Well welcome to Perspectives online and on air from WFSU Public Media I’m Tom Flanigan our program using the zoom platform was pre-recorded on Tuesday the 26th of January for playback on Thursday the 28th the show to appear on both WFSU FM and our WFSU Public Media Facebook page well last week we talked about a project to restore the historic squares in downtown Apalachicola Florida and of course there likely would not even be an apolitical of Florida without the river and the bay that also bear that name and those watery resources if you've been keeping up with this have been quite a topic of interstate contention for literally decades and there are also some late breaking developments in that dispute as well as new initiatives to kind of more carefully examine what's going on with this remarkable and complex eco and economic system and how it might be restored and preserved for everyone to enjoy so we have a phenomenal panel here let's go around and meet everybody if you have a moment to share with us on that score we say hi first to uh kind of the progenitor of the whole project here George Ackerman who uh joined Apalachicola riverkeeper oh my gosh just over three years ago and serves as river keeper and executive director and you may remember George brand north Florida eco-tourism company for nearly a decade where she spent time learning about the river and has done the river trek and all of this kind of thing Georgia thank you for putting all this together and it's just a delight to see your face again thanks tom I’m glad to be here appreciate it you also brought some great friends too uh Sandra Brooke is a faculty member at the FSU coastal and marine lab since 2013 and her research has been focusing on hard bottom communities in both shallow and deep waters specifically understanding their distribution abundance and physiology and also she is involved in the estuarine ecosystems as the lead investigator in the apological base system initiative or ABSI Sandra we want to hear all about that today and thank you for coming on and explaining it to us here in a few minutes thank you for having us Jim Estes from the Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission where he has been for nearly 35 years and it's also predecessor agency for uh us old timers the Florida freshwater fish and game commission sometimes Jim we kind of make the error and harken back to the old title there on the agency but uh during that time you have accumulated a vast treasure trove of experience and I’m happy that you're here to share that with us today thank you tom Anita grove joins us as well now you may recall the last time we had Anita on as she was heading up the uh the chamber of commerce over in Apalachicola uh but she also has been very much involved in the overall political aspect there because she is now an Apalachicola city commissioner and in that instead she joins us today on perspectives Anita always a delight to see you good to see you tom and thank you for having us well you know it wouldn't it would not be Apalachicola without its historic uh industry of record which is of course the seafood industry and a fourth generation seafood worker from Apalachicola joins us in the persona of Shannon Hartsfield his family's livelihood has always been tied to Apalachicola bay and he is president of the franklin county seafood workers association also chairs the seafood management assistance resource and recovery team and has been working with scientists from the university of Florida and is helping out with the initiative that we just talked about the uh the advocacy research that's going on and Shannon good to see you sir and can't wait to pick up on what exactly is going on with the gulf right now we understand there's a moratorium we'll get into that too okay yes sir thank you all right thank you sir the chair of the franklin county commission is our guest as well on this program Ricky jones lifetime resident of east point his parents owned an oyster house and retail market for uh most life and I bet you I just bet you commissioner that over the years my family has stopped by that market to pick up fresh shrimp and and other delights of the deep on multiple occasions thank you sir for joining us today thank you tom good to be here well I guess that takes just full circle then to exactly what the initiative here that we uh mentioned at the beginning is all about uh precisely what is the Apalachicola bay system initiative and also why is it needed we've had several kinds of things like this over the years georgie you want to start us off on this and what's the genesis how did this particular thing get started most of us on this panel tom serve as community advisory board committee members for the ABSI project if you will and I’m going to hand it right over to dr Brooke so she can give the overarching view of how the project came into being and then each of us are glad to talk about our role in the group as well um Sandra yes thank you Georgia so the Apalachicola base system initiative um it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue so we call it ABSI for short the yes the bay has been studied a great deal uh a lot of the work was done a long time ago you know back in the 80s and 90s there has been a lot of work done since then and there's been a lot of work done since the uh fishery crashed in 2012 and 13. what often happens with science though is that it doesn't make it into the arena where it can be applied by managers resource managers and so part of the ABSI process is going to be taking research that is pertinent and meaningful