00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening. Don't eat podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther, stay longer. Oh all right, um A very special guest, Kelly Rawlston. Hello. My first question for you, it's like a It's like a structural question. Do you think I should ask you first to explain the A s A or should I ask you first to explain the Everglades? Well? A s A would be a lot easier, So maybe we'll go with that one. Okay. So within that keep Florida fishing like roll that into it. Okay. So I am work for the American Sport Fishing Association. Where are a trade association for the sport fishing industry, and so our members range from UM tackle retailers, tackle manufacturers, UM clothing, eye wear, boat manufacturers, pretty much anything associated with sport fishing industry. Retailers UM are are our members um A. S A also puts on eye Cast, which is the world's largest sport fishing trade show every July here in Orlando. So would welcome you all back to Florida if you want to make another trip coming up this summer. UM. Because of the importance of Florida to the sport fishing industry. It's the most fishing estate right it is as the fishing capital of the world, and so UM, you know, we have our industry has a huge investment in this state, and we wanted to make sure that we ensured that for the industry moving forward. And so UM we started the Key Florida Fishing Initiative. I guess about two and a half years ago. It's about how long I've been with a s A to really focus on Florida specific issues. So our motto is um a bennet fisheries, clean water and access to both for Florida anglers, UM and our industry. How many states get a how many states get to keep X fishing? Well, you know, as special as Florida is, we are the only one at this point. We also have to keep America Fishing Advocacy program that Florida was so sort of important and so complex. Yeah, you guys had a set up shop in Florida. Yeah, it's UM. It's a nine point six billion dollar industry in the state, thousand jobs and that's just within the state. So A lot of our industry. UM. Their sales are really important here, but manufacturing takes place across the country. So from a nationwide perspective for the sport fishing industry, Florida is extremely important. UM, you're gonna hate this. Who are the like, who are your enemies? Yeah, that's a that's like you're not gonna want You're gonna reframe the question. But you know what I'm saying, Like, so you have you have a like and I'm not talking about on the Florida sens but on the national scale, not your enemies. But what do you when you look at if if the association looks and says, okay, we want to like promote the industry, promote fishing, where do you wind up having friction? Like, where does the friction occur? Because because I think that on the surface, everyone's gonna be like, yeah, of course, yeah, of course I like fishing. UM. I would say it really depends on the issue. UM. Different issues you're in agreement with different folks on. UM. A lot of the federal fisheries management issues, which is where we have been focused primarily at the national level, tend to UM involve environmental groups and commercial fishing, because it's all about dividing up kind of the allocation that that you're given for a particular fishery, particularly red snapper you may have heard of UM, so that one's probably more controversial. But there are other instances, uh California salmon, where we are actually working closely with environmental groups to ensure UM that there's enough available water for salmon in the state. And that's more of like a farmer versus fish type set up because waters in such sorts of short supply out there. So when all of the just I'm just talking like high level general one is a fisheries issue and all of the stakeholders, that's the term you get here all the time, all of the stakeholders come to the table. Recreational fishing is one of those, and oftentimes you will find that also seated at the table would be commercial fishing industry in the environmental movement. Yeah, and I think a lot of that goes back to how federal fisheries management was established in this country with the Magnus and Stevens Act, and that was originally intended well, first, it was originally intended to deal with international fishing in UM United States waters. But after that it morphed into addressing over fishing in the commercial industry, and so that's where a lot of the regulations that we have right now UM are. They're they're focused on commercial fishing, which if you think about it, it's really an entirely different activity then recreational fishing. I mean, yes, you want to go out and encounter a fish, which is what a commercial person wants to do, but they need to encounter a lot of them in a short period of time, and they're trying to harvest everyone that they see. From a recreational perspective, you know, it's more about relationships with people that you're going out on the water with. It's more about the experience of being out there and fishing. And so, yes, there is some harvest involved UM for some species more than others UM, but it's it's an entirely different approach. And so the big issue for us at the federal level has been trying to kind of modernize the way UM recreational fishing is managed because the commercial paradigm does not work well for saltwater recreational fishing. So fresh water is a whole different story that one is typically very well done, but the magazine stevens act Um because there's not a huge commercial fishing footprint, and there's some you know, obviously in some minor mountain the Great Lakes and some of the Mississippi drainage, but really not like when I think about that sort of that the two paradigms or the two like the recreational commercial relationship, be like when we're out fishing in our skiffs in southeast Alaska, right and you're out fishing out of sport fishing license and you're allowed whatever, you know, like a couple of salmon or sometimes one sam or particular species, but you're honestly fishing where you could converse right with per sayers, who are you know, using a hydraulic winch to haula like I feel very inadequate here. You compare like one of their halls with your lifetime of bag limits and realize that like if you if you got your limit every day all season for your lifetime, you wouldn't achieve one basketfull of fish. And you know, and I'm not trying, like, I'm not trying to criticize what I'm saying, it winds up being like it's like this funny juxtaposition to be like sitting in a boat comparing the two, you know, the footprints of each well. And I think that's that's true, especially in certain fisheries where there is a very large commercial element. In Alaska's a prime example of that. We have a lot of mixed use fisheries, particularly down here in the southeast, and then we have some that are almost exclusively recreational. So it does skew both ways. UM. But to kind of bring it back around to UM, you know who's at the table, I think the commercial industry. UM, it's very comfortable with the Magnusine Steven's Act where it is, and rightfully so, it's done a really good job of bringing back, UM a lot of fisheries that were in trouble, and we're in a good place as far as our fish stocks in most cases nationwide. UM. The issue comes when you look at kind of the poster child of federal fisheries management, which is Red Snopper, which is a mixed fishery. It's almost fifty fifty split in the allocation between commercial and recreational. So there's so in that case, there's a significant impact from from recreational fishing um. But you look at it in the recreational private recreational anglers had initially a three day season federal season last year. Now there's other factors that go into why that was a three day season, like Joe blow or the fishing license had a three day season if he wants to go out fishing in federal waters, which is where the larger snapper are. So what has happened is the states have tried to compensate for some of that because they have jurisdiction over their waters. So they've opened longer, progressively longer and longer state seasons to compense state for the increasingly shorter and shorter federal seasons. And we're actually we've actually been a victim of our own success because as red snapper have continue to rebound an increase in size and in number, we meet the quota faster because we're able to just go out and pick them out of the water. Um. And so trying to look at ways to balance that is one thing. But anyway, so back to the issue, So that's what designates the state control of water versus federal waters. So um, it's nine miles out is state waters Gulf wide now um, and then beyond that is the easy out to two miles which is federal jurisdiction. So how does that work as like leaving Florida's side? Just so people can understand, if you just imagine it's sort of like the the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, what is like just generally there, at what point does state regulated water turn into federal regulated water? Um? On the I know, I'm not sure about Pacific. I would assume it's similar to the Atlantic, which is three miles out. Once you take your boat three miles out, you're in federal honors. Yep. So but anyway, back to back to magazine. So it's been a really great job on the commercial side addressing their issues. They're very comfortable with it. From a recreational side, we have some challenges and I think there needs to be some additional flexibility in management there. And so that's been one of the big issues that we have been UM. We have brought to the table um and and Congress appears to be interested and poised to take action. UM. So fingers crossed, so we can see some significant changes. There's some other things that they're working on in the Gulf UM that no offisheries. UM is working on with the Gulf States to actually look at state management, turning over management of that nine the two miles over to the States and seeing what they can do with it. They've they've