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Shredded by Hurricanes: Cedar Key cleaning up marine debris

Volunteers on airboats remove tons of nets
Capt. Neill Holland, President Ocean Aid 360.
Posted 10:42 AM, Jan 29, 2025
and last updated 11:37 PM, Jan 29, 2025

CEDAR KEY, Fla. — If you've never been to Cedar Key, Florida, it is safe to say you are missing out. The waterways surrounded by sandbars and towering mangroves top the list as one of Florida's most beautiful places.

In recent years, hurricanes have wreaked havoc on the people who call Cedar Key home and the aquaculture farms in the Gulf of Mexico.

ABC Action News reporter Michael Paluska got an exclusive look at the massive cleanup effort by locals, volunteers, non-profits, and state agencies to remove marine netting from shellfish and clam farms about a mile and a half offshore.

"We've talked to some locals who told us the surge was as high as 12-13 feet, and I believe it," Captain Neill Holland, President of Ocean Aid 360, told Paluska. "Some of the aquaculture equipment was carried in on wind and waves and deposited way up in the tree line, as you can see here, Michael."

Paluska profiled the non-profit in 2023 during their Ghost Trap Rodeo.

Paluska went on an airboat with Capt. Holland to see the cleanup first-hand while also pitching in to help remove nets from trees, water, and sandbars.

"This workout here is super dirty. We're in the mud a lot of the time. We're sinking down, shin deep, knee deep," Holland said.

Holland couldn't reach some of the netting highs up in trees because the mud acted almost like quicksand. Paluska stepped into a spot that brought mud all the way up to the bottom of his knee.

"To do this type of work takes a very specialized kind of boat, the airboat, to be able

to move up and down the coastline here. We have 10 boats out today. We've been real fortunate in the sense we've been able to mobilize some of this part of Florida's airboat community, and they are out here working with us," Capt. Holland said.

"This all comes from where?" Paluska asked.

"It comes from the aquaculture leases," Holland explained. "They are farming clams and shellfish in this area clams mostly in this area."

"The storms just churned it up and took it?" Paluska asked.

"It's not the fault of the farmers or anything like that whatsoever," Holland said. "The weather was so violent it tore up a lot of the equipment and pushed it right in here to the shoreline. Luckily, we can kind of map the way the storm moved through the area and have a good sense of where the plastics and aquaculture equipment has moved up into the shoreline. This netting is used over top of the leases out here so that fish and other critters aren't pecking at their crop basically and eating their crop."

A number of state agencies, including the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and FWC, assisted in the debris removal located in the Big Bend Seagrass Aquatic Preserve.

Various state agencies, including the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and FWC, assisted in removing debris within the Big Bend Seagrass Aquatic Preserve.

Ocean Aid 360 was awarded the contract for the cleanup.

According to Jennifer McGree with the FWC Marine Debris Program:

"This Cedar Key clam cover net project is funded through the FWC Marine Debris Program and is one of several projects the program is funding to assist agency and industry in addressing aquaculture marine debris from the recent hurricanes. Funding was awarded to the FWC-MDP from the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission as part of a partnership with the Gulf of Mexico Alliance (GOMA) who received NOAA BIL funding to address marine debris across the Gulf states. It truly is a collaborative effort!"

Marine debris removal isn't isolated to Cedar Key. Hurricanes past and present have caused devastation across our state.

Paluska went out with crews in 2023 to clean up after Hurricane Ian. Anyone interested in donating to or volunteering with Ocean Aid 360 can click here.

Since Oct. 2018, the non-profit has removed more than 450,000 pounds of plastic and derelict fishing gear. And the work continues across the state.

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's marine debris Program, also Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's statewide coordinator for marine debris and their team at FWC, they've worked really hard to make sure that organizations like ours that have experience in this realm, and organizing at the community level and organizing captains and specialized equipment, that we're all working together and that we're in the field and making a positive impact as fast as possible," Capt. Holland said. "We've been doing a lot of work, and we're looking forward to a huge summer event, our largest ever to date, that will be focused on the lower Florida Keys. It's going to be a derelict trap removal. To give you an example, this past May 2024, we cleaned three days with 10 commercial boats. We took in 1002 derelict traps. We had 60,000 pounds of plastics and man-made litter removed from the water, 60,000 pounds in three days. We're about to go for three weeks this summer. So I mean, those numbers are going to be huge."


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