Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening. Don't eat podcast.
Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther,
Speaker 1: stay longer. Oh all right, um A very special guest,
Speaker 1: Kelly Rawlston. Hello. My first question for you, it's like
Speaker 1: a It's like a structural question. Do you think I
Speaker 1: should ask you first to explain the A s A
Speaker 1: or should I ask you first to explain the Everglades? Well?
Speaker 1: A s A would be a lot easier, So maybe
Speaker 1: we'll go with that one. Okay. So within that keep
Speaker 1: Florida fishing like roll that into it. Okay. So I
Speaker 1: am work for the American Sport Fishing Association. Where are
Speaker 1: a trade association for the sport fishing industry, and so
Speaker 1: our members range from UM tackle retailers, tackle manufacturers, UM clothing,
Speaker 1: eye wear, boat manufacturers, pretty much anything associated with sport
Speaker 1: fishing industry. Retailers UM are are our members um A.
Speaker 1: S A also puts on eye Cast, which is the
Speaker 1: world's largest sport fishing trade show every July here in Orlando.
Speaker 1: So would welcome you all back to Florida if you
Speaker 1: want to make another trip coming up this summer. UM.
Speaker 1: Because of the importance of Florida to the sport fishing industry.
Speaker 1: It's the most fishing estate right it is as the
Speaker 1: fishing capital of the world, and so UM, you know,
Speaker 1: we have our industry has a huge investment in this state,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to make sure that we ensured that
Speaker 1: for the industry moving forward. And so UM we started
Speaker 1: the Key Florida Fishing Initiative. I guess about two and
Speaker 1: a half years ago. It's about how long I've been
Speaker 1: with a s A to really focus on Florida specific issues.
Speaker 1: So our motto is um a bennet fisheries, clean water
Speaker 1: and access to both for Florida anglers, UM and our industry.
Speaker 1: How many states get a how many states get to
Speaker 1: keep X fishing? Well, you know, as special as Florida is,
Speaker 1: we are the only one at this point. We also
Speaker 1: have to keep America Fishing Advocacy program that Florida was
Speaker 1: so sort of important and so complex. Yeah, you guys
Speaker 1: had a set up shop in Florida. Yeah, it's UM.
Speaker 1: It's a nine point six billion dollar industry in the state,
Speaker 1: thousand jobs and that's just within the state. So A
Speaker 1: lot of our industry. UM. Their sales are really important here,
Speaker 1: but manufacturing takes place across the country. So from a
Speaker 1: nationwide perspective for the sport fishing industry, Florida is extremely important. UM,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hate this. Who are the like, who are
Speaker 1: your enemies? Yeah, that's a that's like you're not gonna
Speaker 1: want You're gonna reframe the question. But you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like, so you have you have a like
Speaker 1: and I'm not talking about on the Florida sens but
Speaker 1: on the national scale, not your enemies. But what do
Speaker 1: you when you look at if if the association looks
Speaker 1: and says, okay, we want to like promote the industry,
Speaker 1: promote fishing, where do you wind up having friction? Like,
Speaker 1: where does the friction occur? Because because I think that
Speaker 1: on the surface, everyone's gonna be like, yeah, of course, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I like fishing. UM. I would say it
Speaker 1: really depends on the issue. UM. Different issues you're in
Speaker 1: agreement with different folks on. UM. A lot of the
Speaker 1: federal fisheries management issues, which is where we have been
Speaker 1: focused primarily at the national level, tend to UM involve
Speaker 1: environmental groups and commercial fishing, because it's all about dividing
Speaker 1: up kind of the allocation that that you're given for
Speaker 1: a particular fishery, particularly red snapper you may have heard
Speaker 1: of UM, so that one's probably more controversial. But there
Speaker 1: are other instances, uh California salmon, where we are actually
Speaker 1: working closely with environmental groups to ensure UM that there's
Speaker 1: enough available water for salmon in the state. And that's
Speaker 1: more of like a farmer versus fish type set up
Speaker 1: because waters in such sorts of short supply out there.
Speaker 1: So when all of the just I'm just talking like
Speaker 1: high level general one is a fisheries issue and all
Speaker 1: of the stakeholders, that's the term you get here all
Speaker 1: the time, all of the stakeholders come to the table.
Speaker 1: Recreational fishing is one of those, and oftentimes you will
Speaker 1: find that also seated at the table would be commercial
Speaker 1: fishing industry in the environmental movement. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of that goes back to how federal fisheries
Speaker 1: management was established in this country with the Magnus and
Speaker 1: Stevens Act, and that was originally intended well, first, it
Speaker 1: was originally intended to deal with international fishing in UM
Speaker 1: United States waters. But after that it morphed into addressing
Speaker 1: over fishing in the commercial industry, and so that's where
Speaker 1: a lot of the regulations that we have right now
Speaker 1: UM are. They're they're focused on commercial fishing, which if
Speaker 1: you think about it, it's really an entirely different activity
Speaker 1: then recreational fishing. I mean, yes, you want to go
Speaker 1: out and encounter a fish, which is what a commercial
Speaker 1: person wants to do, but they need to encounter a
Speaker 1: lot of them in a short period of time, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to harvest everyone that they see. From a
Speaker 1: recreational perspective, you know, it's more about relationships with people
Speaker 1: that you're going out on the water with. It's more
Speaker 1: about the experience of being out there and fishing. And so, yes,
Speaker 1: there is some harvest involved UM for some species more
Speaker 1: than others UM, but it's it's an entirely different approach.
Speaker 1: And so the big issue for us at the federal
Speaker 1: level has been trying to kind of modernize the way
Speaker 1: UM recreational fishing is managed because the commercial paradigm does
Speaker 1: not work well for saltwater recreational fishing. So fresh water
Speaker 1: is a whole different story that one is typically very
Speaker 1: well done, but the magazine stevens act Um because there's
Speaker 1: not a huge commercial fishing footprint, and there's some you know,
Speaker 1: obviously in some minor mountain the Great Lakes and some
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi drainage, but really not like when I
Speaker 1: think about that sort of that the two paradigms or
Speaker 1: the two like the recreational commercial relationship, be like when
Speaker 1: we're out fishing in our skiffs in southeast Alaska, right
Speaker 1: and you're out fishing out of sport fishing license and
Speaker 1: you're allowed whatever, you know, like a couple of salmon
Speaker 1: or sometimes one sam or particular species, but you're honestly
Speaker 1: fishing where you could converse right with per sayers, who
Speaker 1: are you know, using a hydraulic winch to haula like
Speaker 1: I feel very inadequate here. You compare like one of
Speaker 1: their halls with your lifetime of bag limits and realize
Speaker 1: that like if you if you got your limit every
Speaker 1: day all season for your lifetime, you wouldn't achieve one
Speaker 1: basketfull of fish. And you know, and I'm not trying, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to criticize what I'm saying, it winds
Speaker 1: up being like it's like this funny juxtaposition to be
Speaker 1: like sitting in a boat comparing the two, you know,
Speaker 1: the footprints of each well. And I think that's that's true,
Speaker 1: especially in certain fisheries where there is a very large
Speaker 1: commercial element. In Alaska's a prime example of that. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of mixed use fisheries, particularly down here
Speaker 1: in the southeast, and then we have some that are
Speaker 1: almost exclusively recreational. So it does skew both ways. UM.
Speaker 1: But to kind of bring it back around to UM,
Speaker 1: you know who's at the table, I think the commercial industry. UM,
Speaker 1: it's very comfortable with the Magnusine Steven's Act where it is,
Speaker 1: and rightfully so, it's done a really good job of
Speaker 1: bringing back, UM a lot of fisheries that were in trouble,
Speaker 1: and we're in a good place as far as our
Speaker 1: fish stocks in most cases nationwide. UM. The issue comes
Speaker 1: when you look at kind of the poster child of
Speaker 1: federal fisheries management, which is Red Snopper, which is a
Speaker 1: mixed fishery. It's almost fifty fifty split in the allocation
Speaker 1: between commercial and recreational. So there's so in that case,
Speaker 1: there's a significant impact from from recreational fishing um. But
Speaker 1: you look at it in the recreational private recreational anglers
Speaker 1: had initially a three day season federal season last year.
Speaker 1: Now there's other factors that go into why that was
Speaker 1: a three day season, like Joe blow or the fishing
Speaker 1: license had a three day season if he wants to
Speaker 1: go out fishing in federal waters, which is where the
Speaker 1: larger snapper are. So what has happened is the states
Speaker 1: have tried to compensate for some of that because they
Speaker 1: have jurisdiction over their waters. So they've opened longer, progressively
Speaker 1: longer and longer state seasons to compense state for the
Speaker 1: increasingly shorter and shorter federal seasons. And we're actually we've
Speaker 1: actually been a victim of our own success because as
Speaker 1: red snapper have continue to rebound an increase in size
Speaker 1: and in number, we meet the quota faster because we're
Speaker 1: able to just go out and pick them out of
Speaker 1: the water. Um. And so trying to look at ways
Speaker 1: to balance that is one thing. But anyway, so back
Speaker 1: to the issue, So that's what designates the state control
Speaker 1: of water versus federal waters. So um, it's nine miles
Speaker 1: out is state waters Gulf wide now um, and then
Speaker 1: beyond that is the easy out to two miles which
Speaker 1: is federal jurisdiction. So how does that work as like
Speaker 1: leaving Florida's side? Just so people can understand, if you
Speaker 1: just imagine it's sort of like the the Atlantic and
Speaker 1: Pacific coasts, what is like just generally there, at what
Speaker 1: point does state regulated water turn into federal regulated water? Um?
Speaker 1: On the I know, I'm not sure about Pacific. I
Speaker 1: would assume it's similar to the Atlantic, which is three
Speaker 1: miles out. Once you take your boat three miles out,
Speaker 1: you're in federal honors. Yep. So but anyway, back to
Speaker 1: back to magazine. So it's been a really great job
Speaker 1: on the commercial side addressing their issues. They're very comfortable
Speaker 1: with it. From a recreational side, we have some challenges
Speaker 1: and I think there needs to be some additional flexibility
Speaker 1: in management there. And so that's been one of the
Speaker 1: big issues that we have been UM. We have brought
Speaker 1: to the table um and and Congress appears to be
Speaker 1: interested and poised to take action. UM. So fingers crossed,
Speaker 1: so we can see some significant changes. There's some other
Speaker 1: things that they're working on in the Gulf UM that
Speaker 1: no offisheries. UM is working on with the Gulf States
Speaker 1: to actually look at state management, turning over management of
Speaker 1: that nine the two miles over to the States and
Speaker 1: seeing what they can do with it. They've they've just
Speaker 1: um submitted each of the states has submitted exempted fishing
Speaker 1: permits UM. And this goes beyond it's like red snapper,
Speaker 1: which is so this this is exclusively for red snapper
Speaker 1: kind of as a test trend UM and and see
Speaker 1: how how they do with that UM because I think
Speaker 1: I think the States, especially from a recreational perspective, have
Speaker 1: a much closer relationship with anglers and there's a lot
Speaker 1: more trust there UM. And they've actually done a really
Speaker 1: great job managing their inshore fisheries. So UM, this will
Speaker 1: kind of be a test run. And there's some amendments
Speaker 1: going through count the Council, the Gulf Council to see
Speaker 1: if there's there are ways to do it permanently. So
Speaker 1: what are some other um And I want to I
Speaker 1: do want to get back to what we're supposed to
Speaker 1: talking about. But if you look, okay, so in the Gulf,
Speaker 1: like if you follow sort of the news around fisheries,
Speaker 1: you do hear a lot about sort of the context,
Speaker 1: like a limited resource that has a lot of people
Speaker 1: wanting to make sure they're getting their fair share of
Speaker 1: it would be red or red snapper in the Gulf.