just um submitted each of the states has submitted exempted fishing permits UM. And this goes beyond it's like red snapper, which is so this this is exclusively for red snapper kind of as a test trend UM and and see how how they do with that UM because I think I think the States, especially from a recreational perspective, have a much closer relationship with anglers and there's a lot more trust there UM. And they've actually done a really great job managing their inshore fisheries. So UM, this will kind of be a test run. And there's some amendments going through count the Council, the Gulf Council to see if there's there are ways to do it permanently. So what are some other um And I want to I do want to get back to what we're supposed to talking about. But if you look, okay, so in the Gulf, like if you follow sort of the news around fisheries, you do hear a lot about sort of the context, like a limited resource that has a lot of people wanting to make sure they're getting their fair share of it would be red or red snapper in the Gulf. In the Pacific Northwest, people there's constant conflict around salmon resources. Okay, so tribal, commercial, recreational, like who make sure everybody jockeying to get what they feels rightfully, there's what are other besides those two sort of corners of the country. What are other species that kind of like generate that same those same kind of tensions. I quite honestly can't think if any. We've had some issues in the South Atlantic with Kobea recently mainly due to UM trying to come up with better estimates of recreational harvest UM because a lot of the commercial fisheries have UM reporting requirements in place, and recreational fishermen are a little bit more challenging to kind of pin down how much they're bringing in, like how much there actually catching, yeah, UM. And so actually, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council is considering an amendment that would similar to what we're talking about in the Gulf, that would turnover management of kobia to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which is from Florida all the way up the coast. UM. And that's primarily because Kobea are a state water species almost exclusively. So mean they're not out far, not typically typically Okay, So that's the American Sport Fishing Association built into that is key Florida fishing. UM. Now you can't talk about Florida fishing without talking about the Evergades, right. It's well, you know, it's funny when I when I started this position, I thought I'll be doing fisheries issues and UM. And then we had the big rain event UM in January of s and I was like, right, we still haven't fixed the Everglades danging it um because it was a huge, huge deal. Um. We had you know, guacamole six inch thick blue green algae in um in our coastal estuaries as a result of discharges from like cocachobee UM. That affected tourism, It affected habitat, it affected fisheries not only in the estuaries, but also um in Florida Bay down in the Keys. So it is a south it's really a central in South Florida issue when you want to get down to it, and that's so important to our industry here in the state. So explain the rain event and then we'll back up on top of just like everybodies in general. Yeah, but but I'm aware of this, remember like it made national news, international news, international news. So a ton of rainfalls in the off season and the typically dry season. So we've had issues with discharges from like Cochobi going back to the eighties and the seventies. Um, but it really came to a head that year because it was in January, which is typically a really dry month down here, and so all of the tourists that were down here, the snowbirds that were down here, um, saw what happened, and so it started out as freshwater discharges. I realized, I gotta interrupted because I feel like people are not gonna understand what we're talking about. So there's a wet season in a dry season. Now I want to go back here, let me do let me do another thing for and you check me where I'm wrong on this. So everybody can picture the Florida Peninsula. There's a like kind of in the middle up and down there's a big, huge lake which everybody's heard the word. Most everybody's heard of Lake Okeechobee, big huge lake. There are rivers that flow There are a number of primary rivers right that flow southward into Lake okeechobe Historically, when that lake would fill up, it would flow southward from there, and that everything southward from there. Where that overfill, where all that overspill would historically go, is what we call the evergrades. Right. Yeah, it actually really starts at Mickey Mouse if you really want to get technical, So Orlando, Um, there's a chain of lakes and the Kissimi River and all of that. It used to be a big floodplain, but now it's been very channelized, so the water comes in pretty quickly. They're almost finished with restoring the Kissimi River because initially the Army Corps of Engineers, who is kind of the construction lead on all of this from start to finish, I thought would be a good idea to straighten it out because that would be a lot easier to get to and from right Um, But then we found out that the water was just coming in way too quickly, um and causing even greater problems. So historically it would kind of meander down this flow way of the Cassimi River into shallow but huge like Cochobe. It's over seven d square miles but about nine ft average depths, so it's pretty shallow. Um. And you think of it kind of like a really shallow bowl. When it would when it would get filled up, the southern end of it would just overflow and it would be this huge sheet of water about six inches deep that would flow primarily south, but really it hooks kind of tour It hooked historically towards the gulf side. And then there was ye, yeah, it was um. I want to say it was four thousand square miles originally and right now we have about half of that little bit less than half of that that's remaining. UM. So there's been this huge development obviously along the southeast coast of Florida, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Stuart, Florida. All of that has was historic Everglades as well, but it was on a higher ridge. Um. And then we've had agriculture south of the lake on the fertile muck grounds that are down there, um as a result of the flooding. But yeah, it would take almost a year from the for the water to get from Lake Okochobe to Florida Bay. It was that slow movie wants that. Sorry I did not do it. I am not a hydrologist, but that that's what I've been told. That would take a year. So just like its way through, it's so ultimate ultimate filter really um. And so then that freshwater would go into Florida Bay, which is so important for our marine nurseries UM and fisheries. You have everything from lobster to tarpan down there, um. And that used the shore areas of Florida Bay as as nurseries UM. So it's a huge breeding ground um and really really important for our fisheries. So that okay, So that's how the system once functioned. I rose, I'm throwing you off. Some'm changing how I want to do all, okay, because because I feel like but but I want I want to get to like what happens now when you get a ton of rain, which is becoming more important because we just had like a couple of crazy hurricanes too. So what was the big huge flood in the twenties, right, and it killed a bunch of people. Yeah, so well so what happened there, so maybe step back a little bit before that. So the development happened because of agriculture and because of population. Right, people wanted to move to South Florida. Henry Flagnol and his rail road huge component of that. Let's bring them all south, drain out um, you know, the swamp, and and have a great place for people to come and visit and recreate. Um. And so south of the lake was this fertile muck ground. I think even the Seminole Indians when they were kind of pushed into the Everglades, realized how fertile the land was there and used it for farming land that would periodically flood. Yes, yes, um. And so originally um, the two rivers that now connect to Lake Okeechobe that go to the east and the west, the Kloosa Hatchie's on the west and the St. Lucy's on the east, were not originally connected to Lake Cochechobee. And so that's how you ended up with that straight southern will relatively straight. That's what I was. That's why I wasn't clear on as I look at it and read about it, I wasn't. I was always wondering, like, how could one lake head rivers that flowed in three directions? But it didn't know. It just went south. So those rivers were this their own minor they were their own minor drainages, not connected to this primary flow exactly. And so um. So back to the agriculture south of the lake. So people started farming there and they built a really kind of small earthen berm around the south side at the lake. And huge hurricane, Um, they think it was, you know, Category five hit and blew out that dyke and thousands of people died south of the lake because they had built that bern So they had founding a fertile they had founded a fertile floodplain which was prone to periodic flooding. Set up shop, they're moved in built communities. They're like, let's protect it from any kind of to keep it dry. We'll put this dyke up. And then all of a sudden, when the dyke failed, the burn failed, So the core stepped in and it killed thousands of thousands. Um. The core stepped in and and built the Herbert Hoover dyke, and it's still there today. Um, it's undergoing a rehabilitation. In fact, there's still concerns about the stability of that dyke. And that's why when we had Hurricane Irma this last fall, UM Governor Scott ordered an evacuation of those communities south of the lake for fear because we weren't sure exact where it was going to go. UM, you know in the projections where all that it was going to go straight up the middle of the cause it to fail. So it's a dyke, which is like a a big trench full of water or like a big canal and there like a big hill of water. Yeah, it's more like a big, huge, tall hill um that they've built. And so they're going around um and to rehability and so it's not it's not canal long there. It's just like it's just a big it's an earthen burn you see on the Mississippi River, like an earth and damn, I got you, okay, just made out of piled up Yeah. So when they say failed, just that it would have rolled away waters. What you saw in Houston, UM with I can't remember the name of it out there, but there was one that you could just watch that failed. UM as the waters rose. It was just too much pressure. So the core starts to get concerned when water levels in the lake go above fifteen feet, because that's kind of their key cut off for Okay, if it goes above this, we need to start watching out for the dyke and and how stable it is and and is it are we seeing any signs of failure there? So? Is that was that Herbert Hoover dyke? Was that sort of like the first major kind of strike against the Everglades was interrupting the southerly flow of water that in tammy Amy Trail. I would say, we're the major um major factors to begin with. And then the connection of the St. Lucy River and the Clissa Hatchie River, which are the east west flowing rooms. Okay, so so we have this lake that would traditionally flow south as this massive sheet shallow sticks and sheet of water, and you block that flow. And so someone comes up to the idea, probably over generations, I imagine, let's dig in and send that water east and west. Different river system. