Coming to a shore near you...
:confused: could be
Look at the Draconian law already on the books restricting shark fishing in Alabama and the restriction of ANY fishing on Gulf Shores public beaches!
Surf fishing under attack at Fort Lauderdale Beach - Sun Sentinel
Steve Waters Contact ReporterSun Sentinel
Quote:
Fishing from the beach in Fort Lauderdale is under attack.
Because of the claims of an animal rights activist, the Fort Lauderdale City Commission is scheduled to discuss a proposed ordinance about beach fishing at its conference meeting Tuesday afternoon.
The ordinance would prohibit fishing from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. all along the beach in Fort Lauderdale, up to Oakland Park Boulevard.
Currently, beach fishing is allowed from 6 p.m.-9 a.m. up to Northeast 18th Street, from 4 p.m.-9 a.m. between Northeast 18th and 23rd streets and anytime north of Northeast 23rd Street.
The activist, Nanci Alexander, who not only is against fishing but also hunting, zoos, horse-drawn carriages and circuses, happens to live in a condo at 28th Street that has beachfront views.
In an email to Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler and commissioners Romney Rogers, Bruce Roberts and Robert McKinzie, she wrote that commissioner Dean Trantalis "is sponsoring an ordinance to make the existing fishing regulations consistent and apply equally to all of Ft. Lauderdale beach."
She went on to say that "Fishing creates a dangerous situation for families enjoying the beach. Frequently fishing poles are left standing in the sand unattended. In addition, nets, poles, hooks and other fishing equipment are left on the sand unattended. Throwing lines with hooks are dangerous to people using the beach; turtles and other wildlife can get caught in the nets and hooks."
The notion that anglers are cast-netting turtles is ridiculous. A fishing rod in a sand spike might look unattended to an uninformed observer, but anglers are always watching to see if they get a bite.
Steve Kantner of Fort Lauderdale, a surf fishing authority and the author of the excellent book "The Ultimate Guide to Fishing South Florida on Foot," called Alexander's assertions "a litany of absurdities."
"What right-minded fisherman would throw his line out in a bunch of swimmers?" he said. He added that in places like Juno Beach, where anglers can fish all day, they co-exist peacefully and safely with swimmers, dog owners and their pets.
"They don't go near swimmers. Nobody gets hooked," Kantner said. "What bothers me most about the motivation behind this kind of an ordinance is the blatant inaccuracies that are behind it. It's all not true. All you have to do is go up the coast and see legions of beachgoers who get along with fishermen."
Here's the thing about Alexander: She often misrepresents the facts, to put it kindly.
When I first started working at the Sun Sentinel in 1990, I wrote about the great hunting at the Dupuis Wildlife and Environmental Area in western Palm Beach and Martin counties. Alexander called me and said hunters were shooting Florida panthers at Dupuis.
I called Jim Huffstodt, the information officer for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's south regional office in West Palm Beach.
Back then, there was no Google, and Huffstodt undertook an exhaustive search to determine that no panther had ever been shot at Dupuis.
When I told Alexander, she basically said oh well, panthers shouldn't have to be subjected to bullets whizzing over their heads, which left me shaking my head.
That's when I realized what type of activist I was dealing with.
Another time, Alexander told me that a congressional committee that worked on the 1973 Endangered Species Act cited hunting and habitat loss as the two major causes of species extinction. So I called George Reiger, the conservation editor for Field & Stream magazine, who helped with that legislation.
Reiger told me that the committee was talking about commercial hunting, which was banned early in the last century. He added that the committee noted the major role regulated recreational hunting had in restoring species.
After disproving some of her other claims, I discovered she was also a hypocrite when a fellow reporter told me that Alexander, whose ex-husband is Leslie Alexander, the billionaire owner of the Houston Rockets, owned a Rolls-Royce with leather seats. When I asked her about the car after she called me to raise a stink about something I had written, she said she was still trying to come to grips with that.
I asked Trantalis, who received several other anti-beach fishing emails with claims a lot like Alexander's, about the ordinance. He said, "Members of our community who use the beach came to me and explained to me that there were persons fishing at our beach and the manner in which they were fishing posed a threat … to beachgoers and sunbathers."
When I told him the claims were questionable, I got the impression he hadn't considered that possibility. He did say that "all types of activity" at the beach should be encouraged.
When I said the current regulations allow that, but the proposed ordinance would eliminate a large chunk of beach open to fishing during the day, he said, "I have not seen the proposed ordinance. Perhaps we'll massage the ordinance when it comes to the commission."
Public comments are allowed at Tuesday's meeting at Fort Lauderdale City Hall, and the ordinance should come up between 2:15 and 3:30 p.m.