Speaker 1: In the Pacific Northwest, people there's constant conflict around salmon resources. Okay,
Speaker 1: so tribal, commercial, recreational, like who make sure everybody jockeying
Speaker 1: to get what they feels rightfully, there's what are other
Speaker 1: besides those two sort of corners of the country. What
Speaker 1: are other species that kind of like generate that same
Speaker 1: those same kind of tensions. I quite honestly can't think
Speaker 1: if any. We've had some issues in the South Atlantic
Speaker 1: with Kobea recently mainly due to UM trying to come
Speaker 1: up with better estimates of recreational harvest UM because a
Speaker 1: lot of the commercial fisheries have UM reporting requirements in place,
Speaker 1: and recreational fishermen are a little bit more challenging to
Speaker 1: kind of pin down how much they're bringing in, like
Speaker 1: how much there actually catching, yeah, UM. And so actually,
Speaker 1: the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council is considering an amendment
Speaker 1: that would similar to what we're talking about in the Gulf,
Speaker 1: that would turnover management of kobia to the Atlantic States
Speaker 1: Marine Fisheries Commission, which is from Florida all the way
Speaker 1: up the coast. UM. And that's primarily because Kobea are
Speaker 1: a state water species almost exclusively. So mean they're not
Speaker 1: out far, not typically typically Okay, So that's the American
Speaker 1: Sport Fishing Association built into that is key Florida fishing. UM.
Speaker 1: Now you can't talk about Florida fishing without talking about
Speaker 1: the Evergades, right. It's well, you know, it's funny when
Speaker 1: I when I started this position, I thought I'll be
Speaker 1: doing fisheries issues and UM. And then we had the
Speaker 1: big rain event UM in January of s and I
Speaker 1: was like, right, we still haven't fixed the Everglades danging
Speaker 1: it um because it was a huge, huge deal. Um.
Speaker 1: We had you know, guacamole six inch thick blue green
Speaker 1: algae in um in our coastal estuaries as a result
Speaker 1: of discharges from like cocachobee UM. That affected tourism, It
Speaker 1: affected habitat, it affected fisheries not only in the estuaries,
Speaker 1: but also um in Florida Bay down in the Keys.
Speaker 1: So it is a south it's really a central in
Speaker 1: South Florida issue when you want to get down to it,
Speaker 1: and that's so important to our industry here in the state.
Speaker 1: So explain the rain event and then we'll back up
Speaker 1: on top of just like everybodies in general. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but I'm aware of this, remember like it made national news,
Speaker 1: international news, international news. So a ton of rainfalls in
Speaker 1: the off season and the typically dry season. So we've
Speaker 1: had issues with discharges from like Cochobi going back to
Speaker 1: the eighties and the seventies. Um, but it really came
Speaker 1: to a head that year because it was in January,
Speaker 1: which is typically a really dry month down here, and
Speaker 1: so all of the tourists that were down here, the
Speaker 1: snowbirds that were down here, um, saw what happened, and
Speaker 1: so it started out as freshwater discharges. I realized, I
Speaker 1: gotta interrupted because I feel like people are not gonna
Speaker 1: understand what we're talking about. So there's a wet season
Speaker 1: in a dry season. Now I want to go back here,
Speaker 1: let me do let me do another thing for and
Speaker 1: you check me where I'm wrong on this. So everybody
Speaker 1: can picture the Florida Peninsula. There's a like kind of
Speaker 1: in the middle up and down there's a big, huge
Speaker 1: lake which everybody's heard the word. Most everybody's heard of
Speaker 1: Lake Okeechobee, big huge lake. There are rivers that flow
Speaker 1: There are a number of primary rivers right that flow
Speaker 1: southward into Lake okeechobe Historically, when that lake would fill up,
Speaker 1: it would flow southward from there, and that everything southward
Speaker 1: from there. Where that overfill, where all that overspill would
Speaker 1: historically go, is what we call the evergrades. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it actually really starts at Mickey Mouse if you really
Speaker 1: want to get technical, So Orlando, Um, there's a chain
Speaker 1: of lakes and the Kissimi River and all of that.
Speaker 1: It used to be a big floodplain, but now it's
Speaker 1: been very channelized, so the water comes in pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: They're almost finished with restoring the Kissimi River because initially
Speaker 1: the Army Corps of Engineers, who is kind of the
Speaker 1: construction lead on all of this from start to finish,
Speaker 1: I thought would be a good idea to straighten it
Speaker 1: out because that would be a lot easier to get
Speaker 1: to and from right Um, But then we found out
Speaker 1: that the water was just coming in way too quickly,
Speaker 1: um and causing even greater problems. So historically it would
Speaker 1: kind of meander down this flow way of the Cassimi
Speaker 1: River into shallow but huge like Cochobe. It's over seven
Speaker 1: d square miles but about nine ft average depths, so
Speaker 1: it's pretty shallow. Um. And you think of it kind
Speaker 1: of like a really shallow bowl. When it would when
Speaker 1: it would get filled up, the southern end of it
Speaker 1: would just overflow and it would be this huge sheet
Speaker 1: of water about six inches deep that would flow primarily south,
Speaker 1: but really it hooks kind of tour It hooked historically
Speaker 1: towards the gulf side. And then there was ye, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was um. I want to say it was four
Speaker 1: thousand square miles originally and right now we have about
Speaker 1: half of that little bit less than half of that
Speaker 1: that's remaining. UM. So there's been this huge development obviously
Speaker 1: along the southeast coast of Florida, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Stuart, Florida.
Speaker 1: All of that has was historic Everglades as well, but
Speaker 1: it was on a higher ridge. Um. And then we've
Speaker 1: had agriculture south of the lake on the fertile muck
Speaker 1: grounds that are down there, um as a result of
Speaker 1: the flooding. But yeah, it would take almost a year
Speaker 1: from the for the water to get from Lake Okochobe
Speaker 1: to Florida Bay. It was that slow movie wants that.
Speaker 1: Sorry I did not do it. I am not a hydrologist,
Speaker 1: but that that's what I've been told. That would take
Speaker 1: a year. So just like its way through, it's so
Speaker 1: ultimate ultimate filter really um. And so then that freshwater
Speaker 1: would go into Florida Bay, which is so important for
Speaker 1: our marine nurseries UM and fisheries. You have everything from
Speaker 1: lobster to tarpan down there, um. And that used the
Speaker 1: shore areas of Florida Bay as as nurseries UM. So
Speaker 1: it's a huge breeding ground um and really really important
Speaker 1: for our fisheries. So that okay, So that's how the
Speaker 1: system once functioned. I rose, I'm throwing you off. Some'm
Speaker 1: changing how I want to do all, okay, because because
Speaker 1: I feel like but but I want I want to
Speaker 1: get to like what happens now when you get a
Speaker 1: ton of rain, which is becoming more important because we
Speaker 1: just had like a couple of crazy hurricanes too. So
Speaker 1: what was the big huge flood in the twenties, right,
Speaker 1: and it killed a bunch of people. Yeah, so well
Speaker 1: so what happened there, so maybe step back a little
Speaker 1: bit before that. So the development happened because of agriculture
Speaker 1: and because of population. Right, people wanted to move to
Speaker 1: South Florida. Henry Flagnol and his rail road huge component
Speaker 1: of that. Let's bring them all south, drain out um,
Speaker 1: you know, the swamp, and and have a great place
Speaker 1: for people to come and visit and recreate. Um. And
Speaker 1: so south of the lake was this fertile muck ground.
Speaker 1: I think even the Seminole Indians when they were kind
Speaker 1: of pushed into the Everglades, realized how fertile the land
Speaker 1: was there and used it for farming land that would
Speaker 1: periodically flood. Yes, yes, um. And so originally um, the
Speaker 1: two rivers that now connect to Lake Okeechobe that go
Speaker 1: to the east and the west, the Kloosa Hatchie's on
Speaker 1: the west and the St. Lucy's on the east, were
Speaker 1: not originally connected to Lake Cochechobee. And so that's how
Speaker 1: you ended up with that straight southern will relatively straight.
Speaker 1: That's what I was. That's why I wasn't clear on
Speaker 1: as I look at it and read about it, I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I was always wondering, like, how could one lake head
Speaker 1: rivers that flowed in three directions? But it didn't know.
Speaker 1: It just went south. So those rivers were this their
Speaker 1: own minor they were their own minor drainages, not connected
Speaker 1: to this primary flow exactly. And so um. So back
Speaker 1: to the agriculture south of the lake. So people started
Speaker 1: farming there and they built a really kind of small
Speaker 1: earthen berm around the south side at the lake. And
Speaker 1: huge hurricane, Um, they think it was, you know, Category
Speaker 1: five hit and blew out that dyke and thousands of
Speaker 1: people died south of the lake because they had built
Speaker 1: that bern So they had founding a fertile they had
Speaker 1: founded a fertile floodplain which was prone to periodic flooding.
Speaker 1: Set up shop, they're moved in built communities. They're like,
Speaker 1: let's protect it from any kind of to keep it dry.
Speaker 1: We'll put this dyke up. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: when the dyke failed, the burn failed, So the core
Speaker 1: stepped in and it killed thousands of thousands. Um. The
Speaker 1: core stepped in and and built the Herbert Hoover dyke,
Speaker 1: and it's still there today. Um, it's undergoing a rehabilitation.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's still concerns about the stability of that dyke.
Speaker 1: And that's why when we had Hurricane Irma this last fall,
Speaker 1: UM Governor Scott ordered an evacuation of those communities south
Speaker 1: of the lake for fear because we weren't sure exact
Speaker 1: where it was going to go. UM, you know in
Speaker 1: the projections where all that it was going to go
Speaker 1: straight up the middle of the cause it to fail.
Speaker 1: So it's a dyke, which is like a a big
Speaker 1: trench full of water or like a big canal and
Speaker 1: there like a big hill of water. Yeah, it's more
Speaker 1: like a big, huge, tall hill um that they've built.