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do. I mean that the way the system was altered, UM was intentionally to not send water south, and it was intentionally to send it out the two rivers to the east and the west. UM that was the whole rationale. And at the time when the decision was made, I I wonder if people even back then I would say, but hey, what about the Everglades. It was we had as a nation, we hadn't really gotten around to the idea of grappling with like finiteness. I think I think the perception, um, there's a really great book on this subject by the way, um called the Swamp Um that kind of gives a fabulous history of the Everglades. I think the mentality was more, you know, land ho let's go develop. And I don't think there was a lot of thought too, um, you know what what long term impact there might be from all of this um And it was more about public safety, water supply, agriculture, trying to develop, you know, the swamp of Florida, and they hadn't really thought about anything like living within the eco system as part of safety. I don't think so. I think if the perception was we're we're just gonna make it how we want it and it'll be fine. So what were once you once that flow was stopped, can you like kind of like quickly encapsulate sort of like what we began to lose. So in the sort of ecosystem that that water was coming through. Yeah, so areas that were historically wet um got too dry or they would be too wet for too long at too high level. So you start seeing m vegetation changes, you start seeing um exotics um in the system. You start seeing pretty much an entire disruption of an ecosystem. I mean you still you still see alligators, you still see baths, you still see deer and tree islands, UM, but they're becoming fewer and fewer and more impacted. UM. You know. It's really I think on a if it's an average day, I think things are probably not too um too impacted within the system, at least to to you know, the average person's eyes. When you have these unusual events, high water events, that you start to really see the stresses in the system and that it goes beyond the Everglades UM, out to the coast and down to the keys o case of now, the real the real rainy event of what was the two thousand sixteen Yeah, so that was like the unusual super rain Yeah. So and then we had the hurricanes of is really interesting because we had the rainfall event in January which the Lake rose um I want to say it was close to seventeen feet. So water is being discharged to the east in the west at maximum volume as quickly as possible to try and bring the lake levels down because any rain event could can raise the lake level almost three feet. So that's why the core, particularly in the wet season, likes to have it lower so that they have some play in there in case we have a hurricane or we have a tropical system that sits there for a little while so they can manage that flow. So in December that year, you could have been standing on dry ground. UM. At the end of January you could have been you could have been in seventeen feet of water. Yeah, there's a huge fluctuation in the natural system there. And and what happened because it was in an off time, we had these habitat impacts um, oyster die offs, seagrass die offs, um. So there's freshwater inflows to the estuaries that aren't normal. So you basically have salinities dropping to zero um on the coast because they're sending so much water east and west out of those rivers. And you also have just the turbidity, so the waters cloudy, UM. You may have seen. There's some great photos out there if google them where you can kind of see this dark cloud of water coming out of the rivers into the estuaries and and that shades the sea grass, that shades you know, all of the um the sea life that's out there and really can impact fishing. And that's what does the shading. Yeah, well so so well, so then there's the second part. So so there's the impact from the freshwater. But like you have these species that are relying on they're sensitive to how much salt in the water. Yes, absolutely, it can't be too much, can't be too little. L Like you like oysters being something that was like a brackish water species and they can take low salinity for a certain number of days, but once you get past that thresholds then they just can't survive. So you're pumping out so much fresh water that you're turning a saltwater body basically into a somewhat fresh water or freshwater body by just inundating it with so much exactly river water. And then the muddiness prevent sunlight from penetrating through, and so that has that and the salinity impact seagrasses and those estuaries and killed some. And so because of when that when the rainfall fell, we also had the algal bloom happened in the summer once the temperatures warmed up, and there's some and that bloom happened in the lake in Lake Oa, happened out in the marine, and so it was both. There was an algal bloom in Lake Cokachub wasn't which isn't terribly uncommon. Um, but the blue green algal bloom in the estuary and the extremeness of it was um unusual. Um, real quick? Do you accept algil and algal? You do? I don't have a problem with that. Yeah, there's certain words fungi, fun guy, tomatoes, tomato, So yeah, I know what you're going for. Well, no, I dig I'm digg an algal. But I grew up saying algil, and I'm to think if I should switch. So I don't need to switch right now. I don't think so. I think you're good where you are. So you explain the bloom, because I don't think this is widely understood how something like this happens or why it happens. So the most recent information that I've seen on it was that the freshwater coming into the estuaries UM stressed the system that caused the algal bloom there. There's been some controversy about whether the algae came from the lake and ended up in the estuary and that's what caused the bloom, and it may or may not be that. There's UM there's been discussion about whether what word septic tanks play in the in the situation there too, because then you would have within based on runoff basically in the st lucy contributing to those algal blooms. UM. But the most recent information that I've seen, UM, and so this is subject to change, is that the freshwater stressed the estuary system, causing the all any present algae there or nutrients there to support an algoa bloom. There is there uh nong a stack. Two more questions, can you explaining people too estuaries? And and also is there sort of a like when you look at the bloom right and you'd be like it could have started in the lake, It could have been influenced by uh septic systems that were flooded out. Is there are there implications of who owns the problem. Well, there's definitely controversy about that, and you know, from from an A s A perspective, we approach that's American Sport Fishing Association perspective. We we approach Everglades restoration. UM from the philosophy that we want to get this done as quickly as possible, and so we need to look at everything. Um I said. The research that's pointing to septic being a problem, um it makes sense. I mean, we we see that in North Florida where I'm from, with our springs and septic systems, that the higher levels of nutrients lead to alba blooms in the springs, and so from that perspective it makes sense. But I also recognized that discharges coming out of Lake a Chub are significant contributing factor, and so we need to look at all of it. Um. I remember when the lake I grew up on. You know those companies that like True Green or companies that come and do when yeah, yeah, when I was a little kid, if you looked around our lake, it was all it looked like just summer cottages and people had houses that were set back up in the trees away from the lake and no one and there weren't yards, which just you know, it's like kind of like a lot of white pine and oak, and people just had what looked like forest litter generally. And over time it became more of a bedroom community and people started they take down the cabin and build a much bigger house much close to the water, and put in lawns, and then lawn care services caught on and in a microcosm level, what that did to the to the lake catastrophic is unbelievable. All that fertilizer well they had, and so it even goes beyond septic tanks. I know in um Tallahassee they actually traced y'all may have heard of Wahla Springs. It's like an iconic international spring. It's where they film Creature from the Black Lagoon. Wait no, Um Edward ball Um with St. Joe Um. It's kind of the big benefactor of that. But anyway, Um, they've actually traced