WEBVTT


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I would hate
to think where the Keys would be without


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the assistance of the Florida Keys
National Marine Sanctuary and what they've


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brought to the table with whether it's
the protection of all our, you know,


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special preservation
areas, the mooring ball system


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and the list goes on and on.


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And the coral cover in


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those areas is much higher than we see
in a lot of other surrounding areas.


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It includes species
that have gotten eliminated from many


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of the locations within the Florida Keys
from stony coral tissue loss disease.


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We believe these sites are really,
really important to protect


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from localized human impacts,
because that is one of the ways


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that we can help
these reefs adapt to climate change.


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The most important reason
why we don't want to have catch


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release fishery in there is to try to sort
of standardize our regulations.


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It's really, really confusing
when you look at all of our different SPAs


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and we have different regulations
within each one of those.


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And so by making all of these areas
equivalent,


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the original intent of a SPA
was to allow people to


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it was basically to separate uses


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and to protect a lot of the vulnerable
species that occur within those areas.


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And by having these areas
as no take where there's no fishing


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allowed at all in those areas, you
then protect those populations.


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They can they can become more abundant,


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grow to a larger size produce
more offspring that then can


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those offspring can then seed surrounding
areas where you can fish.


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By establishing these sanctuary
preservation areas


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we have concentrated the dive community
into those areas.


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That's the that's the preferred place
where most people are going to dive.


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And we have put in mooring buoys.


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But what we've seen in a lot of cases
is there so many visitors


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that come to these areas
that there's not enough mooring buoys left


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and they will then anchor in those areas.


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So the bulk of what you see now


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out in the sanctuary preservation
area are corals that have been grown


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in land-based or in-water nurseries
and out planted on those reefs.


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And what we're seeing happen
is a substantial portion of those continue


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to get broken up by anchor damage.


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And so by preventing anchoring
in these areas, we will be able to better


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protect these benthic resources,
allowing the corals to survive,


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continue to grow and repopulate
these degraded reefs systems