for management and restoration and incorporating that into management plans what we are trying to do at the moment is understand what caused the decline and everybody has a number of different ideas about what caused the oysters to crash but usually when a system crashes it it's not just one thing so it's a multitude of things so to understand what happened and then to try and understand why it is that despite best efforts the oysters haven't come back so these are things that we're looking at and that information will feed directly into management okay from the state's viewpoint then Jim Estes let's talk about the uh the fish and wildlife conservation commission there um part of the solution of course the current moratorium we're talking about here I take it then that this is going to be trying to look at a multitude of impacting factors when it comes to what's going on with the lower river and the bay and the estuarine ecosystem that's there right yes sir in fact uh I guess our first step honestly to take some action unfortunately was to suspend a harvest in the bay and that was needed as saunders said that we've done a number of things over the last seven or eight years to try to help the oyster population without impacting the fishermen but things have gotten so bad I would say on the top of my head we've probably lost at least 95 percent of our oysters um prior to that time um in 2012 we had a thousand fishermen out there that were fishing the bay that landed oysters in the bay 2019 we only had 47. and in 2019 we only had four of them that were able to even make eke out a living and so the collapse of the oyster population has affected the economy and it has certainly impacted the culture and so there are some things that we've done in the past which include putting culture or shell or substrate on the bottom that just simply don't work now and so we're trying to figure out how we can adapt that and make it work handoff then to Shannon Hartsfield are you among the four that are still making the living from this or are you pretty much wiped out as far as the seafood business that you have been pursuing is concerned Shannon now I actually I actually quit harvesting orchards in in Tuesday in the probably middle of 2012. um I started working on trying to rebuild the bay um I worked and ran quite a few programs of using the horseman rebuilding the bay and um and then I worked with the nif with the UF and FWC project for several years um so I’ve been trying to stay close to the bay and anticipate as much as I can in the bay and try to help you know the bait recon recovery um we're seeing a lot of a lot of great things happening right now not because of just the closures just because we've been getting some pretty good river flows in the last couple years and it's changed our bays um a lot of life is coming back in our bay and we're seeing a lot of that so this is a really good thing yeah well it's good to hear that sense of optimism because what we've been hearing at least over the past couple years was hey wild oystering we might as well write that off it's all going to be you know a controlled farm type situation leasing that sort of thing you're saying though there still may be a future for wild seafood in the bay absolutely we've seen a lot of life in the bay um hopefully uh with fwc and you know FSU um the way we're going uh we can help it recover a little quicker you know we don't know when we'll get our next drought season again and that's going to change the dynamics of what's going on in the bay but uh I think it has more of an opportunity to be a commercial harvest again approach we're approaching now well certainly that's going to be of importance to the folks who maybe are not day-to-day involved with the seafood industry I need to grow first for you and then county commissioner uh chair rich Ricky jones along this line the seafood industry was the just about the end all and be all of Apalachicola almost since its founding that has changed in recent years you're more dependent on tourism and a few other things here what does it mean to have though a continued vibrant and uh profitable seafood industry in Apalachicola well um I have I’ve always said you know being the longtime chamber director I would have people tell me oh seafood's dead you know whether it's shrimp or whatever oh it's dead it's not coming back um there and some old-time fishermen one being buddy ward always said that you know things are cyclical especially in the natural world and one year you'll have a great harvest next year you won't you know or next year so one thing I noticed over that long period of time was you know any time you're a small community and you have something to export to the rest of the world especially something that's highly valued as ecological wild caught oysters were um you know you're kind of in the cafe see you have something to give the rest of the world if you're just have people coming in and you're spending the night and uh you know going fishing yeah that's part of our economy but it's still not quite the dollar value that oysters were bringing in and it always um impressed me that we could sell as much as we could grow out of that bay and that they were highly prized all we needed to do was to protect the reputation of apological holiday oysters and you know I mean there were years of 2012 I believe it was eight million dollars um in in docks and um not dockside value but um in pounds of meat harvested that's not in the shell so that's a lot and I think the dockside value um is about nine million dollars I mean that's a lot