Bruce Beach Hatchery: Gil McRae Q and A with graphic
- April 1, 2014
- / Shannon Nickinson
- / community-dashboard
Fish are Gil McRae’s thing.
McRae is the director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission’s Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.
The proposed fish hatchery at Bruce Beach would fall under his supervision. The hatchery was well-received as an idea back in June 2011 when the Pensacola City Council voted unanimously (with Sam Hall absent) to pitch Bruce Beach as the site for the facility as part of a package of projects for funding by BP under the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process.
A site at the Port of Pensacola also was in consideration at that meeting, but most councilmembers who spoke favored Bruce Beach, which has been vacant save for the construction and fill debris that has clogged the area for years.
At that meeting, Councilwoman Megan Pratt did raise the question of whether the public had had enough time to comment on it. As the settlement process dragged on for more than two years, it turned out that the public got plenty of time weigh in.
Now, with Mayor Ashton Hayward poised to bring to Council a lease agreement for their approval to accept $18.8 million from the oil giant responsible for the Deepwater Horizon accident of 2010 to build the facility, some of those questions have grown into doubts about whether the project is the best, highest use of the 10-acre site.
Questions in particular that compare the fishery project to the proposal to build a new YMCA at the Community Maritime Park that was rejected by the CMPA board though it would have brought in $120,000 in annual lease fees and brought a nonprofit with deep community ties and an interest in wellness, public health and children’s and youth outreach programs.
CMPA board members and city council members, in arguing against the YMCA project, said a nonprofit was not the best use for Site 8, deemed the most desirable at the park because of its waterfront access. The Y is now being built elsewhere in downtown and the city has hired real estate firm CBRE to court developers for Site 8, which remains empty.
[caption id="attachment_8997" align="alignright" width="300"]
Gil McRae[/caption]
“The scrutiny is something we welcome,” McRae says. “If we can’t stand up to scrutiny and have answers people will except, we won’t have the project with the level of community support that we need.
“The reality is that commitment from the council in June 2011 is the reason we proposed the project as we did to BP in Pensacola. That hasn’t changed, it’s just been a protracted negotiation and public review process.”
McRae has a bachelor’s degree in natural resources from the University of Michigan; a master’s degree in fisheries science from the University of Minnesota; and did additional post-graduate work at North Carolina State University. His work as a research scientist in Florida for the FWC has included developing fisheries stock assessments for species, ecosystem assessment and restoration, and inshore marine monitoring and assessment. He has been director of the Marine Research Institute since 2002.
He spoke with me about the project, the public comment process and about how the hatchery will work.
QUESTION: There has been talk that what is in the project now is not what was shown to council in 2011. With the caveat in place that you have not been on the site to see exactly what remediation is needed, the $18.8 million in this round of NRDA funding will cover what aspects that were proposed in 2011?
ANSWER: The funding will cover the hatchery facility (projected to be at least 25,000 square feet) and the associated storage ponds and constructed freshwater wetland. It will not include the stand-alone educational center, but we will be integrating educational/public access elements into our design of the facility. We will also be including the walking trails and some educational/outreach signage and/or kiosks highlighting the cultural significance of the site (maritime history and beach during the era of segregation). Project funds are expected to cover all site remediation required.
Q: So if I send my fifth-grader on a field trip to the hatchery, what do they see?
A: They will see a facility that is yet to be designed, but is undoubtedly beautiful. Inside they will see an array of tanks which will be the biggest aquarium they’ve ever seen. There will be a separate room that has bigger tanks with gigantic fish. These would be the brood stock or parent fish. If they are red fish, they’re heads would be bigger than the kids’. If they are other fish they would be less big but still quite impressive.
They would learn about those fish, how they spawn and reproduce, how the egg goes from egg stage to larval stage, how it absorbs its larval sac and converts to eating live feed. We’ll show them how we raise the live feed, so they’ll learn about that part of the food chain and how it mimics the natural one exactly. They will learn how we transition the fish from when they absorb their larval sac to when they go to live feed. They will learn about the water quality issues that we have to be concerned about when we raise fish. We will have displays that connect various habitats to the species of fish we are raising in the hatchery and point out that without high quality, abundant habitat, you will not have those fish. It goes together. So when they hear about some things like a program to restore habitat they’ll know why.
