Photo courtesy shutterstock.com

By David L. Snelling

The Miami-Dade Boater Safety and Bay Education Task Force is pushing for legislation which would require vessels and watercraft operators to take training courses in an effort to curb boating accidents and fatalities.

The group met this week to hammer out their proposals to submit to Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Miami-Dade County commissioners.

The eight-member Task Force is seeking new legislation at the county and state levels, to close regulatory gaps for long-term improvements and a sharp enhancement in waterway management to shore up navigational guides and traffic patterns.

“Some of those signs are old, they’re faded,” said DERM Director Loren Parra. “We can’t ask people to follow the rules if they can’t see them, so we want to make sure we’re doing that, of course working with all of our different municipalities to strengthen all of our marine patrol.”

Its proposal also includes law enforcement efforts to deter unsafe and impaired boating.

In April 2025, Levine Cava, in partnership with the Lucy Fernandez Foundation, launched the Task Force to safeguard lives and protect people in the waterways.

Fernandez, 17, was killed in a deadly boating accident on Labor Day weekend in 2022 when she and a group of her friends and classmates from Our Lady of the Lourdes Academy were traveling from Elliott Key in Biscayne National Park to Ocean Reef in North Key Largo.

They were aboard a 29-foot center console boat when it collided with a channel marker near Boca Chita Key, capsized and tossed most of the passengers into the water.

Fernandez’s classmate Katerina “Katy” Puig was severely injured and is now confined to a wheelchair, and the other passengers also suffered injuries but have since recovered.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission it discovered alcohol on board, though it was not initially considered a factor in the crash.

George Pino, a South Florida real estate mogul, who operated the boat, was charged with felony manslaughter, operating in a reckless manner along with multiple boating violations.

Lucy’s parents, Melissa and Andres Fernandez, have since become advocates for boating safety co‑founded the Lucy Fernandez Foundation, which offers scholarships to students at Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, promotes boater safety education, and supports legislation such as “Lucy’s Law.”

Andy Fernandez currently chairs the Task Force.

The group said its latest proposal ensures protection for boaters and passengers on the waterways.

“We need safety education, rules and regulation regarding our waterways,” said Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, also a Task Force member. “And the goal of this taskforce has been to not see so many tragedies that we’ve seen just in the last couple of years.”

Fernandez said there’s only one way to prevent more tragedies.

“What we’re trying to do is expand boater education requirements, to see how we could expand it here at the local level where more boat operators are required to obtain more boater education requirements,” said Fernandez. “We want to help obtain more funding for law enforcement.”