Video Script: Sebastian, Part 3
Florida Waterfront Communities’ Commercial Fishing Heritage
Video Script
- Title: Florida's Fishing Traditions: Sebastian, Part 3
- Type: Informational
- Length: 10:35
- Year: 2009
Ruth Stanbridge: I can remember we went up to see Alan Shepard go around. He was going around a few times and he’d come back down. And we took the dirt road, it was called Jungle Trail. It was a county road.
Barbara Smith Arthur: There were two deep ruts that formed the road, and it was high in the middle. And you usually didn’t meet any other traffic. But if you did, you timed it so that you could get out on, on a clearing in the palmettos at the same time that the other vehicle was coming and you put the left front wheel into the right rut, and they would do the same, and you’d quick just jostle each other and get back into the two ruts again. Sometimes you got stuck.
Ruth Stanbridge: Everybody got stuck on that road that had taken the children up to see the spaceship go up. And he was already back down, and we were still stuck on the dirt road, Jungle Trail. So it was a, a paradox here, you know, we were going into space, but we still had dirt roads, major roads in our county. It was our A1A.
Narrator: Since the days steamboats first traversed its waters, the Indian River Lagoon had changed very little. Sea grasses along the river bed and mangroves along the shorelines provided plenty of habitat for the fisheries. And while activities around Cape Canaveral put America’s Space Coast on the map, the waters around the Sebastian Inlet were set in timeless beauty.
Richard Thomas: The river shore was very pristine, and there was a lot of greenery, coconut palms, sable palms, you know, there was no Brazilian peppers back then. And it was, it was wild. And nobody built right on the river shore.
John Devane Sr.: Well, you didn’t see many houses. You saw no high-rise. All the bridges were wood. There was no causeways. There was no dredge holes, and there was no filling -- bulkhead filling in. That’s, that’s been done in the, in the last 30 or 40 years.
Narrator: In the 1960s, the lagoon’s unspoiled shore line faced a disturbing threat: the State of Florida was selling the surrounding wetlands and islands for development. By buying the rights to the bottomlands of the lagoon, developers could dredge and fill along the river to build up waterfront property. These methods, however, threatened the very existence of the nation’s first sanctioned wildlife refuge, Pelican Island
In 1881, a German immigrant named Paul Kroegel arrived in Sebastian. From his homestead, he could look out over a five-acre mangrove island in the Indian River Lagoon, where thousands of brown pelicans and other water birds would roost and nest. But when bird feathers became highly prized in the fashion industry, Kroegel witnessed the slaughter of countless herons, egrets, spoonbills and pelicans for their plumage. Taking an interest in protecting the island’s birds, and without state or federal laws to back him, Kroegel would sail out to Pelican Island with his gun and stand guard.
A well-known ornithologist of the day, Frank Chapman, discovered that Pelican Island was the last rookery for brown pelicans on Florida’s east coast. Along with fellow bird protection advocate, William Dutcher, Chapman met with President Theodore Roosevelt and appealed to his strong conservation ethic. On March 14, 1903, President Roosevelt designated Pelican Island as the Nation's first National Wildlife Refuge.
With a monthly salary of one dollar, Kroegel was hired as the first national wildlife refuge warden. With his gun, boat and badge, Paul Kroegel stood watch over the island until his retirement from federal service in 1926.
When the dredge and fill plan began in the 1960s, a group of local commercial fishermen, citrus growers, and sportsmen banded together to form The Indian River Preservation League. They worked diligently to protect the island that had over half a century earlier started the US Conservation movement.
Charlie Sembler: Being commercial fishermen, obviously, and on the water every day, they saw things and they knew how the environment worked. They knew how things were linked together, and they knew when one of those links was broken, what the potential could be.
Narrator: The League convinced the State of Florida to stop the sale of these important wetlands as well as to set aside 422 acres of mangrove islands as part of the refuge. Through their efforts, Pelican Island was preserved. But other areas along the Indian River continued to be developed. Paved roads and a new causeway opened the inlet to a new wave of growth. With its abundant estuary and access to the ocean, the Lagoon regained its reputation as a “sportsman’s paradise.” Marinas and condominiums became gathering spots for vacationers and sport fisherman. And the river, once a serene waterway for small commercial fishing boats, began to move at a different pace.
