One year after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed a comprehensive restoration plan for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in state waters, NOAA officials told the sanctuary’s advisory council they plan to forge ahead with implementing the new rules in federal waters at the council’s March 10 session.
Last March, DeSantis used his veto power during a state review process to axe the final iteration of Restoration Blueprint, a comprehensive plan in the works since 2011 to revitalize and protect the sanctuary. The move blocked the Blueprint from taking effect in state waters – up to three nautical miles out on the Atlantic side of the Keys, or up to nine miles in the Gulf.
The governor’s final veto was closely tied to a letter sent to sanctuary officials by FWC chairman Rodney Barreto in November 2024, during the Blueprint’s final review stages. It outlined 10 “essential” areas of disagreement between FWC and the sanctuary in the newly-proposed rules – headlined by support for artificial reefs within the sanctuary and disputed regulatory authority over the state’s fisheries.
The unaltered Blueprint proceeded through its final review and took effect on March 5, 2025 in federal waters, which make up roughly 40% of the sanctuary – two days after DeSantis took, in former Sanctuary Superintendent Sarah Fangman’s words, a “sledgehammer instead of a scalpel” to the plan.
In the advisory council’s June 2025 session, several members said they were surprised to learn the rule was still technically in effect in waters further offshore. In that meeting, acting superintendent David Burke told the advisory council that the sanctuary faced two basic options: proceed with, in essence, two separate sanctuaries, operating under the new rule in federal waters and the original 1997 sanctuary regulations closer to shore, or scrap Restoration Blueprint entirely if the differential enforcement seemed impractical.
On March 10, Laura Grimm, NOAA deputy undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere, told the advisory council the agency plans to announce the Blueprint’s effective date from 2025 in a Federal Register notice, and will move forward with the new rule while working to find areas of consensus with state officials in nearshore waters.
“We’re committed to working with the state to understand the governor’s decision regarding state waters,” Grimm said. “We’re going to spend some dedicated time understanding these concerns … and we will be working to find common-sense actions that will address those issues so we can manage this ecosystem together.”
Council members pressed Grimm, NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries director John Armor and Burke over questions of timely progress and enforcement as the sanctuary moves forward with an adaptive management working group.
Effectively on hold for more than a year as the council waited for direction following the veto, the working group will now be tasked with targeting individual areas of consensus between state and federal agencies – such as additional protections prohibiting fishing and other activities in coral nurseries – and finding avenues to implement them in state waters. A workshop later in Tuesday’s meeting asked breakout groups to identify key items with high importance and ease of implementation – much-needed “easy wins” for the sanctuary after a year of regulatory turmoil.
Advisory council chair Ben Daughtry said efficiency and an ability to see measurable progress from the group are paramount, as processes like the Restoration Blueprint took more than a decade to complete before the state veto.
And with well over 4,000 square miles under the now-expanded sanctuary boundary, multiple council members raised concerns over law enforcement and public education campaigns – particularly as some boaters may have unknowingly broken the law over the past year in areas with modified regulations.
“Such a significant part of sanctuary law enforcement relies on the state, and if there’s not a good relationship with the state, we’re either going to need to see federal law enforcement significantly increase or some sort of cooperative situation,” said Daughtry. “The state force is busy doing their own law enforcement, but we’ve relied on them for pretty much the duration of the sanctuary.”
Burke told the group the sanctuary had updated its mobile app and website to reflect the new rule, and that the sanctuary’s outreach and education team would be tasked with the public information campaign to fully announce the new regulations.
