Boat racers lose fight for the pier

By TERRY TOMALIN
Published November 4, 2005

Offshore powerboat racing returns to Tampa Bay this month, but don't look for the big boats to run before standing-room-only crowds at The Pier in St. Petersburg.

The Offshore Super Series will race off St. Pete Beach, where viewing and parking for fans will be in short supply.

"As the name implies, offshore races should be held offshore, not in an estuary," said Suzanne Tarr, a biologist with the Save the Manatee Club, the Maitland-based organization that has actively opposed this year's race. "We think moving the race out to the beach is a win-win situation."

Tell that to the vendors at Vinoy Park who will lose thousands of dollars in revenue, or the restaurant owners who won't see the usual race crowds on the weekends, or the racers who will set up downtown then run a half hour through crowded waterways to get to the race course.

"We would have loved to see the race back downtown," St. Petersburg mayor Rick Baker said. "But the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service didn't want to issue a permit."

When it comes to racing venues, there is no better place for an offshore powerboat race than downtown St. Petersburg. Vinoy Park is a great location for dry pits, nearby Vinoy Basin is an ideal wet pit area, close to the race course off The Pier where fans can literally view the action from a few hundred feet away.

St. Petersburg has hosted several of the most successful races in the history of the sport - two in the summers of '97 and '98, then national and world championships in '99, 2000, '01 and '03 - without killing or injuring any manatees.

The endangered sea cow feeds in sea grass beds, which are primarily found in waters less than 6 feet deep. Offshore powerboats run in deep water, far from the shallows where manatees are found.

But last year the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service pushed a June 2004 event a mile into the bay to satisfy the demands of the Manatee lobby, which made it difficult for race fans to tell one boat from another.

Michael Allweiss, a St. Petersburg attorney who specializes in performance-boating litigation, helped the manatee rights group in their battle to move the race course to deep water.

"At the time, the issue was the timing of the race (June), not the location of the course," Allweiss said. "Fish & Wildlife said if the race was moved to the fall, there wouldn't be a problem."

Allweiss, former chairman of the American Power Boat Association's Offshore Division, had worked with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to bring a half dozen powerboat races to St. Petersburg over the years.

"It doesn't seem fair that they tell them to move the race to the fall to protect manatees, and now that they do they say move it to the beach," he said. "I don't know what the problem is. We held races here for years without incident."

The St. Petersburg Times asked for records regarding the permit application through the Freedom of Information Act, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied that request.

But Tarr, the manatee advocate, provided a copy of a letter she sent to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in June. In it she asked that the request be declined for the following reasons: manatee numbers are in decline, manatees are in the bay, manatees can be hard to see and one "manatee watch" plane couldn't cover the whole race course.

In regards to Tarr's first point, she is wrong. According to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission's Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg, 3,142 manatees were counted in 2005, which is more than 600 more counted the previous year.

In fact, 2005's count was second only to 2001's count of 3,300 when, incidentally, APBA Offshore held a fall race off The Pier in which no manatees were killed.

As for Tarr's other points, I will not dispute that manatees can be found in Tampa Bay year round. But that was not always the case. Before power plants were built with warm-water outflows, manatees migrated south during the winter.

So it goes to reason that if you really wanted to protect manatees, you would shut down the power plants during the winter so the animals would be forced to return to their natural ways.

And while you are at it, why not ban all boat traffic - commercial, military and recreational - during the warmer months when manatees are roaming the bay. If not, there is a chance that one of the sea cows could get hit by a freighter bringing consumer goods into Port Tampa.

Sound ridiculous? Perhaps.

But so is forcing race organizers to move their event to the beach after history has shown the waters off The Pier work just fine for both man and manatees.

[Last modified November 4, 2005, 19:37:31]