damage done to us down here."

In true Mario style he added: "You know me. I'm very direct. I don't want to be bit by a bunch of rattlesnakes and that's what they are." In his lifetime, he said, "I've dealt with Fortune 500 companies -- but this one, BP, they're only interested in their shareholders."

Praying is not enough, Mario concluded. "We must be prepared." To date, BP has provided Florida with $25 million to pay for "positive" media and given Monroe County $400,000, "not nearly enough for the damage done to us," he said. (Got a beef with BP? Call Mario's office at 289-6000.)

In the shadow of the oil disaster, Tuesday's meeting at the Pier House Caribbean Spa was something of a comeback for Reef Relief. The financially buffeted nonprofit welcomed several dignitaries to its meeting, including NOAA's regional director, Billy Causey, and piano man Timmy Wegman. This was a big crowd, the disaster having swelled the volunteer base statewide. Longtime Keys fisherman Mimi Stafford was spontaneously voted onto the board. And a couple of folks had some very good things to say.

Capt. Victoria Rose Impallomeni, spiritual advisor on the board and a 35-year veteran of captaining charters -- "I teach marine science while playing on water" -- has just completed a survey of nearshore patch reefs with coral-reef scientist Dr. James Porter of the University of Georgia. "He was shocked and I was delighted," reported Vicki. "He said he's not seen coral as healthy anywhere else in the Keys." They encountered new staghorn and elkhorn at Boca Grande and Rock Key.

Apparently the whitepox kill of the 1990s is on the wane, in fact our coral is showing significant recovery; credit goes to advanced water treatment in the Keys, a development supported by Reef Relief.

From Mote Marine, founded in Sarasota 50 years ago and with a technical research lab on Summerland Key, came more optimism. Dr. David Vaughn showed pictures of staghorn being cultivated in gardens of cinderblock. He spoke of a coral gene bank in which samples of all the coral types in the Keys are being kept "in captivity." And he revealed the winged "glider" torpedoes developed as deep-water drones, called gliders because they literally fly through the water. Already in use up and down Florida's Gulf coast, they monitor water conditions at a tiny fraction of the cost in manpower, hardware and time that such exercises used to take.

Scott Donahue, associate science coordinator at the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, looked the lionfish in the eye. Local seas, he said, will not stay the same if these venomous invasives stay. They eat lobster and crab and reef fish and there's no predator to stop them. One lionfish can produce millions of eggs a year in multiple spawnings. One hundred and thirty of these creatures have been captured in Sanctuary waters. Fishermen are being encouraged to kill them (no permit is needed). Divers may use slurp guns. Lionfish are Indo-Pacific, explained Donahue, and "not welcome here."

Possibly qualifying as good news from the Sanctuary was Donohue's observation that "the hurricanes of 2005 helped the reef locally by stirring up colder water and preventing further bleaching."

What else we got out of the show-and-tell part of the program are two conclusions. One, that the sea's precious larvae and the larval life "do not do well with dispersants." And two, the work of a project like MEERA (Marine Ecosystem Event Response and Assessment) points to the one fundamental truth these days: It is the public that must be corralled and recruited as the real eyes and ears of flailing bureaucracies.

Reef Relief President Peter Anderson concluded that the organization was "alive and well beyond our hopes and expectations." Out of its strategic planning session has come a defined objective: Within five years, clean beaches with clean water open for swimming 365 days a year. There's talk of the past coming back. "We'll splice some lines," said Anderson, invoking dockside splicing parties for the mooring-buoy program. Cayo Carnival will return, Robin Cayman Smith foreseeing cruise-ship support for the annual celebration.

"We're ready to expand!" said Reef Relief's program director Millard McCleary, advising that its center at the Bight has had "tons more visitors than last year." One hundred grade-school students have experienced Coral Camp, "local kids, kids from Kansas, Arizona and the Bahamas," he said. They're even hiring a new project director.

One of the more passionate speakers was Paul Johnson, former president of Reef Relief and its director of policy and special projects, who shook his head and rolled his eyes at the news that any constitutional amendment on banning deep-water drilling off Florida had just been tipped off the table up in Tallahassee.

"It's not an oil spill, by the way,' he said. "It's a disaster."

• • • • •

A contributor to the oil-drilling debate in the pages of Solares Hill, ever since our "Thank You for Drilling" cover story on Feb. 21, is Adam Rivera. He's an Environment Florida advocate and last week he made a statement prior to the Florida Legislature's special legislative session in response to the Gulf oil disaster:

"Twenty years ago, the Exxon Valdez spill became Florida's original inspiration for a shoreline drilling ban.

"Before disaster again struck in the Gulf, the Florida Legislature was poised to remove that shoreline drilling ban, putting oil rigs within10 miles of our beautiful beaches.

"That's why the safest place for our coastal protections is in Florida's constitution and out of the hands of the legislature.

"If state leaders are prone to forgetting our gravest environmental mistakes, then they should unburden themselves of their ability to repeat them.

"Failure even to consider putting Florida's shoreline drilling ban on the November ballot, despite overwhelming popular support, is unacceptable.

"It is short-sighted at best and infuriatingly loyal to oil interests at worst."

Amen.

mhowell@keysnews.com