Speaker 1: And so they're going around um and to rehability and
Speaker 1: so it's not it's not canal long there. It's just
Speaker 1: like it's just a big it's an earthen burn you
Speaker 1: see on the Mississippi River, like an earth and damn,
Speaker 1: I got you, okay, just made out of piled up Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when they say failed, just that it would have
Speaker 1: rolled away waters. What you saw in Houston, UM with
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of it out there, but
Speaker 1: there was one that you could just watch that failed.
Speaker 1: UM as the waters rose. It was just too much pressure.
Speaker 1: So the core starts to get concerned when water levels
Speaker 1: in the lake go above fifteen feet, because that's kind
Speaker 1: of their key cut off for Okay, if it goes
Speaker 1: above this, we need to start watching out for the
Speaker 1: dyke and and how stable it is and and is
Speaker 1: it are we seeing any signs of failure there? So?
Speaker 1: Is that was that Herbert Hoover dyke? Was that sort
Speaker 1: of like the first major kind of strike against the
Speaker 1: Everglades was interrupting the southerly flow of water that in
Speaker 1: tammy Amy Trail. I would say, we're the major um
Speaker 1: major factors to begin with. And then the connection of
Speaker 1: the St. Lucy River and the Clissa Hatchie River, which
Speaker 1: are the east west flowing rooms. Okay, so so we
Speaker 1: have this lake that would traditionally flow south as this
Speaker 1: massive sheet shallow sticks and sheet of water, and you
Speaker 1: block that flow. And so someone comes up to the idea,
Speaker 1: probably over generations, I imagine, let's dig in and send
Speaker 1: that water east and west. Different river system. It's doing
Speaker 1: exactly what it was designed to do. I mean that
Speaker 1: the way the system was altered, UM was intentionally to
Speaker 1: not send water south, and it was intentionally to send
Speaker 1: it out the two rivers to the east and the west.
Speaker 1: UM that was the whole rationale. And at the time
Speaker 1: when the decision was made, I I wonder if people
Speaker 1: even back then I would say, but hey, what about
Speaker 1: the Everglades. It was we had as a nation, we
Speaker 1: hadn't really gotten around to the idea of grappling with
Speaker 1: like finiteness. I think I think the perception, um, there's
Speaker 1: a really great book on this subject by the way,
Speaker 1: um called the Swamp Um that kind of gives a
Speaker 1: fabulous history of the Everglades. I think the mentality was more,
Speaker 1: you know, land ho let's go develop. And I don't
Speaker 1: think there was a lot of thought too, um, you
Speaker 1: know what what long term impact there might be from
Speaker 1: all of this um And it was more about public safety,
Speaker 1: water supply, agriculture, trying to develop, you know, the swamp
Speaker 1: of Florida, and they hadn't really thought about anything like
Speaker 1: living within the eco system as part of safety. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I think if the perception was we're
Speaker 1: we're just gonna make it how we want it and
Speaker 1: it'll be fine. So what were once you once that
Speaker 1: flow was stopped, can you like kind of like quickly
Speaker 1: encapsulate sort of like what we began to lose. So
Speaker 1: in the sort of ecosystem that that water was coming through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so areas that were historically wet um got too dry
Speaker 1: or they would be too wet for too long at
Speaker 1: too high level. So you start seeing m vegetation changes,
Speaker 1: you start seeing um exotics um in the system. You
Speaker 1: start seeing pretty much an entire disruption of an ecosystem.
Speaker 1: I mean you still you still see alligators, you still
Speaker 1: see baths, you still see deer and tree islands, UM,
Speaker 1: but they're becoming fewer and fewer and more impacted. UM.
Speaker 1: You know. It's really I think on a if it's
Speaker 1: an average day, I think things are probably not too
Speaker 1: um too impacted within the system, at least to to
Speaker 1: you know, the average person's eyes. When you have these
Speaker 1: unusual events, high water events, that you start to really
Speaker 1: see the stresses in the system and that it goes
Speaker 1: beyond the Everglades UM, out to the coast and down
Speaker 1: to the keys o case of now, the real the
Speaker 1: real rainy event of what was the two thousand sixteen Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was like the unusual super rain Yeah. So
Speaker 1: and then we had the hurricanes of is really interesting
Speaker 1: because we had the rainfall event in January which the
Speaker 1: Lake rose um I want to say it was close
Speaker 1: to seventeen feet. So water is being discharged to the
Speaker 1: east in the west at maximum volume as quickly as
Speaker 1: possible to try and bring the lake levels down because
Speaker 1: any rain event could can raise the lake level almost
Speaker 1: three feet. So that's why the core, particularly in the
Speaker 1: wet season, likes to have it lower so that they
Speaker 1: have some play in there in case we have a
Speaker 1: hurricane or we have a tropical system that sits there
Speaker 1: for a little while so they can manage that flow.
Speaker 1: So in December that year, you could have been standing
Speaker 1: on dry ground. UM. At the end of January you
Speaker 1: could have been you could have been in seventeen feet
Speaker 1: of water. Yeah, there's a huge fluctuation in the natural
Speaker 1: system there. And and what happened because it was in
Speaker 1: an off time, we had these habitat impacts um, oyster
Speaker 1: die offs, seagrass die offs, um. So there's freshwater inflows
Speaker 1: to the estuaries that aren't normal. So you basically have
Speaker 1: salinities dropping to zero um on the coast because they're
Speaker 1: sending so much water east and west out of those rivers.
Speaker 1: And you also have just the turbidity, so the waters cloudy, UM.
Speaker 1: You may have seen. There's some great photos out there
Speaker 1: if google them where you can kind of see this
Speaker 1: dark cloud of water coming out of the rivers into
Speaker 1: the estuaries and and that shades the sea grass, that
Speaker 1: shades you know, all of the um the sea life
Speaker 1: that's out there and really can impact fishing. And that's
Speaker 1: what does the shading. Yeah, well so so well, so
Speaker 1: then there's the second part. So so there's the impact
Speaker 1: from the freshwater. But like you have these species that
Speaker 1: are relying on they're sensitive to how much salt in
Speaker 1: the water. Yes, absolutely, it can't be too much, can't
Speaker 1: be too little. L Like you like oysters being something
Speaker 1: that was like a brackish water species and they can
Speaker 1: take low salinity for a certain number of days, but
Speaker 1: once you get past that thresholds then they just can't survive.
Speaker 1: So you're pumping out so much fresh water that you're
Speaker 1: turning a saltwater body basically into a somewhat fresh water
Speaker 1: or freshwater body by just inundating it with so much
Speaker 1: exactly river water. And then the muddiness prevent sunlight from
Speaker 1: penetrating through, and so that has that and the salinity
Speaker 1: impact seagrasses and those estuaries and killed some. And so
Speaker 1: because of when that when the rainfall fell, we also
Speaker 1: had the algal bloom happened in the summer once the
Speaker 1: temperatures warmed up, and there's some and that bloom happened
Speaker 1: in the lake in Lake Oa, happened out in the marine,
Speaker 1: and so it was both. There was an algal bloom
Speaker 1: in Lake Cokachub wasn't which isn't terribly uncommon. Um, but
Speaker 1: the blue green algal bloom in the estuary and the
Speaker 1: extremeness of it was um unusual. Um, real quick? Do
Speaker 1: you accept algil and algal? You do? I don't have
Speaker 1: a problem with that. Yeah, there's certain words fungi, fun guy, tomatoes, tomato,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I know what you're going for. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I dig I'm digg an algal. But I grew up
Speaker 1: saying algil, and I'm to think if I should switch.
Speaker 1: So I don't need to switch right now. I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I think you're good where you are. So
Speaker 1: you explain the bloom, because I don't think this is
Speaker 1: widely understood how something like this happens or why it happens.
Speaker 1: So the most recent information that I've seen on it
Speaker 1: was that the freshwater coming into the estuaries UM stressed
Speaker 1: the system that caused the algal bloom there. There's been
Speaker 1: some controversy about whether the algae came from the lake
Speaker 1: and ended up in the estuary and that's what caused
Speaker 1: the bloom, and it may or may not be that.
Speaker 1: There's UM there's been discussion about whether what word septic
Speaker 1: tanks play in the in the situation there too, because
Speaker 1: then you would have within based on runoff basically in
Speaker 1: the st lucy contributing to those algal blooms. UM. But
Speaker 1: the most recent information that I've seen, UM, and so
Speaker 1: this is subject to change, is that the freshwater stressed
Speaker 1: the estuary system, causing the all any present algae there
Speaker 1: or nutrients there to support an algoa bloom. There is
Speaker 1: there uh nong a stack. Two more questions, can you
Speaker 1: explaining people too estuaries? And and also is there sort
Speaker 1: of a like when you look at the bloom right
Speaker 1: and you'd be like it could have started in the lake,
Speaker 1: It could have been influenced by uh septic systems that
Speaker 1: were flooded out. Is there are there implications of who
Speaker 1: owns the problem. Well, there's definitely controversy about that, and
Speaker 1: you know, from from an A s A perspective, we
Speaker 1: approach that's American Sport Fishing Association perspective. We we approach
Speaker 1: Everglades restoration. UM from the philosophy that we want to
Speaker 1: get this done as quickly as possible, and so we
Speaker 1: need to look at everything. Um I said. The research
Speaker 1: that's pointing to septic being a problem, um it makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we see that in North Florida where
Speaker 1: I'm from, with our springs and septic systems, that the
Speaker 1: higher levels of nutrients lead to alba blooms in the springs,
Speaker 1: and so from that perspective it makes sense. But I
Speaker 1: also recognized that discharges coming out of Lake a Chub
Speaker 1: are significant contributing factor, and so we need to look
Speaker 1: at all of it. Um. I remember when the lake
Speaker 1: I grew up on. You know those companies that like
Speaker 1: True Green or companies that come and do when yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: when I was a little kid, if you looked around
Speaker 1: our lake, it was all it looked like just summer
Speaker 1: cottages and people had houses that were set back up
Speaker 1: in the trees away from the lake and no one
Speaker 1: and there weren't yards, which just you know, it's like
Speaker 1: kind of like a lot of white pine and oak,
Speaker 1: and people just had what looked like forest litter generally.
Speaker 1: And over time it became more of a bedroom community
Speaker 1: and people started they take down the cabin and build
Speaker 1: a much bigger house much close to the water, and
Speaker 1: put in lawns, and then lawn care services caught on
Speaker 1: and in a microcosm level, what that did to the
Speaker 1: to the lake catastrophic is unbelievable. All that fertilizer well
Speaker 1: they had, and so it even goes beyond septic tanks.
Speaker 1: I know in um Tallahassee they actually traced y'all may
Speaker 1: have heard of Wahla Springs. It's like an iconic international spring.
