Three months after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rejected the comprehensive Restoration Blueprint for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in state waters, officials with NOAA say they may end up scrapping the original plan entirely.
Released in January 2025, the Restoration Blueprint’s final rule represents the culmination of 14 years of work by the sanctuary and partner organizations. The revamp presents a long-overdue change to sanctuary regulations that began in 2011, when a startling condition report highlighted a concerning decline in the health of the Keys’ reefs, seagrass beds and other ecosystems.
The Blueprint’s regulations took effect March 5 in federal waters. But at the end of a 45-day state review period that same month, DeSantis used a “sledgehammer instead of a scalpel” in his review of the plan, blocking its implementation in state waters making up 49% of the sanctuary area.
In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on March 3, DeSantis laid out issues with the proposed plan, the majority of which mirrored issues raised four months prior in a strongly-worded letter from FWC chairman Rodney Barreto to sanctuary officials. Among other items, major sticking points included support for artificial reefs within sanctuary boundaries, limited method-specific fishing opportunities within protected areas, and changes to language affecting FWC’s authority over fisheries regulations.
With DeSantis’ letter, in waters within three miles of shore in the Atlantic and nine miles of shore in the Gulf, regulations now revert to the rules originally established in 1997.
In the immediate aftermath of DeSantis’ rejection, multiple officials in stakeholder organizations told the Weekly they were hopeful an amended Blueprint could be submitted for reconsideration after hashing out differences with FWC. But by a June 17 session of the sanctuary’s advisory council, that option was seemingly off the table.
On Tuesday, the sanctuary’s acting superintendent, David Burke, said NOAA was faced with three basic options: continue forward with, in essence, two separate sanctuaries in federal and state waters, each with its own contrasting set of regulations; withdraw the Blueprint entirely if the division would prevent the plan from achieving its overall goals; or solicit public input on whether the plan could still be effective in light of DeSantis’ move.
He added that while the sanctuary’s website and mobile app reflected the changes to federal waters, the sanctuary has yet to update widely-available charts to reflect the new rule, and had minimal ability to enforce it due to staffing constraints.
The implementation of the rule in federal waters came as a surprise to many in the room, several of whom told the Weekly after the meeting they were unaware the Blueprint was technically in effect.
While effects in the Keys have not been as severe as feared thus far, Burke said, federal cuts to regulatory agencies, budgets, staffing and facilities put the future of the Blueprint and sanctuary as a whole in limbo, with little clarity as to when a decision would be made.
Questioned as to whether the sanctuary could acquiesce to the 10 demands set forth by Barreto in order to implement the Blueprint in state waters, Burke said the decision was “binary.”
“The governor certified it as not acceptable in state waters – that’s the end of it,” he said. “We either have the current state of play with two sets of rules, or we revert back to 1997.”
“It’s an absolute shame that that’s the position we’re in,” said Ben Daughtry, chair of the sanctuary advisory council. “But that’s where we’re at with everything that’s going on.”
Speaking to the Weekly later the same day via phone, Burke again said that “in our interpretation, we don’t get to go back and adjust the rule and try to put it over the finish line again,” particularly with the federal rule already in place.
Maintaining the split between the federal and state waters, he said, would present a daunting set of challenges, making rescinding the rule a real possibility.
“It won’t be a small technical set of challenges – we’ve got two different sets of definitions for all the different zones and what they mean,” he said. “We have different rules in different Sanctuary Protection Areas, some of which don’t allow anchoring, some of which do, some of which allow fishing, some of which don’t. … A lot of the benefit of what was going to go in there will end up not happening.”
Asked why hope of a renegotiation in March had seemingly evaporated, Burke said that while the sanctuary “continue(s) to have good working relationships with our counterparts in the state,” the idea of an amended Blueprint “may have been a perspective that one party had, and the other did not.”
“It didn’t take us very long on the federal side to say ‘Okay, now what?’” he said. “We did not think that was the next step in an ongoing negotiation. … It’s not really the end, it’s the end of doing it through Restoration Blueprint.
“There’s a broad recognition that the legacy rules have been inadequate to protect the environment,” Burke concluded. “Everybody recognizes that something still needs to be done, but whether or not the Restoration Blueprint is it remains to be seen.”
While the process to install new rules in the future would hopefully follow a shorter time frame than the comprehensive Blueprint, sanctuary officials told the Weekly a new regulation would follow the same review steps, requiring a minimum of four years to complete.
