This week on Waterways;

Marine Zones and the Tortugas Ecological Reserve.

The Florida Keys.

This picturesque string of islands conjures up images of

swaying palms trees and unforgettable sunsets,

yet it is most famous for the attractions

beneath the water line.

The Keys are home to the world's third largest,

and North America's only, barrier coral reef.

Novice snorkelers and experienced SCUBA divers come

from around the globe to discover the awe-inspiring

beauty of the Keys reef which stretches from north of Key

Largo west through the Dry Tortugas.

The coral reef ecosystem, with its seagrass flats and mangrove

fringed islands, also supports a robust recreational fishing

industry and almost 13 million pounds of commercial seafood

landed annually in Monroe County.

Keys waters are diverse, abundant,

and seemingly limitless.

But a calm sea can often hide trouble below the surface.

Despite the aura of endlessness,

the waters of the Keys are fragile.

Finite.

And they have a long history of human influence.

The Keys have changed immensely over the past century.

To accommodate trains, and later cars, island passes were filled

and new islands were created, literally reshaping the Keys.

To satisfy demand for waterfront property and accommodate a

growing population, more than 124 miles of canals were dredged

from the islands a length almost as long as the entire

Overseas Highway!

During the development boom of the 1950s through 70s, many

acres of tropical hardwood hammocks in the Florida Keys

were cleared to provide land for housing and commercial

development, and more than 50 percent of the historic mangrove

habitat was eliminated.

Over the last century, the Keys have been subject to over

fishing of grouper, sea turtles, and queen conch, resulting in

the listing of these species as endangered or protected.

And since the 1970s, the Keys marine ecosystem has experienced

mass die offs of important species:

long-spined sea urchins from disease,

and branching corals such as elkhorn and

staghorn from disease, bleaching and hurricanes.

In 1960, to address the declines in Keys coral reefs, John

Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park was established off Key Largo as

the world's first underwater park.

Continued environmental concerns prompted the designation of Key

Largo National Marine Sanctuary in 1975 and Looe Key National

Marine Sanctuary in 1981.

However, even after these sanctuaries were established,

pollution, overfishing, physical impacts, and user conflicts

continued to occur.

And throughout the 80s we started seeing all sorts of

impacts on our coral reefs.

We started seeing degraded water quality; we were seeing

increases in use of the resources; we were seeing more

and more boaters in the Keys and we were seeing more and more

inexperienced boaters in the Keys.

And that was resulting in a lot of vessel grounding on the

shallow reefs, on the seagrasses.

Mounting threats to the health and future of the coral reef

ecosystem in the Florida Keys would then prompt Congress to

take action to further protect this fragile natural resource,

one of the nation's great underwater treasures.

Following three major ship groundings within seventeen

days, in October and November of 1989, Congressman Dante Fascell

from Florida worked with Senator Bob Graham to craft the Florida

Keys National Marine Sanctuary and Protection Act.

And in November of 1990 President Bush signed into law

the first congressionally designated sanctuary.

The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

This new sanctuary incorporated the preexisting Key Largo and

Looe Key sanctuaries to protect 2,800 square nautical miles of

spectacular, unique, and nationally

significant marine resources.

The sanctuary is home to the world's third largest barrier

reef, extensive seagrass beds, more than 1,700 mangrove-fringed

islands, and more than 6,000 species of marine life.

It also preserves a part of our nation's history with countless

shipwrecks and other archeological treasures.

This ecosystem is the marine equivalent of a tropical rain

forest.

It supports high levels of biological diversity, but is

fragile and easily susceptible to damage from human activities.

But one thing that was really key to this particular sanctuary

is that Congress directed NOAA to consider spatial and temporal

zoning to better ensure the protection of Sanctuary

resources.

Marine zoning.

Just as areas of land may be set aside for specific uses, so too

can parts of the ocean.

Marine zones can help protect sensitive natural resources from

overuse, separate conflicting uses, and preserve the diversity

of life and the integrity of habitat.

In 1997, after numerous public meetings, workshops, and

extensive public input, the sanctuary implemented its first

management plan, which included the country's first

comprehensive marine zoning plan.

Later, in 2001, after an additional public process, the

sanctuary boundary was expanded slightly and the Tortugas

Ecological Reserve was added to the zone plan.

Today, the sanctuary protects 2,900 square nautical miles and

employs five different zone types,

each with a specific purpose.

[Sound of teletype]

Our sanctuary preservation areas are our smaller zones.

They are set aside to heavily used areas, like the top of Looe

Key Reef for example, where you have tens of thousands of divers

every year that want to go and see the spectacular coral reefs

but they don't necessarily want to compete with spear fishermen,

with marine life collectors, or boats trolling over them.

[Sound of teletype]

The second type of no-take area are the research-only areas.