nutrients from the city of Tallahassee sewer sprayfield into what color springs, And so the city went back and reworked um how they were actually dealing with their sewage much less septic tanks. Um that it would travel that far. Um. I think a lot of it has to do with the kind of the Florida geography. It's all very poorous limestone based, and so I know, it's kind of amazing, like the sort of the flatness that you can just decide to send water, that you'd even have the option right to be like, well this lake drains south, we could move it to the southwest or east. Well, that's why it took a year, right, I think it's I want to say, it's like a six inch difference in elevation. I mean that's why, because you're you're basically almost moving horizontal, but just with a very very slight Yeah, it's like a whole state made out of marine limestone, right, just old seashells exactly. Um, I wanted you too. We're gonna get back on track. Tell people what an estu area is, because I think a lot of people live in a lot of people live in the middle of the country. Like, it's just not a yeah. So it's it's basically where a river empties into a saltwater body, and so you end up with this mixing of fresh and saltwater, so you have brackish areas. Um, the one that that the St. Lucy enters into is the Indian River Lagoon because there's kind of some outer barrier islands there that kind of provide this really protected um environment and UM much like Florida Bay Um, the brackish environ men is a really important nursery area for marine life species. Oh, it's kind of amazing, like as far as and then like bird life, I mean estuaries. It's such a unique that one of it makes this unique ecosystem. My god, it's like this melding of it's like this melding of the land and the sea and salt and fresh and it seems like as far as like biomass of creatures well in North Florida. Mean it's where you have alligators and oysters all in the same area and sharks and I mean it's just it's it's a fascinating place. Now I lost track of our main things though, Yes, and a s A so from from the Sport Fishing Association perspective, you guys aren't super interested and being like, well it's their fault, it was their fault. Yeah, we don't want to point the finger. We just want to find the solution. UM. And you know, I guess sometimes that does involve finger pointing, um, but really trying to work together and bring people together, um to kind up with solutions is kind of our focus. Do you ever look at the whole thing and think like, oh my god, how could it be that, like we want to make sure there's a good resource of fish, right, that it would wind up being that as you you know, you always here, like as you enter that, you wind up in like a rabbit hole. Right, there's a lot of rabbit hole. Yeah, no, no, I'm just talking. We want a whole bunch of fish arounds. What's that going to entail? And you're like, well, let me look into it, and you wind up realizing that that it winds up having a lot to do with sort of like engineering and giant earthen works in American history, and so much of it in Florida has to do with water quality and population growth. I mean, it's not just a marine fisheries issues. We talked talked a little bit about springs. We've got a huge network of lakes that are i mean Lake Cokachobee is internationally renowned bass fishing destination and the whole multiple tournaments there every year up in North Florida, Central Florida. I mean, it's just I think because of kind of the Swiss Cheese nature of the under lyings of the state. UM, there's a huge amount of resources and UM that are impacted by water quality. And and that that I mean are coral reefs are being dramatically impacted by water coral quality. I just got it earful from some deer hunters. Is that Everglades related? Or earful from deer hunters all about who's moving what water where where? Because because it was too high for too long and moving deer and they're drowning deer here and and drying out deer there. And I was kind of asking these guys sort of like, well, historically, right, if you could go back, like what did the deer picture look like? It's it's been like the Everglades situation. The water has been so confused for so long it's hard to remember what it doesn't see. There's not like a sort of like the baseline isn't well know. Yeah, I would say probably the forties were when, because that was kind of when they did the Central and South Florida Project, which was UM where the Core came in and installed all of the dikes and canals and water control structures and all the water conservation areas, and all of that was done after the dike. Um So you had tammy Amy trail than the Dike, than the C and SF project. Um So I think if you went back there you could probably find relatively good information. But there's there's there's not a lot of those folks around still. Yeah. So someone like being born today and just becoming interested in the out of doors and like interested in hunting and fishing. Um it almost becomes like here, it almost probably becomes like someone of an irrelevant question of like what did it used to look like? Because it's just not much of a chance. Yeah. I think it's more what can we do to get it back? Um? So that we don't have this kind of cyclical up and down um series of stressful events on the system. So what Okay, imagine for a minute that there's no that there's unlimited budgets and absolute public will. All right, Yes, what needs to happen money needs to happen is no issue. Just as an exercise, let's as an exercise to start out, let's say that what do we need to do to reston is every person in Florida is like, my number one priority is fixing the system. Yeah, so we need to UM. We need to have storage, extensive water storage around the lake. UM around the lake, but not in the lake well, because the lake is storage. So we need to be able to take the water that comes in and move it around and clean it and then direct it where it needs to go. Ideally, you wouldn't have any water needing to be discharged out the St. Lucy River on the east coast. You would want to maintain some connect to the Clusa Hatchee because sometimes they do have drought situations where they actually need water put in. And we have UM two projects that are working reservoirs that are working on those parts of the system. They're planning storage on the northern side of the lake and also water quality treatment so that we can take all of that water that's coming in from the Kissimi River and hold back some of it UM and clean it before it gets to the lake that would be a lake like yes, and and so some of that's to make up for the fact that the water is not coming in as slowly as it used to. Write UM, we have more runoff basically than we used to because it's because of development UM and modifications that we've made to the system every time. And then to the south, UM they're working on planning a southern reservoir and and UM and treatment water quality treatment is really important. But this would these things would look like water treatment facilities or to the untrained ie, you would think there's a big shadow lake. Yeah, I think you would know that it's a reservoir just because it would have more of a regular shape. But the ones that are in place right now, there's stormwater treatment areas which are a little bit different than a reservoir. They're operated at a little bit shallower level. But the recreational access is allowed to all of those. UM and I know UM with the Southern Reservoir project that's in the planning phases right now. UM they're looking at allowing fishing and hunting in those types of activities on the lake, which is great. So then once you get below that, we need to take out all of the dike and canal systems that we've put in. We well know the dike is going to have to stay because people live there. So unless you want to move those people out, the dike has to stay. UM and so that's kind of where the reservoirs come in because you can discharge from the lake into the reservoirs instead of having to have that sheet flow in agricultural areas south of the lake. So we remove the kind of what we would term barriers to flow the canals and the structures, we maintain protection. For the south east coast of Florida where it's developed. UM, we bridged Tammy Emmy Trail, which when it was constructed was a great idea because it allows you to get from the east coast of Florida the west coast of Florida a straight shot. And the unfortunate thing is it's a second dike basically um preventing water from going south into Everglades National Park. And so they're working on bridging it so that the water can move under it, and then you take it into so that right now that trail it's just a big elevated structure that functions as a road, is a highway just function as a damn though. Yes, Well, they've finished I think a one mile section. They're working on a second section, and then I think there's two other sections that have to be bridged basically to allow that through UM and then UM that would take water down into Florida Bay. UM. Beyond that, there's still a couple of areas that still probably needs some attention to get kind of the full force of water fresh water that we actually need eat in Florida Bay to maintain the salinity. Since we've been sitting in East and West, we haven't been sending a whole lot south UM and and beyond that that that's all you're looking at it. That's only about twenty billion dollars UM and and that has to be coordinated between the state and the federal government. So I want to get to that why that won't I want to get to the reality now that we explore, like what needs to happen with unlimited funding and public will UM. You hear that half of the Everglades are gone. If in this scenari you just laid out like if it is done to completion, does that fix some of that? Or is half the Evergade is just still gone? I don't think you can recover the half that's focus on the half that's left. When they say gone, they mean gone to development that can't be regained. You need to look at it from a glass half