University of South Florida Scholar Commons Digital Collection - Florida Studies Center Oral Histories Digital Collection - Florida Studies Center 4-22-2010 Steve Lowe oral history interview by Robert Cardin, April 22, 2010 Steve Lowe (Interviewee) Robert Cardin (Interviewer) Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/flstud_oh Part of the American Studies Commons, and the Community-based Research Commons Scholar Commons Citation Lowe, Steve (Interviewee) and Cardin, Robert (Interviewer), "Steve Lowe oral history interview by Robert Cardin, April 22, 2010" (2010). Digital Collection - Florida Studies Center Oral Histories. Paper 182. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/flstud_oh/182 This Oral History is brought to you for free and open access by the Digital Collection - Florida Studies Center at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Collection - Florida Studies Center Oral Histories by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact scholarcommons@usf.edu.
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Oculina Bank Oral History Project Oral History Program Florida Studies Center University of South Florida, Tampa Library Digital Object Identifier: O6-00014 Interviewee: Steve Lowe (SL) Interviewer: Robert Cardin (RC) Interview date: April 22, 2010 Interview location: Interviewee s home, Fort Pierce, Florida Transcribed by: Mary Beth Isaacson, MLS Transcription date: June 13, 2010 to July 5, 2010 Audit Edit by: James E. Scholz Audit Edit date: July 7, 2010 to July 8, 2010 Final Edit by: Mary Beth Isaacson, MLS Final Edit date: September 8, 2010 Robert Cardin: Good morning. This is Robert Cardin. Today is April 21, I think. Steve Lowe: Twenty-second. 1
RC: April 22 is today s date. I m at the residence of Steve Lowe, conducting an oral history of Steve Lowe for the Gulf and South Atlantic Fisheries Foundation project Fort Pierce-Oculina Bank. Welcome. Please state your name, Steve. SL: Steve Lowe. RC: And spelled S-t-e-v-e? SL: S-t-e-v-e. RC: L-o-w-e? SL: L-o-w-e. RC: Where were you born, Mr. Lowe? SL: New Smyrna Beach. RC: And what was your date of birth? SL: 2-8-36 [February 8, 1936]. RC: When did you move to Fort Pierce, Steve? SL: When I was two years old, 1938. RC: And what brought you here, sir? SL: My dad. RC: Okay. And, Steve, are you married? 2
SL: Yes. RC: How old were you when you first got married? SL: Which time? RC: The most recent. SL: Oh, God. I was in my fifties, I guess. We ve been married now twenty-five years. RC: Oh, that s a pretty pretty good record, there. Steve, do you have any children? SL: Yeah. RC: How many and how old are they? SL: Two girls. One is forty-seven, and the other one is forty-nine. RC: And, sir, how much schooling do you have? SL: High school. RC: High school graduate, okay. Do you have any other jobs besides fishing? SL: No. RC: Have you had other jobs besides fishing? 3
SL: Running a fish house. Yes, I have: construction jobs, when I just got out of school in 1955. I went fishing one day and caught 1,000 pounds of kingfish, and they were ten cents a pound. They were paying me $100 a week in construction work, and I made $100 that one day, and I quit the construction job. I gave the man two weeks notice. RC: Did you stay all two weeks? SL: Yeah, I stayed there two weeks. (laughs) RC: That s cool, Steve. And, Steve, you currently own a boat? SL: No. One small boat, fifteen foot Key West. RC: Fifteen foot Key West. So, what, do you basically consider yourself retired now? SL: Yeah. RC: Now, I d like to ask you some questions about the Oculina Bank. Steve, how familiar are you with the Oculina Bank? SL: I m real familiar with it. I fished on the Oculina Bank in the fifties [1950s]. RC: In the fifties [1950s]? That s I don t even think it was discovered yet. SL: It wasn t, till seventy-two [1972], and I showed them how to find it then. They took the Sea Diver out there, and they were zigzagging northwest and south er, northwest and northeast and they were going right between the peaks. So, I told them to go out there 240 foot and just start running north. RC: And you told who are you referring to as they? 4