for a rural community a community of 11 000 people that's a nice industry and it works perfectly with the bay it keeps the bay clean um it you know it's it does impact the bay but in more of a positive way and then it aligns well with tourism so it was a pretty great economy plus our populist likes to be self-employed and most people were self-employed so they've turned to other means of making a living but after we've met with a lot of the oystermen they still want to continue and there is a strong um there's a strong cultural heritage there and I think it all works really well keeping um you know keeping things in line so that they're not overtaxed yeah well you brought up the magic word taxes and uh Ricky jones from the revenue standpoint of franklin county uh that has to have a major interest for you guys because let's face it there's not a whole bunch particularly with the timber industry wiped out as was by hurricane Michael you don't have a lot of kind of hip-pocket uh alternatives when it comes to generating revenue for the county do you uh no so economic diversification has been going to be more important for franklin county than it's ever been but at the same time I don't think the county has given up on the seafood industry whatsoever especially the wild called oyster you know adidas hit on some things that are really right so tourism is more of an it's definitely an import to your economy but the exporting economy is something that that we definitely need in franklin county and I can't think right now off the top of our head seafood would be the only thing that we were really exporting so for community our size or for a county our size to be able to see that come back is definitely a good thing not just for the economy but for the people that are tied to this space people that have spent their life there people like my dad and Shannon’s dead this is pretty much all they've ever done and they can tell you things about that bay and you're like really but it's because they've spent so many countless hours harvesting the wild called oyster that literally millions around the world have enjoyed and I think it needs to come back and I think we're seeing steps in the right direction to do that well one thing that has gone on since time immemorial is the uh the brand of the Apalachicola oyster that is something that has not diminished and you're right Ricky that is known still worldwide and I have people way up north that will call me they know I live down here around the coast and say boy we used to get Appalachian oysters all the time whatever happened to that and they they're still inquiring about it is it is legendary before we get on I just pulled up something that just moved and if we start with you maybe Georgia uh if you can react to this a little bit the state of Georgia has now signed an agreement with the u.s army corps of engineers that for the first time formally ratifies the rights of two suburban Atlantic counties to use lake Lanier for drinking water lake Lanier of course being part of the river system that feeds into the Apalachicola so federal litigation among Georgia Alabama and Florida over who gets to use water in the Apalachicola Chattahoochee flint river system has been ongoing for decades as we mentioned at the outset of the program so any reaction there to what I just read Georgia what do you think that will do if anything um I can't speak to the specifics of that right now tom I can say that litigation affecting our watershed has been going on for over 30 years when we were talking before about oysters as an indica oysters and biological terms are an indicator species right they tell us a lot and um and jimin and Sandra could talk for a long time about this uh with them with biology backgrounds but their indicator species for the health of an ecosystem but they're also an indicator species for the health of franklin county and our economy and our ecology here and just as anecdotally when we had the collapse of the oyster industry and when the fishery collapse was declared in 2013 there was a lot of media attention around it and we were getting inquiries literally from all over the country again oysters being the indicator species currently Florida versus Georgia is will return to the supreme court on February 22nd we could get a resolution shortly after that that remains to be seen but that case has been going on since 2013. so many years of waiting separately in federal courts um apological river keeper and conservation partners have a legal challenge to the army corps of engineers water control manual and as everybody is aware the army corps of engineer is who controls decisions and how water is moved through the reservoirs and ultimately down to the Apalachicola river which sits below the Chattahoochee influence so decisions that are made for this entire watershed that three states share of twenty thousand square mo nearly twenty three excuse me twenty thousand square miles a lot of people are impacted and there's got to be a way to share the water so that we are not heard at the end of the line that fresh water flow making its way down the river out into the flood plain and nourishing the river in the bay is so important you know in fact that fresh water helps the productivity and the health of the west um coast of Florida down to Tampa so it's really important that we take care of it so the health of the Apalachicola river and bay is important to the entire west coast of Florida we know that fresh water flow from the river is important for the productivity of species southward to Tampa so it needs to be