full? How can we fix the part that's still there. So we're not gonna we're not looking to regain. We're just looking to salvage and preserve and restore. Restore it is what we're really talking about, and that will go a long way to restoring kind of the natural balance in that system where you know, you have the tree islands and you have the sheet flow in certain parts of it, and you have the fresh water flows into Florida Bay and not have those um, you know, traumatic discharges to the east and the west is kind of a question. No, I'm sorry, It's very complicated and that's kind of the hard part about it. Oh yeah, well, my mind's buzzing. It's like with all these other ideas, Like it's like you're talking about here, we'll go get a shovel from the home depot and get get it all fixed up this afternoon. But no, it seems like you're, um, I understand it, like kind of like the idea of what's been done has been done and you can't change certain things. But that development and the causes and I'm guessing a lot of it's just like concrete and asphalt, right, that just causes fat water to get places faster. Do you ever think that people will look innovatively that way and just say, you know what, maybe instead of concrete, there's gonna be this other thing that we started driving on around in Florida or building houses on in Florida. So that kind of attack it like the beginning as opposed to halfway down, like the holistic approach. Yeah, I mean, I think that would be ideal. UM. I don't know realistically how that would play out, since there are so many people in South Florida, it would be a huge undertaking. UM. You know some of the steps that UM Martin County, which is where Stewart is in St. Lucy River, have taken to talk about fertilizer runoff because septic tanks and fertilizers are kind of UM that component that we were talking about that UM contributed to the algal bloom. Just trying to get folks aware of you know, hey, my green grass is having impacts on the system. And I mean that retraining the public is is definitely a challenge, but they're going back to revisit, you know, kind of that whole public awareness campaign and how do we do that? So how did you say that's off the table, but I don't know how significant of an impact you would have just because of the challenges and trying to implement it. I think that those public kind of like public sacrifice public awareness campaigns do work over time because I'll talk to people who live in areas like like in around the Colorado you know the Colorado River, right, So the whole other issue where very complex issue about water allocations, where water goes, and um, like all have friends who say, like, man, if you water your lawn in my neighborhood, you're ostracized. You're ostracized from the community, you're on if you're watering on an off day and Florida you're yeah, people be like it really like takes hold and people are kind of like, all right, let's just all agree all of our grass is brown in the summer, and let's just make it that the way that green grass used to be a status symbol. Let's accept that brown grass is now a status symbol in the summer. And when you have green grass, you're the guy that used to have brown grass. You're like the outlier. And it's like you can like public sort of public awareness and public opinion shifts as people just you can turn it. It's powerful, I agree, And when it's like willful compliance, then it becomes more palatable to people. Some of that is kind of re establishing that connection I think with with nature. I mean, it's so funny. I make it down here several times a year, and I mean I live in Tallahassee, which is a pretty well developed city. Um, but I come down here and I'm just always amazed at the network of roads and concrete and struck Sure's and and when you go to the Everglades, I mean there's like a wall, a dividing line and you're like over here Everglades over here obviously not Everglades. Um. You know, it is remarkable. No, there's no bleed. Yeah, And I don't think a lot of people cross over that line. Um. And so there's a lot of folks that just aren't aware, um of of kind of what's going on and what the impacts are. If they don't fish, if they're you know, not out on the water a lot, if they could just kind of living their lives, there's not really a daily awareness of what's going on. There's two forms of there's two forms of unawareness um, one, I understand. The one's troubling to me. There's the form of unawareness that you're just like blithely unaware Okay, that for whatever reason, like who you surround yourself with or how you live your life, you just haven't heard yet, okay. And that's a kind where like, okay, that's a failure, like that lack of awareness is a failure sort of of the system him, or you're just speaking to just a human like human attributes, there's at least an opportunity to inform. Yeah, and there's like no one told me, thanks for the heads up. I will now start taking like without overly inconvenience in myself. Now that I understand, I will start taking some minor steps towards helping the bigger picture. There's that kind of person. Then there's the kind of person who's real aware, they know, but they're like, damned if I'm going to inconvenience myself in service of this thing, because the real blame lies with and so yeah, that's the troubling version. But Okay, now you don't have all the money in the world and you don't have total public support, but people are still trying to do to accomplish the end result of what you're getting at where does it stand? Like, where does it stand what needs to happen? Well, I think it's frustrating that we don't. We're we're not seeing UM. I guess the positive benefits of all of the efforts to date, and I think a lot of that is not yet UM. I think that UM, we're we're poised to see a lot of that. UM. There's this mind boggling schedule of sixty eight projects UM that combined make up the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, and and that kind of timeline is called the integrated Delivery Schedule. If anybody just really wants to watch their ice cross, you can google that UM and take a look at it. But we're pretty far along UM when you look at all those projects. We've at least started planning almost everything in this whole thirty year timeline. So serp to use the UM. The short short term version of Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan was authorized in the year two thousands, so it was initially envisioned as a thirty year plan basically to restore this It took us a years to screw it up. The spad how can we go back and fix it? And it projects are moving a lot of dirt. I mean, it's basically reconstructing South Florida. UM. And you're talking about two thousand square miles. That's that's a lot of a lot of dirt to move, UM and greated, we don't have to touch every corner of that, but we have to touch a lot of it. UM. And then you have um negotiations between the state and federal government on how that's going to be done because they share the cost on those projects as an even split. That decided like like how how was it decided? Like, oh, some of this is your problem, Florida. Well, I think the Feds thought that they were doing it for us, and but yeah, they were the ones that actually did it, and so I certainly wasn't a fly on the wall for those conversations. But but that was the agreement that was reached. And UM. You know, Florida has really stepped up to the plate, especially in recent years. They've appropriated over two hundred million dollars annually for their portion of serup UM. Plus they've appropriated UM the money to pay the state's portion of the money to pay for that reservoir on the southern side of Lake Okachobe already that hasn't even been approved by Congress yet. So Florida is the head of the FEDS on getting them their agreed upon share of the money. Yeah, I heard um Congressman Francis Trainey estimate that he thought that from what he'd seen that Florida was about a billion dollars ahead of the federal government in their appropriations for Everglades restoration. Well what is it? Caught hesitating bring it up? I was gonna ask, like, when you take what is the fixed cost, so the cost of fixing it compared to the costs of not fixing it. Yeah, Well, and that's a hard number to pend down because people like don't I know, people's brains don't really work that way though, you know what I mean. Yeah, well, if you think that if you look at just from a fishing perspective, and so that doesn't count tourism or real estate values or um loss of life. Yeah, and there actually have been some documented health um conditions from the algal bloom that happened at the coast. So you know, I don't know how you put a number on that but it's definitely significant, particularly when you put it. I mean, not the fifteen to twenty billion dollars is chump change, but nine point six billion dollars a year just from sport fishing in Florida and Grant and not all of that's in South Florida, but a lot of it's focused there, and not not all of us in South Florida, not all of it is reliant on this. But but just to put those numbers, and that's annually, I mean, to put those numbers in perspective, Yeah, it's we're we're suffering significantly, and that's why it's so important for us to move it, trying to get it done quicker than thirty years. So really, you know, walking the halls of Congress and you know, trying to make folks aware of how important this is. From a national perspective, I mean, it's it's a national treasure that Everglades is. It's actually a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There's no place else in the world like it. It's the world's largest restoration project that's ever been attempted. So and how many, how again, how many projects need to happen. So there's sixty eight total and they need and but but they all need to happen in concert. Well, they have to happen in a certain order. So for example, building a reservoir without a way to get water either to or from the reservoir doesn't really accomplish anything because the reservoir is just