The goliath grouper
Divers, fishermen angle over protection of massive species
can grow to 800 pounds and is the enemy of many fishermen who say it steals their catch. Now the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is considering a plan to allow fishing of the species, even as environmentalists, divers and scientists decry that idea.
It’s a fish that can reach the size of a grizzly bear, and it’s loved by divers and despised by many fishermen.
The goliath grouper, capable of growing to 800 pounds, bobs around the reefs and swallows the occasional crab or passing fish. As fishermen tell it, these marine blimps hover in wait of easy meals, parking themselves next to fishing boats and snatching someone else’s hard-won catch off the line.
Now, after years of pressure from the recreational fishing community, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is considering a limited catch of the species for the first time in 27 years. They face strong opposition from environmentalists, divers and some scientists, who relish the opportunity to see these enormous, surprisingly curious fish just a few hundred yards from South Florida’s condo towers.
“If you sit still, they’ll come to you and see what’s going on,” said Kevin Metz, owner of Underwater Explorers of Boynton Beach, whose business from August through October consists almost exclusively of taking divers to see goliath groupers at a submerged wreck. “It’s amazing to sit there and be surrounded by 15 or 20 400- or 500-pound fish, all looking at you. Wherever you look they’re staring at you from three feet away. It’s a little bit creepy, but it’s unbelievable.”
For anglers, watching in dismay as goliath groupers swallow their catch, the huge fish are as charming as that friend who always seems to show up around dinner time.
Capt. Brian Sanders of Davie has taken famous South Floridians — including former Miami Dolphins’ linebacker Zach Thomas and actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — fishing for goliaths.
Describing one his anglers managed to get to the boat, he said, “I’m sure it’d eaten everybody’s
fish for years.
“It was over 6 feet long. His eyeball was the size of a baseball, and its mouth was so big it could’ve eaten a small child.”
Written comments to the wildlife commission in support of allowing the fish to be taken again describe similar experiences.
“I’ve had experiences of pulling up a smaller fish, and a goliath comes up when the fish is close to the surface, and GULP,” said Evan Bogdon, of Lee County.
“I’ve seen a massive goliath grouper try to take a 32-inch gag grouper, and lost countless snapper and grouper to goliaths,” wrote Kory Watson, of Pinellas County. “I’ve even had a GoPro camera and housing inhaled by a goliath grouper!”
Catch-and-release fishing for goliath grouper has long been allowed, provided the heavier ones are not removed from the water. As to whether to allow them to be killed, the wildlife commission has received 439 written comments so far, the majority from fishermen who blame the resurgence of goliath groupers for a decline in the number of other fish.
“The reef fish populations have steadily declined at all of the spots we fish, as there are anywhere from three to eight of these 300- to 500-pound monsters at EVERY location,” wrote Gary Fernandes, of Alachua. “They eat massive amounts of reef fish to maintain and grow to these huge weights. The season needs to be opened again to thin them way back.”
But Christopher Koenig, a biologist at Florida State University who studies the goliath grouper, said his research on their diet refutes the idea that they have much impact on reef fish, whether grabbed from fishing lines or through the goliath grouper’s own enterprise.
Koenig and his team analyzed the stomach contents of more than 400 goliath groupers, captured alive and returned to the ocean, and found that they contained mostly crabs, with few lobsters, no grouper and few snappers or other reef fish.
“The fishermen are overfishing those species, not the goliath grouper,” he said. “If they did, we’d see at least some of those species in their stomachs, but we don’t.”