HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Dustin Pack’s office is big: Tampa Bay and its rivers and creeks.
Pack is a fly fishing captain for Fly Tide Fishing Charters. He’s also a board member with Tampa Bay Waterkeeper, a nonprofit “dedicated to improving, preserving and protecting Tampa Bay's watershed.”
“One in five jobs here in Tampa Bay revolve around the water, so it’s a big focal point for people to move here and why people still continue to live here,” Pack said.
Pack, however, says the invaluable resource is under threat as more people move to the area and as more pollution enters the watershed.
“The bay is going in the wrong direction,” Pack said.
His nonprofit has a brand new community-driven solution involving all the people who boat, fish, kayak, and swim.
Wednesday, Tampa Bay Waterkeeper launched a new campaign called the Patrol Program.
The Patrol Program provides people a quick and easy way to report environmental issues they see on Tampa Bay waterways.
The website is now live, but free stickers and other promotional items featuring a QR code should show up at marinas, bait shops, and other places across the region starting in July.
When people scan the QR code, it’ll take them to a single website full of contact information to quickly and easily report issues like algae blooms, sedimentation, sewage leaks, leaking containers, illegal dumping, oil slicks, fish kills, injured wildlife, and sightings of endangered species like sawfish and right whales.
Even for a native-like Pack, that info can be hard to find right now.
“You’d have to do a bunch of Google searches, go to a bunch of websites, go through a bunch of contact information to find that right person or that right contact,” he said.
Pack hopes people will embrace the Patrol Program and embrace being allies for Tampa Bay.
“The more people that move here, the more eyes that we have on the water, and I believe that is the easiest way for us to fix our water quality issues — if enough people, you know, voice their opinions and complain about and report things that they see on the water, I think that puts the county or the city, you know, pressure on them to, hey, this is stuff that we really need to fix, and we really need to focus on,” he said.
To learn more about the Patrol Program or report an environmental issue, click here.