SL: Oh, I don t know who it was, but it was the Harbor Branch Foundation. 1 RC: Harbor Branch Foundation? SL: It wasn t, then. I think it was called something other than that. RC: Interesting. Thank you, Steve. Do you know why the Oculina Bank was designated an area to protect? SL: No, I do not, other than longliners were cutting the coral off with the cable. It wasn t the shrimp boats, because they can t drag in there; the peaks are too high. They come up 180 feet, some of them 200 feet. RC: Peak meaning, like, coming out of the 240 foot of water you were speaking of? SL: No, coming out of 600 feet of water, up to 180 feet, some of them. RC: Interesting. I know these days, they re like 195, 205; it s like they re shorter than they used to be. SL: They probably are. RC: Is there anything else you can tell me about the Oculina Bank? SL: Only that there was a lot of fish on it, and I caught a lot of them. Thousands and thousands of pounds of snapper and grouper and every kind of snapper and grouper: mutton snapper, red snapper, gray grouper what you call gag grouper, now Warsaw grouper, plenty of them. 1Harbor Branch Oceanographic Insttuton at Florida Atlantc University conducted scientfc research referenced in the Oculina Bank closure. It is a non-proft oceanographic insttuton dedicated to marine and ocean research and educaton operated by the university. 5
RC: Do you know, like, was there a fleet of boats, or did you have fellow fishermen that fished with you? SL: No. Very few boats fished out there, because of the tide. RC: And they would be mostly commercial? SL: Yeah. We were all commercial, no sport fishing. There was none back then. There was no sport fishing here that went out there. Sy Thomas and George Archer were the two main charter boats out there, and they were mainly sailfish and kingfish and dolphin and wahoo, like that, trolling. They did no bottom fishing out there at all. RC: Yeah, I ve noticed in my lifetime how it used to be game fish, and now a lot of the charter boats are now after bottom fish. SL: Yeah, yeah, like The Floridian; he goes out there. And what s his name, Glenn Cameron? 2 He bottom fishes all winter he did, before they closed it down. He was fishing only in ninety foot of water, and sometimes he went off in the Oculina Bank. RC: Out that way? SL: Yeah. RC: Interesting. What do you think about the closure of the Oculina Bank to anchoring and bottom fishing? SL: I don t think the anchoring ever bothered it; the fishing either, other than slowing down over the years. 2Glenn Cameron was also interviewed for the Oculina Bank Oral History Project. The DOI for his interview is O6-00006. 6
RC: Well, do you mind if I ask you why you think anchoring and bottom fishing didn t bother it? SL: It never the anchor, with the 50 pound anchor we used, you didn t drag that anchor. When you anchored, it was in one place. A 50 pound anchor and 70 foot of chain, probably 800 foot of rope RC: But would you anchor on the peak, or would you position the boat SL: We d anchor in front of the peak and fish on the edge of it. RC: So, you were never even putting your anchor in the coral area. SL: No. No, you didn t want to put the anchor in the peak. If you did, you didn t catch anything. RC: (laughs) Yeah, I think a lot of people don t understand that about commercial fishing. SL: Right. RC: You try to position yourself to have less snag SL: Timing and position, that s the whole thing about fishing. RC: They ve made it, you know, some areas you can power fish, but to me, that just puts you closer to putting your gear into the coral. SL: Yeah, into the coral banks. RC: Has or, I guess, how did the closure of the Oculina Bank affect you? 7
