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Friday, August 10, 2001

Local plan to decrease animal-fishing line snarls

By IVONA LERMAN | News-Journal Environment Writer

DAYTONA BEACH — Margarito the manatee was 16 years old when he lost a flipper -- after getting it tangled in some discarded monofilament fishing line.

Wayne Hartley, a park ranger at Blue Spring State Park for 21 years, knew Margarito since he was born and was upset this winter when he noticed a missing flipper, which was first injured in 1996. He was equally sad when Jessica and Lucille, two othermanatees, lost flippers in the last three years.

Next to manatees, sea turtles and birds are the most common victims of fishing line entanglement in Volusia.

To address that problem, the county plans to expand its monofilament recycling program, said Georgia Zern, a manatee program coordinator for the county.

Hartley said the manatee entanglements are especially upsetting.

“When I think about it, manatees scarred by monofilament just keep popping up in my mind. And their numbers seem to be increasing over the years,” he said.

In March, the county installed four monofilament recycling bins at Ed Stone Park in DeLand and Lake Monroe Park in DeBary to test the recycling program, Zern said. The bins are made from 4-foot-long PVC pipe sections and attached to poles.

“It´s been very successful,” she said.

In the next few days, the first recycling bin will be installed at the Halifax Harbor Marina. Another 12 bins will follow at places such popular fishing bridges as Riverbreeze Park in Oak Hill and Tomoka Basin Geo Park in Ormond Beach, Zern said.

In addition, the county applied for a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to get 60 more recycling bins priced at about $75 each, she said.

Many people don´t know the threats that monofilament line poses to wildlife, Zern said. Even throwing the fishing line in the garbage can be harmful, she said, because it ends up at the landfill, where birds can get entangled in it, she said.

This program is particularly important because Volusia ranks third in the state for the number of manatees rescued each year because of monofilament entanglement, right after Brevard and Monroe counties, said Ann Spellman, a marine biologist for theFlorida Marine Research Institute field laboratory in Melbourne.

Spellman also said that although she focuses on manatees, she has rescued a number of sea turtles during the years, too.

In the last 20 years, at least 288 sea turtles in Florida have died after becoming entangled in monofilament line.

Countless birds and fish also have died that way, said Jessica Koelsch, a Florida marine wildlife program manager for Ocean Conservancy in St. Petersburg. The hazard extends to dolphins and otters.

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