And depending on what we’re able to integrate into the site, they may also learn quite about about the cultural background and history of the area in the community. (Bruce Beach was a shipyard...then of course it was a segregated beach. There’s some difficult but interesting history there. It goes back hundreds of years because everything you guys have goes back hundreds of years. There are cultural resource areas on the site that I am sworn to secrecy not to divulge, but ultimately we could integrate that. I can tell you there are no gold coins or anything…..
There are already two wetlands on the site. The wetland we’re going to build connects the two that are there. It creates a continuous marsh that’s much more representative of what’s out there naturally.
The whole Bruce Beach site is fill. It’s not real land. It was created, so normally that would have been a gradual, swampy area. But everything is altered.
Q: Bruce Beach itself is not a naturally occurring item then?
A: Very little of what you see along any of this is natural, except the water.
Q: The cultural sensitivity aspect, is that built into the $18.8 million?
A: We have to do that outside the $18.8 million but we have committed to doing that. The reality is, we have to get on the site, understand the challenges associated with the site and figure out how much we’re going to need for construction, while preserving operations, monitoring and maintenance component. Anything left over from that ($18.8 million) will go to trails, cultural resource development, etc.
To do something big, we’re going to have to go find additional funding sources. There has been no shortage of ideas of things people want to see on the site.
Q: Without a lease you haven’t been able to do formal study about what mitigation might be needed there, but what kind of contamination is on the site?
A: There’s a lot of construction debris that would have to be cleared out. There’s going to be arsenic in the soil due to railroad use. Anywhere you had railroad use, you have arsenic because it was used in the ties. That’s not an issue unless you disturb the soil or have a situation where kids are likely to eat dirt, like a playground, so I don’t think that will be a big issue. It may just involved us tweaking where the building is located to not disturb a lot of soil area.
The other problem, there is some groundwater contamination in the southwest corner due to the tank farm. We don’t know how extensive that is and it’s not a huge issue because what that would mean is related to putting in a well and we really don’t need to put in a well. There might be other surprises, but we built a contingency into the budget and if we run into something major, my guess is we would be able to go back to BP and they would work with us, because they want to get this off the ground, just as much as we do.
Q: What kind of fish will be hatched at the hatchery?
A: Inshore species, mainly because those are the fish that we know how to raise and those are the fish that are in highest demand from recreational fishermen. Candidate species are spotted trout, red drum and flounder. We’ve had discussions about cobia, but cobia is an offshore species and that’s a different challenge.
The hatchery is set up to raise phase one fish, only an inch big. They have to be released into habitat that they would be in naturally and one that would protect them from predators.
Q: They won’t all be released here?
A: No, they’re actually not released at the site. They’re put in special trucks and transported to release sites (which are) throughout the northern Gulf in Florida. We will likely not go passed Apalachicola Bay with this project. But the key point is the way our hatcheries work, this is where we grow the fish, this is where we do the environmental education and outreach. The fish are taken to those habitats that are sufficient in quality and quantity where they will survive grow and hopefully contribute to the wild population.
Q: There have been conversations about studies related to hatcheries that show hatched fish are not as healthy as wild. Is that good science to your knowledge?
A: To my knowledge none of those studies are from Florida and they focus on things like salmon, which has been a multibillion hatchery program for decades. There are couple of things that have happened. Most of those fish are raised on pellets, so the fish aren’t really trained very well to fend for themselves in a natural environment and consume natural food. We are going to be feeding our fish live natural feed that we grow at the hatchery. The zooplankton, the little crab-like plankton that they eat, (they will be fed at the hatchery) will mimic what they’ll have to go hunt for in the wild. And we’re not raising our fish in raceways. They are in tanks for a very short time and we don’t think that environment, given that we will raise them on live feed, will create a situation where they have less a chance of surviving than natural fish of the same age. Young fish survival rate in nature is very low; that’s why fish lay millions of eggs.
Q: What is very low?
A: It is on the order of a few percent, less than 10 percent. So keep in mind we expect to have a fairly low survival rate because that is comparable to the wild population. We’ve built in funding for assessing the fish post-stocking into the project cost. BP is paying for that for five years.
Q: There has been conversation about if Pensacola should reject the project, do you think that throws off the settlement framework?
A: That’s really a question that will be answered by lawyers, but let me tell you what I’ve been told. The minimum a change in site would require is a restarting of the settlement and new environmental impact statement and a new environmental restoration plan because the current one is specific is to the Bruce Beach site.
Q: It’s my understanding that’s why the resolution in 2011 was sought, to show there was tangible local interest in the project?
A: BP’s a big company. I think they would have gotten wise if we had proposed the project without a location. I don’t know, we weren’t willing to try.