SL: Oh, at that time, I was doing a lot of fishing out there. I was catching a lot of grouper and snapper out in the Oculina Bank. Then, when they closed it, it affected a lot of fishermen, because at that time, there was probably ten or twelve boats going out there fishing. RC: Like, on a daily basis? SL: Yeah, on bottom reels, what they call deck reels. Then they started longlining tilefish, and then they decided they were coming in the Oculina Bank to catch grouper. And they caught a lot of grouper, but when they run those cables, the eight-inch steel cables zigzagging in the banks, when they went to pick them up, it cut the coral off. I think that s what really happened to all the coral out there. RC: How long did that take place? Many years? SL: No, they didn t do it many years. They did it probably five years, maybe. But they destroyed a lot of that coral. RC: If anchoring and bottom fishing in the Oculina Bank was not prohibited, would you have fished there? SL: Sure I would have. I did that all my life. RC: This question here is How, and for what? SL: Sometimes we power fished, just to try a place. If we caught a fish or two, we d run up and anchor. RC: So, if they wouldn t have closed it, you would have just kept right on anchoring and bottom fishing? SL: Oh, yeah, sure. RC: With your deck reels or your bandits? 8
SL: Yeah, there were still a lot of fish there. RC: Steve, can you tell me I mean, you ve been here all your life. Overall, how has fishing changed here in the Fort Pierce area since you started fishing? SL: Well, they ve cut it down so bad that you can t hardly make a living fishing now. They ve got one type of fish left that they can fish, and that s king mackerel. Now, they ve shut the grouper and snapper off. Well, everybody that was stopping and catching grouper and snapper go kingfishing. They get a permit and they go kingfishing, cause that s about the only thing they got left. RC: Well, how about the kingfishermen? I guess they used to have a grouper/snapper auction. Didn t most people also have grouper permits? SL: Oh, yeah. Yeah, they did. I had a grouper permit. Unlimited. I sold it seven or eight years ago, because there was no way I could have caught that many grouper. I sold that permit for $9,000, and now they re probably worth $13,000 or $14,000. RC: You can get $14,000 for them. But are you saying, like, when Oculina Bank changed, you no longer had that option, so that made you depend more on kingfishing? SL: Yeah. RC: And the kingfish fleet in general had that same SL: Yeah, that was it. You could only kingfish. You couldn t bottom fish, not out there, anyway. RC: Well, the way I remember back, let s say, in ninety-four [1994] when it closed, it seemed like most kingfish folks did have grouper permits. Wasn t that, like, the standard? 9
SL: Yeah. Yeah, they caught a lot of grouper inshore. There was a lot of those kingfish boats had unlimited permits, 225 pounds. Course, at that time, that wasn t hard to catch that many grouper. RC: Well, probably the kingfish limit was still a good bit of pay. (laughs) SL: Yeah. Yeah, it was. RC: All right. Steve, have you had any experience with law enforcement, within or regarding Oculina Bank? SL: Nope. Never have. RC: All right. Now, Steve, I d like to talk about your history in general. SL: All right. RC: What is your earliest memory of fishing, and how old were you? SL: Well, my earliest memory was just fishing inshore, in 90 foot of water or 100. RC: No, excuse me, let me rephrase that. Earliest memory, like going to the lake with your grandpa fishing or something. Or did your dad take you out? SL: My dad took me out on the river fishing when I was just a kid, just like ten year old. We caught a lot of channel bass and snook. At that time, you could bring in snook and sell them. We got eighteen cents a pound for them. RC: Really? I ll be darned. SL: And there was no limit on them. You could catch all you wanted to, any size. Now, you got a window that s ridiculous. 10
RC: Speaking of selling fish back then, there was, like, a lot of fish houses? SL: Yeah, there were thirteen fish houses here when I was a kid. Taylor Creek was the north side of Taylor Creek was all fish houses. There was Hudgins and I don t know how many others along there. RC: Like, you came in and sold a snook. Was that eaten locally or shipped away? SL: Most of the snook, there were probably fifteen or twenty of what we called bridge fishermen that fished with cane poles and wire lines. They caught probably an average of 1,000 pounds of snook a night. They were sold locally, and they were shipped to New York. At that time, we shipped everything in barrels, 200 pound barrels. RC: What were they, like sealed barrels or pickle barrels? SL: No, they were wooden barrels, with a canvas-reinforced top. The hoop went on them, and they nailed the hoop on over the top. RC: And you put ice in there to keep them cold? SL: Yeah, there was ice in there. Yeah, there was 100 pounds of ice, and like 200 pounds of fish. RC: I ve always wondered SL: Ice on the bottom, ice in the middle, and ice on top. Then you put the top on it, and you take it down to the Railway Express and set it on one of those railcars. They d load it on a train, and away it d go. RC: That s way before my time, but I ve heard about that. That s really cool. SL: Oh, I was down there went down there with them a lot of times to send fish off. It was something. 11