going to fill up. And so kind of trying to think through sequentially. Okay, if I need to do this first before I do that, because from an engineering perspective and a water movement perspective, that's how it best makes sense. When I said they need to happen in concert, they all like, like, the project is the project, but there's sixty eight components. Like like you would never say like I'm building a house. You never say like I have a projects underway. You'd be like, I'm building a house. Now what that involves is like foundation, framing, plump. Okay, So is do you do any of the projects like as free standing projects. Do they wind up being helpful or does it or does it become that these all need to come online? I think some are different than others. So um Kissimi River restoration is almost complete. Um that's the northern that's north of the lake, and that just in and of itself could be beneficial, right, because that benefits not only the Everglades, but that benefits the Kissimi River basin. So you could feasibly be like stop there but enjoy some payoff from it. Yeah, but some of them do need to be done in concert. And so UM what they did, because things were moving so slowly, they kind of took a subset of the projects that that were thought to be the most beneficial, that would basically give you the biggest bang for the buck and package them together, went through the planning process which is very extensive with the Army Corps of Engineers and probably like all the environmental impact work and UM, and then has to be authorized by Congress. So they package these together and what they call the Central Everglades Planning Project. And so this is the area between um, between Lake Okechobee and Everglades National Park, that would be the Central Everglades. And so we have this whole kind of mishmash of canals and levies and all of that sort of thing. We need to increase conveyance, how how so that we can move water south instead of sending it into a canal to shoot it out to tide UM and we also need storage and so anyway they packaged all those together. We finally were able to get those authorized in two UM as SEP is what it's called UM and so it has to be authorized by Congress, but we're still waiting on federal appropriation to the actual money to get it done. So they'll Congress will authorize it, but not necessarily at that moment. That comes in the budget to the Army Corps of Engineers UM at a later time, and now the state can start on their part, and they have UM of step and they've they've actually started work on that trying to UM do the part that's theirs have. Has the will to tackle the problem gone up or down in the last year, I think from a state perspective, okay, well, but even our federal like our congressional delegation, so our congressmen and our senators I think are very UM, very united in in knowing that everglades restoration, even statewide, that they get it and absolutely absolutely the trouble comes when you have well we've seen the budget challenges at the federal level UM continually. I think we're having one this week UM and so trying to focus other states on one state's problem. UM is a challenge because again you're talking about a pie. It's only so big and how are we going to divide that up? And so the federal government is typically um less than half of the appropriation of what Florida is on an annual basis. I think it was like seventies six UM million was the last number now and the dike is separate from that because that's more of a flood control public safety issue. But just for restoration projects, UM, it's challenging. Who are the who are the losers of the of the whole restoration thing? Like who when you look at the current restoration plan, you say, like, has bipartisan support, the state likes it, your federal debt, your your your your state's delegation to Washington, d SEE likes it. Who are the people or industries or whatever who are looking at like, yeah, you know, not real keen on this plan. H. I think there's been um some challenge. Well, so there's a lot of politics involvement, as with everything. UM. You know, it's not just about restoration, it's it's not just about an environmental project that needs to be taken care of. So there's politics involved and so UM. Politically, UM, you know, I think the folks in the agricultural area have felt targeted at sometimes UM, and I think that that creates a lot of conflict. And how we get things done UM, Political leaders change, UM, and then political will changes. We saw that Governor bush Um had um an accelerate what he called an accelerate plan to move projects along, and then we had to change an administration in the new governor wanted to take a different direction. And that's certainly their prerogative. But you know, when you're talking about the scope of a thirty year project, to change UM, you know, kind of to change direction every eight years or so is gonna is gonna cause challenges at least at the state level. And you have similar turnover at the federal level as well, UM, with the Army Corps of Engineers having changeover and and who's overseeing the project. You have changeover in the committees, UM, and and trying to elevate the importance of Everglades beyond the perception that it's just a Florida project. And so that was when I was talking initially. You know, yeah, it is a Florida project, but it has national significance not only just from the fact that it's an environmental wonder of the world, but also because of the economic impact that it has on industry that is outside of this state that relies on having access to you know, abundant fisheries and clean water. Um. And so you know, you have somebody in Michigan who has a manufacturing plant who's making engine parts for a boat motor and if if if folks aren't buying boats in Florida because the water is terrible, then then Michigan is going to feel it. And so it trying to kind of draw those correlations, um is what we've been trying to focus on to kind of raise the profile of Everglades restoration beyond it being just a Florida issue. Without getting yourself in trouble, can you explain to me why you hear when when when there's a conversation about the Everglades, there's always a conversation about the sugar industry. Can you explain, like why, how does the sugar how does sugar cane production find its way into every conversation around the Everglades. Let's see, um, well, that whole Everglades agricultural area. It's not just sugar, but they are probably one of the largest landowners in that area, and there's several different companies UM. And I mean when you look at a map, I mean you see like Cokachobe, you see the Everglades agricultural area, and then you see the rest of the Everglades, and so I think it's a natural UM. You know, it's a natural reaction to see that the e a basically and say, well, if we just got rid of that, we could make it all work. UM. And so it's just that that area happens that Foster. There's a lot of sugar production in that area. Oka. It was very fertile farmland. I mean that was kind of you know, that was right outside of the lake and so you had this kind of like fertile soil from when the lake would overflow, and it was it was a natural agricultural area. But there's a lot of other stuff that's growing there besides sugar. UM. I I think the conflict comes UM. You know, their property owners and so they have property rights and UM, and so the conflict comes I think between UM folks who are very passionate about restoring the Everglades and seeing that land as kind of the roadblock to it, and well, we should just be able to fix it and get rid of that. And and then you have to balance that with the fact that their property owners, they are UM, they have taken significant steps to help with nutrient runoff from their properties. And I'm not trying to defend anybody. That's just kind of my take on what I've seen in the conversations UM as to why it's such a conflict, Why you hear about so much moving more south? Just to touch on another, like, just to hit all the conflicts, there's a lot of them. Fishing access, Yeah, okay, so places where you are and are not allowed to fish is something you hear about a lot down here. Can you kind of like sketch out sort of the conversations around UM prohibiting recreational fishing in certain waterways and what they hope to gain from that, what's lost with those decisions? Are you talking about more from a coastal perspective, not so much everglades. Yeah, So there's a lot of concern I think globally about UM the condition of coral reefs, and we have a really significant coral reef track off Southeast Florida runs from Stewart in Martin County all the way down into the Florida Keys and the Florida Keys has National Marine Sanctuary UM that kind of oversees most of what's going on down there, kind of as a blanket UM communicator, but a lot of UM. The area north of that hasn't received as much attention, and there's been a really significant coral disease outbreak there. UM. They're they're not under they don't really understand exactly, UM the extent of it. UM. They're doing surveys right now, they don't necessarily understand where it came from. Could be tied to the acidification there. You know, globally, when you look at impacts to coral reefs, water quality is probably number one, which could be acidification. It could be sediment that's settling on things. It could be UM. You know that you've disturbed one area and somehow you've stirred up a disease that was kind of in the sediment and now has become waterborne and spreads, Which is kind of the thought process that I've heard to what's happened in Southeast Florida there. The thing we know for certain is coral reefs dying. Yeah, and I think worldwide, UM, there has been a push for UM for area closures to help preserve these areas, and UM, you know, I think in some instances it's probably a good idea. In fact, UM, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is talking today about the Dry Tortuga's Research Natural Area, which is out off the coast of South Florida down here pass