The other thing that could happen (if the Bruce Beach site is rejected) is BP may want to renegotiate. Either they may think the project in another location adds more or less value. I don’t know if that is the case. The project is part of a package, a human use project package, so the remaining Florida projects may be repackaged and the crediting on those may change if the hatchery was pulled out. Those are the potential things that might happen.
At a minimum what would have to happen would be a restart of environmental impact statement and restoration plan for the new site. That’s been a two-year process to get where we are now. So we may be looking at a two-year delay.
Q: Is there another site was in consideration?
A: There was a site in Walton County that was in consideration in 2011.
Q: Could you just go back to them?
A: I think we could, yes.
Q: Is there like a cut off list, like these 10 projects made the list, but projects 11, 12, 13, and 14 were pretty good they just didn’t have enough credits. If one of projects 1 through 10 were to fall off can bump project 11 up the list?
A: Keep in mind that this project group has coexisted together as a group for better part of two years. So the projects that didn’t make the group were not appropriate to the group. So I wouldn’t say there’s a bench strength on the project list. I wouldn’t put it that way. It would be more like we pull ballplayers from the audience randomly.
Q: The model for the Pensacola facility is similar to what is in use in Port Manatee?
A: It’s a model but it is smaller. Our Port Manatee hatchery is at the base of a landfill across from a prison. It does have the recirculating aquaculture system, but it has two tanks. This would be more like a dozen tanks.
We are the Fish and Wildlife Commission our mission is to protect and enhance natural populations. The constitution prohibits us from harming national populations. There are many safeguard associated with how we will raise and release fish. Just a few of those: Before any fish are even spawned, we go out and collect their parents from the wild in the area we propose to stock them. This helps assure that the genetics of a hatchery fish are similar to the genetics of a wild fish. And if we continue to raise that species over a number of years, we will cycle out those parents to combat inbreeding. The life cycle of brood fish is about 3-4 years. The set up in the broodstock tanks are typically one female and a whole bunch of males. It’s broadcast spawning (when animals release their eggs and sperm into the water, where fertilization occurs externally). (In that set up), inbreeding is unlikely.
We don’t release any fish that’s not certified by an aquatic animal vet and every fish goes through that. If any fish has a problem that we can’t resolve, we will destroy the fish rather than release it.
Q: And something that would cause you to destroy the fish would be?
A: We’re very conservative. Even if they have a morphological anomaly, like a spine curvature, that can’t be passed on. Some parasites, most of which can be cured with a freshwater dip. We’re very conservative, if the fish aren’t identical to what we expect to see in the wild, but at that small size, they’re unlikely to have those health issues, because those arise when you keep fish in aquariums for a very long time.
We’ve left what we will raise and where we will stock them open on purpose to get a plan that has buy in from the local community.
Q: Talk about the research aspects of the project
A: The facility will be in my division in FWC which is the Fish and Wildlife Research institute. Our division has no regulatory or policy-making responsibility. Our duties are strictly science. The people in our commission who set seasons or bag limits, they are in different divisions. I have no vested interest in what the regulations are. In many cases I don’t even know what they are. Having the facility in our group makes it a research facility and when we have a base in a city, things tend to happen.
Typically there is university interest because we are doing practical resources work and they have students graduate students who they want exposed to that stuff because those students are trying to get into that business. I mentioned that UWF is committed to a faculty position that is based or partly based at the site and people say that is just one position. But that one faculty position bring students with them. They can bring a whole department with them. They bring a university perspective, just a kernel of something that can grow an entire university program.
The best example is we have at Jacksonville University. We decided we would base some fishery folks there and Jacksonville University let us use an old house they owned. But ultimately over five or seven years, that partnership grew and expanded to where Jacksonville University got state support to build a marine institute, an entirely new entity, on their campus that is now one of the centers for research on the St. John’s River.
When we’re working in an area and universities know there is real world research going on, their ability to recruit students interested in that work really increases. That’s a good draw.
Q: How long has the FWC been doing fishery enhancement research and what would the Pensacola facility mean to that effort?
A: We began researching marine stock enhancement in the mid-1980's. The Pensacola facility would be our first production-oriented facility for marine fisheries enhancement in the state. That means we would be moving from pure research mode into a comprehensive evaluation mode for marine stock enhancement.
Q: So almost three years ago, City Council unanimously signed off on this thing. Does it surprise you the way that this conversation has turned?
