Crab Island at Gulf Islands National Seashore can be a raucous party at times that the National Park Service is trying to bring under control.
Across the National Park System there are crowding and environmental issues that park managers struggle to address. But Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida has an issue that is a bit more unusual than others. It involves Crab Island, a lively spot within the national seashore that attracts throngs of partiers, personal watercraft, and businesses that sell everything from frozen bananas to hot boiled peanuts.
The problem is that this "island" really is just a submerged sand bar, and it serves as a vital nursery area for Gulf of Mexico fisheries and has been identified as a critical resource in the national seashore. This area – which draws dozens of floating food vendors, bars, and large moored structures for the thousands of partiers -- has been for the most part unregulated and unmanaged over the past decade or so due to jurisdictional complexities between the National Park Service, the state of Florida, Okaloosa County, and Eglin Air Force Base.
The result has been tragic at times, with fatalities and serious injuries too frequently reported among partiers, and environmentally suspect, as the gulf waters also serve as a giant restroom while boats scar sensitive seagrass beds.
Against this backdrop, the Park Service is working to develop a Commercial Services Strategy that will provide a guide to regulating and managing the area.
Crab Island Is Not Really An Island
"What we know today as Crab Island is actually a very, very large, submerged sandbar," Gulf Islands Superintendent Dan Brown told Traveler's Lynn Riddick in this week's podcast. "The water depths there, of course are tide dependent. But the water can be anywhere from knee deep when tide is out in some locations to neck deep. And it depends on where you are on that sandbar."
To this sandbar, which covers hundreds of acres, come hundreds of boats, "probably somewhere between 500 and 1,000" at peak times, said the superintendent. "And each boat, of course, has many occupants. And on a typical recreation season, warm day, a majority of those folks are standing in the water next to their boat on that sandbar.”
The crowds come to play volleyball, snorkel, dance about on personal watercraft, and revel in the atmosphere. There are vendors who sell ice cream and smoothies, burgers, Mexican food, and pulled pork sandwiches. You can buy pool floats, beach toys, and T-shirts. There are floating stages for concerts, floating wrestling mats, Jetski and paddleboard rentals, and water taxis to get you to and back from the "island." And until recently there have been large inflatable water slides and playgrounds that are mostly gone due to a county ordinance that required them to be removed between sunset and sunrise. And that was out of the question for some of these structures, because they took as many as four days to set up.
Supporting the boats and their occupants are floating restaurants and thumping boom boxes, and on a hot summer day among the favorite beverages are beer -- lots of beer -- and hard liquor. The consequence of some of the behavior leads to fist fights, boating under the influence, boat fires, and even death.
"When the tide is going out from the bay into the Gulf of Mexico, it creates very strong currents," Superintendent Brown told Riddick. "And if folks are standing on the east side of Crab Island, closer to East Pass, and they're in deeper waters, it's relatively easy for people to get swept off of their feet into the deep waters of East Pass. And if people are not prepared for that, not good swimmers, maybe inebriated, it can and has caused drownings.
"There was one day back in 2001 where there were eight drownings in a single day. Some of the other issues out there that cause severe injuries, potentially sometimes fatalities, people like to dive off of their boats and platforms and so forth into the water, and whenever you have shallow water, it's resulted in a lot of leg and knee injuries, spinal injuries, etc."
This year there were at three fatalities -- a man diving into shallow water, one who drowned while snorkeling, and a third who got pulled under by the rip tide.
Along With Human Injuries, There Are Environmental Damages
The crowds and their boats and PWCs also lead to environmental damage to the very resources the National Park Service was directed to protect.
"One of our most important and vital natural resources in the national seashore, and along the coast, are our seagrass beds. Almost all marine life, both shellfish and finfish spawn and go through their juvenile phases within seagrass beds," the superintendent explained. "They're vitally important. Seagrass grows in shallow water areas and is easily impacted by things such as water pollution, and sedimentation, etc. It needs to have pretty clear waters for sunlight to reach and for the sea grasses to propagate and sustain themselves. They can be damaged not only by pollution and siltation in the waters but also by boat prop scars."
Across the national seashore's 120,000 marine acres, which span parts of Florida and Mississippi, the park's marine ecologist measured 13 miles of boat prop scars in seagrass beds, and half of those scars were in the Crab Island area, said Brown. There also are anchor scars, boat groundings, and water turbidity caused by the all the activity.
"We also have water quality issues there. When you have hundreds and even thousands of people standing in the water for long periods of the day on hot days drinking beverages and there are no restroom facilities, you can imagine the water quality that exists there. It's not good," said the superintendent, adding that the seashore is in the process of assessing the water quality.
Adding to the human waste in the water is fuel.