This is a special marine zoning type that we've established in

this sanctuary to set aside areas for research,

research only.

[Sound of teletype]

So by having the existing management areas,

we not only recognized their authority and their jurisdiction

and the rules and regulations that exist through other

entities but we also complement them by providing sanctuary

regulations that they can use in their areas.

So together we integrate our management in the existing

management areas.

[Sound of teletype]

Wildlife management areas.

Bird rookeries, bird nesting areas, turtle beaches;

there are some really special resources

surrounding the Florida Keys.

What we have done with the wildlife management areas is set

a buffer around many of the islands where most of them are

restricted as far as vessel use.

[Sound of teletype]

The fifth and largest type of zone used by

the Sanctuary are Ecological Reserves.

Ecological Reserves protect an entire range of marine habitats;

protecting natural spawning, nursery, and permanent-residence

areas needed for sustainable populations of marine life,

and the coral reef community.

A lot of people think that the larger ecological reserves will

benefit fisheries in various ways, but we set them aside to

protect the biodiversity of the area.

We want to protect the food, the home, the habitat, of all the

recreationally and commercially important species, but also the

little blennies and gobies that just make a living there.

Parceling areas of water for specific uses is a task not

taken lightly or quickly.

The creation of new conservation strategies and marine zones

takes place through a public process that can take years.

During this time, the sanctuary and its advisory council

consider scientific research and community input, as well as how

these new rules would affect the environment and the economy.

The last thing we did there was draw lines on maps, not the

first thing.

But we spent a lot of time educating or explaining what we

knew, and didn't know; we had oceanographers, we had fishermen

talk about their experience and what they catch and where they

catch it and what areas they need.

We had lobstermen; we had recreational anglers; we had

divers; we had conversation orientated type people, these

are the things they wanted and then we set some criteria and

actually the last thing they did was develop the reserves.

It turned out to be two hundred square miles which is huge and

at the time the largest no-take areas in the United States.

With the creation of the sanctuary's network of

marine zones in 1997, and the addition of the Tortugas

Ecological Reserve in 2001, the real work had only just begun.

I think whenever you tell people that they can no longer go to a

location and do what they have traditionally done, you're going

to meet with resistance.

That's human nature and should be expected.

And I think that when we do that we owe it to the public, to

those people impacted by the management decisions to show

that those decisions were wise.

To prove the decisions were wise, there would need to be a

comparison of research from before and after the

implementation of marine zones.

These research projects help determine whether the marine

zones are meeting their intended goals, and whether Ecological

Reserves are succeeding in protecting habitat

and biodiversity.

Some zone monitoring projects compare how much coral is

present inside and outside a marine zone and how that level

has changed over the years.

Other researchers look at reef fish, and how their size and

populations might differ inside a zone or outside.

Results from these studies help sanctuary managers understand

how to better utilize marine zones to protect the special

resources of the Florida Keys.

Coral reefs are integrated ecosystems that depend both on

fish and how much seaweed they eat and the predators they eat;

the organisms that live on the bottom as well as the actual

animals and plants that live on the bottom themselves.

The balance between the amount of coral that's out there, the

amount of seaweed and the amount of bare space is telling you

about the health of the reef.

The good news is that the amounts of seaweed, which is on

the bottom in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is

actually quite low, and it's among the lowest around the

Caribbean.

And that is probably because of the protections that are

afforded to fish that eat those seaweeds; particularly two kinds

of fish called parrotfish and surgeonfish.

The results that we've been coming up with and the results

of other studies that are running in tandem with ours are

telling us that the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary is

effective.

It's got more fish and less seaweed than a lot of places

around the Caribbean and that is a perfect concoction to recover

the corals in the Keys Sanctuary and in particular in the Marine

Protected Areas within the Keys.

Coral reefs, because they are slow growing and affected by so

many factors, take longer to show a response to marine zone

protection.

Fish, on the other hand, respond more quickly to protection and

through long-term monitoring scientists have been able to

more quickly detect changes in their populations.

Much of this research has been focused on the sanctuary's crown

jewel The Tortugas Ecological Reserve, located more than 70

miles west of Key West, is separated into North and South.

Entrance into Tortugas South is limited to permitted

researchers, and access to Tortugas North is controlled

through a simple, no-fee permit.

This 151-square-nautical-mile reserve is closed to all

consumptive use, including fishing and anchoring.

More than 400 species of reef fish live here, including all

species of grouper; and the coral here is healthier and more

abundant than anywhere else in the Florida Keys.Fishing and

anchoring are prohibited to help preserve biodiversity and

protect coral reef habitats.

I think that the Tortugas Banks are really an important part of

America's heritage.

It's one of the truly tropical ecosystems that we have in the

United States.

The marine reserve it's an ecosystem management approach.

You're trying to not just address one fish species or one

coral species; you're trying to improve the health of the whole