The National Ocean Service is narrowing the field of new leadership at the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) nearly a year after an investigation of "waste, fraud and a hostile work environment" at the Sanctuary concluded that -- yes -- changes have to be made there.
You may recall, I wrote last June that the investigation was about to happen.
The feds play this kind of this kind of thing close to the vest. We still don't know what triggered the probe at this sanctuary established to protect the world's third largest barrier reef and such spectacular and unique resources as coral reefs, shipwrecks, seagrass beds, mangrove-fringed islands and more than 6,000 species of marine life.
Sadly, water quality in Florida Bay and around the Keys has been disintegrating for a very long time. We've known, and written at length that there's more wrong than a hostile work environment at FKNMS -- and we hoped beyond hope the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration would notice.
Maybe positive changes will be forthcoming.
Keeley Belva, spokesperson for the National Ocean Service, confirmed Tuesday, "We're going through the process of staff reassignment now -- we'll reassign other NOAA staff to the Florida Keys to fill the open positions."
As a direct result of the Ocean Service and National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's investigation, the top three administrators at the Sanctuary are being replaced.
Superintendent Sean Morton has been reassigned to the NCCOS Center for Coastal Environmental Health in Charleston, S.C. Deputy Superintendent Mary Tagliareni has been reassigned to Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Michigan.
Acting Superintendent Ed Lindeloff and acting Deputy Superintendent Lisa Symons will continue to serve in those positions until replacements are found.
The third and most important reassignee is Billy Causey, the southeast regional director for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. He's out. Well, out, but nowhere near far enough out. Causey was sent to the National Marine Protected Areas Center to serve as "an expert adviser" on MPA management. Basically, that means he gets a new office down the hall.
I hope his new job isn't as important as it sounds.
I'd like to hope Causey had to answer for the millions of dollars the sanctuary has taken in federal funding -- and yet the reefs in the Florida Keys now have less living coral than any other in the wider Caribbean region. But I doubt last June's investigation went there. Otherwise Causey would have been retired, not reassigned.
By all accounts, Billy Causey is the man most responsible for preserving the faulty hypothesis of Florida Bay needing more fresh water (instead of more clean water). He supported the late Jay Zieman, architect of the bogus hypersalinity hypothesis, who also received $5 million from Paul Tudor Jones to push his junk science. You don't have to take my word. In fact, please don't: It's a hypothesis the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Florida Bay Report totally debunked.
Ask some of the folks who have been around awhile and served on Keys advisory boards. They've seen firsthand the fraud, waste, junk science, harmful water quality policies (e.g. promoting flooding of Florida Bay with high-nitrogen Everglades runoff that feeds the regional algae blooms) and lack of common-sense fisheries management actions such as protecting the mutton snapper spawning aggregations near Key West.
Scary when you consider Causey failed to earn his doctorate, so in 2006 the University of South Florida gave him an honorary one anyway. "Oh, he likes to be called Doctor," one of his staff told me. "We have to call him Doctor."
"Expert adviser" Causey is a doctor all right. Doctor Doom.
Causey put a bright face on his new role when he talked to the Key West Citizen about the changes, calling them the creation of a "clean slate" that will be beneficial for the sanctuary. "The changes will be good for the team in the Florida Keys," he said.
Looking at the state of the barrier reef, looking at the management practices past and present -- including, and especially realizing the Sanctuary had nothing to do with the decision to sewer the Keys -- I'm thinking there's only one way the FKNMS preservation mission can go, and that's up.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinstatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
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