RC: Was your dad selling fish at that time? SL: Yeah. Oh, yeah, he had the fish house at the south end of the South the west end of the South Bridge. He had that fish house there in 1938. RC: You re kidding me. SL: That s when he started it. It was there during the war, and we sold the sailors all the fish and tackle they needed. He had a bait house, and tackle, and fish house, and everything, for years and years. RC: Sold to sailors what, were there military in Fort Pierce at that time? SL: Oh, sure. This is where the underwater demolitions started. RC: But y all were actually, like, selling to the naval base or something? SL: Yeah, we sold some to the he sold some fish to the naval base, and we sold fishing tackle, me and my brother. We d go out on the bridge with trays, with balls of cotton line with a lead and a leader on it, and we d get fifty cents for it. The sailors could they had the guardhouse on this end, on the west end of the bridge at that time, and they could come out on the bridge and fish. They d buy all this tackle from us, and throw it overboard when they got ready to go back and buy another one. RC: You were an entrepreneur there, Steve. SL: Oh, yeah. We sold those nickel pies; we used to go the bakery here, at Bell Bakery, and we d take a tray full of them pies out there, cream-filled pie turnovers, and made a nickel apiece. RC: Man, I d be I would have loved it back then. 12
SL: Yeah. RC: Steve, when you I guess you learned how to sell all the pies on your own, but how did you learn how to fish? SL: Oh, I just I did that on my own, same way I learned how to run a boat. RC: Just jumped in it? SL: I didn t go to school. I just got in and went. I always put motors in boats and shafts and everything, built them. RC: It s a good life, isn t it? SL: Yeah. It was then; not too good now, though. RC: Well, Steve, how did you decide to become a fisherman? SL: Well, my dad was in the fish business, and everything I caught, he bought. So, I d catch snapper, mango snapper, off the dock, off the bridge, and bring them down there, and he d sell them. He d buy from me. RC: And you just decided it was a good way to make a living. SL: Sure. I had more money than anybody in town. I could sell any kind of fish: sheepshead, snapper, grouper. Anything I caught, they d buy. RC: Was there a point in your life that you just all of a sudden decided, I m gonna be a commercial fisherman? SL: Yeah, when I was working for Fletcher Construction. I decided right then, when I went that one day and caught 1,000 pounds of kingfish. I made as much that day as I did the 13
whole week working for him, running a whole gang of men. I told him; he tried to give me more money, and I said, No, I m going fishing, and I went. RC: Right then and there. SL: Right then. RC: That made your decision. SL: That s it. RC: Well, Steve, when did you start to work as a fisherman in the Fort Pierce area? SL: You mean full-time? RC: Well, since I don t know, let s do both. I guess when you were in your teens, you worked part-time. SL: Yeah, right. After I got out of school, then I went serious fishing. RC: Is that when you quit Fletcher Construction? SL: Yeah. RC: When do you think that might have been? SL: Probably 1956. RC: And you ve been full-time since. SL: Yep. 14
