BY LINDSEY RANAYHOSSAINI Staff Writer

FLORIDA’S SEAPORTS REPORT RECORD GROWTH, PLAN FOR EXPANSION AMIDST UNCERTAINTY

Spurred by 2021’s global supply chain crisis and ongoing labor issues in California’s ports, as well as a rapidly growing state population and increased trade between the U.S. and Mexico, Florida’s 16 seaports posted record cargo movements in 2022.

Together, they handled 112.5 million tons of cargo, a 6-percent increase from 2021.

“There’s been unprecedented growth for one simple thing you’ll appreciate: population growth,” said Carlos Buqueras, chairman of the Florida Ports Council and president and CEO of SeaPort Manatee. “As they say in the shipping business, or any business, a rising sea floats all ships. We all went up. The Florida ports have been very aggressive in growing and being able to serve the population that depends on us to provide most of the supplies that they use in a day.”

Increased trade with Mexico has played a significant role in growth for Florida’s ports. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S. exports to Mexico increased 30.7 percent from 2020 to 2021, and imports from Mexico increased by 18.3 percent. And as more cargo travels between the two countries, there has been greater demand for Florida’s ports.

“It’s neat to see the types of commodities that are traveling both directions,” said Alex King, chair of the Florida Seaport Transportation and Economic Development Council and executive director of Port Panama City. “That’s something that not only Panama City, but other Gulf ports are really getting involved in considering the amount of trade that currently goes by land over the border.”

And though California’s ports offer an attractive route for trade with Asia, they have become overcrowded and faced an onslaught of labor issues due to ongoing contract negotiations, an issue that has not impacted Florida’s ports.

“You head to California ports, and that was the quickest way for shipping line carriers to deliver goods to the United States (from Asia),” said Michael Rubin, president and CEO of the Florida Ports Council. “And it’s gotten crowded. [The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach] are perhaps the most inefficient ports in the world.”

As they say in the shipping business, or any business, a rising sea floats all ships. We all went up.

But Florida’s Gulf ports may be impacted by a different issue – the trade waters they serve are home to the endangered Rice’s whale, and further protections could drastically reshape Florida’s shipping industry.

GROWTH IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

Florida’s four most active ports in the Gulf of Mexico reported record-breaking numbers for both cargo and revenue in 2022. Port Panama City set an all-time record of 2.03 million tons of cargo, a 4-percent yearover-year growth. Additionally, Port Panama City saw a 9-percent increase in revenue over fiscal year 2021, with a record $19.04 million in revenue for fiscal year 2022. Also in the Panhandle, the Port of Pensacola handled 425,577 tons of cargo in fiscal year 2022, a 55-percent year-over-year increase.

The story was similar for SeaPort Manatee, which saw a 35-percent increase in container cargo in fiscal year 2022 and a record 177,108 Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEU), more than doubling its TEU total for fiscal year 2020.

Port Tampa Bay, Florida’s largest seaport by tonnage and acreage, is also one of the nation’s fastest growing seaports. The port is set to receive $12.6 million in Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) grant funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation to expand a berth at Port Redwing, a satellite facility. Overall, Port Tampa Bay is planning the completion of $78.3 million in improvement projects in 2023.

The ports are critical in bringing by sea the fuel that powers the cars that everybody uses

FROM THE PORTS TO THE PEOPLE

More important than the amount of cargo handled by the ports, however, is what that cargo contains. SeaPort Manatee and Port Tampa Bay serve as two of Florida’s four fuel ports. The fuel ports supply 90 percent of Florida’s fuel, and Rubin estimated that 40 to 45 percent of that fuel is transported through Port Tampa Bay.

“When I say that ports touch everybody, that includes fuel, so the ports are critical in bringing by sea the fuel that powers the cars that everybody uses,” Buqueras said.

Other goods that pass through the ports include food, medical supplies, construction materials and paper pulp to create products like toilet paper. Buqueras shared that SeaPort Manatee is responsible for bringing 1.2 billion bananas to Florida each year and is the second largest importer of orange juice in the United States.

Jaxport in Jacksonville, Florida’s largest container port by volume, is one of the nation’s top vehicle-handling ports –553,029 automobiles passed through the port last year – with its other chief imports including medical products, machinery and industrial chemicals.

