South Florida's Coastal Ecology and Implications for Commercial Fishing, Recreational Line Fishing, Scuba Spearfishing, and Freedive Spearfishing

By Dan Volker 

"The threat of losing the ability to enjoy their <freedive spearfishing> chosen form of recreation decreases with the lobbying power of each group. Unfortunately, this bears no relationship what so ever to ecological impact. An ideal example can be seen in the Florida Keys and the Marine Sanctuaries. Recreational line fishing, while not particularly destructive to most fish found in these sanctuary zones, represents thousands of times the ecological impact which would be represented by the user group of freedive spearfisherman----yet the freedive spearfishing was banned along with recreational scuba spearfishing, and commercial spearfishing! This is occurred simply because there is a large recreational fishing and sport fishing lobby, and none have ever existed for freedive spearfishing."