taken care of okay on to you then if we could sunder a book when it comes to a follow-up to what some uh Georgia joe said that the conventional wisdom seemed to be at least for the non-scientific among us which is certainly me um that it was just a question of that balance between fresh and salt water that was the real bugaboo bear of Apalachicola bay and having the negative impact on seafood particularly uh bottom dwellers like oysters the project that you're now involved with the ABSI project are you saying that the research you're doing is going to go beyond just that simple equation you're going to be looking at some other things too yes absolutely so there's um a number of things that could have contributed to the loss of oysters within the bay and during the drought season we had a number of bad droughts uh the salinity goes up because the freshwater input is reduced and what happens then is that a number of predators come in to the bay normally those predators would be pushed out by the freshwater but they come back in and especially things like oyster drills they can really do a number on the oysters they're pretty voracious predators so we had that problem but um you know the flow into the river is uh driven by two factors one is climate and the other one is management and of course when we're getting enough rain as Shannon said in the last few years we've had a nice amount of rain and so we are seeing life come back but it hasn't completely fixed the problem and so that sort of implies that that wasn't the only source of the problem we've also had um a situation you know oysters are funny little beasts and that they're not like fishes that you know if you reduce a fish stock then hopefully you take the pressure off and they come back oysters make their own habitat so when the oyster populations go down their habitat goes down and that sort of gets into a spiral because the oysters have to make the reefs and so what we've also seen is that the habitat has deteriorated as well so then when you get into this kind of a toilet bowl type of situation where you've got so few oysters in the bay that they can't produce enough spat to bring the population back up again so it's like this you know number of different things that create a perfect storm and I and I think that's probably where we're at the moment so what we have to do is understand why they're not coming back at the moment is it habitat is it there's not enough animals in the system is it because of the water and how do we maybe work with the army corps to determine um or to come up with some scenarios that that will help us maybe bring down the water when we need it rather than just saying we need more water so we are trying to look at different things that might be influencing the recovery of the oyster populations beyond just the water which is absolutely important and beyond just the current moratorium and gymnastics I believe it was what five years is what we're looking at initially uh it could be longer I’m sure but at least five years for uh putting a kibosh on the harvesting of wild oysters in the bay yes sir we're committed to five years at the most we want to get the restoration going I like Shannon I feel pretty optimistic but just like saunders said this is not an easy thing to figure out why some of the actions that we have taken and not been successful and we need to figure that out in order to responsibly you know spend the money that we got from the national fish and wildlife foundation okay Shannon Hartsfield you literally know just about every square inch of the bottom of that bay what is what is your gut telling you about what's going on down there I don't know it's hard to say one particular I mean it's so much of a change in the last 15 years has happened in our bay um the biggest thing that we that I’ve noticed in the you know over the last few years is we have a hard issue for spat to set and take hold um see you know we're not having the spat like we used to have now we're in the last uh nine months we've seen more stat debate than we have in in eight years so pinpointing something particular is hard to do because there's been so much changes that's happened okay yeah and as um both Sandra and Jim had pointed out it looks like you've got a lot of moving parts in this machine right here it's not just one or two factors it's a bunch of things that are interconnected in ways that hopefully this research will help to figure out and what that what that does um Anita grove back to again just what is your vision for Apalachicola now that you've gone from you know the uh the chamber side over into the city commission side there because we talked about that that really neat plan for the squares and stuff last week but how do you see this impacting the future of Apalachicola which many people said would probably no longer resemble its past well I mean if the project um the abc project is trying to determine where we start there have been restoration efforts done since 2013 we put new bars in we tried uh fossilized shell we tried rock we tried um shell and some of them were working some of them are not like Shannon said we started to see the bay come back and we'd get little tiny oysters about size of a porter and then all of a sudden they wouldn't stick they wouldn't stay so what's causing that and I think at this point since we were fortunate enough to get triumph grant and the FSU marine lab on board to figure out to figure out what's going on what is the best substrate where is the best place to put it uh and instead of because we all don't live under water and