Page 64 - Panama City Living Magazine September-October 2019

In May 2019, to help mitigate the effects of the disaster, local residents came to- gether to release 8,000 juvenile redfish, also known as red drum, into the bay at Port St. Joe. The release was organized by the Coastal Conservation Association of Florida (CCA Florida), Duke Energy, and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conserva- tion (FWC).
Community members gathered at Frank Pate Park Boat Ramp, forming a steady line of people carry- ing the fish in plastic bags from holding tanks to the bay, carefully easing the bags into their new habitat, to see the 5- to 8-inch juvenile redfish dash off into deeper waters.
Brian Gorski, executive director of CCA Florida, explains that 34,000 redfish have been released this year in waters that were impacted by red tide in Florida. Both juvenile and adult fish were released, though only juvenile fish were used in Port St. Joe. When adult fish are released they are tagged with dart tags that carry a phone number and an identifying tag number. The tags help CCA Florida track the size and release location for each fish, and tracking them requires active participa- tion from fishermen. Fishermen who catch tagged fish should call in and report it. Juvenile fish re- leased by CCA Florida can be tracked by DNA
testing from a simple fin clip from a live fish. “We take this data and are able to track the catches and see where the fish have traveled, how much they’ve grown, etc.,” Gorski explains.
The juvenile redfish in Port St. Joe were hatched and raised under watchful human eyes in the tanks of Duke Energy’s Mariculture Center in Crystal River, described on their website as “two-story, 8,100 square-foot multi-species hatchery that cultivates and releases about 100,000 fish fin- gerlings, including redfish, pigfish, pinfish and spotted seatrout, into the Gulf of Mexico each year.” Several months pass by before the fish are ready to travel in tanks to their new habitats and be introduced into the wild. Gorski says after spawning and growing through the larval stage, they are stocked in outside grow-out ponds that mimic natural habitats, which helps the fish to be better acclimated when they are finally released. Redfish normally grow to be 10 to 15 inches in length in one year and mature between three and five years, reaching average lengths of 28 inches for males and 33 inches for females. Redfish can live up to 60 years.
According to Gorski, in Florida, the fishery is part of the natural ecosystem. He explains that help- ing restore the fish population in Port St. Joe and other parts of the state after an event like red tide
64 • September–October 2019 • www.PanamaCityLiving.com