Federal officials cite environmental concerns and false statements and plagiarism in the Madeira Beach company's application.
By CRAIG PITTMAN
Published December 30, 2003
ST. PETERSBURG - Federal officials have rejected a controversial proposal by a Madeira Beach company to set up Florida's first offshore fish farm 33 miles into the Gulf of Mexico.
Florida Offshore Aquaculture's application included "numerous false statements" and plagiarized information from a study that the University of Miami did for a fish farm in Puerto Rico, officials said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service also cited serious environmental concerns, including water pollution from the fish feed.
In announcing the decision last week, the agency said it will spend the next two years studying the potential environmental impact of fish farms. No permits would be issued for any offshore aquaculture in the gulf during that time.
"We're toast," said company founder Joseph "Jody" Symons, a retired Motorola salesman. He said Monday he was unsure whether his company will appeal the decision or just give up.
Co-founder Tommy Powell, a computer expert who in the 1970s launched the Sound Advice electronics chain to launder drug smuggling profits, sounded a defiant note. In an e-mail, Powell contended that Florida Offshore Aquaculture did not get a fair hearing before federal officials, which he said violated the company's right to due process.
He declined to elaborate, citing his objections to previous St. Petersburg Times coverage of the company: "Anything I told you, you would twist it around to suit your quest for sensationalism."
Symons, Powell and a third founder, charter boat captain Tommy Butler, formed the company in 2002. Their plan called for raising thousands of cobia, amberjack, pompano and other species in cone-shaped net cages anchored to the sandy bottom 33 miles south-southwest of John's Pass. Once the fish were big enough, they would be sold to seafood companies.
But even aquaculture enthusiasts wondered whether the project could work. The cages would be farther from shore than any previous aquaculture operation in the United States, leading to questions about how closely Symons and the others could monitor what was happening there.
None of the three founders have any experience with aquaculture. Butler, the only one with any experience with fish, was on probation for growing marijuana in his home. He also failed to pay thousands of dollars in federal fines.
Environmental groups such as the Ocean Conservancy mounted a campaign challenging the project. The farm-raised fish could develop diseases that spread to wild fish, they said. Excess feed for the fish could pollute the water, they warned.
The campaign succeeded in generating more than 300 letters opposing the application from Florida Offshore Aquaculture, federal officials said. The only support came from the state agriculture department, which helped Florida Offshore Aquaculture officials draft the application.
Meanwhile, questions cropped up about the the company's application, which said the state fish hatchery at Port Manatee and biologists from the Florida Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg would help tag the fish and check their health.
When a Times reporter contacted hatchery and FMRI officials in August, they said that was not true. Symons then promised to change the application.
In September, University of Miami professor Daniel Bennetti said Florida Offshore Aquaculture had copied, word-for-word, "entire sections and pages" of a study the university had done for a Puerto Rico fish farm.
Bennetti said the sections copied included the water temperature and salinity of the site, suggesting Symons' group did no research on their own proposed farm site.
Symons said Monday that they conducted a scientific study, but he inadvertently copied Bennetti's information.
Members of the Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council posed more than a dozen questions to Symons in September. The council recommended denying the permit.
Initially, NOAA Fisheries found the project would have no significant impact, but the alleged falsehoods and plagiarism doomed the company's application. "The applicants have raised serious doubts regarding their credibility," a NOAA Fisheries attorney, B. Michael McLemore, wrote in November in an internal memo.
- Times staff researcher Cathy Wos contributed to this story.