A: What surprised me was the extended time it took us to negotiate the project with BP. When we presented it to the council, we would have never guessed it would have been another nearly three years before we came back.
The proposal from 2011 was pretty much a larger scale version of what we ultimately proposed to BP. We had to refine it to bring it in line with the cost that we felt the trustees would be comfortable with because keep in mind what we put into this project took money from other things. We wanted to go in with a diverse portfolio of projects -- water quality, habitat restoration, fishery restoration, lost recreational opportunity -- so there was some scaling that had to be done on all projects to ensure that we could come with that diverse portfolio.
[progresspromise]
Questions in particular that compare the fishery project to the proposal to build a new YMCA at the Community Maritime Park that was rejected by the CMPA board though it would have brought in $120,000 in annual lease fees and brought a nonprofit with deep community ties and an interest in wellness, public health and children’s and youth outreach programs.
CMPA board members and city council members, in arguing against the YMCA project, said a nonprofit was not the best use for Site 8, deemed the most desirable at the park because of its waterfront access. The Y is now being built elsewhere in downtown and the city has hired real estate firm CBRE to court developers for Site 8, which remains empty.
[caption id="attachment_8997" align="alignright" width="300"] Gil McRae[/caption]
“The scrutiny is something we welcome,” McRae says. “If we can’t stand up to scrutiny and have answers people will except, we won’t have the project with the level of community support that we need.
“The reality is that commitment from the council in June 2011 is the reason we proposed the project as we did to BP in Pensacola. That hasn’t changed, it’s just been a protracted negotiation and public review process.”
McRae has a bachelor’s degree in natural resources from the University of Michigan; a master’s degree in fisheries science from the University of Minnesota; and did additional post-graduate work at North Carolina State University. His work as a research scientist in Florida for the FWC has included developing fisheries stock assessments for species, ecosystem assessment and restoration, and inshore marine monitoring and assessment. He has been director of the Marine Research Institute since 2002.
He spoke with me about the project, the public comment process and about how the hatchery will work.
QUESTION: There has been talk that what is in the project now is not what was shown to council in 2011. With the caveat in place that you have not been on the site to see exactly what remediation is needed, the $18.8 million in this round of NRDA funding will cover what aspects that were proposed in 2011?
ANSWER: The funding will cover the hatchery facility (projected to be at least 25,000 square feet) and the associated storage ponds and constructed freshwater wetland. It will not include the stand-alone educational center, but we will be integrating educational/public access elements into our design of the facility. We will also be including the walking trails and some educational/outreach signage and/or kiosks highlighting the cultural significance of the site (maritime history and beach during the era of segregation). Project funds are expected to cover all site remediation required.
Q: So if I send my fifth-grader on a field trip to the hatchery, what do they see?
A: They will see a facility that is yet to be designed, but is undoubtedly beautiful. Inside they will see an array of tanks which will be the biggest aquarium they’ve ever seen. There will be a separate room that has bigger tanks with gigantic fish. These would be the brood stock or parent fish. If they are red fish, they’re heads would be bigger than the kids’. If they are other fish they would be less big but still quite impressive.
They would learn about those fish, how they spawn and reproduce, how the egg goes from egg stage to larval stage, how it absorbs its larval sac and converts to eating live feed. We’ll show them how we raise the live feed, so they’ll learn about that part of the food chain and how it mimics the natural one exactly. They will learn how we transition the fish from when they absorb their larval sac to when they go to live feed. They will learn about the water quality issues that we have to be concerned about when we raise fish. We will have displays that connect various habitats to the species of fish we are raising in the hatchery and point out that without high quality, abundant habitat, you will not have those fish. It goes together. So when they hear about some things like a program to restore habitat they’ll know why.
And depending on what we’re able to integrate into the site, they may also learn quite about about the cultural background and history of the area in the community. (Bruce Beach was a shipyard...then of course it was a segregated beach. There’s some difficult but interesting history there. It goes back hundreds of years because everything you guys have goes back hundreds of years. There are cultural resource areas on the site that I am sworn to secrecy not to divulge, but ultimately we could integrate that. I can tell you there are no gold coins or anything…..
There are already two wetlands on the site. The wetland we’re going to build connects the two that are there. It creates a continuous marsh that’s much more representative of what’s out there naturally.
The whole Bruce Beach site is fill. It’s not real land. It was created, so normally that would have been a gradual, swampy area. But everything is altered.
Q: Bruce Beach itself is not a naturally occurring item then?
