earlier that day, he had gone to home depot with his crew: shelly, his wife of 42 years, and caleb johnson, a longtime friend. he and johnson loaded up two-by-fours to rebuild the roof that sheltered animals at southern fresh farms, a non-profit educational farm in fort myers. shelly remained in their dodge ram pickup and turned down fox news to answer concerned calls.

she texted a friend coping with the destruction from hurricane ian that pounded the west coast of florida at the end of september. the storm had subsumed her friend’s home in floodwaters. still, he had made the time to check in on the farm. shelly responded with several hearts, and her blue eyes glistened like morning dew. as messages asking to donate surged, so did her tears.

back at their farm, robert leaned over the cherry picker bucket lift, hammering each timber one slab at a time. a-rat-a-tat-tat, an echo of the woodpeckers on the oaks surrounding them. johnson and jake stevens, another friend of the mcmahons since his childhood, stood nearby, the two swapping turns directing the crane and clamping down the wood. manure encircled them, musky, but they didn’t seem to mind. the pair joked that they were dating. stevens had come by with a pack of ale the night before, and “not many people show up with a cold beer for no reason,” johnson said. johnson’s wife, michelle, swept away glass shards by the farm’s central market, where visitors sit on wooden benches and buy harvested crops. the three of them, in cream cowboy hats, guffawed like father and sons.

hurricane ian trampled over 5 million acres of agricultural land in florida. the storm ranks among the top storms in u.s. history. for small, family farmers, the recovery is a long season, a brutal winter, fruitless. they face flooding, scattered debris and long-term crop losses. sea water deposited salt in some soils, parching the plants, making them impossible to nurture back to life. 

southwest florida’s barrier islands are familiar with the walloping winds and waters. in 1926, a hurricane choked sanibel island farmland. farmers gave up seeding fruits and vegetables like tomatoes on the island.

the loss is also palpable for fruit orchards, especially the state’s citrus industry, which leads the nation in growing oranges for juice. hurricane ian uprooted the trees, and with them, years of growth. once oranges tumble to the soil, they cannot be sold.

the mcmahons, 15 miles from the beach, were far enough from the bay that salt didn’t inundate their five acres. robert and shelly moved onto the land in 1980, the year they married. in 2014, they stacked rows of pots in vertical towers, tall as longleaf pine saplings. lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and green beans sprouted from those towers, with some, like hops and watermelon, embedded in the earth. a spaghetti tube wove through the lined containers, irrigating them with compost. the mcmahons scattered seeds of education in the soil, welcoming students to learn agriculture. they became an agritourism park and offered paper cups of chopped carrots and kibble to feed the livestock and fish. the livestock shuffled in the grass, the chickens squabbled. the hens were too old to lay eggs, but they cracked up the guests.

in that first weekend after the storm, robert prioritized the roof over replanting. he did so to shelter the animals from rain. the goats, donkeys, sheep, chickens and cows braved the category 4 hurricane, except henry, a bulking mass of 2,200 pounds. the steer’s hoof, matted by mud, had cracked under his weight and the sloshing waves. he was on medication from blue pearl, the only pet hospital that was open in the storm’s aftermath. shelly and robert had bought him when he was only an hour old, 30 pounds. they saved him from the butcher block and coddled him with gatorade and milk replacement, after he left his mother. he had laid his spotted head on shelly’s shoulder, dwarfing her. he snoozed in her lap. now, henry’s eyelids hung heavy, as though to conceal the fractured farm.

the five acres, once orange with marigolds and sunflowers beaming up at the sun — gone. the mcmahons had planted the flowers just days before ian. but the storm drowned them in its current. perhaps the marigolds, called flor del muerto in latin culture, foretold the death to come. 

the arrival of hurricane ian

as the swirling winds approached at 8 a.m. on sept. 28, robert and shelly huddled at home with their daughter and son-in-law and their two children, aged 13 and nine. forecasters had predicted the storm would hit tampa bay, so the mcmahons didn’t bother to shutter the windows. they didn’t do too much to prepare. they left the farm in mother nature’s palms. 

but then the storm swerved south. and mother nature didn’t spare them.  

robert said he recalls looking out the windows and saw the roof insulation trickle down, like fluttering snow. the wind rustled, tousling all the crop towers, round and round. the children played games on their ipads and sat idly by.

they lost power at 11 a.m. still, robert assured everyone everything would be all right. as the grandfather, he said he felt the paternal tug to protect, later recounting that he said, “we’ll get through this,” to his family. 

robert said that he thought the roof might upend as the wind roared, louder than a groaning tractor. he told everyone to grab their shoes and a flashlight. 

