There's a unique
spawning aggregation that occurs at Carysfort Reef of black grouper.
This is actually the first spawning aggregation for black grouper
that has been identified anywhere in the southeastern United States.
So by protecting this area, by expanding the SPA into deeper water,
we would be protecting one of the most vulnerable life stages
of this particular species, a species that is very, very important.
One of the issues with a lot of the corals that occur in deeper water,
they tend to grow very, very large, but they're much more fragile
because there's less light at those depths.
The corals that would normally form sort of a boulder or a mounding structure
tend to plate out more.
They become very, very thin and large.
And because of that, they're really sensitive
to any sort of damage from vessels.
Like if you drop an anchor in there.
And currently right
now, there's quite a bit of fishing that goes on in those offshore areas.
And in some cases that involves anchoring into that deeper habitat.
So by expanding into 100 feet depth
and we are going to be protecting these female lobsters
throughout their entire life
and life history from when they first settle out into the shallow habitat
all the way through the period when they are reproducing,
they're able to reproduce in their natural area
where they would normally go in deeper water without any fear of being
preyed upon by humans.
There's been continuous work
done at this site, and a few years back we identified two additional
spawning aggregations that were just to the west of Riley's hump,
but they were outside of the existing
boundary of this protected area.
There's a cubera snapper there,
and there's also a black grouper spawning aggregation that we found.
So that's the second
black group responding aggregation that's been identified anywhere within Florida.
And so our proposal is to expand the boundaries.
I think it's about a mile
to the west to basically protect those two spawning aggregations