A: Very little of what you see along any of this is natural, except the water.
Q: The cultural sensitivity aspect, is that built into the $18.8 million?
A: We have to do that outside the $18.8 million but we have committed to doing that. The reality is, we have to get on the site, understand the challenges associated with the site and figure out how much we’re going to need for construction, while preserving operations, monitoring and maintenance component. Anything left over from that ($18.8 million) will go to trails, cultural resource development, etc.
To do something big, we’re going to have to go find additional funding sources. There has been no shortage of ideas of things people want to see on the site.
Q: Without a lease you haven’t been able to do formal study about what mitigation might be needed there, but what kind of contamination is on the site?
A: There’s a lot of construction debris that would have to be cleared out. There’s going to be arsenic in the soil due to railroad use. Anywhere you had railroad use, you have arsenic because it was used in the ties. That’s not an issue unless you disturb the soil or have a situation where kids are likely to eat dirt, like a playground, so I don’t think that will be a big issue. It may just involved us tweaking where the building is located to not disturb a lot of soil area.
The other problem, there is some groundwater contamination in the southwest corner due to the tank farm. We don’t know how extensive that is and it’s not a huge issue because what that would mean is related to putting in a well and we really don’t need to put in a well. There might be other surprises, but we built a contingency into the budget and if we run into something major, my guess is we would be able to go back to BP and they would work with us, because they want to get this off the ground, just as much as we do.
Q: What kind of fish will be hatched at the hatchery?
A: Inshore species, mainly because those are the fish that we know how to raise and those are the fish that are in highest demand from recreational fishermen. Candidate species are spotted trout, red drum and flounder. We’ve had discussions about cobia, but cobia is an offshore species and that’s a different challenge.
The hatchery is set up to raise phase one fish, only an inch big. They have to be released into habitat that they would be in naturally and one that would protect them from predators.
Q: They won’t all be released here?
A: No, they’re actually not released at the site. They’re put in special trucks and transported to release sites (which are) throughout the northern Gulf in Florida. We will likely not go passed Apalachicola Bay with this project. But the key point is the way our hatcheries work, this is where we grow the fish, this is where we do the environmental education and outreach. The fish are taken to those habitats that are sufficient in quality and quantity where they will survive grow and hopefully contribute to the wild population.
Q: There have been conversations about studies related to hatcheries that show hatched fish are not as healthy as wild. Is that good science to your knowledge?
A: To my knowledge none of those studies are from Florida and they focus on things like salmon, which has been a multibillion hatchery program for decades. There are couple of things that have happened. Most of those fish are raised on pellets, so the fish aren’t really trained very well to fend for themselves in a natural environment and consume natural food. We are going to be feeding our fish live natural feed that we grow at the hatchery. The zooplankton, the little crab-like plankton that they eat, (they will be fed at the hatchery) will mimic what they’ll have to go hunt for in the wild. And we’re not raising our fish in raceways. They are in tanks for a very short time and we don’t think that environment, given that we will raise them on live feed, will create a situation where they have less a chance of surviving than natural fish of the same age. Young fish survival rate in nature is very low; that’s why fish lay millions of eggs.
Q: What is very low?
A: It is on the order of a few percent, less than 10 percent. So keep in mind we expect to have a fairly low survival rate because that is comparable to the wild population. We’ve built in funding for assessing the fish post-stocking into the project cost. BP is paying for that for five years.
Q: There has been conversation about if Pensacola should reject the project, do you think that throws off the settlement framework?
A: That’s really a question that will be answered by lawyers, but let me tell you what I’ve been told. The minimum a change in site would require is a restarting of the settlement and new environmental impact statement and a new environmental restoration plan because the current one is specific is to the Bruce Beach site.
Q: It’s my understanding that’s why the resolution in 2011 was sought, to show there was tangible local interest in the project?
A: BP’s a big company. I think they would have gotten wise if we had proposed the project without a location. I don’t know, we weren’t willing to try.
The other thing that could happen (if the Bruce Beach site is rejected) is BP may want to renegotiate. Either they may think the project in another location adds more or less value. I don’t know if that is the case. The project is part of a package, a human use project package, so the remaining Florida projects may be repackaged and the crediting on those may change if the hatchery was pulled out. Those are the potential things that might happen.
At a minimum what would have to happen would be a restart of environmental impact statement and restoration plan for the new site. That’s been a two-year process to get where we are now. So we may be looking at a two-year delay.
Q: Is there another site was in consideration?