Speaker 1: It's where they film Creature from the Black Lagoon. Wait no,
Speaker 1: Um Edward ball Um with St. Joe Um. It's kind
Speaker 1: of the big benefactor of that. But anyway, Um, they've
Speaker 1: actually traced nutrients from the city of Tallahassee sewer sprayfield
Speaker 1: into what color springs, And so the city went back
Speaker 1: and reworked um how they were actually dealing with their
Speaker 1: sewage much less septic tanks. Um that it would travel
Speaker 1: that far. Um. I think a lot of it has
Speaker 1: to do with the kind of the Florida geography. It's
Speaker 1: all very poorous limestone based, and so I know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of amazing, like the sort of the flatness that
Speaker 1: you can just decide to send water, that you'd even
Speaker 1: have the option right to be like, well this lake
Speaker 1: drains south, we could move it to the southwest or east. Well,
Speaker 1: that's why it took a year, right, I think it's
Speaker 1: I want to say, it's like a six inch difference
Speaker 1: in elevation. I mean that's why, because you're you're basically
Speaker 1: almost moving horizontal, but just with a very very slight Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a whole state made out of marine limestone, right,
Speaker 1: just old seashells exactly. Um, I wanted you too. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get back on track. Tell people what an estu
Speaker 1: area is, because I think a lot of people live
Speaker 1: in a lot of people live in the middle of
Speaker 1: the country. Like, it's just not a yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: it's basically where a river empties into a saltwater body,
Speaker 1: and so you end up with this mixing of fresh
Speaker 1: and saltwater, so you have brackish areas. Um, the one
Speaker 1: that that the St. Lucy enters into is the Indian
Speaker 1: River Lagoon because there's kind of some outer barrier islands
Speaker 1: there that kind of provide this really protected um environment
Speaker 1: and UM much like Florida Bay Um, the brackish environ
Speaker 1: men is a really important nursery area for marine life species. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of amazing, like as far as and then
Speaker 1: like bird life, I mean estuaries. It's such a unique
Speaker 1: that one of it makes this unique ecosystem. My god,
Speaker 1: it's like this melding of it's like this melding of
Speaker 1: the land and the sea and salt and fresh and
Speaker 1: it seems like as far as like biomass of creatures
Speaker 1: well in North Florida. Mean it's where you have alligators
Speaker 1: and oysters all in the same area and sharks and
Speaker 1: I mean it's just it's it's a fascinating place. Now
Speaker 1: I lost track of our main things though, Yes, and
Speaker 1: a s A so from from the Sport Fishing Association perspective,
Speaker 1: you guys aren't super interested and being like, well it's
Speaker 1: their fault, it was their fault. Yeah, we don't want
Speaker 1: to point the finger. We just want to find the solution. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, I guess sometimes that does involve finger pointing, um,
Speaker 1: but really trying to work together and bring people together,
Speaker 1: um to kind up with solutions is kind of our focus.
Speaker 1: Do you ever look at the whole thing and think like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, how could it be that, like we
Speaker 1: want to make sure there's a good resource of fish, right,
Speaker 1: that it would wind up being that as you you know,
Speaker 1: you always here, like as you enter that, you wind
Speaker 1: up in like a rabbit hole. Right, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of rabbit hole. Yeah, no, no, I'm just talking. We
Speaker 1: want a whole bunch of fish arounds. What's that going
Speaker 1: to entail? And you're like, well, let me look into it,
Speaker 1: and you wind up realizing that that it winds up
Speaker 1: having a lot to do with sort of like engineering
Speaker 1: and giant earthen works in American history, and so much
Speaker 1: of it in Florida has to do with water quality
Speaker 1: and population growth. I mean, it's not just a marine
Speaker 1: fisheries issues. We talked talked a little bit about springs.
Speaker 1: We've got a huge network of lakes that are i
Speaker 1: mean Lake Cokachobee is internationally renowned bass fishing destination and
Speaker 1: the whole multiple tournaments there every year up in North Florida,
Speaker 1: Central Florida. I mean, it's just I think because of
Speaker 1: kind of the Swiss Cheese nature of the under lyings
Speaker 1: of the state. UM, there's a huge amount of resources
Speaker 1: and UM that are impacted by water quality. And and
Speaker 1: that that I mean are coral reefs are being dramatically
Speaker 1: impacted by water coral quality. I just got it earful
Speaker 1: from some deer hunters. Is that Everglades related? Or earful
Speaker 1: from deer hunters all about who's moving what water where where?
Speaker 1: Because because it was too high for too long and
Speaker 1: moving deer and they're drowning deer here and and drying
Speaker 1: out deer there. And I was kind of asking these
Speaker 1: guys sort of like, well, historically, right, if you could
Speaker 1: go back, like what did the deer picture look like?
Speaker 1: It's it's been like the Everglades situation. The water has
Speaker 1: been so confused for so long it's hard to remember
Speaker 1: what it doesn't see. There's not like a sort of
Speaker 1: like the baseline isn't well know. Yeah, I would say
Speaker 1: probably the forties were when, because that was kind of
Speaker 1: when they did the Central and South Florida Project, which
Speaker 1: was UM where the Core came in and installed all
Speaker 1: of the dikes and canals and water control structures and
Speaker 1: all the water conservation areas, and all of that was
Speaker 1: done after the dike. Um So you had tammy Amy
Speaker 1: trail than the Dike, than the C and SF project.
Speaker 1: Um So I think if you went back there you
Speaker 1: could probably find relatively good information. But there's there's there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of those folks around still. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: someone like being born today and just becoming interested in
Speaker 1: the out of doors and like interested in hunting and fishing.
Speaker 1: Um it almost becomes like here, it almost probably becomes
Speaker 1: like someone of an irrelevant question of like what did
Speaker 1: it used to look like? Because it's just not much
Speaker 1: of a chance. Yeah. I think it's more what can
Speaker 1: we do to get it back? Um? So that we
Speaker 1: don't have this kind of cyclical up and down um
Speaker 1: series of stressful events on the system. So what Okay,
Speaker 1: imagine for a minute that there's no that there's unlimited
Speaker 1: budgets and absolute public will. All right, Yes, what needs
Speaker 1: to happen money needs to happen is no issue. Just
Speaker 1: as an exercise, let's as an exercise to start out,
Speaker 1: let's say that what do we need to do to
Speaker 1: reston is every person in Florida is like, my number
Speaker 1: one priority is fixing the system. Yeah, so we need
Speaker 1: to UM. We need to have storage, extensive water storage
Speaker 1: around the lake. UM around the lake, but not in
Speaker 1: the lake well, because the lake is storage. So we
Speaker 1: need to be able to take the water that comes
Speaker 1: in and move it around and clean it and then
Speaker 1: direct it where it needs to go. Ideally, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have any water needing to be discharged out the St.
Speaker 1: Lucy River on the east coast. You would want to
Speaker 1: maintain some connect to the Clusa Hatchee because sometimes they
Speaker 1: do have drought situations where they actually need water put in.
Speaker 1: And we have UM two projects that are working reservoirs
Speaker 1: that are working on those parts of the system. They're
Speaker 1: planning storage on the northern side of the lake and
Speaker 1: also water quality treatment so that we can take all
Speaker 1: of that water that's coming in from the Kissimi River
Speaker 1: and hold back some of it UM and clean it
Speaker 1: before it gets to the lake that would be a
Speaker 1: lake like yes, and and so some of that's to
Speaker 1: make up for the fact that the water is not
Speaker 1: coming in as slowly as it used to. Write UM,
Speaker 1: we have more runoff basically than we used to because
Speaker 1: it's because of development UM and modifications that we've made
Speaker 1: to the system every time. And then to the south,
Speaker 1: UM they're working on planning a southern reservoir and and
Speaker 1: UM and treatment water quality treatment is really important. But
Speaker 1: this would these things would look like water treatment facilities
Speaker 1: or to the untrained ie, you would think there's a
Speaker 1: big shadow lake. Yeah, I think you would know that
Speaker 1: it's a reservoir just because it would have more of
Speaker 1: a regular shape. But the ones that are in place
Speaker 1: right now, there's stormwater treatment areas which are a little
Speaker 1: bit different than a reservoir. They're operated at a little
Speaker 1: bit shallower level. But the recreational access is allowed to
Speaker 1: all of those. UM and I know UM with the
Speaker 1: Southern Reservoir project that's in the planning phases right now.
Speaker 1: UM they're looking at allowing fishing and hunting in those
Speaker 1: types of activities on the lake, which is great. So
Speaker 1: then once you get below that, we need to take
Speaker 1: out all of the dike and canal systems that we've
Speaker 1: put in. We well know the dike is going to
Speaker 1: have to stay because people live there. So unless you
Speaker 1: want to move those people out, the dike has to stay.
Speaker 1: UM and so that's kind of where the reservoirs come
Speaker 1: in because you can discharge from the lake into the
Speaker 1: reservoirs instead of having to have that sheet flow in
Speaker 1: agricultural areas south of the lake. So we remove the
Speaker 1: kind of what we would term barriers to flow the
Speaker 1: canals and the structures, we maintain protection. For the south
Speaker 1: east coast of Florida where it's developed. UM, we bridged
Speaker 1: Tammy Emmy Trail, which when it was constructed was a
Speaker 1: great idea because it allows you to get from the
Speaker 1: east coast of Florida the west coast of Florida a
Speaker 1: straight shot. And the unfortunate thing is it's a second
Speaker 1: dike basically um preventing water from going south into Everglades
Speaker 1: National Park. And so they're working on bridging it so
Speaker 1: that the water can move under it, and then you
Speaker 1: take it into so that right now that trail it's
Speaker 1: just a big elevated structure that functions as a road,
Speaker 1: is a highway just function as a damn though. Yes, Well,
Speaker 1: they've finished I think a one mile section. They're working
Speaker 1: on a second section, and then I think there's two
Speaker 1: other sections that have to be bridged basically to allow
Speaker 1: that through UM and then UM that would take water
Speaker 1: down into Florida Bay. UM. Beyond that, there's still a
Speaker 1: couple of areas that still probably needs some attention to
Speaker 1: get kind of the full force of water fresh water
Speaker 1: that we actually need eat in Florida Bay to maintain
Speaker 1: the salinity. Since we've been sitting in East and West,
Speaker 1: we haven't been sending a whole lot south UM and
Speaker 1: and beyond that that that's all you're looking at it.
Speaker 1: That's only about twenty billion dollars UM and and that
Speaker 1: has to be coordinated between the state and the federal government.
Speaker 1: So I want to get to that why that won't
Speaker 1: I want to get to the reality now that we explore,
Speaker 1: like what needs to happen with unlimited funding and public
Speaker 1: will UM. You hear that half of the Everglades are gone.
Speaker 1: If in this scenari you just laid out like if
Speaker 1: it is done to completion, does that fix some of that?
