ALEX FOGG MEMBER PROFILE

TEXT BY KYLE KRAY

Hometown: Annapolis, Maryland

Age: 37 Years

Diving: 20

Why I’m a DAN Member: My primary reason for joining is for the insurance benefits and peace of mind that if anything happened while diving, I would be taken care of.

Alex Fogg is recognised in the dive community for creating the world's most extensive invasive lionfish collection and hosting the Emerald Coast Open, a two-day outreach event that removes tens of thousands of lionfish each year. Over the past decade, he has personally harvested an unquantifiable number of invasive lionfish from North American waters.

Fogg is also the Natural Resources Chief for Okaloosa County, Florida, managing more than $20 million in artificial reef construction projects. His current and most significant project to date is the planned sinking of the SS United States near Destin. At 990 feet (302 meters) long, the ocean liner will become the largest artificial reef in the world.

HOW DID YOU BECOME A DIVER?

My father was in the U.S. Navy. We moved around throughout my childhood, but we were always a coastal family. He inspired me to get in the water, whether it was the cold waters of Maine and Maryland or the clear, warm waters of Florida. I grew up listening to stories of diving and spearfishing. All I wanted was to be a part of that world. I first got certified as a diver so I could spearfish.

HOW DID DIVING SHAPE YOUR CAREER?

I knew I wanted to be close to the water and in it as much as possible, so majoring in marine science seemed the best way to achieve that goal. I moved to South Carolina for college and dived out of Charleston. After graduation, I joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a fisheries biologist in Mississippi, where I collected fish, participated in surveys, and recorded data following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

HOW DID THE HUNT FOR LIONFISH START?

By the time I was in graduate school at the University of Southern Mississippi, lionfish had invaded the Atlantic coast and the Caribbean. Still, they were just starting to establish in the Gulf of Mexico, and I was uniquely positioned in the dive community to get involved. Researchers had been working on invasive lionfish in the Florida Keys, and we applied those concepts to similar studies in the Gulf. I am grateful to those who took me under their wing at NOAA and allowed me to contribute to the lionfish work early on.

The only way to study lionfish was to collect a large number of samples through diving. I travelled extensively along the Gulf Coast, meeting with divers and dive clubs to ask for their help in harvesting lionfish so that we could assess the impact of this invasive species. Collection efforts were slow at first because there weren’t a lot of lionfish around, but that situation eventually changed.

We would collect thousands of lionfish a week, thanks to the efforts of local divers who became active citizen scientists. Many of them didn’t agree with fisheries research and the regulations it sometimes produced, but everyone got behind removing lionfish, as they had become a much larger problem.

While I was in graduate school, a position opened with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission that was associated with the artificial reef program, but also included a lionfish drop coordinator component within marine fisheries management. I saw the position as an opportunity to dive into some great projects with a healthy impact on the environment while keeping my spear sharp with lionfish and research in that field. I took the position and moved to Florida, where I have been ever since.

HOW DID THE EMERALD COAST OPEN START, AND HOW HAS LIONFISH TOURNAMENT HARVESTING AFFECTED THE INVASIVE POPULATIONS?

There were lionfish harvesting tournaments in Florida, but we developed the concept into a Lionfish Removal and Awareness Day, which became the Emerald Coast Open. We moved the event to Destin in 2019. The first tournament caught and released 19,000 lionfish over a weekend, marking the beginning of its growth in terms of sponsorships, participation numbers, and positive impacts on local tourism and ecology.

When we have significant events that remove 20,000 lionfish in just two days, it has a profoundly positive impact on the ecosystem. These events provide a strong but temporary positive impact on the ecosystem, lasting about six months. Spearfishing and line fishing heavily stress the coast over the summer, so removing an additional stressor for a few months is a tremendous benefit to an ecosystem that already sees enough pressure.

YOU HAVE MANAGED THE SINKING OF MORE THAN 1,000 ARTIFICIAL REEFS, BUT THE SS UNITED STATES IS YOUR BIGGEST PROJECT YET. TELL ME ABOUT THOSE PLANS.

I've been overseeing the artificial reef program in Destin-Fort Walton Beach since approximately 2017, and we’ve worked diligently to expand our program exponentially, benefiting both the environment and the local economy. The best part of working here is our leadership’s support, which led to the plans for bringing the SS United States to Destin. It is currently in Mobile, Alabama, undergoing the remediation process before being transported to Destin for sinking.

The SS United States is a retired American ocean liner built in the early 1950s and the largest ocean liner to be entirely constructed in the U.S. Decades of time, energy, and money have gone into what its future would be.

Recent court proceedings looked to doom it to the scrap pile, which was not the dream of its previous owners. In light of the challenging situation, we contacted them to see if they would consider selling it to us for use as an artificial reef and honour it in that way, along with a land-based museum in Destin-Fort Walton Beach.

Destin-Fort Walton Beach will be home to the world’s largest artificial reef and the first artificial reef with a nearby standalone museum dedicated to it. It will be a unique experience for everyone, and we can’t wait to make it available to the world.