RC: What did you fish for when you first quit, kingfish, snapper, grouper? You named several kinds. SL: We caught kingfish, but I d go snapper fishing. I loved to catch snapper and grouper. At that time, we d catch them in 90, 100 foot of water. You d quit kingfishing [when] they quit biting, and you d anchor up and catch grouper. It was a pretty common thing to do then. But now, you can t catch them: it s closed. RC: In general, you re just a very diversified fisherman. SL: Yeah. RC: Like, what was in season? SL: Oh, yeah; different kinds of fish at different times of the year. RC: That s what people don t understand. They want a year-long supply of everything. SL: No. Don t work that way. RC: It s like your red tomatoes all year. (laughs) SL: That s right. Don t work. RC: Steve, I guess you said you came in, and you would anchor up, bottom fish. Like, were you hand line or bandit fishing or deck reel fishing? SL: Well, in a hundred foot of water, we mostly hand line fished. The first hand lines we had were made out of cotton, twisted cotton, seventy-two thread cotton line. RC: And what, did you just use a sinker hook and some bait? 15
SL: Yeah, used a kidney, what we called a kidney lead; weighed about two pounds, three pounds. You put a leader off the end of it: that s what you used for line. RC: Just one hook and one bait? SL: One hook and one line; always used one hook and one line. RC: And, Steve, you just mentioned, like, 100 foot or less or something, your hand line. What about I guess in Oculina Bank you already stated that you would use a deck reel or SL: Right. That was a wire line. RC: Who did you fish with, Steve? SL: Homer Curry, mostly. I fished two or three of his boats. RC: Who owned the boat? SL: Homer Curry. RC: Homer Curry. And now was this what, you were full-time fishing? SL: Yeah. RC: And how were you related to this person? SL: Just a friend. That s all. RC: When did you, like, invest your money in your own boat and start fishing for yourself? 16
SL: In 1968, I built the first boat. Denny McGauran and myself built the boat. (inaudible) Little twenty-four footer: I called it Shantrey. RC: And how many pounds of fish can you put on a twenty-four pound boat, Steve? SL: I put 2800 pounds on that little boat one day! RC: (laughs) SL: Right out of here. RC: And, what, you ve had two other boats since that one? SL: I ve had several boats. My dad had one, the Sally Bee, and we rebuilt it Frank Johnson rebuilt that. It was good; it was a Carolina Sharpie. It was slow, at only eight miles an hour, but boy, it was a good kingfish boat, because it had a round stern; there was no wake behind it at all. RC: Fishing close, huh? SL: Yep. Catch em right up against the stern. RC: Now, this is a question, but I want answered: What s the most grouper you ever caught in one day, Steve? SL: Ten thousand pounds, me and another man. RC: (makes approving noise) Was that on your twenty-four footer? SL: No, that was on the thirty-footer. That was on the Laura Anne. 17
RC: The Laura Anne? SL: Yep. RC: And you built the Laura Anne, too? SL: Yeah. Bought the hull from Coby and built the cabin, and I put it all together. RC: What did you have in her back the? SL: Had a 653 Detroit Diesel line. RC: What did you check home, about eight knots with that 10,000 pounds? SL: No, that was yeah, about that, about that. We damn near sunk. The guy I had with me, he was so beat from fishing that he was sitting on the engine box, and I m looking down and the water s right up at the engine box. I told him, You d better go move them Warsaws. They were laying all over the deck, and he started pulling em up with a gaff hook, and opened up the scuppers. RC: The water drained on out. SL: The water run out then. RC: Steve, where did you go fish when you began fishing? SL: Right out of Fort Pierce. We fished inshore; we fished sixty, seventy, eighty feet of water, a hundred feet, usually kingfishing. RC: I ve got this map here; I m gonna break it out. (rustles paper) Is this about the area here, the Northeast Ground? 18
SL: Yeah, Northeast and Bethel Shoals. RC: Okay. Now, when you fished the Oculina Bank, where did you fish? SL: Oh, well, I had numbers; that s all latitude and longitude. 223 was the south peak I fished. RC: That would be right there. That s, I guess, what they call Chapman s Reef or something. SL: Yeah. RC: And on this map, you see this here experimental closure area. Did you is that the only place in here you fished, or did you SL: No, I fished all the way up to Melbourne. RC: Oh, through the whole Habitat Area of Particular Concern. All right, thank you, Steve. SL: And the shrimp boats were outside. I d catch royal reds and rock shrimp. RC: What depths were they working, if you recall? SL: Where were they working? RC: What depths? You said they were outside of the SL: Oh, they were outside of the Oculina Bank. RC: Seven, eight hundred feet? 19
