Goliath Grouper - Big Fish Bounce Back

The goliath grouper, nearly gone from Florida waters two decades ago, is back in a way befitting a fish that commonly grows larger than a refrigerator.

Finned hulks routinely frustrate anglers off the southwest coast, gulping would-be catches and busting tackle. They lurk on reefs and wrecks off the Keys, where dive captain Spencer Slate sees them regularly enough to nickname one 250-pounder ``Bruiser.''

''He's a huge fish and just a delight for divers,'' said Slate. ``They are absolutely the most docile creatures in the world.''

Docile, aside from the occasional bump, bite or freakish fatal encounter with humans that show goliaths aren't the super-sized puppy dogs with scales they often seem. They're the biggest beasts on the reef, short of the largest of passing sharks, and freight-train strong when they decide to kick tail.

Last month, a diver off Key West speared one of modest size and drowned when the powerful fish bolted under a coral head, entangling him in a trailing line.

SPECIES RECOVERING

The goliath grouper has now rebounded to the point that federal fishery managers in the Gulf of Mexico are, for the first time in 16 years, considering at least partially lifting a ban against killing them. If approved, a small but undetermined number of anglers might get to keep their goliath catches under a program to provide samples for scientists.

A decision is a year or more away. But a growing number of fishing groups and guides, who have clamored for years to relax restrictions, believe there are plenty of fish to support dropping the ban now.

Some even argue there are too many in some areas. The biggest brutes, which can top a quarter-ton, are particularly thick on wrecks and other hot spots in the Gulf, where many anglers blame them for vacuuming up lobster, fish and everything else.

''An awful lot of people out there believe things are out of balance,'' said Karl Wickstrom, editor-in-chief of Florida Sportsman magazine, which put the goliath on its cover this month. ``You create problems when you get too many of one species.''

Wickstrom isn't advocating an unregulated season, but what he called a ''conservative'' phase-in -- a six-month window when recreational anglers could keep one fish per boat.

Under state and federal restrictions imposed in 1990, anglers must release any goliaths they catch. Spearing them or selling their meat is illegal.

No one disputes the biggest member of the grouper family has rebounded. In March, the National Marine Fisheries Service dropped goliaths as a ``species of concern, a list of stocks at risk of overfishing.

But scientists aren't ready to pronounce goliaths recovered enough to catch and filet.

There is much uncertainity about them and not so much data, said Nancy Thompson, director of the Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami, which is overseeing a goliath study for the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Council.

Still, she agreed, the rise merits at least a look at tweaking the fish's protected status.

''We're being very cautious about it but, yes, we're willing to talk about it,'' Thompson said. 'It's not everybody going out willy-nilly taking a fish and saying, `Here's an otolith (an ear bone used to assess age).' It will have to be controlled.''

One question is whether the rebound extends further up the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, where goliaths were once common.

''It's very difficult to draw conclusions based on seeing a lot of animals in the Keys and Southwest Florida,'' Thompson said. ``It's like looking at a small part of a snapshot and making a conclusion about what the whole picture is.''

EASY CATCH

Then there are the characteristics that got goliath, known as jewfish until the objectionable name was changed in 2001, in deep trouble in the 1980s.

Goliaths move slowly, readily approach humans and will eat just about anything in front of them. Despite their bulk and power, that behavior made them easy targets for seafood trade and trophy hunters.

''I would just like to point out to anyone who is really gung-ho to reopen this fishery that the reason they're off limits is because they're so susceptible to overfishing,'' said Libby Fetherston, with the Ocean Conservancy.

Chris Koenig, a marine ecologist with Florida State University working on the stock assessment, said concerns about goliaths gobbling everything around them are unfounded.

While grouper will certainly make a meal of a struggling fish at the end of an angler's line, no different than sharks and barracuda, Koenig said their main diet is actually unappealing.

''They eat fish that other fish can't or won't eat,'' he said.

The goliath, armed with small teeth but a cavernous mouth, is designed to consume the sea's slow-movers -- stingrays, catfish, blowfish and other prey that depend on weapons, not speed, to survive.

''When they swallow something, they swallow it alive and whole,'' he said. ``Whatever they eat dies in their stomach.''

Koenig also cautioned that the rebound of the last two decades may slow as mangroves, an essential nursery for the fish, continue to disappear outside the protected Everglades and 10,000 Islands.

''If it wasn't for that mangrove habitat, we would never have seen this kind of recovery,'' he said.

Many argue the big brown fish should just be left alone.

Divers have found goliaths, one of the largest sea creatures most people would want to get close to, only add to the underwater attractions.

''My personal feeling is they should let them all go. I'm not anti-fisherman by any means, but I enjoy diving with them,'' said Slate, who owns Cap'n Slate's Atlantis Dive Center in Key Largo. ``That goliath grouper is worth millions down there swimming around.''