By Michael Hoyt Williamson
On April 2nd, an announcement was made in the local press that Mayor Ashton Hayward has successfully negotiated a deal to bring a salt-water fish hatchery to Pensacola. The hatchery is a joint venture between the Hubbs-Seaworld Research Institute, the Florida Wildlife Federation, the Florida Wildlife Commission, and the City of Pensacola, and is going to be built on Bruce Beach near the Maritime Park. Twenty million dollars of grant money from the National Resource Damage Assessment Funds from the BP Oil Disaster of 2010 will be used to build the hatchery and fund its operation for the first five years. The proposed hatchery will be able to raise several different species of saltwater fish at one time. Redfish, red snapper, and speckled trout are popular game fish on the Gulf Coast and were mentioned in the initial press release as possible species to be raised in the hatchery.
A species that I believe needs to be considered for breeding at the hatchery is Cobia. The Cobia population has been in decline for well over a decade. One of the mandates for picking the species to raise in a hatchery is that it must be native to the area. Cobia’s natural spawning areas in the US are the Chesapeake Bay, and the northern Gulf Coast.
The first Cobia show up each year in our area around mid-March. Cobia migrate from east to the west. The migration lasts for a couple of months. Every spring, fishermen man the rails of the fishing piers and the towers of Ling boats in anticipation of the annual arrival of these spectacular fish. In the past decade, there has been increased pressure on the Cobia population due to the many tournaments along the Gulf Coast and the popularity of the fish as table-fare in many of the seafood restaurants around town. As the popularity of the fish increased, so did the number of fishermen looking for them. Today, there are twice as many Ling boats with towers fishing for them as there were twenty years ago.
If all this was not enough, the BP Oil Disaster of 2010 has depleted the Cobia stock even more. The oil disaster could not have happened at a worse time as far as the Cobia is concerned. In mid-April, the majority of the migrating fish are in the waters off Louisiana. The oil field in particular is probably the most concentrated area for spawning due to all the reef structure that the oil rigs provide. The majority of the egg laying done by the spawning Cobia is done around structures in the oil field. Of all the species of fish affected by the oil disaster, the Cobia had to be one of the most seriously negatively impacted species because of their concentration in the area at the time of the disaster. Not only were hundreds of spawning fish killed, but think of all the millions of eggs and larva obliterated by the oil and the dispersants sprayed to combat the oil spill. The 2012 Cobia catch was the worst ever remembered by local fishermen. A total of one hundred Cobia were harvested on the five gulf piers between Pensacola and Panama City. Thirty, of the one hundred fish harvested last year, were caught off the Pensacola Beach pier. Twenty years ago, we would catch thirty Cobia on a weekend. On a positive note, this year’s catch has surprisingly been a little better. At present, sixty-six Cobia have been harvested at Pensacola pier.
Cobia are one of the easiest fish to raise in a hatchery, they have fast growth rates, and low mortality and feed conversion rates. They have been commercially raised in hatcheries all over the world for the past twenty-five years. Currently Cobia is being raised in Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Belize, Dominican Republic, Martinique, Mexico, Brazil, and Panama.
In Escambia County over $200 Million dollars’ worth of projects have been purposed by different agencies as BP Restore money projects. Very few of these projects were directly affected by the oil disaster. Building a hatchery is one the few projects that will actually fix something that got destroyed by the oil disaster.
In the coming months, the public will have the opportunity to provide input on the soon to be built hatchery. I encourage everyone to attend and have their voice heard in the selection process of which fish to raise at the hatchery. I’m hoping for a large turnout of area fishermen for the meeting and I want to remind everybody to THINK COBIA!