Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approves draft for harvesting goliath groupers

By Ari Hait

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    PALM BEACH, Florida (WPBF) — For more than 30 years, Florida law has prevented anyone from killing a goliath grouper, but the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission approved a proposed draft Wednesday that would change this.

The new draft would allow the following:

Goliath grouper season would last three months, March through May. A permit for one fish per person would be issued via a lottery system. Only 200 permits will be issued, and only goliaths between 20 and 36 inches can be kept. The policy would not apply to Palm Beach County, the Atlantic Coast of the Keys and Dry Tortugas National Park. There are post-harvest requirements. The staff will bring the issue back with changes to a future meeting at an undisclosed time. If those are approved, feedback and data will be gathered and a final public hearing will be held in March of 2022.

To read the original proposed rule in full, click here. To see the meeting presentation, click here.

If you like the water, you probably like goliath groupers. They are literally one of the biggest attractions in South Florida for both fishing and diving.

“This is the top place in the world for goliath groupers,” said Dan Volker, who has been diving in South Florida most of his life. “People can come from all over the world and swim with 6-, 7-, 800-pound fish.”

Currently, if anglers catch a goliath grouper, they have to release it.

Boynton Beach Mayor Steven Grant has questions about the proposal.

“It’s something that worries me,” Grant said. “Because is this going to help our environment or is it going to be hurting our environment?”

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Grant is a diver and has gone swimming with the goliaths in the past, which he sees as better than killing them.

“That ability to see the goliath groupers in their spawning when they’re friendly, getting up and close to them, that is something that I would want to encourage, because you’re not harming any of those fish,” he said.

But supporters of the proposal believe there’s no need to protect the goliath groupers anymore. They believe the population has rebounded over the last 30 years to the point where goliaths are now a nuisance, stealing fish anglers want to catch.

Volker isn’t so sure.

“The problem is we found this year that the population is collapsing,” he said.

Volker said that’s only one reason he believes the FWC should reject the proposal. He said another reason is money – goliath groupers are worth more alive as tourist attractions.

“(Think about) $500 to kill a fish versus a fish that might be worth $100,000 or a half a million dollars for its repeated benefit in ecotourism for divers,” he said.

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