Speaker 1: Or is half the Evergade is just still gone? I
Speaker 1: don't think you can recover the half that's focus on
Speaker 1: the half that's left. When they say gone, they mean
Speaker 1: gone to development that can't be regained. You need to
Speaker 1: look at it from a glass half full? How can
Speaker 1: we fix the part that's still there. So we're not
Speaker 1: gonna we're not looking to regain. We're just looking to
Speaker 1: salvage and preserve and restore. Restore it is what we're
Speaker 1: really talking about, and that will go a long way
Speaker 1: to restoring kind of the natural balance in that system
Speaker 1: where you know, you have the tree islands and you
Speaker 1: have the sheet flow in certain parts of it, and
Speaker 1: you have the fresh water flows into Florida Bay and
Speaker 1: not have those um, you know, traumatic discharges to the
Speaker 1: east and the west is kind of a question. No,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, It's very complicated and that's kind of the
Speaker 1: hard part about it. Oh yeah, well, my mind's buzzing.
Speaker 1: It's like with all these other ideas, Like it's like
Speaker 1: you're talking about here, we'll go get a shovel from
Speaker 1: the home depot and get get it all fixed up
Speaker 1: this afternoon. But no, it seems like you're, um, I
Speaker 1: understand it, like kind of like the idea of what's
Speaker 1: been done has been done and you can't change certain things.
Speaker 1: But that development and the causes and I'm guessing a
Speaker 1: lot of it's just like concrete and asphalt, right, that
Speaker 1: just causes fat water to get places faster. Do you
Speaker 1: ever think that people will look innovatively that way and
Speaker 1: just say, you know what, maybe instead of concrete, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be this other thing that we started driving on
Speaker 1: around in Florida or building houses on in Florida. So
Speaker 1: that kind of attack it like the beginning as opposed
Speaker 1: to halfway down, like the holistic approach. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that would be ideal. UM. I don't know
Speaker 1: realistically how that would play out, since there are so
Speaker 1: many people in South Florida, it would be a huge undertaking. UM.
Speaker 1: You know some of the steps that UM Martin County,
Speaker 1: which is where Stewart is in St. Lucy River, have
Speaker 1: taken to talk about fertilizer runoff because septic tanks and
Speaker 1: fertilizers are kind of UM that component that we were
Speaker 1: talking about that UM contributed to the algal bloom. Just
Speaker 1: trying to get folks aware of you know, hey, my
Speaker 1: green grass is having impacts on the system. And I
Speaker 1: mean that retraining the public is is definitely a challenge,
Speaker 1: but they're going back to revisit, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: that whole public awareness campaign and how do we do that?
Speaker 1: So how did you say that's off the table, but
Speaker 1: I don't know how significant of an impact you would
Speaker 1: have just because of the challenges and trying to implement it.
Speaker 1: I think that those public kind of like public sacrifice
Speaker 1: public awareness campaigns do work over time because I'll talk
Speaker 1: to people who live in areas like like in around
Speaker 1: the Colorado you know the Colorado River, right, So the
Speaker 1: whole other issue where very complex issue about water allocations,
Speaker 1: where water goes, and um, like all have friends who say, like, man,
Speaker 1: if you water your lawn in my neighborhood, you're ostracized.
Speaker 1: You're ostracized from the community, you're on if you're watering
Speaker 1: on an off day and Florida you're yeah, people be
Speaker 1: like it really like takes hold and people are kind
Speaker 1: of like, all right, let's just all agree all of
Speaker 1: our grass is brown in the summer, and let's just
Speaker 1: make it that the way that green grass used to
Speaker 1: be a status symbol. Let's accept that brown grass is
Speaker 1: now a status symbol in the summer. And when you
Speaker 1: have green grass, you're the guy that used to have
Speaker 1: brown grass. You're like the outlier. And it's like you
Speaker 1: can like public sort of public awareness and public opinion
Speaker 1: shifts as people just you can turn it. It's powerful,
Speaker 1: I agree, And when it's like willful compliance, then it
Speaker 1: becomes more palatable to people. Some of that is kind
Speaker 1: of re establishing that connection I think with with nature.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so funny. I make it down here
Speaker 1: several times a year, and I mean I live in Tallahassee,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty well developed city. Um, but I
Speaker 1: come down here and I'm just always amazed at the
Speaker 1: network of roads and concrete and struck Sure's and and
Speaker 1: when you go to the Everglades, I mean there's like
Speaker 1: a wall, a dividing line and you're like over here
Speaker 1: Everglades over here obviously not Everglades. Um. You know, it
Speaker 1: is remarkable. No, there's no bleed. Yeah, And I don't
Speaker 1: think a lot of people cross over that line. Um.
Speaker 1: And so there's a lot of folks that just aren't aware,
Speaker 1: um of of kind of what's going on and what
Speaker 1: the impacts are. If they don't fish, if they're you know,
Speaker 1: not out on the water a lot, if they could
Speaker 1: just kind of living their lives, there's not really a
Speaker 1: daily awareness of what's going on. There's two forms of
Speaker 1: there's two forms of unawareness um, one, I understand. The
Speaker 1: one's troubling to me. There's the form of unawareness that
Speaker 1: you're just like blithely unaware Okay, that for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: like who you surround yourself with or how you live
Speaker 1: your life, you just haven't heard yet, okay. And that's
Speaker 1: a kind where like, okay, that's a failure, like that
Speaker 1: lack of awareness is a failure sort of of the
Speaker 1: system him, or you're just speaking to just a human
Speaker 1: like human attributes, there's at least an opportunity to inform. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's like no one told me, thanks for the
Speaker 1: heads up. I will now start taking like without overly
Speaker 1: inconvenience in myself. Now that I understand, I will start
Speaker 1: taking some minor steps towards helping the bigger picture. There's
Speaker 1: that kind of person. Then there's the kind of person
Speaker 1: who's real aware, they know, but they're like, damned if
Speaker 1: I'm going to inconvenience myself in service of this thing,
Speaker 1: because the real blame lies with and so yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the troubling version. But Okay, now you don't have all
Speaker 1: the money in the world and you don't have total
Speaker 1: public support, but people are still trying to do to
Speaker 1: accomplish the end result of what you're getting at where
Speaker 1: does it stand? Like, where does it stand what needs
Speaker 1: to happen? Well, I think it's frustrating that we don't.
Speaker 1: We're we're not seeing UM. I guess the positive benefits
Speaker 1: of all of the efforts to date, and I think
Speaker 1: a lot of that is not yet UM. I think
Speaker 1: that UM, we're we're poised to see a lot of that. UM.
Speaker 1: There's this mind boggling schedule of sixty eight projects UM
Speaker 1: that combined make up the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, and
Speaker 1: and that kind of timeline is called the integrated Delivery Schedule.
Speaker 1: If anybody just really wants to watch their ice cross,
Speaker 1: you can google that UM and take a look at it.
Speaker 1: But we're pretty far along UM when you look at
Speaker 1: all those projects. We've at least started planning almost everything
Speaker 1: in this whole thirty year timeline. So serp to use
Speaker 1: the UM. The short short term version of Comprehensive Everglades
Speaker 1: Restoration Plan was authorized in the year two thousands, so
Speaker 1: it was initially envisioned as a thirty year plan basically
Speaker 1: to restore this It took us a years to screw
Speaker 1: it up. The spad how can we go back and
Speaker 1: fix it? And it projects are moving a lot of dirt.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's basically reconstructing South Florida. UM. And you're
Speaker 1: talking about two thousand square miles. That's that's a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of dirt to move, UM and greated,
Speaker 1: we don't have to touch every corner of that, but
Speaker 1: we have to touch a lot of it. UM. And
Speaker 1: then you have um negotiations between the state and federal
Speaker 1: government on how that's going to be done because they
Speaker 1: share the cost on those projects as an even split.
Speaker 1: That decided like like how how was it decided? Like, oh,
Speaker 1: some of this is your problem, Florida. Well, I think
Speaker 1: the Feds thought that they were doing it for us,
Speaker 1: and but yeah, they were the ones that actually did it,
Speaker 1: and so I certainly wasn't a fly on the wall
Speaker 1: for those conversations. But but that was the agreement that
Speaker 1: was reached. And UM. You know, Florida has really stepped
Speaker 1: up to the plate, especially in recent years. They've appropriated
Speaker 1: over two hundred million dollars annually for their portion of
Speaker 1: serup UM. Plus they've appropriated UM the money to pay
Speaker 1: the state's portion of the money to pay for that
Speaker 1: reservoir on the southern side of Lake Okachobe already that
Speaker 1: hasn't even been approved by Congress yet. So Florida is
Speaker 1: the head of the FEDS on getting them their agreed
Speaker 1: upon share of the money. Yeah, I heard um Congressman
Speaker 1: Francis Trainey estimate that he thought that from what he'd
Speaker 1: seen that Florida was about a billion dollars ahead of
Speaker 1: the federal government in their appropriations for Everglades restoration. Well
Speaker 1: what is it? Caught hesitating bring it up? I was
Speaker 1: gonna ask, like, when you take what is the fixed cost,
Speaker 1: so the cost of fixing it compared to the costs
Speaker 1: of not fixing it. Yeah, Well, and that's a hard
Speaker 1: number to pend down because people like don't I know,
Speaker 1: people's brains don't really work that way though, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Yeah, well, if you think that if
Speaker 1: you look at just from a fishing perspective, and so
Speaker 1: that doesn't count tourism or real estate values or um
Speaker 1: loss of life. Yeah, and there actually have been some
Speaker 1: documented health um conditions from the algal bloom that happened
Speaker 1: at the coast. So you know, I don't know how
Speaker 1: you put a number on that but it's definitely significant,
Speaker 1: particularly when you put it. I mean, not the fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty billion dollars is chump change, but nine point
Speaker 1: six billion dollars a year just from sport fishing in
Speaker 1: Florida and Grant and not all of that's in South Florida,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it's focused there, and not not
Speaker 1: all of us in South Florida, not all of it
Speaker 1: is reliant on this. But but just to put those numbers,
Speaker 1: and that's annually, I mean, to put those numbers in perspective, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's we're we're suffering significantly, and that's why it's so
Speaker 1: important for us to move it, trying to get it
Speaker 1: done quicker than thirty years. So really, you know, walking
Speaker 1: the halls of Congress and you know, trying to make
Speaker 1: folks aware of how important this is. From a national perspective,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's a national treasure that Everglades is.