we're not oysters so we don't know exactly what the causes are so we can keep coming up with scenarios but we need to test some of them out so now we have some scientists who are part of the project who are doing models on the river um doing models on the bay and as Sandra said you know one of the biggest things is the freshwater inflow that is a big part of our bay I mean it's not just oysters we've lost 40 percent of the tupelo tree forest in the floodplain over the last 20 years so it's stopping finding out what's causing it and then um it I think it is so much of an opportunity that we all believe in and I don't think we do that lightly I think we believe in it because we think it can come back that it is a good component of our economy and I know people who um you know they work in many people who harvest oysters they also flounder they also may clean houses or build houses on the island um they have a multi-income um base but it is I think still a valid way to earn a living and um a very sustainable uh economy which is what most cities look for as a sustainable economy sure we could build up 10 10 buildings and get in call centers and all of that but that's going to pick up and move someday too this is a part of what we do and it blends well with what our bay is but now we have to adjust to the 21st century in that somebody's taking the water from us so we have to figure out how we can make the this restoration stick even with all the parameters we have and just figuring them out is uh not easy but we have a broad-based group of stakeholders myself um the commissioner county commissioner jones Shannon Georgia we have all of these stakeholders who are on the committee asking all these hard questions saying okay what will make it successful what do we need to do when we're at this point and we have um we have some facilitators moving us through monthly meetings to try and come up with um our um ways of addressing all these issues but Sandra can speak to that and we'll get to I yeah go ahead Sandra please comment on that if you would yes I was going to bring up the community advisory board I had forgotten to mention it previously when I was talking about ABSI but it is an absolutely critical component I believe we have around 23 um stakeholders that encompass people like Shannon the oystermen we've got two oystermen we've got seafood industry we have people like Anita and Ricky and Jim you know from the agencies we've got Georgia we have a really good caring informed group of people that know things as individuals that they can contribute to the group I don't know what Shannon knows I could never hope to know what Shannon knows or Jim or Georgia but together they bring that expertise and we talk about things and we hash them out and we they we are going to find a way forward that the stakeholders can buy into just doing science by itself does not necessarily translate to action or anything that people believe in and that's a very important component of what we're trying to do because this is a small community and if we don't have buy-in then you know for management or restoration it's not going to work people have to sort of believe in it and buy into it and abide by the regulations that come up so this is absolutely critical and I’ve learned an incredible amount from just being around these people so um and it's going to continue beyond the life of ABSI we're looking at ways of doing that so we don't just produce this thing and then have it languish if this works if we do see and a resurrection of the seafood industry starting with the oysters and then the entire ecosystem ultimately comes back to even a fraction of what it was before and let me ask you uh chair jones since you've been involved with the seafood industry for so many years as has Mr. Hartsfield here are the people to make that seafood industry thrive and profitable still going to be around a lot of younger folks as we've seen the seafood industry kind of piddle out over the years have moved away because the jobs weren't available all those seafood houses that were lined along 98 all the way from there from med art over through um Carrabelle and east point and over to St. George island and ultimately to Apalachicola most of those gone nowadays will there be enough people to revive the industry that depends on seafood that's the dollar question because uh at the end of the day well I can just tell you tom I can remember just like Shannon probably does growing up here in east point which we both did there were as many as 26 seafood houses just in east point alone but you also were talking about a time that the only economy in franklin county was seafood there was no other economy so yes uh having a place for it to come back to I guess is the key phrase that we're looking at here and I can tell you that something that the county commission has been focused on we haven't talked about changing zoning or doing different things uh if the industry comes back it has to have somewhere to come back to so when I mentioned earlier economic diversification it's not excluding commercial seafood it's in addition to bringing back commercial safety to franklin county so that becomes an overall piece part of a much larger puzzle than is what you're kind of looking at yes sir okay hey we have a very special perspectives and we're so glad you could be a part of it both online and on air here and if you miss all or part of any of our offerings they're available online not just on the wFSU.org website but also on our WISE Public Media Facebook page we try to have the most recent program up on