Stop The Harvest Of Endangered Goliath Groupers

From Jean-Michel Cousteau's Field Notes Blog on the Web site of Ocean Futures Society:

The goliath grouper, a species prominently featured in OFS' PBS TV series, Ocean Adventures: America's Underwater Treasures, is in jeopardy and needs the support of the marine community to secure its protection and survival. This long lived, giant, charismatic, non-threatening, marvelous fish is considered critically endangered by the International Conservation Union (IUCN). The species is close to or has already reached ecological extinction in the Caribbean. The 1990 U.S. federal fishing ban on these groupers began a population recovery process, along with the preservation of high-quality mangrove nurseries existing off Southwestern Florida.

Unfortunately, the goliath grouper's success story may be cut short by a motion proposed by some representatives with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the National Marine Fisheries Service to allow the harvest of 800 goliath groupers for scientific studies to support the stock assessment of this species.

Ocean Futures Society supports maintaining protection for goliath groupers and that there is no need to initiate any killings, even for research. We believe that all the information necessary for doing a stock assessment can be obtained from live fish. In addition, scientific data from live fish would be more reliable.