Speaker 1: It's actually a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There's no place
Speaker 1: else in the world like it. It's the world's largest
Speaker 1: restoration project that's ever been attempted. So and how many,
Speaker 1: how again, how many projects need to happen. So there's
Speaker 1: sixty eight total and they need and but but they
Speaker 1: all need to happen in concert. Well, they have to
Speaker 1: happen in a certain order. So for example, building a
Speaker 1: reservoir without a way to get water either to or
Speaker 1: from the reservoir doesn't really accomplish anything because the reservoir
Speaker 1: is just going to fill up. And so kind of
Speaker 1: trying to think through sequentially. Okay, if I need to
Speaker 1: do this first before I do that, because from an
Speaker 1: engineering perspective and a water movement perspective, that's how it
Speaker 1: best makes sense. When I said they need to happen
Speaker 1: in concert, they all like, like, the project is the project,
Speaker 1: but there's sixty eight components. Like like you would never
Speaker 1: say like I'm building a house. You never say like
Speaker 1: I have a projects underway. You'd be like, I'm building
Speaker 1: a house. Now what that involves is like foundation, framing, plump. Okay,
Speaker 1: So is do you do any of the projects like
Speaker 1: as free standing projects. Do they wind up being helpful
Speaker 1: or does it or does it become that these all
Speaker 1: need to come online? I think some are different than others.
Speaker 1: So um Kissimi River restoration is almost complete. Um that's
Speaker 1: the northern that's north of the lake, and that just
Speaker 1: in and of itself could be beneficial, right, because that
Speaker 1: benefits not only the Everglades, but that benefits the Kissimi
Speaker 1: River basin. So you could feasibly be like stop there
Speaker 1: but enjoy some payoff from it. Yeah, but some of
Speaker 1: them do need to be done in concert. And so
Speaker 1: UM what they did, because things were moving so slowly,
Speaker 1: they kind of took a subset of the projects that
Speaker 1: that were thought to be the most beneficial, that would
Speaker 1: basically give you the biggest bang for the buck and
Speaker 1: package them together, went through the planning process which is
Speaker 1: very extensive with the Army Corps of Engineers and probably
Speaker 1: like all the environmental impact work and UM, and then
Speaker 1: has to be authorized by Congress. So they package these
Speaker 1: together and what they call the Central Everglades Planning Project.
Speaker 1: And so this is the area between um, between Lake
Speaker 1: Okechobee and Everglades National Park, that would be the Central Everglades.
Speaker 1: And so we have this whole kind of mishmash of
Speaker 1: canals and levies and all of that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: We need to increase conveyance, how how so that we
Speaker 1: can move water south instead of sending it into a
Speaker 1: canal to shoot it out to tide UM and we
Speaker 1: also need storage and so anyway they packaged all those together.
Speaker 1: We finally were able to get those authorized in two
Speaker 1: UM as SEP is what it's called UM and so
Speaker 1: it has to be authorized by Congress, but we're still
Speaker 1: waiting on federal appropriation to the actual money to get
Speaker 1: it done. So they'll Congress will authorize it, but not
Speaker 1: necessarily at that moment. That comes in the budget to
Speaker 1: the Army Corps of Engineers UM at a later time,
Speaker 1: and now the state can start on their part, and
Speaker 1: they have UM of step and they've they've actually started
Speaker 1: work on that trying to UM do the part that's
Speaker 1: theirs have. Has the will to tackle the problem gone
Speaker 1: up or down in the last year, I think from
Speaker 1: a state perspective, okay, well, but even our federal like
Speaker 1: our congressional delegation, so our congressmen and our senators I
Speaker 1: think are very UM, very united in in knowing that
Speaker 1: everglades restoration, even statewide, that they get it and absolutely
Speaker 1: absolutely the trouble comes when you have well we've seen
Speaker 1: the budget challenges at the federal level UM continually. I
Speaker 1: think we're having one this week UM and so trying
Speaker 1: to focus other states on one state's problem. UM is
Speaker 1: a challenge because again you're talking about a pie. It's
Speaker 1: only so big and how are we going to divide
Speaker 1: that up? And so the federal government is typically um
Speaker 1: less than half of the appropriation of what Florida is
Speaker 1: on an annual basis. I think it was like seventies
Speaker 1: six UM million was the last number now and the
Speaker 1: dike is separate from that because that's more of a
Speaker 1: flood control public safety issue. But just for restoration projects, UM,
Speaker 1: it's challenging. Who are the who are the losers of
Speaker 1: the of the whole restoration thing? Like who when you
Speaker 1: look at the current restoration plan, you say, like, has
Speaker 1: bipartisan support, the state likes it, your federal debt, your
Speaker 1: your your your state's delegation to Washington, d SEE likes it.
Speaker 1: Who are the people or industries or whatever who are
Speaker 1: looking at like, yeah, you know, not real keen on
Speaker 1: this plan. H. I think there's been um some challenge. Well,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of politics involvement, as with everything. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not just about restoration, it's it's not
Speaker 1: just about an environmental project that needs to be taken
Speaker 1: care of. So there's politics involved and so UM. Politically, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the folks in the agricultural area
Speaker 1: have felt targeted at sometimes UM, and I think that
Speaker 1: that creates a lot of conflict. And how we get
Speaker 1: things done UM, Political leaders change, UM, and then political
Speaker 1: will changes. We saw that Governor bush Um had um
Speaker 1: an accelerate what he called an accelerate plan to move
Speaker 1: projects along, and then we had to change an administration
Speaker 1: in the new governor wanted to take a different direction.
Speaker 1: And that's certainly their prerogative. But you know, when you're
Speaker 1: talking about the scope of a thirty year project, to
Speaker 1: change UM, you know, kind of to change direction every
Speaker 1: eight years or so is gonna is gonna cause challenges
Speaker 1: at least at the state level. And you have similar
Speaker 1: turnover at the federal level as well, UM, with the
Speaker 1: Army Corps of Engineers having changeover and and who's overseeing
Speaker 1: the project. You have changeover in the committees, UM, and
Speaker 1: and trying to elevate the importance of Everglades beyond the
Speaker 1: perception that it's just a Florida project. And so that
Speaker 1: was when I was talking initially. You know, yeah, it
Speaker 1: is a Florida project, but it has national significance not
Speaker 1: only just from the fact that it's an environmental wonder
Speaker 1: of the world, but also because of the economic impact
Speaker 1: that it has on industry that is outside of this
Speaker 1: state that relies on having access to you know, abundant
Speaker 1: fisheries and clean water. Um. And so you know, you
Speaker 1: have somebody in Michigan who has a manufacturing plant who's
Speaker 1: making engine parts for a boat motor and if if
Speaker 1: if folks aren't buying boats in Florida because the water
Speaker 1: is terrible, then then Michigan is going to feel it.
Speaker 1: And so it trying to kind of draw those correlations,
Speaker 1: um is what we've been trying to focus on to
Speaker 1: kind of raise the profile of Everglades restoration beyond it
Speaker 1: being just a Florida issue. Without getting yourself in trouble,
Speaker 1: can you explain to me why you hear when when
Speaker 1: when there's a conversation about the Everglades, there's always a
Speaker 1: conversation about the sugar industry. Can you explain, like why,
Speaker 1: how does the sugar how does sugar cane production find
Speaker 1: its way into every conversation around the Everglades. Let's see, um, well,
Speaker 1: that whole Everglades agricultural area. It's not just sugar, but
Speaker 1: they are probably one of the largest landowners in that area,
Speaker 1: and there's several different companies UM. And I mean when
Speaker 1: you look at a map, I mean you see like Cokachobe,
Speaker 1: you see the Everglades agricultural area, and then you see
Speaker 1: the rest of the Everglades, and so I think it's
Speaker 1: a natural UM. You know, it's a natural reaction to
Speaker 1: see that the e a basically and say, well, if
Speaker 1: we just got rid of that, we could make it
Speaker 1: all work. UM. And so it's just that that area
Speaker 1: happens that Foster. There's a lot of sugar production in
Speaker 1: that area. Oka. It was very fertile farmland. I mean
Speaker 1: that was kind of you know, that was right outside
Speaker 1: of the lake and so you had this kind of
Speaker 1: like fertile soil from when the lake would overflow, and
Speaker 1: it was it was a natural agricultural area. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff that's growing there besides sugar. UM.
Speaker 1: I I think the conflict comes UM. You know, their
Speaker 1: property owners and so they have property rights and UM,
Speaker 1: and so the conflict comes I think between UM folks
Speaker 1: who are very passionate about restoring the Everglades and seeing
Speaker 1: that land as kind of the roadblock to it, and well,
Speaker 1: we should just be able to fix it and get
Speaker 1: rid of that. And and then you have to balance
Speaker 1: that with the fact that their property owners, they are UM,
Speaker 1: they have taken significant steps to help with nutrient runoff
Speaker 1: from their properties. And I'm not trying to defend anybody.
Speaker 1: That's just kind of my take on what I've seen
Speaker 1: in the conversations UM as to why it's such a conflict,
Speaker 1: Why you hear about so much moving more south? Just
Speaker 1: to touch on another, like, just to hit all the conflicts,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them. Fishing access, Yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: places where you are and are not allowed to fish
Speaker 1: is something you hear about a lot down here. Can
Speaker 1: you kind of like sketch out sort of the conversations
Speaker 1: around UM prohibiting recreational fishing in certain waterways and what
Speaker 1: they hope to gain from that, what's lost with those decisions?
Speaker 1: Are you talking about more from a coastal perspective, not
Speaker 1: so much everglades. Yeah, So there's a lot of concern
Speaker 1: I think globally about UM the condition of coral reefs,
Speaker 1: and we have a really significant coral reef track off
Speaker 1: Southeast Florida runs from Stewart in Martin County all the
Speaker 1: way down into the Florida Keys and the Florida Keys
Speaker 1: has National Marine Sanctuary UM that kind of oversees most
Speaker 1: of what's going on down there, kind of as a
Speaker 1: blanket UM communicator, but a lot of UM. The area
Speaker 1: north of that hasn't received as much attention, and there's
Speaker 1: been a really significant coral disease outbreak there. UM. They're
Speaker 1: they're not under they don't really understand exactly, UM the
Speaker 1: extent of it. UM. They're doing surveys right now, they
Speaker 1: don't necessarily understand where it came from. Could be tied
Speaker 1: to the acidification there. You know, globally, when you look
Speaker 1: at impacts to coral reefs, water quality is probably number one,
Speaker 1: which could be acidification. It could be sediment that's settling
Speaker 1: on things. It could be UM. You know that you've
Speaker 1: disturbed one area and somehow you've stirred up a disease
Speaker 1: that was kind of in the sediment and now has
Speaker 1: become waterborne and spreads, Which is kind of the thought
Speaker 1: process that I've heard to what's happened in Southeast Florida there.
Speaker 1: The thing we know for certain is coral reefs dying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think worldwide, UM, there has been a push
Speaker 1: for UM for area closures to help preserve these areas,
Speaker 1: and UM, you know, I think in some instances it's
Speaker 1: probably a good idea. In fact, UM, the Florida Fish
Speaker 1: and Wildlife Conservation Commission is talking today about the Dry
Speaker 1: Tortuga's Research Natural Area, which is out off the coast
Speaker 1: of South Florida down here pass Key West and and
Speaker 1: that area is closed to fishing UM. And there were
Speaker 1: some really good reasons why they did it. There was
Speaker 1: a confluence of currents, it's got excellent water quality, UM,
Speaker 1: it's somewhat remote. You have multiple UM important fish species
Speaker 1: that use that area as a spawning ground, and the
Speaker 1: currents are able to take the eggs UM and other locations.
