Finally, something in 2020 did not become a dumpster fire.
I know everyone can agree with me that nearly every institution we depend on, utilize or are a part of has reeked like hot garbage since this godforsaken virus took over our nation 12 long years ago.
What? I'm now being told it has been only five months. C'mon, really? Could have fooled me. Seems like it's been an eternity since we had normalcy in our lives.
All I remember is one day we rang in the new year. The next day, it seemed, we were in Defcon 1 and our entire world was in complete chaos.
So when lobster mini-season rolled around, my thoughts instantly turned to the negative. What could go wrong, I pondered. Plenty.
At this time last week, I thought the end result for lobster divers would be disappointment for many, except for the select few. When it comes to lobster mini-season, there are always a select few. No matter how bad it was for the majority, the select few can be found on Facebook smiling with what looks like ALL of the lobsters.
However, I was wrong. It was one of the few times I was glad to be.
This year, the majority of those I encountered and interacted with were smiling. Most people I spoke with were pleased to have found what they captured. There were a few who left the water short of their goal, but many were eager to get back on day two and rectify the situation.
To me, the 2020 lobster mini-season stood apart from the mini-seasons of the past decade. Here is how and why.
Visibility
Remember the song "I Can See for Miles" by British 70s rockers The Who? Well, maybe the visibility wasn't quite that good, but in some places it was pretty clear.
Visibility is one of those diving terms that can define how good or how bad a diver's day is. Success in hunting spiny lobsters under ledges and coral on a reef depends heavily on how well a diver can see through the water.
However, there isn't really a consistent way to quantify visibility. It is often subjective and it can vary every few hundred yards. From what I could gather from reports, visibility broke down like this:
- Peck's Lake south of St. Lucie Inlet: 10 feet clouded by outgoing tide, bringing dark brackish water from the St. Lucie River out over the reef. It was better the deeper one went.
- Nearshore reefs off South Hutchinson Island: 10 feet, fair
- Nearshore reefs off North Hutchinson Island and Vero Beach: 5 to 10 feet, poor to fair
- Reefs deeper than 30 feet: Pretty good, 20 to 30 feet
- Palm Beaches: Excellent
- Florida Keys: Excellent
Weather window
How lucky was everyone the mini-season fell on the calendar when it did? The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission sets the lobster sport season for the final consecutive Wednesday and Thursday in July. As a result, it can begin as early as the 25th or finish as late as the 31st.
More: Divers report big lobsters, bag limits and busy boat ramps
If the season began last Saturday, it may have been too windy to provide clear visibility, especially in shallow water along the beaches. Onshore winds would have kicked up the bottom.
And next week, it appears as if most of South Florida's coastal waters will be roiled by the after-effects of a tropical storm.
Just by chance, this week turned out to be the ideal week to have lobster mini-season, at least as far as the weather is concerned.
Florida Keys
What seemed to me as if it would be an unmitigated disaster actually wasn't after all.
For the two weeks prior to mini-season, Keys officials scrambled to try to close down access to its 126-mile-long island chain without actually posting a checkpoint at the entrance as they did through April and May.
More: Keys closures to stem COVID-19 will create more problems
So to prevent or discourage visitors, they did the next most deterrent thing. They closed public boat ramps, beaches and parks. Leaders were fearful of gatherings of lobster mini-season participants that could spread the virus through its 74,000 residents.
Visitors I spoke with prior to heading there were concerned they would not be able to launch boats. Well, the good news is, everything seemed to go smoothly, from what I can tell. The best measure of how well it went? The lobster photos I saw.
Diver down
The waters were loaded with divers this year. According to the FWC, there were 176,190 lobster harvest stamps sold this fiscal year, and I'll bet that number increased the last few days as new divers bought licenses.
To me, I felt as if nearly all of them went diving. Boat ramps on the Treasure Coast were more crowded than I have seen them in 10 years.
Photos from beaches and condominium owners indicated a throng of divers working those second and third reefs that run parallel to our beaches in 15 to 20 feet of water.
Peck's Lake off Hobe Sound looked like a floating marina, where divers from St. Lucie and Jupiter inlets met to work the same reefs.
Sandsprit Park, one of the largest boat ramps located closest to the inlet, was pretty full, but not over capacity as it was in its heyday. Over 15 years ago, I covered seasons when boaters parked their trailers out along St. Lucie Boulevard and in any empty lot they could find nearby. It wasn't that busy this year, but good to see.
Lake Okeechobee discharges
One reason why Sandsprit was so busy was the lack of dirty water being dumped from Lake Okeechobee. It was the second straight year no water came from the lake, which means we can all thank a dry winter and spring. These years were terrible with runoff:
- 2018: Lake Okeechobee discharges began in May and continued into the fall. Some microcystin algae formed in the river, but the dark, silt-laden water smothered the reefs south of the inlet, fouling plans for the few divers who tried. Later this year, a red tide popped up along Treasure Coast beaches.
- 2016: Discharges began in the spring and lasted through the fall. In total, 163 billion gallons poured out of the lake this year. The toxic algae was terrible all the way downstream into downtown Stuart. The reefs were murdered. This was the first year beaches were closed because of algae.
- 2013: Discharges began in June and lasted until November. This was the original "Lost Summer," as it was nicknamed. Filthy water was the theme the entire summer. Clean water advocate groups protested all summer to get leaders to act.
- 2005: This was the aftermath of the 2004 hurricane season, which featured four storms hitting Florida. Discharges went on nearly the entire year. This was the fist year the Treasure Coast ever saw any cyanobacteria and it was bad in the South Fork of the St. Lucie. It blanketed the nearshore reefs with dirty freshwater.
Storm's a comin'
The lobster regular season opens Aug. 6 statewide and will remain open until March 31.
Tropical Storm/Hurricane Isaias will be a distant memory by then, but if the storm season is as busy as predicted, diving days may be limited.
Hope you got bugs while you could.
Ed Killer is TCPalm's outdoors writer. Become a valued customer by subscribing to TCPalm. To interact with Ed, friend him on Facebook at Ed Killer, follow him on Twitter @tcpalmekiller or email him at ed.killer@tcpalm.com.
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