Key West and and that area is closed to fishing UM. And there were some really good reasons why they did it. There was a confluence of currents, it's got excellent water quality, UM, it's somewhat remote. You have multiple UM important fish species that use that area as a spawning ground, and the currents are able to take the eggs UM and other locations. So it's in addition to that, there's actually on going research in the area. So you have people actively looking at that place and looking at the impacts UM to make sure that what they're doing is working, also using it for research purposes to see, Okay, what kind of impacts do these closed areas have. UM. And you have ongoing law enforcement that's engaged in making sure that the regulations are being enforced quite frankly. UM. You know, just because you have a rule or a law or regulation doesn't mean that people are going to abide by it. And so kind of all of those factors together, UM, you know, have led to a area and area that's closed to fishing. That makes sense. UM. One of the proposals UM that has come up UM as far as the Southeast Florida Coral Retract is to close twenty two percent of it to fishing and boating access, and the idea being that we have this stressed reef. In other places around the world, we've seen that when we close areas to fish access, they kind of act like a reserve basically that the fish can go to um and and have some protection there, and then that spills over into the surrounding areas. Like you might close the area but not see it, but not see like a decline of the resource that is putting out. Yeah, and I think UM in other places that that could make sense. UM, It's the jury is still out. I've seen a lot of mixed research on how effective what they would call a no take marine protected area UM is in in achieving that goal. UM. I think in areas, particularly with corals where you're talking about protecting herbivores like parrot fish to keep algae down off of reefs, that can be an important component. Um. But in Florida we have really stringent fishing regulations. UM. And you know, from a stockwide perspective, UM, we don't see a lot. We might see some localized depletions where there are you know, area as a heavy effort. UM. But from a stockwide perspective, you know, we don't have we don't have issues with parrot fish populations. UM. And you know, the vast majority of our sport fish are in really really good shape and so UM from our perspective, you really need a good reason um to justify why you're gonna close it down, and you need to try other stuff first, um, because fishing is so important in Florida. I mean, if we're seeing localized depletions in a certain area, well you know what, then then let's decrease the bag limit there. We don't need to shut shut it down to everything as the knee jerk reaction. So I think, UM, I think there's been some you know, you look at it from like I said, a global perspective and a note take area can make sense, but I think you also need to try other things first, particularly here in the States where we have um, you know, such strong regulations already in place from a federal antistate perspective. So so the main way two help the fisheries here would be more habitat level. I think that's a lot of big general sense, more like whole picture habitat level fixes rather than stopping fishing. Yeah, I think because I think a lot of what you see are going back to water quality. I mean, it really is. That really is kind of the lynchpin and all of it. And and the challenges is that it's not easy to fix UM. You know, there are a lot of different sources of UM runoff, of pollution, of sedimentation. You know, we're also you know, we've got um uh huge UM barge traffic and port traffic, and you have to try to balance and and I don't know that we necessarily understand all of what goes into those developments, but you've got to balance, you know, the development with the resource. It is tricky and it's not easy. And I think that's why UM, you know, I think when you look at closing off an area fishing. Well, that's something easy and concrete that I can do today. Um. The problem is is that if you don't address the real elephant in the room of water quality, you're not going to achieve the goal that you want. Yeah, you could damage that industry and still wind up with things going downhill. Exactly exactly. We covered a lot, an immense amount, got it all figured out. Now right, you can take my job. I'm ready to go, and I'm ready to go down to the store and get me some shovels and take the axes. Is there anything we didn't get to that you want to get to? Um? You know, I think I hope that we've got the message across that. UM. I know you'll have listeners across the nation, in the world, and you know, what, what can they do? And why should they do something? That people we get a lot of when we're talking about issues. We get a lot of people who are like, but what do I do? Yeah? And I think that that's what I always like to leave people with, because I think part of the frustration with Everglades restoration is that people feel like they can't do anything that it's this, you know, would be like, oh my God, I'd rather just go work on another issue. Yeah, there's the whole bureautic mess, and it's completely out of my hands and there's nothing I can do. And I you know, we have three million anglers that come to Florida, either visiting or resident every year. That's a lot of people that come to our state to visit. And and so they're obviously not from Florida. Um. You know, they can call their congressman and their senator and their state and say, hey, you know, this isn't a Michigan or an Iowa or a Seattle specific issue, but you need to support it and and here's why, and and lay it out for them. You know that it's the national treasure that I go there to fish, and I want to see this preserve um and restored to what it could and should be to keep this tragedy from happening again. That's the thing that I try to put forth, Like an idea I try to get um hunters and anglers on board with, is that like an attack against one as an attack against all, and and and some groups do that. Well, you know, I think that when it comes to like gun rights, right, people look at an attack against one is an attack against all. But I think that when it comes to habitat issues, that's not We're good at being like we're really good at being really insular and like provincially you know, and just sort of viewing like, well, I'm kind of worried about my little spot. Yeah, right, like you know, I'm gonna go down to the County Deer Commission and give them a yearful. But yeah, they're not. But they but they don't like, look, they're not looking at the big, huge picture, right because but even in this case. What's interesting about Florida though, is here everybody does. I grew up, We came down in fished Florida. We came every year to fish in Florida, drive down, typically, drive down the motor home and camp on the beach, gets sun sick fishing Florida. Yeah, I mean, like I said, that's the millions of people. So it's not even like for millions of Americans. It's not like you're not doing this sort of generous act. You can still keep it selfish. Well, you don't have to be I mean, go to the beach. I mean if you just come down as a tourist, um, you don't want to see algae six inch thick in the water. It really makes it distasteful. And I remember standing on the beach here one time, a couple of years ago. So my kids are three, five, and seven and standing on the beach right before our three year old was born, and I see what I think is like a pot of raise maybe coming down the beach, and that really is just like traveling the way that raised don't and uh, and my kids are just out in angle deep water and just right within arms reached, these manatees come by. Oh, just blew their mind, man, very mind, you know what I mean. And just see that like and you're not like you know, I've seen them like in in the out in the mangroves and stuff and bleeze and elsewhere, but just on this beach where as far as you look one way and as far as you look the other way, it's hotels and sand. But to think like that there, but to build a place where that can co exist, where they're traveling from one, you know, one estuary or whatever to another and have them come blown by, I mean it kind of like makes a believer out of you to see something like that. And I think you make a good point. I mean, I think as um, you know, as despairing as it can seem when you look at it from this side, seeing how far we still have to go. Um, not only can we help shorten that timeline so it's not quite so far, but we can look at the successes that we've already had, and manatees are certainly one. We were talking about American crocodiles earlier before we started, and I was guilty thinking that we didn't have American crocodiles anymore. But it why is up being that they went from being federally listed as endangered and got upgraded. Yeah, they're great as much as the upgrade got upgraded to threaten, which is like a nice move. It's a move in the right direction. Is better than being moving from threatened to endangered exactly. And we have um, you know black bear. I mean, we have a lot of things in the state that we that have come back, um through through public involvement in this process. And UM, so I think there is hope. I think the take home news that there is hope UM for Everglades restoration. And I think we have a lot of projects that are going to be coming online in the next five years or so that are gonna have a big impact, and we just need to finish the last few to kind of bring it to the finish line and then look to see, you know, how is this working. Where else can we tweak it? Because it's not going to be a hundred percent It was never designed to be a hundred percent fix. Um. There's always going to be things that you see when you're on the ground that you know, what, we might need to tweak this a little bit, or you know, if we did this one little project over here. Um. The South Worida Water Management District has already done