THE CRUISE INDUSTRY REBOUNDS

Florida’s ports play a significant role in the supply chain, but they also serve the state’s tourism industry. Port Canaveral, PortMiami and Port Everglades are the world’s top three cruise homeports, handling approximately 60 percent of all U.S. passenger traffic.

The cruise industry has not fully rebounded in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with Florida’s cruise industry recording 10.77 million passengers in 2022, a 41-percent decrease from 2019. However, the Florida Ports Council projects that the cruise industry will exceed its 2019 numbers in 2023.

PortMiami, the world’s largest cruise terminal, anticipates a 20-percent increase in the number of cruise ship calls in the next year. Port Canaveral, also one of Florida’s four fuel ports, is slated to add a $175 million cruise terminal in late 2026 to accommodate new ships. And Port Everglades, South Florida’s main seaport for receiving energy products, is set for $25 million in cruise terminal improvements in fiscal year 2023.

PETITIONED ACTIONS FOR PORT ACTIVITY

Despite the growth in cargo handled by Florida’s ports and a projected total of $2.3 billion dollars in priority improvement projects planned for 10 of the State’s ports this year, four of Florida’s six Gulf Coast ports could be drastically impacted as the result of petitioned actions that would significantly decrease vessel activity in the Gulf of Mexico.

Those petitioned actions, submitted in 2021 to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Healthy Gulf, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice and New England Aquarium seek to establish a vessel slowdown zone in the region of the Gulf of Mexico from Pensacola to just south of Tampa within waters 100 to 400 meters deep. Proposed regulations within the vessel slowdown zone include a 10-knot speed limit for vessels greater than 65 feet in length and eliminating nighttime vessel traffic altogether.

The petition was submitted by the environmental groups for the protection of the Rice’s whale, a newly discovered species of whale that was officially recognized by the Society of Marine Mammalogy and Taxonomy in 2021. Prior to this classification, Rice’s whales were believed to be a subspecies of the Bryde’s whale, which were classified as endangered species in 2019.

Grant Baysinger, a contractor in the Marine Mammal Branch of the Protected Resources Division in NOAA’s Southeast Regional Office, said there are only an estimated 51 Rice’s whales remaining.

“They’re found only in the Gulf of Mexico, and they’re in an area that’s heavily impacted by humans,” Baysinger said. “As a large whale, they’re important to the ecosystem. The contributions they make of just moving around and spreading nutrients around the Gulf of Mexico is important to habitats and to other species out there. And then, just generally, this is a whale that’s found in American waters, so it seems like it should be something of a priority that we do something for this whale.”

In proposing the vessel slowdown zone, the two major concerns cited by petitioners were noise pollution and vessel collisions.

Because whales communicate through whale calls, noise pollution makes it difficult for the species to locate mates and food sources. Baysinger likened this to sitting next to a friend at a sporting event and being forced to speak louder and louder to hold a conversation. And depending on the severity of noise pollution and their proximity to loud noises, whales can suffer either temporary or permanent damage to their hearing, making critical communication impossible.

The Gulf of Mexico is bowl-shaped, Baysinger explained, so the sounds created by industrial activity in the Gulf bounce around before exiting. This is of greater concern in the Western Gulf, where the seismic testing and surveys generated by the oil and gas industry create more noise than in the Eastern Gulf where the industry is not operating.

Though one Rice’s whale was discovered off the coast of Corpus Christi, Texas in 2017, and passive acoustic monitoring has recorded Rice’s whale calls off the coasts of Texas and Louisiana, the species is predominantly found in the Eastern Gulf’s quieter waters.

Still, Baysinger advised that any human-generated noise, including vessel traffic, can be harmful to whales.

“It’s a cumulative kind of effect,” Baysinger said. “Any sound is adding to the level of sound that is out there in the Gulf of Mexico. So while seismic surveys are probably the loudest thing going on in the Gulf of Mexico, any incremental increases in sound are noticeable.”

Vessel collisions are the second threat to Rice’s whales cited in the petition, and the proposed solution is a stoppage of nighttime vessel traffic. Rice’s whales feed during the day and spend the night within 50 feet of the water’s surface.

“They’re spending their nights at the surface of the water, and one of the challenges of that is that they’re difficult to see to begin with, but even more so at night when visibility is lower,” Baysinger said.

NOAA opened the petition for the vessel slowdown zone for a 90-day public comment period that ended July 6, and the organization received more than 75,000 comments in response.