both places just as quick as we can after it airs on the radio so you can revisit it as many times as you'd like and pick up on some things maybe that that you possibly had missed before well Georgia Ackerman as far as Apalachicola river keeper is concerned which you're the exec director here you see this this project moving forward what specifically here do you want Sandra and Jim and the other research components of this the people involved in that to come back to you and then what happens to that information how does that help besides having a whole bunch of three-ring binders sitting around just chock-full of all kinds of good information and charts and graphs and that sort of stuff tom I haven't seen a three ring binder and I don't know when everything's electronic it's all in a drop box and all these other fabulous storage places so always remember to back up that hard drive is what I would remind everybody because when you crash your laptop and lose all your stuff it's unpleasant um riverkeeper one of the roles that we play in terms of participating in the community advisory board is um the bringing the message of the connectivity of the river in the bay and we all understand that this is um you know a connected system in the river and the bay um river in the bay are connected system we also interact regularly with um members of the Apalachicola Chattahoochee flint stakeholders group which is a tri-state group so we try to bring in um topics and ideas and things that are happening there and then part of my job as riverkeeper of course being up and down the watershed and interacting with other counties we try to bring in some messaging there riverkeeper is a nonprofit organization and we're membership based so part of what we do is try to speak up for the river so to speak as part of the waterkeeper alliance so the learning experience as well as Sandra has mentioned getting to hear from other experts in the different fields from folks that are at the table at the advisory board is also really helpful in terms of hearing different perspectives if you will okay and uh Sandra Brooke take us out on the into the bay in the river here for uh an hour or two here how does it work how does the accumulation of this research data take place okay so George is right you know we produce a whole lot of graphs and a whole lot of excel spreadsheets and that in itself is not terribly useful but um so what we're doing with that is integrating that information into a number of platforms or models that can be used so for example we have two hydrodynamic modelers and one of them is looking at flows through the watershed and the other one is looking at how the river and the ocean interact in the bay and so rather than just looking at a whole pile of spreadsheet what we see is this dynamic system that the modelers can query and so we can say if we have x amount of water flowing in what is the salinity like likely to be over here in on this oyster reef or what's it likely to be over there on that reef and so we can play around with this information and come up with different scenarios of if we have a dry year what happens there may be better places to restore if we look into the future and see we're not going to get as much water so maybe those old places that were fantastic oyster reefs aren't that way anymore so we can use these what we call decision support tools to try and drive some of our you know decisions about management and restoration and that's just one example you know we have predictive habitat models that we're generating we're trying to work out how the reef heights changed over time which will inform restoration so that's the kind of what I’m hoping the difference will be between and sort of your normal grant type system is that that information will be fed directly into support tools that management and restoration can use good effect so we want the data to be useful so that's kind of the ultimate goal and then with the community advisory board we'll take the good parts of those tools and the and the options that they come up with and the community advisory board said no we don't want to do this part but let's do that instead and we can take that and drive it forward hopefully to a good end so Shannon can get back out in the water again if I can tell he's itching to get back out again but one wonderful thing about science is that it has an awful lot to say about places other than where it originated Jim Estes I’m thinking with the multitude of river and bay systems we have all over Florida what's going on with ABSI here may have applicability to other places around the state too that may have a seafood industry or some other factors of economic development that are useful to that particular place do you see some cross-pollination going on here yes sir absolutely in fact we have oyster populations um all along the east coast of the united states and certainly in the gulf of Mexico that have that have some needs and the things that we're learning here certainly should help inform what we can do in other places by taking some active action so yes sir you're exactly right okay terrific and that also means again back to Anita grove and uh and let's talk about uh what you see I guess part again of that overall mosaic of industry of uh economic development that taking place within apological or perhaps not to the degree that it was historically but uh moving forward and being a part of that tourism industry do you see maybe a revival of like seafood houses raw bars those kinds of things popping up once we get the uh out from under this coven