“why?” blake, his grandson, asked him. 

“just put your shoes on. let’s be ready,” robert said. 

he remembers clenching his boots and the kids their tennis shoes. no thoughts of other possessions flashed in his mind, only getting his family to safety.

hours went by. time wavered, flickering unsteadily. robert said he felt helpless as time passed, only able to watch as the roofs atop the market and animal shelter blew away.

finally, at 2:30 a.m. the hurricane bands receded.

at first light, the family walked outside. shelly wept. hurricane ian had wiped away everything they had built. within hours, their livelihood – lost. the hydroponic crops, the lettuce a week away from harvest, smothered and withered. the seminole pumpkins, which had crept up a wire trellis, hung brown and shriveled. the golden sunflowers, once on fire under the sun, submerged and floated away.

at the time, shelly thought they were “screwed.” 

she figured the farm and upcoming seventh-annual fall festival were over. every year, the mcmahon’s welcomed vendors and locals to the farm where they sold animal feed, pumpkins and vegetables in woven baskets and offered hay rides. the festival raked in much of the family’s profit. she had no idea how they would survive without their fruits and blooms.

they spent three nights in darkness without power. shelly had collected oil lamps for years, one of the many memorabilia and handmade creations stashed in the home. now, they had utility. she lit them in the darkness, cradling the orbs aglow.

over the next week, her fears were extinguished. dozens of folks from neighboring areas arrived, some bearing only the clothes on their backs. they had lost everything themselves, but they had come to help the mcmahons rebuild. the farm meant so much to them over the years, especially during the pandemic. an alcove, a nature trove brimming with vegetables, chirping birds and mangoes. those gleaming sunflowers blazed in their memories.

changing climate

robert remembers when the surrounding neighborhoods, like paseo, were sleepy areas. his father first bought the land in 1978. daniels road, now six-lane daniels parkway, was still one-lane and dirt. their mailbox was in town. at the time, the farm had some cows and a couple of horses. 

robert mcmahon sr. farmed most of his life, tending to mums and gladiolus with his wife, lillian, in iona, florida decades before. they were truck farmers, driving the crops to the packing house, and didn’t live on the land. across the river near paseo, the family later leased the land and grew red potatoes. their farm was on the upland; no wetlands drained. with the sprawling housing developments built since, hurricane floods clog the homes, robert said, rather than sloshing through.

“do i go along with the climate change thing? i don’t know. i’m not that guy,” robert said, as he dragged a hoe across the soil, digging up weeds. “all’s i can tell you is what i’ve seen in my 63 years of being here, and what i see is development, what i see is concrete, what i see is asphalt, what i see is roofs. and to me if you want to blame something, that’s the thing to blame.”

gravel slabs, spread by human machines, harbor heat. and he’s felt the blaze of hotter days on his nape since his childhood, even since the ‘90s.

david zierden, state climatologist, said that the number of hurricanes has not changed, as many climate change deniers point out. the intensity has. the heating atmosphere, increased sea surface temperatures and sea level exacerbate the storms.

“the rising global sea level is getting close to about a foot now in the last 100 years,” he said. “so now you’re adding a foot more to the potential storm surge.”

rapid intensification, as seen with ian, has also risen, zierden said.

