 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Cast out
By LENNIE BENNETT
© St. Petersburg Times, ST. PETERSBURG -- Gerald Whorton, a caster of nets and catcher of fish, is having a good day. In his cooler lie 35 mullet, hauled in from a canal near his apartment on Fourth Street and 78th Avenue N. He will soon sell them to a local restaurant for $40 and cheeseburgers, which is "not bad" for an hour's work. But Whorton, 18, is concerned that his livelihood will be undermined by a recent action by the City Council. "This is gonna kill me," he says. "This" is an ordinance passed Thursday that prohibits cast netting in all city lakes except Lake Maggiore and increases the fine for illegal netting from $40 to $250 with potential criminal charges for trespassing. A second violation will cost $500. The ordinance was introduced to "put teeth" in the law governing freshwater fishing in St. Petersburg, said Richard Kriseman, the City Council member who initiated it. "Citizens from the Lake Pasadena neighborhood came to me with problems they were having with commercial fishermen," he said. "They weren't just netting. They were getting rude and vulgar with community members. I have a hard time believing somebody fishing in Lake Pasadena is going to make it his livelihood." It is mullet season, so Whorton is cast netting in saltwater, which is not illegal. But for a good part of the year, he fishes for tilapia, also called Nile perch, in the freshwater lakes and retention ponds, such as Lake Pasadena, that dot the city. He says he can sometimes net 400 pounds of them in one throw, and sometimes 4,000 pounds in a week, then sell them to local distributors and fish markets. Tilapia, native to Africa, were accidentally introduced to Florida in the early 1960s, when biologists experimented with marketing them as a new freshwater game fish. The problem was that mature tilapia are bottom-feeding vegetarians that do not bite a baited hook. But they are prolific breeders and soon turned up in Florida lakes in great quantities. By the 1980s, savvy fishermen were selling them to consumers, who liked their mild white flesh. Now "farms" in Central and South America raise them. Still, a market for "wild" tilapia like those caught by Whorton is big, mainly because they are much cheaper, selling for about 40 cents a pound, compared to $2 for farm-raised. Gib Migliano of Save on Seafood says most of the tilapia he buys are farm-raised, but "we also sell the wild, mostly to out-of-state markets. You have to be careful where you get your wild tilapia from." Council member Kriseman said cast netters can fish Lake Maggiore, which is loaded with tilapia, as much as they want. "That lake is so nasty," Whorton said. "I wouldn't want those fish," said Migliano. "They might glow in the dark." Wildlife advocates are divided on the efficacy of wholesale removal of tilapia from the small lakes. "Birds and turtles eat the fish," says Helen Warren, past president of the local Audubon Society. "The food chain is being interrupted." "They're probably helping lakes by taking tilapia," says Gary Morse, public information director for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Whorton, who has made his own way in the world since he was about 15, "flipping burgers, roofing, landscaping," says he will continue to freshwater fish even with the risk. "Fishing is something I love to do. Why do something you just like, when you can do something you love and make a living doing it?"
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times South Pinellas desks |