situation here uh starting to return to Apalachicola proper definitely we haven't lost a lot of our restaurants in terms of because of the oyster collapse we've been serving the aquaculture oysters from alligator point also we've always depended on oysters from Texas and Louisiana because certain times a year with the demand is just so much more than we're able to provide but um certainly I don't think the infrastructure to serve the oysters nor the reputation has left us I’m being the head of the chamber I had a unique perspective I actually had two men fly here from new Zealand and they were coming to the states trying oysters all over the country they had landed on the west coast and rented a car and they were going everywhere Apalachicola was one of their premier destinations so there is a strong interest and anybody who's ever eaten any of our oysters knows that they are just superb so I think if we can get the oysters back um we'll definitely the desire will be there and one thing I was um an analogy came to mind when sander was talking um just so you understand the committee and this project many times we've had university students and faculty come in and do studies but they're might be done separately from other things this particular study and committee it's sort of like a design build project we're starting with nothing and all of these people who are coming in Shannon and Jim and Georgia and Ricky they all have experience years and years of experience they also have different uh life experience and data they bring to the table so all of that's being worked into this plan and I actually this morning have been working on the successor committee to this committee so that when this project is has been quote unquote completed we'll have another body that will be associated with the state of the agencies the funders and we'll keep it going uh beyond just this project because we all realize being here for a long time that the plans can be made and put on the shelf and that's not going to do us any good and we're going to see some changes as far as even if you disregard climate change completely there's still going to be some uh should we say modifications a situation down on the gulf even when you have a uh heavy storm that it blows through Shannon Hartsfield what was that was that really gratifying for you that very often you know academic research is on one level and really practical first-hand knowledge of a situation never the twain shall meet when you were brought on board here to be part of this whole situation and for them to tap your expertise and long knowledge as to here's exactly what I see going on in this area you know um when I took over the safety work association president I took over as my livelihood trying to help my livelihood so I took the opportunity to work with all of these different agencies that's coming in and learn from them uh when we put the smart group together uh when was we was asking fwc and and fdax and and all these questions you know was doing it to learn but it helped us to understand what was actually getting done you know so that gave us the opportunity to step forth to anticipate in all of this you know so I I’ve jumped in with both feet you know and not look backwards you know because I see myself back on that bay uh ocean again um I still have my I’ll have all my vessels all working order uh I go out on the water with FSU whatever chance I get and uh and so I’m you know I’m dedicated you know 100 dedicated I got a lot of family and friends once we back out on the water uh there's a lot of guys that's down in other areas that normally works here you know just putting the pressure in other areas uh that's harvesting it down you know down south Florida and it's putting a lot more pressure on harvesting down there now because of that but there's a lot of guys that's this this looking forward you know that actually quit Austrian uh before the closure you know because they've seen what was going on and they support this closure uh the handful of guys that's not supporting not the closure is really uh are not looking forward to seeing this bay recover uh they're not they think there's no problem with debate and that's what's finding this hardship to understand some of these guys saying oh it's coming back it's going to come back and yet it's been declining you know the whole time so this is a this is a process and an ongoing thing that I think is going to be good down the road for the future of Apalachicola that that's going to try to once it gets rebuilt to a certain extent to wherever it could be it will maintain because it's going to be something in place to keep from happening what has happened in the past that's a really good point and uh Ricky jones if I can ask you is that is that a hard sell job with some other folks who still are attached to the seafood industry to let them know that hey this is one way to move forward productively to try to recapture at least a part of what historically has been there and here's how y'all can help out with that yeah it's it might be a little bit but here's the thing you have to find out what's the right and best thing to do and you have to pursue that uh so I think we're on a steady course you know there are always some that will be for or against uh anything especially if they deem it to be coming from the government in any way so there's always going to be that issue but you know at the end of the day you have to do what's the right thing to do and if there's a way to bring this baby back in any form like it used to be then we owe it to not only ourselves but