“we can’t say that hurricane ian would not have happened without climate change, but we could certainly see the fingerprints,” he said.

the climate, of course, is not the only thing changing for florida’s farmers. brad hawkins, a fellow farmer who robert said will one day run southern fresh farms, comes from a multi-generation farm family. his father helped robert back when he grew solely red potatoes. hawkins said he searches for answers on google, such as solutions for ravaging rabbits. as a kid in the ‘60s, robert gathered with farmers at a southern restaurant on weekends at 5:30 a.m., where they sat at a big table, ate breakfast and shared what they knew. lee county is not the same, robert said. everyone knew a farmer back then, with six to seven million farms in the u.s. from 1910 to 1940. now, there are about two million. 

robert and shelly have felt the farming struggles in their relationship, each ding to their livelihood. they met in high school, shelly at cypress lake and robert at riverdale, when robert hosted a toga party. shelly arrived in sheets and said she immediately knew that she wanted to speak with him when she saw him at the door. from there out, he became her partner, her protector. she laughed with johnson’s wife, michelle, saying she only got drunk a handful of times and never smoked. she had no need. she was content with life with robert on the farm. she grew up, after all, going to her grandparents’ illinois farm and was accustomed to dirt under nails. 

the mcmahons are the kind of family who wake up with the sun each day and sometimes crave chicken gizzards from a gas station. they call themselves rednecks proudly. they are entwined with their land, as sure as the mycelia woven below. they certainly were not the kind to be stopped by a hurricane.

hacking losses and sowing seeds – recovery

a wooden gazebo, once washed up from the swirls of hurricane charley, still stands. robert found it toppled over on sanibel island while cleaning up from that 2004 tempest. the arches have overseen weddings and birthday parties. and it survived hurricane ian.

but their pond and a mango tree did not. after a couple years of growth, it had finally begun bearing fruit. 

the first steps were to scrap the losses and hack the fallen trees like the mango, just as farmers once took to the woods with a trusty backhoe. clearing and cleansing the land prepares it for new plantings.

the first weekend after hurricane ian, robert and shelly debated a facebook post asking for volunteers to help. they decided against it, not wanting hundreds to show up. already in a gofundme campaign, they had raised $21,050 by the first week of october. that’s how beloved they were in their community.

shelly and her daughter amy swept debris in the marketplace. they wore rubber boots, chicken proof for when the birds pecked at their feet. they knew rain could return. but they hoped that it wouldn’t and drown the delicate seedlings.

michelle rode a golf cart over to the animals and huffed along, carrying a hefty bag of “sweet feed,” as good as any southern tea. she dumped the protein-rich grains into bowls like she would for any beloved pet.

“this is what we do,” robert said, and he opened the gate. one bullock, bob, shoved him with his head in greeting. bob then mulled over his bowl, and food scattered everywhere, his black hide, dark as subversive sheep fleece. he’s “full of piss and vinegar,” robert said.

robert worked on the roof the rest of the day, cracking jokes and smiling, while shelly struggled not to cry. her gratitude shone around her like the glow of her oil lamps in her home. 

by the end of the day, the mcmahons said they felt good about the progress they had made. the animal roof offered ample shade, the market floor was almost safe to hobble barefoot on. so the next morning, they departed the farm to chip in elsewhere.

they helped neighbors lug furniture, tarnished by mold to the street corner. they had already been collecting clothing donations and taking them to the beach and the churches nearby. 

the next day on the farm, a handful of volunteers arrived. they devoted themselves to the battered plants. the hydroponic crops, with four pots per tower, were skewed to the side or uprooted. water could not flow through. two men, one an elementary school teacher in sperry water shoes, another with his hair tied back in a bun, lifted them. the two stood on chairs, hammering the poles deeper into the soil. sweat dribbled down their faces in florida’s warm fall air. 

robert bought everyone wendy’s burgers for lunch. they also snacked on “monkey meat,” a scramble of bologna and mayonnaise spread on white bread. shelly said she and the kids grew up on the sandwiches. she intended to continue the tradition.

the fall festival was just a week away. even though they had come a long way, they had nothing to sell in the market. but they had an idea. they decided to purchase fruits and vegetables at the local market and ship pumpkins from north carolina too. they were determined to hold the festival, even though their farm was laid bare.

the day before, shelly raised the american flag in a ritual, her head tilted in awe toward the star-crested banner, as though gazing at the constellations themselves. “we’re raising the flag, baby,” her best friend, diane stevens, with similar short stature, said. shelly yanked the metal wire and the flag up, up, up. stevens sang “god bless america,” the chorus ringing alongside the rustling of the flag. when it reached the top, waving in the wind, shelly raised her arms triumphantly, her face splayed in a wide smile. 

but by night time, stress furrowed shelly’s brow. she hadn’t known this day would come; she didn’t think it would. 

