Photo by William L. Newton/Darling NWR. This adult osprey is about to feast on fish.
Almost everyone being by the water has witnessed a brown bird with white markings on its belly hovering over the water, then swooping down to the water and then fly upwards again with a fish in its talons.
Almost certainly they had witnessed an osprey in action. Ospreys, also known as fish hawks, occasionally will soar on wind currents but most of the time they are flapping their wings in active flight. While flying over water hunting for fish, osprey will hover before diving into the water feet-first.
Mullet are frequently the osprey’s target because they school together, swim in shallow water, and are rich in fat. Ospreys usually hunt alone in the early morning and late afternoon. The average osprey eats 1-3 fish daily.
A breeding male, however, who must fish for a mate and 2-3 baby ospreys has to catch up to six to eight fish a day. Mother Nature has equipped the osprey with certain physical features that makes them better fish-hunters.
For example, the bottoms of their feet have many short spines that allow them to better grasp a slimy fish. Most birds have three toes and a thumb. However, the osprey has the ability to turn his third toe around so that it can have an extra-strong grip with two fingers and two thumbs. Additionally these birds have extremely sharp talons, as well as a strong hooked beak used for tearing off fish in bite-sized pieces.
Their oily feathers also help keep them dry when the crash into the water. Because leaves can get in the way of their wings, ospreys tend to nest in dead trees. They will also build nests on power poles, when there are no dead trees. An osprey nest can weigh up to 1,000 pounds, but are not very deep inside and probably would not hold an adult person.
Building the nests in power poles or in dead trees gives the osprey the ability to see possible predators climbing towards their nest. Ospreys will reproduce at the age of three years. When a male desires a mate, he flies around with a newly-caught fish or nesting material.
Ospreys will mate for life and mating pairs return to the same nest year after year. If the pair has no nest, they both will gather sticks and grass and make one. Occasionally they will incorporate fishing line or plastic bags into the nest, which can kill their young. Florida ospreys stay in Florida year round. They lay their eggs between December and February. Ospreys living north of Florida will migrate south each year to Florida. Their cream-colored eggs with spots are about the same size as the chicken eggs that you see in the grocery store.
The male will feed the female whom does most of the sitting on the eggs. Usually they lay three eggs. When there is not a lot of food available, the larger chicks will peck at the smallest baby so that they can engulf the food themselves, which gives the runt a good chance of dying from starvation.
Ten to 15 days before fledging (flying), young ospreys will practice flapping their wings. They will also jump up and down on the nest until a wind gust lifts them over the edge of the nest on their first flight. The parents will fly past the nest with a fish and drop it into the water to encourage the young birds to catch their own fish.
While the young can usually catch a fish two to three days after fledging, the parents will still bring food for a few weeks. Aside the difficulty of finding strong dead trees for their nest, osprey have a hard time finding enough fish to feed their young. Fertilizers and other pollutants can run off into the water and kill the fish limiting their food supply.
Timber harvesting decreases their chance of finding a suitable dead tree for building a nest especially if done in a rain forest where they stay in the winter if they migrated south to Florida. Occasionally some ospreys will get shot despite being illegal to do so. Chemicals like DDT can get into the environment and get soaked up into the water, which in turn gets into the fish. Since ospreys eat only fish, they tend to get a lot of DDT. This causes their egg shells to be thin so that the eggs will crack when the mother sits on them.
Additionally DDT eggshells do not let much air through, making it difficult for the baby to breathe inside the shell. The cessation of the use o=f DDT in the 1970’s allowed more baby ospreys to survive. Ospreys are considered a “threatened species” and are protected by law in Florida.
With people trying not to pollute the water, not shooting ospreys, and using care where they place their discarded monofilament line, ospreys may eventually populate to the point they can removed from the threatened species list. A good way to help ospreys is to build nesting platforms with tall poles with a platform on them so that they can build their nest.
Red snapper ban will hurt local fishermen
As most folks are learning, the National Marine Fisheries Service requested the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council to close the South Atlantic waters for both recreational and commercial fishing for Red Snapper "in order to prevent further disruption of the red snapper population pending more federal action in 2010." There is a strong possibility that this ban could be extended into this time next year.
The NMFS and SAFMC exhibited a total lack of consideration for the welfare of multiple small business owners throughout the southeast including Volusia and Flagler counties.
