Miami International Boat Show in a fight with Miami-Dade mayor over manatee safety

A dispute over manatee protections failed to ban nautical test drives at the Miami International Boat Show this winter, despite the administration of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava saying the event didn’t comply with safety rules imposed on the 2022 show.

Miami-Dade County commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved the Boat Show’s permit ahead of the February 2023 event near the Venetian Causeway off downtown Miami. The approval included allowing the show to conduct the test drives, overruling objections from the administration.

The administration wanted test drives — known as “sea trials” — banned around the event’s waterfront location because some of the show’s temporary docks would float over parts of Biscayne Bay designated as manatee habitat.

“The risk from activity in sensitive manatee habitat remains high and will be compounded by continuing sea trials in this location,” Lourdes Gomez, Regulatory and Economic Resources director under Levine Cava, wrote in a memo this week to commissioners.

READ MORE: A floating complication at the Miami International Boat Show: Manatees keep swimming by

The show countered it has a better manatee-protection plan than the commission approved for the 2022 event, which saw no manatee injuries or collisions with the more than 100 boats traveling in and out of slips with professional skippers and manatee spotters aboard and on nearby docks.

“The system worked last year,” said boat show lawyer Spencer Crowley, referring to the 2022 show held on Presidents Day weekend. “And we believe it’s going to work this year.”

Seeking a compromise solution

For the 2023 event, again scheduled for Presidents Day weekend in mid-February, the boat show proposed moving its sea-trial docks to an area only partially in the zone near Miami’s shoreline designated as manatee habitat by the county.

Of the roughly 150 slips available for sea-trial boats that would come and go during the five-day show, 40% would be in the manatee zone, according to show documents. The Levine Cava administration wants all sea-trial slips outside of the zone, a restriction boat show administrators say can’t be done given the need to keep the docks close to the Miami waterfront. The administration also disputes the show’s contention that some slips in the approved plan sit outside the manatee zone.

For the 2022 show, all sea-trial slips were in Miami’s Venetian Marina, placing all of the boat traffic in the county’s manatee zone. Boat show lawyers and lobbyists contend Miami-Dade lives with manatee risks from everyday boat traffic in the area, so it doesn’t make sense to ban boat traffic from one of the largest tourism draws of the year for the Miami area.

Environmental regulators under Gomez said the increased traffic from the hundreds of boats on display at the show moving in and out means extra hazards for manatees at a time when the protected species is facing food shortages across Florida. That includes in Biscayne Bay, where dying sea grass from pollution makes it harder for the sea cows to find food.

The administration also recommended commissioners ban sea trials in the habitat zones for the 2022 show, but commissioners overruled the agency and asked for a manatee-protection plan instead.

The boat show hired a manatee specialist to oversee a squad of biology students assigned to spot manatees swimming around the docks, sightings that triggered orders to halt boat traffic to allow for the creatures to clear the area.

More than 500 sea trials occurred during the show, according to county data, with a professional captain piloting a boat out of the boat show area to open waters in the ocean or the bay for a customer to test out the vessel.

Report is critical of adherence to the rules this year

In a report released last week, the Division of Environmental Resources Management said the boat show failed to make sure boat traffic halted after manatee sightings by spotters on the dock and by drone operators with airborne cameras.

The county report said between two dozen and three dozen manatees were spotted during the show, though a precise count is difficult because it’s not always clear if the same manatee is seen multiple times.

While most vessels followed the rules, “many captains appeared to be unaware of the alerts and were observed exiting or entering the marina from a pier that had been temporarily suspended due to the presence of manatees,” the report reads. Asked why they didn’t follow the rules, the captains said “they were unaware of the suspension because their radios were turned off or not on the appropriate channel.”

In its 2023 plan, the boat show said it will broadcast manatee alerts on speakers installed on the sea-trial docks so captains won’t rely on radios to hear warnings. While the 2022 dock layout would remain the same, the smaller vessels available for test drives would move to temporary slips in deeper water farther away from shore than the marina’s location.

The February show was the first time the event was in downtown Miami after Levine Cava’s 2020 election. Since 2016, the show had been operating out of Marine Stadium off Virginia Key, a harbor that’s not part of the county’s manatee zone.

Environmental groups urged commissioners to reject the sea-trial plan in 2023, hoping for a different outcome from the board this time.

“There was not enough self-policing,” said Maria “MJ” Algarra, founder of the anti-littering group Clean This Beach Up. “That this is happening again at the same location is mind-blowing.”

This story was originally published October 31, 2022 at 6:18 PM.