“what else do we have to do?” she shouted at amy. 

“i don’t know,” amy said. 

they ran back and forth. “i feel like we are not even close to being ready for tomorrow,” shelly said.

“we always feel like that,” amy said in a reassuring tone. 

 in response, robert said, “what we get done, we get done.”

the fall festival

by 8 a.m., food trucks piled in, dozens of people they had known for years. stuffed animal making stations, apple butter and jelly merchants, friends who wanted to make a couple extra bucks frying doughnuts. shelly and robert allowed anyone in. they especially wanted those who had lost a lot from the hurricane to make some sales. admission was free for everyone, as always.

the kettle corn aroma, nutty and dusted with caramelized sugar, wafted about. children squealed, swinging in the playground. scorched sizzles of steak arose from the grill. robert flipped burger patties as deftly as he drops seeds.

“they’ve been here before,” shelly said, pointing at a family donned in rubber boots, their feet sinking in and sticking to the soggy soil saturated from rain. ‘course shelly knew almost everyone, and dished out “honey” and “sweetie,” as often as she sold cups of carrots to families. she set aside a dozen eggs for a past pet sitter. she whispered to teresa guilday, robert’s sister and fellow cashier, about a woman who taught kindergarten. she remembered a little girl who once drew her a minnie mouse picture when she was in diapers. shelly still keeps the picture, as she does with most sentimental items. the table was stacked with mementos, including a cloth pumpkin her mother sewed and a photo of her and robert, when her silver locks were ginger and voluminous in true ‘80s fashion.

each time someone came by that table, they exchanged hurricane stories. 

“i was a puddle here 17 days ago,” shelly said to one passerby.

frans kox, who owned a flower store on sanibel island, told her about the wreckage he faced: 17 feet of water assailing his home, only a few inches from their front door. he told her his street looked like a river, water churning through. every bloom drowned. 

shelly told him that she and robert lost 90 percent of their crops.

“i cry every day at what we accomplished and all the people who came to help,” she said to kox. 

true to word and form, shelly’s eyes welled with each embrace and conversation, her puffy cheeks flushing to a deep, tomato blush. “stop it,” guilday said to her, lightly slapping her on the arm. “they’re happy tears,” shelly said. 

the festival, envisioned as a weekend affair, stretched for three weeks. the winter season quickly approached. the productive christmas season was in the seeds tucked in the cooler, in the balsam trees and pine scent — a cold winter’s night, the rustling of their wreaths and dangling lights. shelly would cook five made-from-scratch meals again for the community with santa claus visits throughout december. 

robert and shelly had planted sunflowers the week before the festival with hopes of seeing their barren field blossom once more. palms to earth with their community, hope budded in their souls. and in the fields where they planted the flowers, little tendrils circled the soil, teeming beneath.

katie delk is a 2022-2023 florida climate institute fellow reporting a series of articles about the impact of climate change on florida’s farmers—and how they are adapting.

when he toted around his dad’s five-weight fly rod, the grown-ups told him he “ain’t gonna catch nothing.” and yet, wiggins returned from the bays and estuaries near his home with bucketsful of sea trout. 

“where’d you catch all them fish?” they’d ask. “i can’t catch them with a fly rod,” he replied. “bye.”

wiggins was a fishing guide for a dozen years, poling his flats boat and pointing out flopping trout, redfish and mullet. then for 23 years, he starred in a tv show called “addictive fishing,” produced by childhood friend kevin mccabe. wiggins first screen-tested the show in his son’s kindergarten class. the jabbering children hushed to watch. 