This ban is the first step in a set of rules to be considered by the SAMFC but is felt by anglers to be based upon flawed and misleading scientific data. There has been a definite increase in snapper catches – like has not been seen since the mid-seventies.
However, Roy Crabtree, director of the Southeast Fisheries Services, said the increase in catch is indicative that a moratorium is needed. At the recreational size limits of 15 inches in the Gulf and 20-inch minimum size limit size in the Atlantic and a possession limit of two red snapper a day per person, including prohibiting the of possession of the recreational bag limit by the captain and crews of for-hire vessels, I personally cannot see the reason for closure.
I do feel that the commercial size limit of 13 inches is too low and needs to conform to the recreational limits. Both commercial and recreational bag limit of two red snapper, per person, per day is acceptable.
In March, the council convenes to announce their decision on whether to outlaw all bottom fishing in designated federal waters.
At best, 2010 will be a year without Red Snapper, at worst it will be another 35 years before this fishery reopens. Lets hope the lawsuits work.
This has been done in Jacksonville by the Jacksonville Electric Authority, which has built several platforms for these birds to nest safely.
The fishing report
In the surf and piers adjacent to Ponce Inlet the winter pompano season has started off with several “monster pompano”. Additionally there have been many bull whiting, sheepshead, and black drum taken. and a few very large red drum.
The pompano around the inlet have been caught using clams in lieu of sand fleas. Slow trolling live baits along the jetty rocks as well as in Spruce Creek is producing nice catches of snook.
In northern Volusia and Flagler counties, anglers are starting to catch nice-sized flounder with mud minnows, fingerling mullet, and root beer artificial baits. Also showing up are ladyfish, which put on their usual great show when hooked. Up in the Tomoka area and the Halifax River there have been numerous catches of small tout and redfish. Snook have become more aggressive with the cooler water. Anglers are still hooking up tarpon in the river.
Redfish are not schooling as yet but this should be happening soon. In the lagoon, get out early before the wind picks up and sight cast with lighter colors. like white. Capt. Scott Tripp has been successful using the Rapala skitter walk and the white salt and pepper colored plastics and the pearl colored Gulp. These items may be purchased at Scott’s store – New Smyrna Beach Outfitters at 402 Beach Street in New Smyrna Beach. Bottom fishing continues to be hot and now is the time to catch Red Snapper before the five-month closure starts on Jan. 4.
The Florida red tide organism, Karenia brevis, was not detected in waters collected this week along shore of Brevard and Indian River Counties and offshore Martin County. No samples were received from the Northwest coast. On the southwest coast no organisms were detected in water samples from Lee, Collier, Manatee, and Pinellas counties or offshore Monroe County in the Florida Keys. Three samples of collected this week along shore of Sarasota County and one sample along shore of Charlotte County contained background concentrations of K. brevis.
Annual catch limits (ACL’s) as mandated by the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act might impact fisheries management and subsequent regulations more that any other requirement recently faced by fishery managers. ACL’s are the amount of fish, either in numbers or pounds, of a species that fisherman are allowed to harvest on an annual basis. ACL’s are based upon scientific recommendations. Members of the Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) decide the Acceptable Biological Catch (ABC) using scientific data. The Council then must establish an ACL that does not exceed the ABC and at a level that prevents overfishing. By the Magnuson Act, species currently undergoing overfishing must have ACL’s set by 2010.
In order to address the 2010 deadline for species that are currently undergoing overfishing – namely snowy grouper, gag snapper, speckled hind, red grouper, Warsaw grouper, golden tile fish, black grouper, black sea bass, vermilion snapper and red snapper – the Council began developing Amendment 17 to the Snapper Grouper Fishery Management Plan.
The management alternatives in the draft amendment were based on the ABC levels provided by the SSC in June of 2008. However, during its meeting in December, the SSC withdrew many of the ABC estimates after members expressed concerns about the ability to provide the numbers with limited data and the lack of available guidelines.
Budd's P.S.:
It has been written that “Eighty percent of the earth’s surface is covered with water, but only 5 percent of that is good fishing.”
So whether you charter, ride a head boat, run your own vessel, stay in the river, surf fish, or fish from shore or a bridge, there are fish to be caught. Fishing is not a matter of life and death, it is so much more important than that.
Tight lines, Capt. Budd