Nicky Hill: You would be out there sometimes a week or two in the river and never see another boat. And that was awesome. Now you’ve got to, it’s like being on the freeway. You’ve got to check behind you and to the side or you’ll get run over, literally. You know, somebody doing 40, 50 knots.
Charlie Sembler: Sebastian, growing up, was a typical small town, American waterfront, fishing village, if you will. That was a fantastic place to grow up. Um, it was no rules, um, other than listen to your parents and do what your parents told you to do. The freedom was enormous. You could come and go. But it was all based around family and work and friends. It was a great place to grow up as a boy.
Johnny Devane Jr.: On Saturday mornings, I had my household chores to do. My mom had chores for me and my sister to do and then after then I could go to the fish house to play; that’s what we would do. We would, hunting fiddler crabs on the river shore and fish off the dock, laying on the dock, fishing on the pilings for sheep head, mangrove snappers. And then when my dad would come in, I would have to go catch bait with him.
Johnny Devane Sr.: As a little fella, he went fishing with me, he'd get seasick, so sick I thought he was gonna die, of course, I used to get seasick, too.
Johnny Devane Jr.: I hated the seasick part, but I loved the fishing. And, so I just stayed with it.
Johnny Devane Sr.: But it gave them something to do; he could earn his earn money.
Charlie Sembler: Not only were we fishing and catching fish and having fun, but as young boys and teenagers, we were making, very good wages.
Neal Adams:
I would actually ride my bike down to the fish house and I’d take the boat out and I’d fish. And when I got to high school, I would fish, I would go out and make a first set at night, and I’d have to be back home by 10 o’clock. So I’d go out and I’d fish. And I started making money in high school. I made enough money in high school to buy my first truck.
Ed Silva: It was all there was to do when we were growing up around here and kept us all out of trouble, kept some money in our pockets, and you know, kept us honest and kept us fishing, and, I mean, that's about all we had to do.
Charlie Sembler: And it wasn’t necessarily the money, although that was, for young folks, it was nice, but it was, it was who we are. It was the fiber and the fabric of what we’d always done and who we were. It was a, it was a great time. We were net fishermen, mullet, mackerel, bluefish. And there’s, it’s hard to describe into words, but there is nothing like it.
Narrator: In November of 1994, a long-standing debate regarding the harvesting of Florida’s nearshore finfish came to a head with the passing of Amendment Three of the Florida Constitution. The amendment, which came to be known as “The Net Ban,” was implemented in July of the following year. Citing the over-harvesting of nearshore species, environmental groups and sport fishermen lobbied for the banning of gill and trammel nets in Florida waters. The effects to Florida’s commercial fishing industry were devastating.
Charlie Sembler: When the net ban came down, it was a crippling blow to our family. It’s what we had done for almost a century, and realizing at that point in time that Florida changed from when we first came to Sebastian in the early 1900s.
Roland Hill: When the net ban started was the worst year, I think, of my life, because I had fishermen that all they'd every done was fish and some of them were 55, 60 years old, and tears would come in their eyes and their wives would cry and it was terrible.
Johnny Thomas: And it was all I ever wanted to do is retire fishing. If you call it retire, because I’ve known fisherman being 90 years old and still going. So, just like me, I’m 67 now. I figured I had me another 23 years, at least, you know, of fishing that I could have gone.
Narrator: The effect of the net ban on Sebastian was swift and devastating. Many commercial fishermen were forced to work onshore to make ends meet. The once impressive fleet was cut down to a handful of boats. Most of the remaining turned to hand-line mackerel fishing in the Atlantic.
Albert Quatraro: And once the net ban in state waters went in, the fish houses really were in trouble because all they had to depend on was the hand line king mackerel fisherman. And now they're sitting on a piece of property that's worth millions of dollars, dealing a few hand line king mackerel, and what happened was most of them sold out and they're fancy marinas and restaurants now.