“from age seven to 70, we had an audience,” wiggins said, and he still does. his show evolved into “blair wiggins outdoors,” streamed on bally sports sun and youtube. kids still scramble up to him and elders doggedly hobble over for photos.

when he hooks a fish on tv, wiggins famously hollers, “there he is!” he calls prize catches “mogans,” mixing the southern nickname “biggans” and the northern vernacular, “monsters.” 

over the decades, the mogans became harder to find. as wiggins hauled fish out of the indian river lagoon, he observed the coastal ecosystem changing. first came the vanishing critters. as a kid, wiggins recalled, he encountered millions of fragile starfish dotting parris island channels. “i haven’t seen one in 30 years,” he said.

the same holds true for seagrass, shellfish, horseshoe crabs, sea trout and mullet. wading near the south banyan isles and pineda, scraggly seagrass scratched his little-boy legs like prairie grass, and fanned out just as far. brevard county was known as the sea trout capital of the world, wiggins said. “you could go out off of any given dock, any bank, throw out a shrimp on a popping cork and catch a trout anywhere in brevard county.”

when the seagrasses first disappeared, it was a little easier to fish—the trout were stark in the waters. today, it’s tough to find them at all, he said.

in the past, hundreds of mullet would leap out of the water in a five-minute span. the splashes are now silent.

nearly a half a century after he bought that tiny outboard, and more than two decades after he became a tv fishing star, wiggins is moving into his third act. rather than extracting marine life from his childhood waters, he is putting it back. he and fellow citizens along the indian river coast are planting millions of hard clams, part of burgeoning initiatives across florida to reintroduce historic shellfish to clean up waterways and restore life up the food chain. 

oysters and hard clams, cradled in their self-built shells, clean water as they develop. clams gobble algae through a siphon and expel feces, a fertilizer for seagrass and food for shrimp. once they’re settled on the bottom, they clasp sea grass, rooting it into the soil. each clam filters 20 gallons of water a day. reintroducing shellfish to waterways is a natural solution, a return.

death by 1,000 cuts

quahog clams once thrived throughout florida’s coastlines. native american mounds along the spruce creek reveal an abundance of oysters and clams, along with saltwater fish. but by the 21st century, the populations were devastated. todd osborne, a researcher at the university of florida’s whitney laboratory for marine bioscience, calls it death by 1,000 cuts.

as the four-mile pineda causeway was built in 1973, carving into the indian river and banana river lagoons, blair wiggins and his father chugged along south across from patrick air force base. the pair glared at the hulk of concrete. “take a good look around son,” his father said. “because there’s the beginning of the end.” 

“he was right,” said cari wiggins, blair’s wife and the director of “blair wiggins outdoors.”

the pineda causeway was one of 13 causeways constructed across the indian river lagoon. around the state, the raised roads choke water flow by creating a narrow opening. the bottleneck impedes water exchange and marine life migration. pockets of decaying matter gather in its corners, fueling algal blooms. blair calls them: “dams with roads on top.”

“they funneled into a small opening and everything quit moving,” cari wiggins said. “water is not going to want to flow sideways.”

the collapse of clams can also be traced to the commercial shellfish industry. at its peak in the 1980s and ‘90s, semi-trucks idled at boat ramps to pick up croker bags of native clams. 

the intense harvesting was the “nail in the coffin” for wild clam populations, osborne said. he estimates harvesting data only cover a third of actual numbers because cash was involved.

osborne said at the peak, the wild clam harvest was like the wild west; clammers collected the shelled critters in the thousands. unload. get paid. do it again.

“the clam boats that you saw, you could have lined them up side by side and walked to merritt island,” cari wiggins said.

hard clams burrow in seagrass. as the clammers dragged spiked clam rakes along the bottom, they inadvertently dredged up seagrass and crushed the smallest clams and horseshoe crabs.