that with several projects that they've taken on by themselves apart from the federal government, to kind of tweak it to have a maximum benefit for a minimal cost. So the part about people getting involved in somebody they want to get involved, You say, call your representatives, tell him we need money. I mean, that's like the fish in Florida. My brother in law likes to fish in Florida. Yeah, you got to help that guy out. Send some money down there. Exactly because when they get to the appropriations, which you know, is divvying up the money, um, for the Army Corps of Engineers. There's fifty other states that have significant projects. UM. One other thing, one other funding opportunity that's kind of on hopefully on the more immediate horizon, is the Disaster Relief bill. UM. So that's as a result of all the hurricanes that we had to Puerto Rico and Florida. Yeah, all three um. And that's that's kind of sitting in the Senate right now. The House is already voted on it. But that would give twelve billion dollars to the CORE UM. And so granted that has to be divided between the three disaster states, but that could give some significant funding for the CORE to move forward on some Everglades projects quickly. So calling your senators and saying we need to take this up. You said it was twenty billion, right. It's a fifth year total right there. Yeah, yep. And I guess you could probably um help to come to Florida do a little fishing always always, and and to put in another plug, you know, because of the hurricanes, there were some significant impacts in the Florida Keys and the southwest coast Florida Everglades City and those are some of the best fishing um opportunities here in the state, and and those folks, the guides especially, really need folks to come down. Um you know it. Sometimes hotels can still be a challenge, but they're open, ready for business, and the fishing is great. So yeah, I would say you need to come. I would add that that's provisional when I say that come down to fish, it's provisional, Like, if you're gonna come down and fish, you need to You owe it to yourself and others to take a minute to understand what am I catching. Yeah, first you start out by saying, like you need to force yourself to admit that you kind of love it, right, I think a lot of people fish, but they never go like and I love it? Ye, So you say like, and I love it, And I wanted to stick around where did the fish come from? Like? Where did this what exactly went into this fish existing here on earth? And when you start understanding that how it's all connected, then then hopefully as UH advocacy is born, well, it develops that relationship right between the person and the and the environment. So it's better to do that than to be like, whatever the hell happened to that fish? In twenty years. I guess I won't go to Florida now. Um, you guys got any final things gonna book my trip now, not that I'm not gonna come back now. And then it sounds like the fish is just gonna get better and better reservation. Well, you know, I think, um, at least from a fishing perspective, have a lot of the impacts that we see are temporary because it is a you know, a finite event, um where we had the impacts from the discharges, but you know, we've had two in a row, and so you know, we're hoping that we don't continue to see that increase in frequency because that obviously would have more of a long term effect. Would be nice to get a break, Matt could have you said anything? Yet you're all heads You're all head set it up. Um. You know, I've been bringing people down to South Florida for a long time, and uh, you know, people obviously have enjoyed, you know, all of the the fruits of the environment, et cetera. And you know, I've been very overwhelmed on you know, the overall complexity of all of the issues. And we spent a lot of time with the locals and everyone's got an opinion. It's refreshing to know that there's you know, the restoration plan in place, and uh, the complexity. I don't think the rest of the US really understands all of the constituents and UM, stakeholders, did you say and just appreciate your work? Well, thank you well And I think, UM, what what your comments brought up an interesting point, So stakeholders, it's not just the state in the federal government. There's actually another nation. We have tribal nations, UM, and the Everglades that are also involved in this process. Um. You have the Mikasuki and seminoles so UM. That kind of adds a whole another complexity of trying to have actual international negotiations, if you will. UM, I think from the Everglades perspective, and we keep talking about restoration, and I don't want folks to get the idea that it's this like blighted landscape, UM, you know, not worthy of of of seeing until it's fixed, because it is. It is the most awe inspiring place that I think I've ever been in State Florida. For sure. UM. To see the vastness of it, even as it exists now is truly overwhelming, and it the miles of grass and water. I mean, it is truly a river of grass and um. So even as it exists now, it's definitely worth a visit and a look to appreciate, um, appreciate it as a wonder. Oh yeah, you totally get it looking at it. It's not it's like a fixer upper. It's not like a burned down structure. Yeah, but I think when people think of, well, we've got to restore it, you know that it's just this, it's like it's a concrete jungle or something. Now like, no, I get it, man, I get it, and we need to Yeah, it's it's all inspiring. Yeah, it's not like you're trying to say you're not You're not trying to get someone to sort of imagine it's beauty. It's beauty still is right there demonstrated. We just want to make sure we can continue it and keep it long term. And depending on who you're talked to, some people describe as extremely sensitive and then others that it has a resiliency to it that has withstood, you know, all the historical impacts that you talked about. So it's kind of hard to reconcile between both. Yeah. I think as much as we've messed it up, it is amazing that it is still there and still beautiful and still inspiring. Alright, Kelly Ralston, Oh do you have time? I still have one last question? Just like all right, No, that's fine, go ahead. I just like, no, I'm not a hurry Okay, I just did that. I said her name like in an endy way. Yeah, that's why you jumped in. You sense that. Yeah, Um, what do you what species do you like to chase? And what's your next I'm more of a sure girl. Um. We're hoping to well. I will be down at Miami Boat Show um coming up next week, which is put on by a nationally manufacturer association. Pretty amazing thing. Um. And then we're going to head down to the Keys and see what we can find. Depending on the weather, we may try to go a little further offshore, but probably will be more in shore species. So that myself a snook, that's what you want to catch. They're my favorite. I like to eat them. I have not eaten them. I just bring myself. I know they taste from whatever. It's only they're amazing Itelie. Yes, Uh yeah, one of the best things in the ocean. Yeah, I'm not to have a king that runs. Everyone runs out there and kills a snook. We'll just follow your bag limits in season. In season. Yeah, we had some real issues with snook back in when they had that really sustained um cold weather event had a huge killoff closed season. Um Atlantic was less impacted than the Gulf side. Um so. But we're finally now back into a cycle of having open season for snook. But you can catch them around. They're fun catch. I was reading to you'r a fifth generation Floridian, I am, So you go back to like Cobza Devaca. Yeah, yeah, we're I got I got Orange Grove folks back in central Florida, and I've got Bristol, Florida is up in the Panhandle, right around the Apological River. They were farmers and used to ferry folks back and forth across the river. How old were when you caught your first fish? Do you remember? I think we probably went to Lake Hall in Tallahassee, So I was probably under ten when I caught one there, and we used to get whiting down at the coast all the time. That was fried him up for breakfast the fish. Yeah my kids, My kids get af from when we go to Florida. Yeah, those are those are good times. But yeah, so all that was when I was really young, and then um kind of came back to it and graduate school I actually worked on pufferfish ball things, and gradually did worked on um, well the technical terms functional morphology, so you'd actually you figure out how they were eating, and then you could use the patterns that you saw in the muscles and the um skeletal structures to kind of look at evolution of fish feeding, which is kind of a cool thing. I recently read a structural morphology paper round the hinge Functions of a large mouthed bass really was author, but everybody them. It was people studying, people who study like like mechanical engineers looking at the kind of baffling hinge structure of a large mouth bass mouth. Yeah we did that, um, but more from looking at muscle activity and how the bones in the face were arranged. Um, but yeah, there's there a large mouth bass's mouth can do some interesting stuff. Look at a sling jaw rass. That's even more amazing that they can basically take their whole mouth and shoot it out underneath. Yeah, and then create like a ton of inward, like a ton of suction. Yeah, it's suction pressure. That basically all right, I'm gonna say your name in an endy wady ready, Kelly Rolston. No, that's the beginning way. I can't even do it. Can you do it? Because the beginning. If I was the beginning, I'd be like Kelly Rolston, Yes, but I want to end at some like Kelly. No, that's the beginning is Can you do it anyway? I did it a minute ago. Yeah, you had us all. I can't think of how to do it. Just edit it back in and you clip that chunk out and pack it in here. Thank you very much for joining us, Kelly Ralston, Pleasure American Sport Fishing Association. Keep Florida fishing, um and if you keep Florida fishing, you're kind of keeping America fishing. Thank you for joining us. Thanks so much,