SL: Yeah, six hundred feet or something like that. They had their plotters; they knew where they were at. They didn t want to get in them peaks. RC: There s a question here: During what months of the year did you fish for what? SL: Well, red snapper, I usually started catching them in May. That was when they were roeing, and they were crazy. They d bite, just like on Indiana Rock. I d go there about once every three weeks. RC: What, throughout the summer and into the fall? SL: Yeah, in the summer. And boy, they were thick there. Sometimes well, me and the Cuban, the chief, we had ninety-seven head there one afternoon, with 2700 pound. There were nothing but red snapper. RC: That s some serious fish. SL: Yeah, we caught a lot of amberjacks and grouper, but we threw them over. We just wanted snapper. RC: Just wanted snapper. Well, when would you grouper fish? SL: Oh, grouper, we d fish them in the summer, too. And we went to the Bahamas one year I think there was eight of us, chartered a sailboat and went over there. My dad told me the price of grouper was going down, and I had 16,000 pounds in that week. RC: Oh, man! SL: He wanted he said the price was going they were sixteen cents a pound and they were going down. I said, Well, that s good enough for me. I ll quit! RC: A couple pennies would be about the same as a dollar these days. 20
SL: Oh, yeah. Yeah, about sixteen cents a pound was pretty big money. RC: Well, Steve, here s a tough one. How long did a fishing trip last? I mean, did you day boat and kingfish? SL: Oh, I would day boat kingfish. Just one day. RC: And how about your grouper and snapper fishing? SL: Well, when I went on the Laura Anne that was the one that I built in sixty-eight [1968] I d go for three or four days on a trip. RC: And that was SL: I d go till I found em. RC: That was for the grouper and snapper? SL: Yeah. Sometimes I ended up off of New Smyrna and Daytona, up in there. RC: Well, Steve, if you had to average out how much of a catch you d have on a trip I mean, is there any way for you to do that? SL: Oh, we d catch on an average trip of three or four days, we d catch 3,000 or 4,000, mostly snapper. RC: And that was by targeting snapper? SL: Yeah. Yeah, that s what I looked for. I didn t look for grouper, I looked for snapper. They were big money. They were fifty cents a pound. 21
RC: (whistles) SL: (laughs) RC: That s a 500 percent increase SL: Yeah. RC: over the grouper prices. Now, where did you sell your catch at that time, Steve? SL: To my dad. Charlie Seafood. RC: And how did we spoke of when your dad opened his business in thirty-eight [1938] and stuff like that. How long did he keep a fish house open, or did you just take over his fish house? SL: I took over his fish house in the late seventies [1970s]. Seventy-six [1976], about then. He got sick, somebody had to take it over, and I did. RC: That s almost forty years, Steve! SL: I know. I quit fishing then. Tied my boat up and sold it to Frankie Breig. RC: That was the Laura Anne, wasn t it? SL: Yep, that was the Laura Anne. And that boat s still fishing. RC: And how long did you run that fish house, Steve? Let me ask you. SL: Seventeen years. 22
RC: Till the Oculina Bank closed. SL: Yeah. RC: I figured out the math: you ran it till ninety-four [1994]. SL: Yeah. RC: And did that have anything to do with SL: No. Nineteen eighty-eight was when I sold out over there. The reason I sold out is because the government got in with me, and when they get in with something, it s ruined. RC: Okay. So, I figure I ll write this down: you said you ran it for seventeen years SL: Yeah. RC: and you started in seventy-six [1976]? SL: I think seventy-six [1976], yeah. I sold it in eighty-eight [1988]. RC: And did you run it after you sold it? SL: No. RC: All right. Well, it s time for me to switch pages. So, throughout your history, I guess when we asked you where did you sell your catch, you sold it to your dad SL: Right. 23