“every morning i would get up and go to the boat ramp, literally it was a sea of grass floating on top of the water from where they had been digging with their rakes,” blair said.

listen: uf biogeochemistry professor todd osborne on how humans have engineered “an efficient way of poisoning the lagoon with excess nutrients.”

pollution is another part of the complexity of harm. it flows from industries and local backyards into the water. synthetic fertilizers and septic tanks are two of the culprits. 

“we’ve engineered a really beautiful and safe human landscape.” osborne said. “we’ve also engineered a very efficient way of poisoning the lagoon with excessive nutrients.” 

while shellfish filter the water, larval clams are especially sensitive to pollution and cannot ingest it, said mike sullivan, who owns a st. augustine shellfish farm and seafood market/restaurant called commander’s shellfish camp.

clams, sullivan said, are like canaries in coal mines for the sea.

“clams die if the water quality is bad or is getting bad. they can’t survive,” he said. “that’s why they’re not repopulating in a lot of these areas that have been fished out.”

sullivan is the largest clam producer on the east coast of florida, with about 75% of the region’s “clam leases” that the state administers for inshore coastal waters, according to the marine scientist mark martindale, director of the whitney laboratory.

coastal water pollution has reached the point in florida that not many waterways remain safe enough to grow hard clams for people to eat. along the northeast florida coast, sullivan’s spot on the matanzas river is one of the few.

a meeting of the minds between scientists and locals who’ve fished the waters longer than it takes to earn a phd led to a promising solution for what ails the indian river lagoon. restore the shellfish even if people can’t eat them. reintroduce thousands and millions.

restoring the once plentiful shellfish, osborne and wiggins conclude, would represent a major step toward renewing clean water.

a bottom-up approach to clean water

the indian river lagoon clam restoration initiative began as a grassroots movement. 

“we had an idea, and a network of people that came together to say, ok, let’s just do it, and see what happens.’ and we got attention, and it was working,” osborne said. “and then the money came, so it has definitely been a bottom-up approach.”

partners including the st. johns river water management district and the florida fish and wildlife conservation commission (fwc) provide staff, scientific oversight, boats and permitting. in 2019, epa’s national estuary program awarded additional support. every 10 cents puts another clam in the water, osborne said. but what’s crucial about the project, he said, is that the public is the main stakeholder.

“it’s more important that the people that live here and experience this every day, are front and center,” osborne said. “because you don’t need someone from tallahassee telling you what to do over here.”

living on the river is much more motivating than a remote vision, he explained.

beginning in 2019, scientists collected hard clams from mosquito lagoon. osborne describes them as “super clams,” because they had survived both brown tide and toxic algae bloom crises. 

“they are adapted to this ecosystem as it is now,” osborne said.

at the whitney lab’s bivalve hatchery in st. augustine, scientists began spawning the clams and raising them in a nursery that spring. after nine months, when the clams were about the size of golf balls, scientists and volunteers released them into the mosquito and indian river lagoons. 

the clams are grown on licensed shellfish aquaculture leases; blair is among those who offer lease space. nets shield the clams from predators like stingrays, though florida crown conchs that also love to eat them occasionally drill through. the conchs can devour 20 percent of the clams on a bed.

cedar key’s model, “clamelot”

across florida on the rural gulf of mexico nature coast, a gravestone stands outside city hall in the tiny fishing village of cedar key. etched in gray are the words: “in loving memory dedicated to the commercial net fishermen of this community.” the gravestone was erected on july 1, 1995, the summer after florida’s voters banned gill-net fishing by constitutional amendment. the vote followed a major push by sport fishers to stop commercial netting they said was harming fish populations, though researchers later found that the campaign had been misrepresented. the few fishing villages left in florida, including cedar key, seemed doomed to lose a way of life.

instead, a rebound emerged. federally funded job retraining converted net fishers and others put out of work by the ban to become clam farmers. leslie sturmer, a shellfish extension specialist, relocated to cedar key to assist. locals accepted the practice, she said, as the technology is simple, maintenance is low and the relatively clean coastal waters are perfect for clams.

cedar key launched the first clam aquaculture leases on florida’s gulf coast. the legacy began. now, the town, located about 60 miles west of gainesville, provides some 90% to 95% of florida’s eating clams. the clams are cultured in water-side clam shacks and planted on the lease sites around the cedar key coast. the booming industry, which sturmer calls “clamelot” after the legendary camelot, provides a local incentive for keeping water clean. 

the clams in the indian river lagoon, on the other hand, aren’t edible. the water quality is too poor, blair said, and the pollution pulses through these filter feeders. 