"Over the past probably 10, 11 years, a number of different types of commercial operations have arisen in the Crab Island area, unauthorized, and that has included very large floating structures, floating barges, floating platforms, some 1,500 square feet and even larger, and they have maintained restaurants and so forth," said Brown. "And to provide the necessary power for their equipment and facilities, they operate generators and they have to keep those generators going constantly, which means they have to refuel them, and that refueling takes place right there on the water, over the water. They also have boat rentals, Jetski rentals and so forth. And those vessels also have to be refueled and so that that refueling would oftentimes take place over the open waters."
The superintendent said part of the problem with trying to manage the Crab Island activity is the dueling agencies that have a role in doing that. The uplands are part of Eglin Air Force Base, and Crab Island falls within Okaloosa County, Florida. The result is that the state of Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has officers who patrol and respond to emergencies in the area, the U.S. Coast Guard helps out, even the Destin (Florida) Fire Department has responded at times, even though Crab Island is beyond its legal jurisdiction.
When Congress established the national seashore, the legislation specifically mentioned that the surrounding waters of the islands fell within the national seashore. And that placed Crab Island under the auspices of Gulf Islands National Seashore, which also has had law enforcement rangers occasionally patrol the area.
But "other than emergency response, the area was largely unmanaged for a number of years, particularly in regard to the commercial services," Superintendent Brown told Riddick. "All of those commercial services that you mentioned ... all of those until recently were unauthorized and contrary to federal law and regulation, not permitted and yet they occurred. They started appearing probably in about 2009."
Reining Things In With A Commerical Services Strategy
In an effort to bring things under control, the National Park Service is preparing a Commercial Services Strategy for Crab Island "that we will fully implement, which means it will need to be followed by compliance with NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, and we will be completing an environmental assessment to accompany the document," he said.
Key to developing the strategy is that it only allows businesses that are "consistent with the park's enabling legislation that Congress passed to establish the park," Superintendent Brown said. "It has to be complimentary to the park's mission and visitor service objectives. Legally, it has to be, especially for concessions contracts, both necessary and appropriate for public use and enjoyment of the park. Must be for a type of service that is not already available outside of park boundaries nearby. We're not going to compete with adjacent businesses right outside the park. And it also cannot cause unacceptable impacts to park resources. So those are some of the initial things that we have to use to evaluate a particular proposed commercial service."
When you look at YouTube videos of Crab Island, you see more than a few businesses that either operate to provide food, beverages, and rental equipment to those on the "island," and many others that bring people out to the island for the day. The Park Service’s final management decision could have a profound impact on them.
In laying the groundwork for developing the Commercial Services Strategy, the involved stakeholders on the state, local, and federal level agreed that a reasonable approach would be to gather data about what is currently happening, on an unauthorized basis, at Crab Island during the busy season from March into October. The best way to do that would be to issue Commercial Use Authorization permits, 29 of which the Park Service issued for 2020.
"In issuing these we made it clear to the businesses that it in no way was indicating that this was an authorization that would continue into the future,” Brown noted. “It was simply a means of documenting who was out there, who was operating, what types of services they were providing, what their revenue was, and so forth.
"We needed all of that information in order to proceed with the commercial services planning process. So, issuing those CUAs was the first step in the planning process, and it was simply a means of data gathering. CUAs are issued annually. They have to be considered for reissuance on an annual basis."
So far, the seashore staff has held two public meetings to explain the need for the Commercial Services Strategy and some of the options being considered. The three options crafted by the staff were:
- One would potentially authorize some commercial activities.
- Another would not authorize any commercial activities at Crab Island, largely because of safety issues, and water quality issues and resource impact issues.
- The third concept was somewhat of a no action status quo prior to 2019, where nothing was authorized and everything that was out there was illegal.
"I suspect by the nature of the questions that the vast majority of the attendees were commercial vendors, who are concerned about how this planning effort will potentially impact their operations," Superintendent Brown told Riddick. "Although there were others who were obviously concerned citizens, who were asking questions about impacts to resources. So, there were a variety of questions."
With an eye toward implementing the strategy by March 2021 in time for next year's busy season, the seashore staff has been collecting data touching on water quality and seagrass impacts.
In his meetings with the public, Brown has "talked about the types of commercial services that we already authorize in park waters throughout the park. And those same types of activities potentially could apply to any of our park waters, things like land-to-land water taxis, charter fishing, snorkeling, guided snorkeling, scuba lessons, guided kayaking and paddleboard lessons, dolphin cruises."
Which option for Crab Island rises to the top remains to be seen, but Brown said the bottom line is that the selected option needs to follow federal laws as they apply to the national seashore.
"My job is to help shepherd the planning process and to listen to the public and to make sure that our planning efforts adhere to law, regulation and policy," said the superintendent. "Personally, I guess I'm held accountable for making sure that we're following those laws and regulation policy. And what has been happening out there has not been authorized and is contrary to law, regulation and policy. So, we're in the planning process to address that."