Speaker 1: So it's in addition to that, there's actually on going
Speaker 1: research in the area. So you have people actively looking
Speaker 1: at that place and looking at the impacts UM to
Speaker 1: make sure that what they're doing is working, also using
Speaker 1: it for research purposes to see, Okay, what kind of
Speaker 1: impacts do these closed areas have. UM. And you have
Speaker 1: ongoing law enforcement that's engaged in making sure that the
Speaker 1: regulations are being enforced quite frankly. UM. You know, just
Speaker 1: because you have a rule or a law or regulation
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that people are going to abide by it.
Speaker 1: And so kind of all of those factors together, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, have led to a area and area that's
Speaker 1: closed to fishing. That makes sense. UM. One of the
Speaker 1: proposals UM that has come up UM as far as
Speaker 1: the Southeast Florida Coral Retract is to close twenty two
Speaker 1: percent of it to fishing and boating access, and the
Speaker 1: idea being that we have this stressed reef. In other
Speaker 1: places around the world, we've seen that when we close
Speaker 1: areas to fish access, they kind of act like a
Speaker 1: reserve basically that the fish can go to um and
Speaker 1: and have some protection there, and then that spills over
Speaker 1: into the surrounding areas. Like you might close the area
Speaker 1: but not see it, but not see like a decline
Speaker 1: of the resource that is putting out. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think UM in other places that that could make sense. UM,
Speaker 1: It's the jury is still out. I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of mixed research on how effective what they would call
Speaker 1: a no take marine protected area UM is in in
Speaker 1: achieving that goal. UM. I think in areas, particularly with
Speaker 1: corals where you're talking about protecting herbivores like parrot fish
Speaker 1: to keep algae down off of reefs, that can be
Speaker 1: an important component. Um. But in Florida we have really
Speaker 1: stringent fishing regulations. UM. And you know, from a stockwide perspective, UM,
Speaker 1: we don't see a lot. We might see some localized
Speaker 1: depletions where there are you know, area as a heavy effort. UM.
Speaker 1: But from a stockwide perspective, you know, we don't have
Speaker 1: we don't have issues with parrot fish populations. UM. And
Speaker 1: you know, the vast majority of our sport fish are
Speaker 1: in really really good shape and so UM from our perspective,
Speaker 1: you really need a good reason um to justify why
Speaker 1: you're gonna close it down, and you need to try
Speaker 1: other stuff first, um, because fishing is so important in Florida.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we're seeing localized depletions in a certain area,
Speaker 1: well you know what, then then let's decrease the bag
Speaker 1: limit there. We don't need to shut shut it down
Speaker 1: to everything as the knee jerk reaction. So I think, UM,
Speaker 1: I think there's been some you know, you look at
Speaker 1: it from like I said, a global perspective and a
Speaker 1: note take area can make sense, but I think you
Speaker 1: also need to try other things first, particularly here in
Speaker 1: the States where we have um, you know, such strong
Speaker 1: regulations already in place from a federal antistate perspective. So
Speaker 1: so the main way two help the fisheries here would
Speaker 1: be more habitat level. I think that's a lot of
Speaker 1: big general sense, more like whole picture habitat level fixes
Speaker 1: rather than stopping fishing. Yeah, I think because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of what you see are going back to
Speaker 1: water quality. I mean, it really is. That really is
Speaker 1: kind of the lynchpin and all of it. And and
Speaker 1: the challenges is that it's not easy to fix UM.
Speaker 1: You know, there are a lot of different sources of
Speaker 1: UM runoff, of pollution, of sedimentation. You know, we're also
Speaker 1: you know, we've got um uh huge UM barge traffic
Speaker 1: and port traffic, and you have to try to balance
Speaker 1: and and I don't know that we necessarily understand all
Speaker 1: of what goes into those developments, but you've got to balance,
Speaker 1: you know, the development with the resource. It is tricky
Speaker 1: and it's not easy. And I think that's why UM,
Speaker 1: you know, I think when you look at closing off
Speaker 1: an area fishing. Well, that's something easy and concrete that
Speaker 1: I can do today. Um. The problem is is that
Speaker 1: if you don't address the real elephant in the room
Speaker 1: of water quality, you're not going to achieve the goal
Speaker 1: that you want. Yeah, you could damage that industry and
Speaker 1: still wind up with things going downhill. Exactly exactly. We
Speaker 1: covered a lot, an immense amount, got it all figured out.
Speaker 1: Now right, you can take my job. I'm ready to go,
Speaker 1: and I'm ready to go down to the store and
Speaker 1: get me some shovels and take the axes. Is there
Speaker 1: anything we didn't get to that you want to get to? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, I think I hope that we've got the
Speaker 1: message across that. UM. I know you'll have listeners across
Speaker 1: the nation, in the world, and you know, what, what
Speaker 1: can they do? And why should they do something? That
Speaker 1: people we get a lot of when we're talking about issues.
Speaker 1: We get a lot of people who are like, but
Speaker 1: what do I do? Yeah? And I think that that's
Speaker 1: what I always like to leave people with, because I
Speaker 1: think part of the frustration with Everglades restoration is that
Speaker 1: people feel like they can't do anything that it's this,
Speaker 1: you know, would be like, oh my God, I'd rather
Speaker 1: just go work on another issue. Yeah, there's the whole
Speaker 1: bureautic mess, and it's completely out of my hands and
Speaker 1: there's nothing I can do. And I you know, we
Speaker 1: have three million anglers that come to Florida, either visiting
Speaker 1: or resident every year. That's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: come to our state to visit. And and so they're
Speaker 1: obviously not from Florida. Um. You know, they can call
Speaker 1: their congressman and their senator and their state and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, this isn't a Michigan or an Iowa or
Speaker 1: a Seattle specific issue, but you need to support it
Speaker 1: and and here's why, and and lay it out for them.
Speaker 1: You know that it's the national treasure that I go
Speaker 1: there to fish, and I want to see this preserve
Speaker 1: um and restored to what it could and should be
Speaker 1: to keep this tragedy from happening again. That's the thing
Speaker 1: that I try to put forth, Like an idea I
Speaker 1: try to get um hunters and anglers on board with,
Speaker 1: is that like an attack against one as an attack
Speaker 1: against all, and and and some groups do that. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that when it comes to like
Speaker 1: gun rights, right, people look at an attack against one
Speaker 1: is an attack against all. But I think that when
Speaker 1: it comes to habitat issues, that's not We're good at
Speaker 1: being like we're really good at being really insular and
Speaker 1: like provincially you know, and just sort of viewing like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of worried about my little spot. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: like you know, I'm gonna go down to the County
Speaker 1: Deer Commission and give them a yearful. But yeah, they're not.
Speaker 1: But they but they don't like, look, they're not looking
Speaker 1: at the big, huge picture, right because but even in
Speaker 1: this case. What's interesting about Florida though, is here everybody does.
Speaker 1: I grew up, We came down in fished Florida. We
Speaker 1: came every year to fish in Florida, drive down, typically,
Speaker 1: drive down the motor home and camp on the beach,
Speaker 1: gets sun sick fishing Florida. Yeah, I mean, like I said,
Speaker 1: that's the millions of people. So it's not even like
Speaker 1: for millions of Americans. It's not like you're not doing
Speaker 1: this sort of generous act. You can still keep it selfish. Well,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be I mean, go to the beach.
Speaker 1: I mean if you just come down as a tourist, um,
Speaker 1: you don't want to see algae six inch thick in
Speaker 1: the water. It really makes it distasteful. And I remember
Speaker 1: standing on the beach here one time, a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. So my kids are three, five, and seven
Speaker 1: and standing on the beach right before our three year
Speaker 1: old was born, and I see what I think is
Speaker 1: like a pot of raise maybe coming down the beach,
Speaker 1: and that really is just like traveling the way that
Speaker 1: raised don't and uh, and my kids are just out
Speaker 1: in angle deep water and just right within arms reached,
Speaker 1: these manatees come by. Oh, just blew their mind, man,
Speaker 1: very mind, you know what I mean. And just see
Speaker 1: that like and you're not like you know, I've seen
Speaker 1: them like in in the out in the mangroves and
Speaker 1: stuff and bleeze and elsewhere, but just on this beach
Speaker 1: where as far as you look one way and as
Speaker 1: far as you look the other way, it's hotels and sand.
Speaker 1: But to think like that there, but to build a
Speaker 1: place where that can co exist, where they're traveling from one,
Speaker 1: you know, one estuary or whatever to another and have
Speaker 1: them come blown by, I mean it kind of like
Speaker 1: makes a believer out of you to see something like that.
Speaker 1: And I think you make a good point. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think as um, you know, as despairing as it
Speaker 1: can seem when you look at it from this side,
Speaker 1: seeing how far we still have to go. Um, not
Speaker 1: only can we help shorten that timeline so it's not
Speaker 1: quite so far, but we can look at the successes
Speaker 1: that we've already had, and manatees are certainly one. We
Speaker 1: were talking about American crocodiles earlier before we started, and
Speaker 1: I was guilty thinking that we didn't have American crocodiles anymore.
Speaker 1: But it why is up being that they went from
Speaker 1: being federally listed as endangered and got upgraded. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: great as much as the upgrade got upgraded to threaten,
Speaker 1: which is like a nice move. It's a move in
Speaker 1: the right direction. Is better than being moving from threatened
Speaker 1: to endangered exactly. And we have um, you know black bear.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have a lot of things in the
Speaker 1: state that we that have come back, um through through
Speaker 1: public involvement in this process. And UM, so I think
Speaker 1: there is hope. I think the take home news that
Speaker 1: there is hope UM for Everglades restoration. And I think
Speaker 1: we have a lot of projects that are going to
Speaker 1: be coming online in the next five years or so
Speaker 1: that are gonna have a big impact, and we just
Speaker 1: need to finish the last few to kind of bring
Speaker 1: it to the finish line and then look to see,
Speaker 1: you know, how is this working. Where else can we
Speaker 1: tweak it? Because it's not going to be a hundred
Speaker 1: percent It was never designed to be a hundred percent fix. Um.
Speaker 1: There's always going to be things that you see when
Speaker 1: you're on the ground that you know, what, we might
Speaker 1: need to tweak this a little bit, or you know,
Speaker 1: if we did this one little project over here. Um.
Speaker 1: The South Worida Water Management District has already done that
Speaker 1: with several projects that they've taken on by themselves apart
Speaker 1: from the federal government, to kind of tweak it to
Speaker 1: have a maximum benefit for a minimal cost. So the
Speaker 1: part about people getting involved in somebody they want to
Speaker 1: get involved, You say, call your representatives, tell him we
Speaker 1: need money. I mean, that's like the fish in Florida.
