Video Script: Sebastian, Part 2
Florida Waterfront Communities’ Commercial Fishing Heritage
Video Script
- Title: Florida's Fishing Traditions: Sebastian, Part 2
- Type: Informational
- Length: 9:10
- Year: 2009
Narrator: As the industry grew, fishing communities along the Indian River Lagoon began to revisit an age-old desire: to cut an inlet through the barrier island to gain access to the fisheries of the Atlantic Ocean.
Ruth Stanbridge: It started with the Ais Indians; they lived on the barrier island. They were here when the Spanish came with the 1715 fleet. And the reason I bring that up, because they were always trying to get from the river over to the ocean with their boats. And they would haul the boats over the barrier island in the narrow spots to get into the river. So when the first settlers came down the river and they fished and they saw right across that little spit of land was an ocean with fish in it. They were forever trying to get across, too.
Narrator: Separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a barrier island, the Indian River Lagoon stretches from Cape Canaveral south to Jupiter Inlet. The region is so large that it spans two climate zones; the northern end of the lagoon is home to a variety of species that may range all the way through the Carolinas up to New Jersey; the southern end is sub-topical, housing a diversity of species found in South Florida and the Caribbean. The creation of the Sebastian Inlet introduced a flow of saltwater into the center of the freshwater lagoon. The brackish water allowed the Indian River to become the most species-diverse lagoon in North America.
Ruth Stanbridge: The St. Sebastian River, which provides a tremendous amount of freshwater, makes the brackish possible. I mean, you may have areas that are more fresh or more salt, but you have these species of fish that actually adapt and that causes a diversity in the lagoon that you don’t find normally in other places. I mean, we have tarpon, which is considered saltwater, from way up the St. Sebastian River.
Dr. Peter Barile: So we wouldn't have some species like some of these grunts, snappers and such, and groupers in the lagoon at all if we didn't have these Oceanic inlets where the adults need to come in, have access to these coastal nurseries and then once those young species grow up and they return to the open ocean.
Narrator: A number of attempts to open the inlet from 1881 to 1915 were foiled when sand washed in by the tides closed each breach almost as quickly as it was cut. But by 1918, entrepreneur and inventor Roy Couch began digging the permanent cut that would finally connect the Indian River Lagoon with the Atlantic Ocean.
Charlie Sembler: My great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather both had worked on it. Um, and they did that with mule pans and shovels and picks. The hydraulic dredges, when that came around in like the 1919 era.
Narrator: By 1924 the inlet was open to navigation. However, despite a protective jetty, recurring sandbars forced the inlet to be closed and re-dug several times over the next seventeen years. But in 1941, the communities around the lagoon finally allowed one last sandbar to form and close the inlet, not out of frustration, but out of fear.
Ruth Stanbridge: In World War II, they actually allowed it to close, because we had U-boats, German U-boats offshore, and they were afraid that they would actually come into the inlet, into the lagoon. But it was so important that after the war, the Corps of Engineers actually got involved in maintaining and keeping that inlet open.
After the sand was cleared and the jetties strengthened, the inlet was reopened in 1948, and has remained open ever since. Once again the Atlantic fisheries were an easily accessible option for Sebastian’s commercial fishermen.
Johnny Devane Sr.: According to what the weather was or what was available, a lot of time fished in the ocean; or we’d fish here in the river, go catch roe mullet, or earlier in the season catch spots with a gill net. So you had something that you could do all year around, if you wanted to, and bring home a paycheck.
Narrator: Most fishermen were paid for their catch by full-service fish houses that sprang up along the Indian River Lagoon. Here fishermen would tie up their boats, dry and repair their nets, and gather ice and supplies for their next fishing trips. While they did so, dockside workers would unload the fish directly off the boats and carry them to the fish house. There they would be sorted, weighed, packed with ice into large barrels, and shipped off to market every day. For decades the fish houses were the hub of the commercial fishing industry.
Charlie Sembler: The waterfront was the heartbeat of this community for obvious reasons. That’s where most of the commerce took place. That’s where most of the jobs were.
John Devane Sr.: Sebastian didn’t have many stores in it or anything, a little hardware store and a little old dry good store and a, and a grocery store and a post office and an ice plant that the power company owned and ran. And they made ice, fish ice, and the fish houses would have to go over and get big blocks of ice.
Coolidge Judah: They had an ice plant downtown, you'd go down and buy your ice, it was 300- pound cake of ice.
Viola Judah: They’d have to go the ice plant and get this ice and take it down to the dock. And then you had a thing to chisel the ice. You get it to where you could pack the fish.
Richard Thomas: Here, I was a kid with a chipper, the most dangerous instrument, I’d say, created by man to cut ice and to shave it. And you’d have to straddle that thing. My mother would always count my toes when I came home, because she knew what I was doing behind her back.
Johnny Devane Sr.: A lot of fish back then were shipped in barrels, 200-pound barrels and had to go to the railroad, had a depot and, right to the railroad track in Sebastian. The steam engine from Miami on 29 would come by late in the afternoon. Usually, he was always two or three hours late. And they would take and load those fish up in those boxcars, barrels of fish, and ship them to New York.
Narrator: Day in and day out, trains carried fresh fish to the northern markets, and Sebastian’s fisherman worked tirelessly to make sure there was a steady supply.
Johnny Thomas: But a typical week for a fisherman was seven days. And it usually, for me, I was very nocturnal, so it was from first dark to daylight. And that usually was, they used to call me the vampire, because a lot of times I came out at midnight, you know, after it was dark and so forth. And that’s, I’d fish from then till daylight and be home before the sun came up.
Nicky Hill: It’s just one of those jobs that you’ve got to love it or you need to get out of it. And it’s not a job; it’s a life. And it really affects your family, you know, like a, you have to have a special spouse to be a fisherman’s wife, because it’s a lot of time.
Tim Adams: But generally, you’re putting in 12, 15 hours a day hook and line fishing in the summer months. It’s generally long days, there’s very few short days in commercial fishing. And if you’re not fishing, you’re always working on a boat or taking care of some gear of some type. It’s never ending.
Narrator: But every now and then the fishing community would come together and relax. At these times the fish houses would take on a new role.
John Devane Jr.: We’d have big island parties, the Semblers would, probably a couple times a month. And everyone would bring a covered dish and come out to the local spoil islands, and it was a real nice time being a kid growing up barefooted around the fish house.
Charlie Sembler: The fish houses in the Sebastian area was, was really, it was a social place for barbecues and, um, impromptu oyster roasts. Sometimes there would be a little singing going on. Every now and then, there may be a little scuffle going on. But it was the focal point. It was the center of town. It’s where everything happened. It was where the activity happened.
Tim Adams: I think anywhere that you go in the State of Florida, where you have a commercial fishing village, a commercial fishing heritage, and a culture of people who have been there for generations of time, they’re like a family. They may not get along all the time. Of course, family members don’t. But you will find that there’s a sense of community in any one of these little villages that you go to, a very tight knit, sense of community. And, and I’m glad that it’s that way, because we try to protect what we have. We try to keep our identity. And unfortunately, in Florida today in these coastal communities, that’s rapidly disappearing.
