By SCCF Environmental Policy Staff

This week we focus on HB 1001/SB 1388: “Vessels.” These bills are being referred to as the “Boater’s Freedom Act,” but in practice they will free bad actors to flout important environmental protections. The bills aim to make law enforcement’s job more difficult when interacting with boaters by requiring “probable cause” to stop anyone on the water.

Today, law enforcement can stop boaters to check their safety and marine sanitation equipment and can inspect catches for fishing violations. The ability to make these checks protects boaters by ensuring that they are maintaining the required safety equipment and helps protect our fisheries. 

Fisheries management relies on adhering to size and catch limits, and individual poachers can have an outsized impact on a species population if they are targeting the wrong organism. Currently, our law enforcement officials are empowered to make sure boaters are following the regulation, but this bill will remove key enforcement abilities.

Inherent in these bills, initiated by the Governor prior to the legislative session, are proposals to end the practice of checking vessels unless law enforcement has “probable cause” to stop anyone on the water. Probable cause would not include safety checks or marine sanitation equipment inspections, as these would only be considered secondary offenses. 

Unless a law enforcement official catches a poacher in the act, they will have no means to inspect vessels that they suspect may be taking species that are too small, at the wrong time of their reproductive cycle to be harvested, or of an illegal species. The protections we have in place help the state manage our fisheries, but without enforcement, even the best laws are meaningless. 

This bill would provide bad actors a pathway to poaching and skirting other important boating regulations.

Additionally, the bill, as it is currently written, could open sensitive areas to disturbances. While this could be an unintended consequence, the bill contains language that prohibits the exclusion from an area or sale of a boat motor based on the energy used. In practice, this could prohibit resource managers from excluding powerboats from areas that require relatively calm and noise-free environments, such as bird rookeries. 

Currently, there are areas of Florida that exclude gas-powered boats due to these concerns, but allow electric motor and kayaks. If these bills pass, resource managers would likely have to decide whether to open these areas to all motors or to prohibit the electric vessels to protect species from the impacts of the noisy gas engines. It’s unclear if this was the goal of the bill, as the bill sponsor’s staff has communicated that this language was only intended to prevent the prohibition of the sale of motor products, and that language could be adjusted so the bill will not override local regulation. 

As the bill is currently written, it will severely hinder the efforts of law enforcement to protect our waterways and coastal ecosystems, while also potentially opening large swathes of protected areas to noise pollution and disturbance. 

Boating provides Floridians with a unique sense of freedom and should be supported by our leaders, provided it is done so in a responsible manner. That freedom should not come at the cost of the environment or wildlife of Florida — a resource we all share.

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