Speaker 1: My brother in law likes to fish in Florida. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got to help that guy out. Send some money
Speaker 1: down there. Exactly because when they get to the appropriations,
Speaker 1: which you know, is divvying up the money, um, for
Speaker 1: the Army Corps of Engineers. There's fifty other states that
Speaker 1: have significant projects. UM. One other thing, one other funding
Speaker 1: opportunity that's kind of on hopefully on the more immediate horizon,
Speaker 1: is the Disaster Relief bill. UM. So that's as a
Speaker 1: result of all the hurricanes that we had to Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico and Florida. Yeah, all three um. And that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of sitting in the Senate right now. The House
Speaker 1: is already voted on it. But that would give twelve
Speaker 1: billion dollars to the CORE UM. And so granted that
Speaker 1: has to be divided between the three disaster states, but
Speaker 1: that could give some significant funding for the CORE to
Speaker 1: move forward on some Everglades projects quickly. So calling your
Speaker 1: senators and saying we need to take this up. You
Speaker 1: said it was twenty billion, right. It's a fifth year
Speaker 1: total right there. Yeah, yep. And I guess you could
Speaker 1: probably um help to come to Florida do a little
Speaker 1: fishing always always, and and to put in another plug,
Speaker 1: you know, because of the hurricanes, there were some significant
Speaker 1: impacts in the Florida Keys and the southwest coast Florida
Speaker 1: Everglades City and those are some of the best fishing
Speaker 1: um opportunities here in the state, and and those folks,
Speaker 1: the guides especially, really need folks to come down. Um
Speaker 1: you know it. Sometimes hotels can still be a challenge,
Speaker 1: but they're open, ready for business, and the fishing is great.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would say you need to come. I
Speaker 1: would add that that's provisional when I say that come
Speaker 1: down to fish, it's provisional, Like, if you're gonna come
Speaker 1: down and fish, you need to You owe it to
Speaker 1: yourself and others to take a minute to understand what
Speaker 1: am I catching. Yeah, first you start out by saying,
Speaker 1: like you need to force yourself to admit that you
Speaker 1: kind of love it, right, I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people fish, but they never go like and I love it? Ye,
Speaker 1: So you say like, and I love it, And I
Speaker 1: wanted to stick around where did the fish come from? Like?
Speaker 1: Where did this what exactly went into this fish existing
Speaker 1: here on earth? And when you start understanding that how
Speaker 1: it's all connected, then then hopefully as UH advocacy is born, well,
Speaker 1: it develops that relationship right between the person and the
Speaker 1: and the environment. So it's better to do that than
Speaker 1: to be like, whatever the hell happened to that fish?
Speaker 1: In twenty years. I guess I won't go to Florida now. Um,
Speaker 1: you guys got any final things gonna book my trip now,
Speaker 1: not that I'm not gonna come back now. And then
Speaker 1: it sounds like the fish is just gonna get better
Speaker 1: and better reservation. Well, you know, I think, um, at
Speaker 1: least from a fishing perspective, have a lot of the
Speaker 1: impacts that we see are temporary because it is a
Speaker 1: you know, a finite event, um where we had the
Speaker 1: impacts from the discharges, but you know, we've had two
Speaker 1: in a row, and so you know, we're hoping that
Speaker 1: we don't continue to see that increase in frequency because
Speaker 1: that obviously would have more of a long term effect.
Speaker 1: Would be nice to get a break, Matt could have
Speaker 1: you said anything? Yet you're all heads You're all head
Speaker 1: set it up. Um. You know, I've been bringing people
Speaker 1: down to South Florida for a long time, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, people obviously have enjoyed, you know, all of
Speaker 1: the the fruits of the environment, et cetera. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've been very overwhelmed on you know, the overall complexity
Speaker 1: of all of the issues. And we spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time with the locals and everyone's got an opinion.
Speaker 1: It's refreshing to know that there's you know, the restoration
Speaker 1: plan in place, and uh, the complexity. I don't think
Speaker 1: the rest of the US really understands all of the
Speaker 1: constituents and UM, stakeholders, did you say and just appreciate
Speaker 1: your work? Well, thank you well And I think, UM,
Speaker 1: what what your comments brought up an interesting point, So stakeholders,
Speaker 1: it's not just the state in the federal government. There's
Speaker 1: actually another nation. We have tribal nations, UM, and the
Speaker 1: Everglades that are also involved in this process. Um. You
Speaker 1: have the Mikasuki and seminoles so UM. That kind of
Speaker 1: adds a whole another complexity of trying to have actual
Speaker 1: international negotiations, if you will. UM, I think from the
Speaker 1: Everglades perspective, and we keep talking about restoration, and I
Speaker 1: don't want folks to get the idea that it's this
Speaker 1: like blighted landscape, UM, you know, not worthy of of
Speaker 1: of seeing until it's fixed, because it is. It is
Speaker 1: the most awe inspiring place that I think I've ever
Speaker 1: been in State Florida. For sure. UM. To see the
Speaker 1: vastness of it, even as it exists now is truly overwhelming,
Speaker 1: and it the miles of grass and water. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is truly a river of grass and um. So
Speaker 1: even as it exists now, it's definitely worth a visit
Speaker 1: and a look to appreciate, um, appreciate it as a wonder.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you totally get it looking at it. It's
Speaker 1: not it's like a fixer upper. It's not like a
Speaker 1: burned down structure. Yeah, but I think when people think of, well,
Speaker 1: we've got to restore it, you know that it's just this,
Speaker 1: it's like it's a concrete jungle or something. Now like, no,
Speaker 1: I get it, man, I get it, and we need
Speaker 1: to Yeah, it's it's all inspiring. Yeah, it's not like
Speaker 1: you're trying to say you're not You're not trying to
Speaker 1: get someone to sort of imagine it's beauty. It's beauty
Speaker 1: still is right there demonstrated. We just want to make
Speaker 1: sure we can continue it and keep it long term.
Speaker 1: And depending on who you're talked to, some people describe
Speaker 1: as extremely sensitive and then others that it has a
Speaker 1: resiliency to it that has withstood, you know, all the
Speaker 1: historical impacts that you talked about. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to reconcile between both. Yeah. I think as much
Speaker 1: as we've messed it up, it is amazing that it
Speaker 1: is still there and still beautiful and still inspiring. Alright,
Speaker 1: Kelly Ralston, Oh do you have time? I still have
Speaker 1: one last question? Just like all right, No, that's fine,
Speaker 1: go ahead. I just like, no, I'm not a hurry Okay,
Speaker 1: I just did that. I said her name like in
Speaker 1: an endy way. Yeah, that's why you jumped in. You
Speaker 1: sense that. Yeah, Um, what do you what species do
Speaker 1: you like to chase? And what's your next I'm more
Speaker 1: of a sure girl. Um. We're hoping to well. I
Speaker 1: will be down at Miami Boat Show um coming up
Speaker 1: next week, which is put on by a nationally manufacturer association.
Speaker 1: Pretty amazing thing. Um. And then we're going to head
Speaker 1: down to the Keys and see what we can find.
Speaker 1: Depending on the weather, we may try to go a
Speaker 1: little further offshore, but probably will be more in shore species.
Speaker 1: So that myself a snook, that's what you want to catch.
Speaker 1: They're my favorite. I like to eat them. I have
Speaker 1: not eaten them. I just bring myself. I know they
Speaker 1: taste from whatever. It's only they're amazing Itelie. Yes, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the best things in the ocean. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not to have a king that runs. Everyone runs out
Speaker 1: there and kills a snook. We'll just follow your bag
Speaker 1: limits in season. In season. Yeah, we had some real
Speaker 1: issues with snook back in when they had that really
Speaker 1: sustained um cold weather event had a huge killoff closed season.
Speaker 1: Um Atlantic was less impacted than the Gulf side. Um so.
Speaker 1: But we're finally now back into a cycle of having
Speaker 1: open season for snook. But you can catch them around.
Speaker 1: They're fun catch. I was reading to you'r a fifth
Speaker 1: generation Floridian, I am, So you go back to like
Speaker 1: Cobza Devaca. Yeah, yeah, we're I got I got Orange
Speaker 1: Grove folks back in central Florida, and I've got Bristol,
Speaker 1: Florida is up in the Panhandle, right around the Apological River.
Speaker 1: They were farmers and used to ferry folks back and
Speaker 1: forth across the river. How old were when you caught
Speaker 1: your first fish? Do you remember? I think we probably
Speaker 1: went to Lake Hall in Tallahassee, So I was probably
Speaker 1: under ten when I caught one there, and we used
Speaker 1: to get whiting down at the coast all the time.
Speaker 1: That was fried him up for breakfast the fish. Yeah
Speaker 1: my kids, My kids get af from when we go
Speaker 1: to Florida. Yeah, those are those are good times. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so all that was when I was really young, and
Speaker 1: then um kind of came back to it and graduate
Speaker 1: school I actually worked on pufferfish ball things, and gradually
Speaker 1: did worked on um, well the technical terms functional morphology,
Speaker 1: so you'd actually you figure out how they were eating,
Speaker 1: and then you could use the patterns that you saw
Speaker 1: in the muscles and the um skeletal structures to kind
Speaker 1: of look at evolution of fish feeding, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a cool thing. I recently read a structural morphology
Speaker 1: paper round the hinge Functions of a large mouthed bass
Speaker 1: really was author, but everybody them. It was people studying,
Speaker 1: people who study like like mechanical engineers looking at the
Speaker 1: kind of baffling hinge structure of a large mouth bass mouth.
Speaker 1: Yeah we did that, um, but more from looking at
Speaker 1: muscle activity and how the bones in the face were arranged. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there's there a large mouth bass's mouth can
Speaker 1: do some interesting stuff. Look at a sling jaw rass.
Speaker 1: That's even more amazing that they can basically take their
Speaker 1: whole mouth and shoot it out underneath. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: create like a ton of inward, like a ton of suction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's suction pressure. That basically all right, I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: your name in an endy wady ready, Kelly Rolston. No,
Speaker 1: that's the beginning way. I can't even do it. Can
Speaker 1: you do it? Because the beginning. If I was the beginning,
Speaker 1: I'd be like Kelly Rolston, Yes, but I want to
Speaker 1: end at some like Kelly. No, that's the beginning is
Speaker 1: Can you do it anyway? I did it a minute ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had us all. I can't think of how to
Speaker 1: do it. Just edit it back in and you clip
Speaker 1: that chunk out and pack it in here. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much for joining us, Kelly Ralston, Pleasure American Sport
Speaker 1: Fishing Association. Keep Florida fishing, um and if you keep
Speaker 1: Florida fishing, you're kind of keeping America fishing. Thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us. Thanks so much,