Jurisdiction Question Involving an Island State Park...

[j.razz1]

I wanted to see if any of you have any insight into this scenario.

I'm going to be doing some land-based photography on Three Rooker Island off the coast of Florida for licensing purposes. I've been in contact Florida's State Parks department and they currently ban sUAS in their state parks (which Three Rooker Island is in). Now, what I'm doing there has nothing to do with aerial shots, so I don't have a valid request to submit for a film/photo permit in that state park.

However, having said that, I also know that if I am taking off and landing outside the state park and then flying over it, it is outside of their jurisdiction/regulation. The qualm I'm running into with this "loophole" is I'm unsure of where the state park boundary ends and gulf waters begin.

If I dock my boat right off the shore of the island, am I now considered outside the park? What about 30 feet out? a 1,000 yards? I know that Florida controls the waters for 9 nautical miles off its coast, but I'm not finding anything on how far this (or any) State Park extends past the shore line.

Have any of you dealt with a similar scenario or are familiar with a state or federal park surrounded by water that has banned sUAS?

 

[BigAl07]

You're walking a thin line and remember... any infractions dealing with your UAS could cost you your Part 107 privileges which would not help your business in any way. You could easily turn into TN Land Pictures Only Services.

 

[sar104]

Looks like the boundary is basically the shoreline, but with the islands connected.

USGS

Satellite

 

[j.razz1]

You're walking a thin line and remember... any infractions dealing with your UAS could cost you your Part 107 privileges which would not help your business in any way. You could easily turn into TN Land Pictures Only Services.

I am a rule follower and if I can't find any clarification on where it is acceptable to take off from in the water, then I just simply won't. There are several other islands that are not in the state park's jurisdiction and I'll probably just do some aerial over them.

This was mainly a question to see if anyone has dealt with this before. In Navajo country, you can take off outside of a national park and fly right over without breaking any laws or regulations. But taking off inside that park will put you in violation of the law. I wanted to see if this is similar in nature and if so, where in the ocean does state park jurisdiction end?

Thanks for the warning BigAI07, I appreciate you looking out with a word of wisdom.

 

[j.razz1]

Looks like the boundary is basically the shoreline, but with the islands connected.


USGS



Satellite

Where did you get the top image from? I'm assuming the US Geological Survey charts, but I wasn't able to find it with a legend/key. Thanks for posting sar104.

 

[j.razz1]

Okay, just to shed some light on this, I went to the source and spoke to the FWC and the State Park Service overseeing three rookers island. The boundaries go about a mile on either side of the island and continue up and down the chain with a couple of breaks where the park does not extend. See the image. The green overlay is the park boundary. This is what the State Park Service sent me.

Additionally, the FWC manager I spoke to said that he was personally more open to people utilizing their freedoms, but the State Park Service has regulations against harassing birds- so even if you could fly line of site to the island and were 400' up, if they could link your drone to causing a bird to fly from its nest, they could fine you at that point. He said that harassing has a broad meaning that has yet to be tightened up by the courts.

And to add to this, if you look at the sectional chart, it is outside of controlled airspace for both hobby and recreational, but there is a caveat. The Sectional Chart has this statement: "Pilots are requested to avoid overflights below 2000 MSL in these areas. One of "these" areas is Three Rookers Island. The key word there is "requested" but I would assume it is worded that way for multiple reasons, but one of them being a warning to pilots or else they may run into an issue with harassing the birds and be fined or have to serve jail time. See sectional chart.

Also, if you rely on Airmap, here's why you shouldn't. While it is only a request, the request could keep you out of trouble with the powers that be. Airmap didn't have any indication of this "request". In the past, when I've found errors or anomalies and reported it to them, they've been quick to respond and resolve the issues. I'm going to send them a message to ask that they include these warnings for our benefit.

Lastly, I do want to say that once I explained that I was looking for information to inform my decisions and to stay on the good side of the law, every person I spoke to was more than willing to talk openly and no one was rude. I did get some wrong information at one point about not being able to fly over state parks period, but she was open to what I had to say in those regards.

I should have just called them to begin with, but I thought I'd post here first to see if anyone else had any experience with this type of situation.

Hopefully if someone comes across this with a similar question, they will find this post helpful. Have a good rest of your day all!