EDITOR'S DESK

by Victoria Parsons & Mary Kelley Hoppe

We don't own a boat, and probably never will, but that hasn't dampened our enthusiasm for living along Tampa Bay. Okay, so the bay's more like eight miles from our doorsteps, but not a day goes by when we're not writing about, driving along or letting our minds wander down to the waterfront.

With this issue, Tampa Bay Soundings marks its first year covering the waterfront and watershed, with an ever-growing list of fascinating stories to tell and people to interview. We're pleased to present this special edition devoted to the business of the bay and economic impact of Florida's largest estuary.

Yes, we've rounded up the usual suspects, but scratch the surface and you'll quickly see that the bay's economic heartbeat extends well beyond the ports - notwithstanding their substantial contributions. Tampa Bay is a magnet for talent and innovation with no shortage of fascinating niches to explore. Consider:

• Clustered together on a spit of land jutting out into St. Petersburg's Bayboro Harbor is the Southeastern United States' largest convergence of marine research outfits, more than 800 employees strong. On one mighty block reside Florida Marine Research Institute, USF College of Marine Science, Florida Institute of Oceanography, USF Center for Ocean Technology, Tampa Bay Estuary Program - and just down the street, the U.S. Geological Survey, which is expanding its Gulf Coast complex. And that's just for starters, if USF Dean Peter Betzer gets his way - and additional parking.
• Chances are that PT Cruiser that just whizzed by started its cruise in Mexico. With a little nudging from enterprising folks on this side of the Gulf, Daimler-Chrysler, which manufactures the popular car near Mexico City, sliced its transport time to U.S. dealers from 52 days to 44 hours by shipping cars into the Port of Tampa instead of trucking them. Just one more example of how the Port of Tampa, which supplies the region's jet fuel and petroleum, is vital to the economy. Fast-growing Port Manatee, in the midst of an expansion which will double its capacity, is a major economic force as well.
• As for Tampa Bay Partnership Chair Rhea Law, we knew she was a player, but we never dreamed she could summon a cruise ship to pass by her window just to drive home a point about the port's impact. On a clear day from her majestic perch on the 17th floor of One Mack Center in downtown Tampa, she can see the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Nice view if you can get it, but even ground-level slackers like us get a thrill from driving along the bayshore or bridges that criss-cross the bay on a sun-drenched afternoon when the pelicans are diving for dinner.
• Dan Avoures knows a thing or two about curb appeal. The naval architect lovingly restores Trumpy Yachts from his boatyard in St. Petersburg. Note to reader: If you have to ask what or how much, you clearly can't afford them. He's one of a vanishing line of craftsmen boat builders and tenders sought after by affluent customers in and outside of Florida.

Each story, large and small, is part of the bay culture and economy that makes Tampa Bay great.

No question about it: the best part about Tampa Bay is Tampa Bay.

TO STOCK OR NOT TO STOCK:
Let's Settle the Question Once and For All

by Ken Leber

Reading the recent point-counterpoint on marine stock enhancement by Karl Wickstrom and Robin Lewis (TBS Winter 2003) made me a bit dizzy. Their debate is a perfect example of how, in the absence of enough information, perfectly logical arguments can support both sides of the resource management coin. I liked Robin's frank argument asking, in essence, "where's the beef?" in the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's (FWC) Stock Enhancement program. I also liked Karl's portrayal of the FWC redfish project in Tampa Bay as a good effort to maximize the number of fish caught in the fishery per dollar spent in the hatchery. This is a healthy and overdue debate.

But I'm perplexed. Are hatcheries going to give Florida's marine sport fish the "friendly boost" Karl suggests? Or are they going to be the "abysmal failure" portrayed by Robin?

As lead editor of Blackwell Science's forthcoming book, "Stock Enhancement and Sea Ranching 2," I should know the answers. The book summarizes the research findings of 40 of the world's finest scientists - foremost authorities on stock enhancement.

It's ironic, but the book actually parallels TBS's point-counterpoint almost to the letter. What I'm saying is, the fisheries scientific community is just as confused as TBS's readers must be. To understand why, let's examine the issue a bit closer.

Marine stock enhancement in the U.S. dates back to the 1880s. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (now National Marine Fisheries Service) used hatcheries as their principal fishery management tool for 70 years to stock eggs and 3-day-old fish larvae. Yes, cod, haddock, and flounder were stocked by the billions. Talk about chumming the water! This major effort never showed any signs of success. Finally, in the 1950s, the Bureau closed its premier hatcheries at Woods Hole and Gloucester and shifted its management strategy to regulating fisheries. So much for the allure of supply-side management.

Later, in the 1980s, scientists finally figured out how to culture a few species of marine fishes. That set the stocking pendulum swinging again in the U.S., because now fish could be grown past the larval stage to fingerling or larger juvenile sizes, old enough to survive if released into the sea. And new, benign tags were developed that could be used to mark even tiny juveniles. Thus, in the mid 1990s - a century after it all began - we began to see the first-ever scientific publications on the fate of marine fishes released into U.S. waters. Good grief, stock enhancement is still a brand new science with no clear recipe for success. No wonder people are questioning its usefulness.

Enter FWC and Mote Marine Laboratory. I get a bright gleam in my eye thinking about the hatchery-reared snook we've been releasing experimentally in Sarasota Bay since 1997. Our annual Snook Foundation fishing tournament has shown a hatchery impact of 4% in the fishery. Three years in a row about eight out of the 200 or so snook caught in our bay-wide tournament were adult hatchery-reared fish. Who would have thought that releasing 42,000 baby snook over six years could have made any detectable impact? What if we'd released 400,000?

This and other studies like the FWC Tampa Bay redfish project have perked the interest of even the most ardent critics. Marine stock enhancement has enormous potential, but we still have to address critical uncertainties - like how many fish our nursery habitats can support, and what are the optimal release strategies?

Both the Tampa Bay redfish project and our Sarasota Bay snook project are patterned after the same work in Hawaii that Professor Ray Hilborn cites in 1998 as "among the best studies he's seen." Hilborn is one of the world's most vocal critics of stock enhancement - the critic Robin Lewis cites. But Hilborn is also a renowned and visionary scientist. Let's listen to him when he concludes in a 1999 paper: "The responsible scientific fisheries community needs to step in and realistically evaluate fish stocking versus other management tools. Let's stop bashing hatcheries. Let's conduct a scientific evaluation of their effectiveness and use hatcheries responsibly."

So, let's reserve judgment on stock enhancement's potential in Florida until some good, hard, old-fashioned Baconian science can finally be conducted using modern methods, like the FWC/Mote Tampa Bay study and our Mote/FWC Sarasota Bay snook study. Then we'll know once and for all if hatchery-release technology can be developed into a solid fishery-management tool - a tool that can be used for restoring, maintaining or boosting the economic output of our precious fisheries, or if stocking programs simply don't work.

A leader in the new science of stock enhancement, Dr. Ken Leber directs the Center for Fisheries Enhancement at Mote Marine Laboratory.

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