Since my ultimate goal is to be a game warden with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, for my Independent Research Project I want to try to bring the law side of things together with the science of this class. In order to do this I am wanting to see basically is there a reason for people to be poaching (which is illegally hunting or catching game or fish in an unfair way) in Flagler County (since that is where I live). I am going to focus on
Sciaenops ocellatus, which is commonly known as Red Drum. This species is a very popular sport fish statewide and has been known to be pretty good to eat; I personally am not a big fish eater so I can't say whether I agree or not.
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| Sciaenops ocellatus - Red Drum |
According to the Florida Museum of Natural History (
FLMNH), these fish can tolerate a wide range of temperature and salinity. And "Young red drums inhabit mainly estuaries, river mouths and shallow coastal waters until age three to four. At this age, they tend to leave the protection of estuaries, moving into open coastal waters" (FLMNH). Also this species can produce one-half to two million eggs per breeding season.
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Red Drum Management Zones- each zone has slightly
different regulations. |
Currently the
rules and regulations by FWC for Red Drum are that they have to be between 18 and 27 inches in total length and a person can catch 2 per person per day in the Northern part (blue and green sections on this map) of the state- or 1 per person per day from about Volusia county south (orange section of this map)- or an 8 per vessel limit. However, I have unfortunately heard stories of people not following these laws. Plus these rules and regulations became effective in February of 2012. Which makes me wonder, how reasonable are these laws for the Flagler County area?
The FWC does do stock assessments for each year, however even their
2015 stock assessment doesn't have information from the actual year of 2015. The 2015 stock assessment does state, "Lengths of most Red Drum landed by recreational fishers during 2010-2014 were between 44cm (17.3 inches) and 72cm (28inches) total length". Which is fairly accurate for the current laws but since these numbers are not from 2016, or even 2015, I wanted to use this IRP to see if there is much of a change in these numbers, specifically for Flagler County.
Deanna--first, you have wonderful writing abilities! Great post. You do need to properly cite your online references at the bottom of your post. Next week, you should complete a library search of what is known about your topic with, again, reference citations on your post.
ReplyDeleteAlso--what sort of data do you plan to collect/measure in order to complete your IRP?--and be thinking about which graph you would use to interpret this data?