RC: until seventy-six [1976], and then you kind of sold it to yourself, maybe, or you didn t fish at all? SL: I didn t fish at all then. You can t run a fish house and go fishing. It won t work. RC: And uh, give me a break here. I m trying to figure out my question paper here. This is where I got tripped up the last time. Okay, um, you ve given dates. I guess now we would be to the point of maybe when you went back to fishing, perhaps after you sold your fish house. When would you have what did you SL: I sold my fish to Inlet Fisheries. RC: Okay, so, let s say, what did you do next? SL: Went fishing. That was it; mostly kingfishing. RC: And then you d slip out and do your Oculina Bank? SL: I did go off there a few times and catch some grouper, before it closed. Then, when they closed it, I quit going out there at all. RC: So, would we be safe in saying, like, from ninety-four [1994] till when did you kingfish, Steve? SL: I kingfished there year-round, then. RC: When did you quit? It s been about has it been four years since you quit? SL: I think four years, yeah. RC: So, let s say 2006. 24
SL: Yeah. RC: All right. Now, what did you do next when you retired, Steve? SL: Nothing! RC: (laughs) SL: I got neuropathy drop foot. I can t do anything. RC: And it s safe to say you d still be out there hitting if you could. SL: Yes, I would. I d be out there kingfishing today, if I could get out there. But I can t do it. RC: Yeah. SL: And I miss it a lot. RC: Well, it sounds like you got to catch your fair share. SL: Oh, yeah. I ve caught mine. RC: Don t let anyone say that you [have not] caught yours. SL: Like I always say, I got mine. (laughs) RC: Well, Steve, finally I d like to talk about how fishing has changed over time with regards to the Oculina Bank. Since eighty-four [1984] since 1984, several changes have been made in Oculina Bank regulations. I d like to know if any of these changes affected you and, if so, how. 25
SL: Oh, they closed it up, and when they closed it, I quit. I didn t even go back out there. RC: And you re speaking of the ninety-four [1994] closure. SL: Right. RC: Well, in eighty-four [1984], it was closed to trawling, dredging, and bottom longlining. Did this affect you? SL: No, cause I never did any of that. RC: Okay. And, of course, you fished prior to ninety-four [1994], when it was designated as a closed area, no retention. I guess did that affect you? SL: Yeah. I quit. I didn t even go out there. RC: So, in ninety-six [1996], all anchoring was prohibited within Oculina Bank, and did this affect you? No, you d already quit. SL: No. RC: The reason it didn t was because you already had quit. SL: Yeah. RC: Okay, here s another one: In 1996, trawling for rock shrimp was prohibited in the area to the east and the north of the designated Oculina Bank; and in ninety-eight [1998], this was incorporated into the Oculina Bank HAPC. Fishing with bottom longline gear, trawl, or dredge was prohibited in the expanded [area]; along with that, no anchoring of vessel. Did this impact you? Once again, you had already quit, correct? SL: No. I had quit. 26
RC: Okay. Here s one just for you. The designation of Marine Protected Areas that are closed to fishing is being used more frequently as a fisheries management tool. What do you think about the use of closed areas to fishing, compared with other types of regulations? SL: Well, I think the regulations are enough, without closing off all the ocean. At the rate they re going, there s not gonna be any place left to fish. RC: And so, we have things like closed areas, closed to fish, closed seasons, et cetera. Which do you prefer, and what do you think is the best way to manage fisheries? SL: I think the best way to manage is with the quotas: you know, limits. RC: Quotas are the allocation in poundages? SL: Yeah. RC: Number of allowable catch. SL: Not closing the damn ocean! (laughs) RC: What do you think about when they closed caught, the boats park? I mean, a lot of people say that s not the way to manage a fishery. SL: What, closing the ocean? RC: No, once the quota s caught, then everyone has to park their boat. SL: Well, they don t care, but that s not the way it works. All those boats will turn to another fishery that s open, and there s only one left that s open: kingfish. King mackerel can t stand that kind of pressure, and they ll find out that next year, they ll get less and less 27