A: There was a site in Walton County that was in consideration in 2011.
Q: Could you just go back to them?
A: I think we could, yes.
Q: Is there like a cut off list, like these 10 projects made the list, but projects 11, 12, 13, and 14 were pretty good they just didn’t have enough credits. If one of projects 1 through 10 were to fall off can bump project 11 up the list?
A: Keep in mind that this project group has coexisted together as a group for better part of two years. So the projects that didn’t make the group were not appropriate to the group. So I wouldn’t say there’s a bench strength on the project list. I wouldn’t put it that way. It would be more like we pull ballplayers from the audience randomly.
Q: The model for the Pensacola facility is similar to what is in use in Port Manatee?
A: It’s a model but it is smaller. Our Port Manatee hatchery is at the base of a landfill across from a prison. It does have the recirculating aquaculture system, but it has two tanks. This would be more like a dozen tanks.
We are the Fish and Wildlife Commission our mission is to protect and enhance natural populations. The constitution prohibits us from harming national populations. There are many safeguard associated with how we will raise and release fish. Just a few of those: Before any fish are even spawned, we go out and collect their parents from the wild in the area we propose to stock them. This helps assure that the genetics of a hatchery fish are similar to the genetics of a wild fish. And if we continue to raise that species over a number of years, we will cycle out those parents to combat inbreeding. The life cycle of brood fish is about 3-4 years. The set up in the broodstock tanks are typically one female and a whole bunch of males. It’s broadcast spawning (when animals release their eggs and sperm into the water, where fertilization occurs externally). (In that set up), inbreeding is unlikely.
We don’t release any fish that’s not certified by an aquatic animal vet and every fish goes through that. If any fish has a problem that we can’t resolve, we will destroy the fish rather than release it.
Q: And something that would cause you to destroy the fish would be?
A: We’re very conservative. Even if they have a morphological anomaly, like a spine curvature, that can’t be passed on. Some parasites, most of which can be cured with a freshwater dip. We’re very conservative, if the fish aren’t identical to what we expect to see in the wild, but at that small size, they’re unlikely to have those health issues, because those arise when you keep fish in aquariums for a very long time.
We’ve left what we will raise and where we will stock them open on purpose to get a plan that has buy in from the local community.
Q: Talk about the research aspects of the project
A: The facility will be in my division in FWC which is the Fish and Wildlife Research institute. Our division has no regulatory or policy-making responsibility. Our duties are strictly science. The people in our commission who set seasons or bag limits, they are in different divisions. I have no vested interest in what the regulations are. In many cases I don’t even know what they are. Having the facility in our group makes it a research facility and when we have a base in a city, things tend to happen.
Typically there is university interest because we are doing practical resources work and they have students graduate students who they want exposed to that stuff because those students are trying to get into that business. I mentioned that UWF is committed to a faculty position that is based or partly based at the site and people say that is just one position. But that one faculty position bring students with them. They can bring a whole department with them. They bring a university perspective, just a kernel of something that can grow an entire university program.
The best example is we have at Jacksonville University. We decided we would base some fishery folks there and Jacksonville University let us use an old house they owned. But ultimately over five or seven years, that partnership grew and expanded to where Jacksonville University got state support to build a marine institute, an entirely new entity, on their campus that is now one of the centers for research on the St. John’s River.
When we’re working in an area and universities know there is real world research going on, their ability to recruit students interested in that work really increases. That’s a good draw.
Q: How long has the FWC been doing fishery enhancement research and what would the Pensacola facility mean to that effort?
A: We began researching marine stock enhancement in the mid-1980's. The Pensacola facility would be our first production-oriented facility for marine fisheries enhancement in the state. That means we would be moving from pure research mode into a comprehensive evaluation mode for marine stock enhancement.
Q: So almost three years ago, City Council unanimously signed off on this thing. Does it surprise you the way that this conversation has turned?
A: What surprised me was the extended time it took us to negotiate the project with BP. When we presented it to the council, we would have never guessed it would have been another nearly three years before we came back.
The proposal from 2011 was pretty much a larger scale version of what we ultimately proposed to BP. We had to refine it to bring it in line with the cost that we felt the trustees would be comfortable with because keep in mind what we put into this project took money from other things. We wanted to go in with a diverse portfolio of projects -- water quality, habitat restoration, fishery restoration, lost recreational opportunity -- so there was some scaling that had to be done on all projects to ensure that we could come with that diverse portfolio.
[progresspromise]
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