Unfortunately, threats to mangroves are extreme and warrant immediate attention.  Like wetlands worldwide, these critically important habitats have declined significantly (Florida has lost approximately 50% of it’s mangroves, for example), and continue to be under stress.  Diversion of fresh water from mangrove areas, filling in mangrove wetlands for development, cutting mangroves for wood products, and pollution are all immediate threats to these habitats and to the communities that depend on them.  Without these fragile habitats many species will not be able to survive, and we will lose a fantastic habitat for fly fishing.

As in all of our coastal environments, the connections between healthy habitats are essential to the success of gamefish populations.  For example, juvenile tarpon and snook require shallow, protected, low salinity areas during at least the first year of life, but must be able to move to somewhat deeper areas with higher salinity as they grow.  Eventually, adults use the various habitats provided by estuaries and the coastal ocean, but even adults have specific habitat requirements.  A fish’s chances of survival are much greater if it can move from one habitat to another without having to negotiate large inhospitable areas, such as seawalls where mangrove shoreline used to be.  This is especially true for the juvenile and sub-adult stages of the life cycle that depend on the very mangrove shorelines that are under such extreme threat. 
Sadly, coastal habitats are under increasing stress, and poor quality habitats are bad news to the fishes that depend on them.  Despite some changes in environmental laws, development continues to eradicate important mangrove habitats.  In many areas, only small sections of mangroves remain where once the entire shoreline was a continuous stretch of undisturbed mangrove habitat.  In other areas, poor water quality from too much sediment or pollution, or from too much or too little freshwater due to channelization, has eradicated seagrass beds next to mangroves, leaving only open bottom.  Often the changes in water quality alter the communities associated with mangrove prop roots, which impacts the prey available to gamefish.  In addition, dredging to allow more boat access removes the shallow habitats that are essential to both juvenile and adult gamefish.  Often, these destructive forces act in concert, resulting in sparse coastal landscapes.  

To fragment these important fish habitats into ever smaller, low-quality parcels is to invite disaster for coastal gamefish, and is an outcome we should try our best to prevent. 

If you fish along mangrove shorelines, please don’t break off your leader and leave it dangling in the mangroves.  Far too many birds have become entangled in monofilament left dangling from mangrove branches – I’ve pulled numerous monofilament-entangled dead birds from among mangrove branches. 

Finally, since we have already lost so much of the mangrove habitat that gamefish depend on, as responsible stewards of gamefish habitats it is important for us to report destruction of mangroves.  Enforcement agencies aren’t able to be in all places at all times, so when we are on the water we must report the destruction of gamefish habitats. 

All material copyright Aaron Adams 2007, 2008, and beyond, unless noted.