Traveler footnote: You can listen to Lynn Riddick's entire interview with Superintendent Dan Brown in National Parks Traveler Episode #93.
Comments
Oy vey, such schmutz! This dead cat was really already at peak ripeness even before it got thrown up on the porch. With a situation this disgusting right there in the National Park System, I feel like, as a citizen, I "should" say something; but, there is so much, you know, "it" here that there is hardly anywhere to even plant your first step without stepping in "it" and getting "it" all over you. There are so many threads to untangle here. There are serious environmental and wildlife impacts in a sensitive area; there are public health and safety issues; there are illegal back-alley-on-the-water "commercial activities" involved; alcohol, undoubtedly drugs and debauchery, and possibly sex workers are there, along with the usual lowlifes so emotionally attached to such vices that they will work to perpetuate them by claiming specious personal liberty rights; "dueling agencies" with obviously disparate, if not just flat conflicting, constituency interests have been allowed to exercise, if not downright assume, jurisdictional rights within what is supposed to be a national seashore; there is the potential for a not fully trustworthy or responsible response on the part of the DOI/NPS in what's left of Trump era republican lawlessness; and it's all happening in, of course, what's left of Florida. But, all of this seems to boil down to three basic concerns that plague all of our parks and all three raise questions of the basic mission of the NPS.
First, what are parks for? Yes, they are for the enjoyment of the people, but not only for the enjoyment of the people, for the benefit of the people. How those benefits are fully defined is an important and continually evolving questions, which is one of the primary reasons why the NPS is also mandated, by law, "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife ...and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." This is clearly not happening at Crab Island. But, this situation also begs the broader question of the proper role and limits of "entertainment" in the parks. What is the proper role of killing the wildlife in the parks ...just for fun and as nothing more than a form of entertainment? What is the proper role of basejumping and the use of various thrillcraft in the parks, particularly when the same terrain used for these practices is the nesting and breeding grounds for increasingly rare wildlife? What is the proper role of kayaking only inches above spawning redds? In a world in which so many wildlife populations are dwindling, in which the integrity of their gene pools is increasingly coming into question, what should take priority, mountan bikes or mountain lions?
Second, what priority should be placed on commercial ventures using the parks? The article laments illegal "commercial activities" actually at Crab Island, but also mentions how adjacent businesses, businesses that are nearby although not on park property, but still make their profits by providing products and services that exacerbate the problems at Crab Island. The first thing that comes to mind are Somali pirates that operate in the Indian Ocean outside Somali waters, but than retreat to the relative safety of hideouts in Somalia. The next thing that comes to mind is Caneel Bay where a corrupt real estate grifter has retreated to the relative safety of his political connections. And, these kinds of issues are not rare across the NPS. We've had a concessionaire quietly lay claim to the rights to the names of national historic facilities and sites in a prestigious national park in California as a means of holding the NPS hostage either to a bid to extend the company's concessions contract or, barring that, an outright ransom. They ultimately got the ransom. The same company took their villainy to the next level at another prestigious national park where they bought up commercial properties in a gateway community in an apparent effort to ensure they have the local political clout to get NPS attention. My own recent experience looking at park superintendent appointments, at Grand Canyon, Point Reyes, and other parks, seems to indicate that park superintendents are actually selected and groomed to be slavishly amenable to commercial and political interests. The same can be said in some of the supposed park support nonprofits. In my opinion, enough is enough and kowtowing to commercial and political interests in and around our parks has already gone far too far.
Third, what about the rule of law? The "commercial activities" actually at Crab Island, what happened over the past few years in what was once one of our most prestigious park support nonprofits, and what continues at Caneel Bay are all clearly illegal. Yet, there are no signs of any significant consequences anywhere. The article above quotes Gulf Islands National Seashore Superintendent Dan Brown as describing, in detail, the illegal environmental and wildlife damages being heaped on his park, as well as the rampant illegal commercial activities facilitating that damage; yet, when it comes to consequences, all that Superintendent Brown has to talk about is how the NPS is preparing a "Commercial Services Strategy" for Crab Island and how the "best way" to deal with the current state of criminal chaos "would be to issue Commercial Use Authorization permits" so that the chaos could continue legally? As usual for the NPS, any discussion of consequences for illegal actions seems to be missing. Under these circumstances, am I supposed to be holding out any hope for a legitimate NEPA process here? In fact, some of Superintendent Brown's comments strike me as more focused on protecting the official park concessionaires' operations from unauthorized competition than looking out for the resources of the park.
Forgive me; but, the article above reinforces my belief that, at this point, the most important reform needed in the NPS, especially among the superintendents in the field, might be a massive spinal transplantation, reinforcement, and stiffening program.