Stone Crabs Are in Trouble, Females in the Comics Industry, and New Rules for the Goliath Grouper

On this Tuesday, March 29, edition of Cadran Solaire:

stone crabs

Unless you’re a crabeater, the last time you might have thought of stone crabs was when you ate your claws with butter at dinner. And when you got the bill, you might also have noticed that the price of your crab claw has gone up.

Stone crab season will be coming to an end in just over a month. And some fear that we need to better control the stone crab population.

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The WLRN environment Journalist Jenny Staletovich has joined Sundial. She looked into the status of stone crabs in Florida for an upcoming report.

“When I started asking about the numbers themselves and the state of the population, I was surprised to find that they had come down so much,” Staletovich said. “They were at their highest in 2000, and since then they have been falling steadily.”

Female comic artists

In the Sundial Book Club Picks for March, “Secret Identity” by Alex Segura, the protagonist is called Carmen Valdez. She had just moved to New York. It’s the 1970s. And she dreams of becoming a comic book designer. But she faces an uphill battle as it is a male-dominated industry.

How many female artists are there in the comics industry today? Much more than in the 1970s, but still disproportionate.

Keyla Valerio is a Miamian now living in Detroit, who has worked on projects like Power Rangers. She joined Sundial to share what the industry looks like for women today and how she still sometimes feels the pressure to create while thinking about a more male audience.

“Things like uniform color are very gendered,” she said. “When you’re trying to kind of draw and create content for people, especially knowing what your audience is, I think a lot of us grew up or started thinking that you kind of had to cater to who buys what.”

“But I think the good thing with an increase in female consumers when it comes to comics, and even stuff like video games…it allows us creators to have a bit more freedom and get the job done. we want to do, and it’s taking off, I think,” Valerio said.

What it’s like to be a woman in the comics industry.mp3

Goliath Grouper

For 32 years, it has been forbidden to kill the Goliath grouper. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission recently lifted that ban — except for a stretch in South Florida from Martin County to the Dry Tortugas.

The fish are popular with divers. Shana Phelan, owner of Pura Vida Divers in Riviera Beach, joined Sundial to share what it’s like to dive with these big fish – in some cases up to 800 pounds.

“These are the cutest, ugliest fish you’ve ever seen,” Phelan said.

And she made it clear that she was not in favor of partially lifting the ban on fishing these gentle, curious giants in the sea.

“We’re not super excited about it,” she said. “There are certainly ways to do research without having to cause mortality.”

You can find more WLRN coverage on the Goliath grouper here.

Diving with Goliath Grouper.mp3