Southeast/Gulf/Caribbean Region

• In order to help maintain viable fish populations in Florida, recreational fishers are responsible for carefully handling fish that are hooked, and releasing fish that are not harvested so they can spawn or perhaps be caught again.
• Reef fish may require special handling during release to decrease mortality (gas in their swim bladder can over-expand when fish are brought quickly to the surface by hook and line, causing serious injury).
• In cooperation with Mote Marine Laboratory researchers, Florida Sea Grant designed and developed the Novak Venting Tool to aid fish and anglers.
• Sea Grant also developed video and print educational materials to assist anglers in learning to vent reef fish, and led a coordinated statewide effort to introduce fish venting.
• Through educational workshops and sport fishing events, thousands of anglers were taught proper fish venting techniques, catch and release practices, and the benefits of using circle hooks to minimize gut-hooking fish.
• This "Sea Grant-invented" tool is now sold commercially by Aquatic Release Conservation, Inc.

• SafeOysters.org is an educational website containing information about Vibrio vulnificus infections contracted from raw oyster consumption and salt-water wound infections.
• The website targets health care professionals, food and health educators, seafood industry professionals, fishermen and consumers with information specific to each group.
• The site features information about how to diagnose, treat, and prevent serious illness and death in at-risk patients from this naturally occurring marine bacterium.
• For more information, please visit: http://www.safeoysters.org/
• The site is sponsored by Georgia Sea Grant, the University of Georgia Marine Extension Service and the California Sea Grant Extension Program.
  

• Better land-use planning—such as prohibitions on construction in very low areas—could improve hurricane protection in Louisiana, but it will take a state mandate to make that happen, according to Louisiana Sea Grant.
• Jim Wilkins, director of the legal advisory service at Louisiana Sea Grant, is working with Sea Grant researchers and representatives from the nonprofit Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana on a report about the legal issues and possibilities of land-use planning in Louisiana.
• The report is being prepared with the idea that land-use planning can reduce vulnerability during hurricanes or other storms, even in areas protected by levee systems, which are not surefire protection.
• Land-use planning could include prohibitions against construction in very low areas or mandates for certain elevations above what the Federal Emergency Management Agency recommends.
• When completed later this year, the report will recommend that the state require parishes to come up with land-use planning that limits damage from natural hazards.

• A new group will attempt to inventory the Alabama Gulf Coast's "working waterfronts" in support of seafood and fishing industries concerned about their economic future.
• Working with Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant, Jody Thompson of Auburn University's Marine Extension and Research Center says organizers have signed up 39 representatives from businesses from Orange Beach to Bayou La Batre as members of the Alabama Working Waterfront Coalition.
• Sea Grant funded the project with a $90,000 grant.
• This coalition aims to protect the economy and historical and cultural assets of traditional fishing by protecting waterfront access and community education.

• In collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), UPR Sea Grant organized a round table entitled "Facing the Consequences of Climate Change in Puerto Rico."
• The three-day event was held in San Juan from May 8 - 10.
• The event drew more than 30 top Caribbean scientists working on the effects and possible consequences of global warming in the Caribbean.
• The objectives of the round table were: to explore anticipated climate change impacts in Puerto Rico; to bring together Caribbean climate change scientists in order to establish a working group for climate change in Puerto Rico; to collaborate with other Caribbean nations; and, to develop adaptation and mitigation strategies to inform government and the public.
• Detailed plans and actions generated at the round table will be printed in a Puerto Rico Climate Change Action Plan, which will include both long and short-term goals so that the Puerto Rican government and citizens can begin the process of confronting the impacts of climate change now and in the future. Video of the round table proceedings will be available soon via the Puerto Rico Sea Grant web site.

South Carolina Sea Grant
Sea Grant and partners offer blue crab workshops based on new computer model

• With South Carolina Sea Grant support, Dr. Michael Childress of Clemson University and Dr. Elizabeth Wenner of the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR), created a computer model, called the South Carolina Blue Crab Regional Abundance Biotic Simulation to study how water pollution, winter freezes, habitat destruction, tropical storms and fishing pressure affects the blue crab commercial fishery.
• In order to share this technology with user groups, two workshops were held this spring.
• The first workshop focused on how the model was created, and its use in population analysis and fisheries management. The second workshop covered how to use the model to track crab movements, trap efficiency and the impact of changes in water quality on blue crab populations.
• For more information about the project and to see the model in action, visit www.clemson.edu/SCBCRABS.
• The workshops were sponsored by the South Carolina Sea Grant Extension Program, the SCDNR and Clemson University

• Galveston County offers boaters the most marina wet slips in Texas, according to a Texas Sea Grant survey.
• The survey results are available in the 2006 Texas Marina Facilities & Services Directory, which shows more than 43,000 wet slips in Texas. Of those wet slips in Texas, 30,901 are in the state's top 10 boating areas.
• The survey shows the No. 1 area for wet slips is the Clear Lake/Galveston Bay area, with 8,209. Of those, more than 5,480 are in 18 Galveston County marinas.