to the generations coming after us to do that pursuit it is very much worth the pursuit that is beautifully put folks we're kind of running short of time here let me give everyone an opportunity to kick in any final comments or thoughts that they may have let's start off with you Georgia Ackerman I would just remind everybody that um Florida’s Apalachicola river is the largest in our state in terms of fresh water flow it's a remarkable flood plain it's an incredible bay and I look forward to working with everybody and keeping it protected and making sure our state moves forward on a full-scale restoration plan and we'll also remind you that the Apalachicola river is a great kayaking opportunity too especially once a year with the annual river trek and you can check out the river trek information which is also on the riverkeeper website or just give George a call she'll talk to your hero for at least an hour there Sandra brook from the FSU coastal and marine lab your turn so the fishery closure has really um benefited the research objectives because it takes away the artifacts or the things that happen associated with harvest and it makes it a lot easier for us to interpret what we see because we don't have the harvesting going on but and so that benefits us and that's one thing but I just think it's even though the fishery has declined precipitously and people weren't really making a living I think we need to recognize that it's still incredibly brave of the oystermen to support a closure of their fishery and so um you know there are still some people that are opposed to it and for obvious reasons but you know people like Shannon and the other people that supported it I just think we should acknowledge that it was a it was a brave thing to do and I really hope that um their sort of sacrifices uh helps bring back their fishery thank you well put Jim Estes from the Florida fish and wildlife conservation commission it's up to you sir well I think I think tom you heard a couple themes here I think that one of the themes was is that we have a bunch of people with a bunch of different um expertise that we have working on the bay and I will say that this is a little bit different than how government usually does things a lot of times government puts the government experts up there and they don't really work with some of the stakeholders that are being affected and we certainly with the with the citizens advisory board with absolute we are certainly doing that and I can tell you sir that I’ve been working like I said for 35 years and environmental mostly research honestly um you know I have a master's degree but there's never a time that I go on Apalachicola bay with Shannon that he doesn't teach me something and so the strength of what we're doing is all this expertise and I think that because we have all the all the folks that are going the same direction we're going to get her done very good sir I love the optimism appalachian cola city commissioner Anita Grove your turn man well I echo all the sentiments um brought forth already I do think um you know in the future we're looking for ways to grow more food so we'll be growing food again I think we'll always have an outlet to sell our food and it's a it's a very sustainable crop for Apalachicola bay um it's been good to us for a hundred years I don't think there's any reason to throw it out we just need to figure out how we can as commissioner jones said diversify our economy um also you know take advantage of what we have naturally and get it back and we're all putting a lot of effort to see that we get it back thank you ma'am well it wouldn't be a party of course without the Apalachicola oysters harvested for so many years by folks like Shannon Hartsfield and sir it's your turn yes I’m looking forward to having a future for the first time in a long time um I see a future in the back in the bay um my dad is about to turn 73 years old and I’d love to be able to take him back out with me and harvest horses again with him so this is the first time in a long time that I actually see a future back in the bay thank you sir we'll end up with the chair of the franklin county commission Ricky jones all yours here um I can tell you I’ve been very pleased to be a part of this discussion today and the continuing discussion going on and I’m really excited to see not only what this absolute group and this collection of different agencies from the state level some you know even local government levels to take this plan and turn it into actionable implementation and I like the rest of the group and very excited to see I do believe that there will be another day where oysters are colonel athletic school day wild card oysters I don't believe that the industries are the new industry with aquaculture needs to go away for wildcat to exist or vice versa I think they both have their own merits and their own strengths and I’m looking forward to seeing buckets going out of here again with our label athletics thank you very much sir we appreciate it the story of the Apalachicola base system initiative from a multiple of stakeholders and initiators folks thank you all for coming on perspectives and telling us all about it today our program is brought to you of course by the good folks at wise public media our thanks to Taylor Cox, Paul Dam, Amy Diaz de Villegas, Brandon Brown, Tricia Moynihan and Lydell Rawls our director of content Kim Kelling she's also executive producer I’m Tom Flanigan hey let's get together and chat again next week right here on Perspectives.

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