“We’re going through those,” Baysinger said. “It’s going to take time – we weren’t anticipating that many public comments. We have to sort them out and kind of understand what folks said about the whale in the comments and the impacts to industry and those kinds of things.”

Baysinger said the timeline for NOAA’s response to the proposed action is uncertain, with other projects related to the Rice’s whale receiving higher priority.

“There’s no set standard or timeline that we’re working on at this time,” Baysinger said.

THE PORTS RESPOND

Pointing to the critical role that Florida’s ports play in transporting essential goods to Florida consumers, the Florida Ports Council has issued numerous resources outlining what the organization characterizes as the “clear and present danger to Florida’s economy” created by NOAA’s petitioned actions on vessel activity. SeaPort Manatee, Port Tampa Bay, Port Panama City and Port of Pensacola all fall within the proposed vessel slowdown zone.

”There’s probably nothing more anti-commerce than what they’re trying to do here,” Rubin said “It’s just astounding to me. I’ve read more about whales than I’ve wanted to in my entire life, and I really am astounded by the limited data they have and what they’ve done based on that limited data.”

More than 6,400 ships called on Port Tampa Bay in fiscal year 2022 for an average of 17 or more ships per day. These vessels all relied on nighttime travel for part of their journey to the port, and the journeys of vessels traveling to the other three impacted ports reflect a similar reliance on nighttime travel.

Vessels carrying fuel from Texas and Louisiana to Central Florida would have to transit the vessel slowdown zone twice, adding two extra days to their travel. And if a hurricane were to hit Florida, the inability to efficiently move fuel to the State could have catastrophic consequences for Floridians attempting to evacuate, Rubin added.

“Anybody that’s been through a hurricane in Florida realizes how important fuel can be at any time,” Rubin said. “We’re really concerned that somebody at NOAA hasn’t been paying attention to the logistics of trade movement, so we’re going to make sure that they understand what they’re doing.”

Buqueras points out that, while Florida’s ports would be harmed by the vessel slowdown zone, consumers would bear much of the burden of the proposed rules. With lower vessel speeds and the elimination of nighttime traffic, fewer vessels would be able to traverse the Gulf of Mexico, leading to less cargo handled through the ports and fewer goods for consumers to buy. Ultimately, a decreased supply of goods could translate to higher prices for consumers who have already experienced the sting of inflation in recent years.

THE GULF OF MEXICO COMMERCE PROTECTION ACT

The Florida Ports Council has actively engaged the state’s congressional delegation on the potential impacts of the vessel slowdown zone, and their advocacy appears to have paid off, Rubin said.

“The good news is Congress is pretty bipartisan on this issue, which is very unusual these days,” Rubin said. “The fact that you can get Congress to agree to anything just shows you that people are concerned.”

On Aug. 18, U.S. Reps. Clay Higgins (R-LA) and Neal Dunn (R-FL) introduced the Gulf of Mexico Commerce Act to prevent NOAA from rulemaking that would establish the vessel slowdown zone, as well as requiring NOAA to consult government agencies and impacted stakeholders regarding the development of Rice’s whale protection policies. The bill would also require the Department of Commerce to study and report on the impact that the vessel slowdown zone would have on the supply chain.

CRITICAL HABITAT DESIGNATION

The petitioned action for the vessel slowdown zone is not the only issue causing concern for Florida’s ports. A proposed rule by NOAA Fisheries to establish a critical habitat designation for the Rice’s whale for an area encompassing more than 28,000 square miles of continental shelf and slope associated waters within the Gulf of Mexico is open for public comment through Sept. 22. Notably, the proposed rule encompasses the entire Gulf of Mexico, while the petitioned action only impacts the Eastern Gulf.

Baysinger referred to this proposed rule as “the highest priority project right now.”

On its face, a critical habitat designation does not entail restrictions for entities like ports, and according to NOAA Fisheries, the designation of a critical habitat must take into consideration “economic, national security and other relevant impacts, including public input.” However, Rubin expressed concerns that establishing a critical habitat for Rice’s whales would set the stage for more rules and restrictions down the road.

Baysinger maintained that the critical habitat status would “not come with modifications to the current or existing operations [of the ports].”

“So it’s just a designation of a habitat, but OK, you’re in a designated habitat, what’s next?” Rubin said. “You’re kind of waiting for the next shoe to drop.”