quota, like they do every year; or take part of the quota here and give it to the west coast, over in the Gulf. That don t make sense. RC: Well, here s a question I m gonna ask you: Because you ve been part of the fishing industry in Fort Pierce for so many years, what do you think of fishing in general? I mean, do you think some management measures have worked, or they haven t worked? SL: Well, I think it worked to put everybody out of business, as far as I can see, because it s getting worse and worse and worse all the time. It s not a free enterprise like it used to be. RC: And with these people being put out of business, do you think I mean, there s all kinds of talk about how the kingfish are in as good a shape as they were twenty years ago. SL: No, they re not. No. I ve caught as high as 3500 pounds of kingfish a day, by myself. RC: Out here off Fort Pierce? SL: Yes. And you can t do that now. I don t care how good you are or who you are. They pat themselves on the back now if they ve got a seventy-five head limit; they really think they ve done something [when] they ve caught seventy-five head. I caught 800 head a day. RC: Well, I will thank you. That was good. Thinking ahead to the future, what do you think fishing in Fort Pierce will be like in ten years? SL: There won t be any. RC: And is there a reason why you believe that? You think the laws will be closing it down? SL: The laws will be closing it down. They keep limiting and regulating it and regulating it and regulating it more all the time. They can only stand that much. You can t just keep closing down. Now you ve got all your inshore fisheries; they ve got a restricted species on them. That s another government thing that s gonna that kills everything in the river. 28
RC: Yeah, everywhere from the beach and the river and everywhere. SL: Everywhere. Yeah. You got the net closure; that s three miles offshore. That s a bunch of baloney. RC: Well, Steve, in summary, I ve picked up some things here, and you said when the Oculina Bank closed you just, basically, quit bottom fishing. SL: They closed it, I quit. RC: And you said that you actually sold your grouper permit. SL: Yeah, because there s no way I could have made that kind of money bottom fishing. No way. RC: Just because Oculina Bank s that rich? SL: Yeah, and the inshore. They re just not there. The fish aren t there like they used to be. RC: Do you think that maybe the Oculina Bank held more fish, or you had more fishing opportunities, or it held fish year-round? Did you find, like, any patterns of migration? SL: We had more opportunity then. I d go out there and I d be the only boat there. Anytime you can find a place like that, you re all right. RC: Not inshore fighting with everyone else. SL: That s right. They re fighting over kingfish. I sat out there and caught a thousand pounds of red snapper while I m watching them, and they re fighting over a damn ten cent kingfish. RC: All right, Steve. Well, thank you very much for sharing your fishing history with us, and I m about to conclude that. Have you got anything else to say about it? 29
SL: No, not a thing, other than it s something that no young person should ever get into now. RC: The Oculina Bank or fishing? SL: Fishing. RC: (laughs) SL: And the Oculina Bank, they took that. RC: Yeah. SL: They will never open that again. I don t see that in my lifetime, and I ain t got that much longer to go. But I don t think they ll ever open up again. RC: I know it was designated as an Experimental Closed Area. You ever figured out what the experiment was? SL: No. Only thing I can see is John Reed 3 going down there in his submarine looking at it. RC: Oh, okay. Well, thank you, sir. That ll conclude it. End of interview 3John Reed has worked for Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution as a research scientist since 1969. He has over thirty publications relating to the subject of the Oculina Bank. 30