“eventually down the line, i would love to be able to go out there and harvest a five-gallon bucket of clams, come back and then have a great clam bake at the house like i used to,” blair said, “but until it gets right and we get our clams and our water back, the farm-raised clams are good enough for me.”

seeding hope in seeding clams

this spring, wading outside the river rocks restaurant in rockledge, volunteers poured 100,000 hard clams from red-ribbed bags into the indian river lagoon. 

the shards collected across the sand, crunching beneath feet. “this is how the indian river lagoon used to feel,” blair said. 

the river rocks spot is among hundreds carefully chosen in the region. when people go out for lunch there, they can see the restoration project’s placard and poles in the water or spot volunteers slugging around bags of clams.

“we wanted to engage the public so that they could see what we were doing,” osborne said.

the area was a former productive aquaculture lease, with clam shell remnants speckling the shoreline. the scientists replant clams where they once lived. 

across the state in southwest florida, sarasota bay watch follows a similar strategy. the nonprofit began releasing scallops into the bay in 2009. however, the sensitive scallops couldn’t survive the poor water quality. in 2016, the group shifted to clams. the southern quahogs are heartier, said ronda ryan, sarasota bay watch executive director. they survived florida’s devastating 2017-2018 red tide.

the nonprofit also releases clams where seagrass is sparse in the bay. “the hope is that putting clams in the water will help clear the water and improve the capability for photosynthesis and thus increase seagrass,” ryan said.

osborne agrees.

“the goal here is to reestablish seagrass, because seagrass is the functional base or foundation of the ecosystem,” he said. “everything out there either eats it, lays their eggs in it, hides in it or lives in it. without it, it’s like a desert.”

a greater purpose

in 2019 when the indian river lagoon restoration project began, water samples didn’t detect any clam larvae. but in this spring’s spawning season, osborne said, hundreds of free-swimming clam larvae — known as veligers — showed up in the samples.

“we know that at least what we put out there has spawned,” osborne said.

the project has released 13 million clams since its inception, with nearly a million in this year alone. by october, the volunteers and scientists will plant three million more. the next phase, which the fwc is sponsoring, will add 12 million clams to the lagoon’s troubled waters in the next two years. 

osborne paints a vision for the future he and other scientists and volunteers are working to create: once the quahogs clear out the algae, water clarity will improve and sunlight will reach the darkened, dying seagrasses. 

pinfish, a prominent bait fish, nibble off of clam siphons, unclogging them. 

clams are the base, sullivan said, and with their flourishing, others along the ecological chain will, too.

on a recent friday, three generations of women converged in the shallow water near river rocks restaurant: a grandmother, annette bushnell, 57; her daughter, cami waldon, 36; and a granddaughter, kaylee waldon, 14. annette and cami donned straw hats and giggled as they hauled the quahogs. 

 “we’ve heard rumors that the indian river lagoon was once clear, and we’d love to try to make that happen again,” cami said. “i like releasing the clams, knowing that they were going to serve a greater purpose.”

bushnell said she appreciated working arm and arm with the community, passing the bags between one another. her father lived on a houseboat, and her grandmother owned a boat named “tattletail.” in washington state, the family clammed with her grandparents.

brine pulses through blair’s veins too. a sea breeze saturates his lungs.

his family’s fishing legacy traces back five generations, he said; on his dad’s side, back to his great-great grandad in southern alabama, and on his mom’s side, back to the seminole indians of florida.

the solution to florida’s water woes can’t be just about the shellfish, he acknowledges. for all the work he, his neighbors and the scientists are doing to restore clams, an even greater effort must be made to stem the pollution torrent killing the lagoon. 

he and other locals can wade in florida waters and chuck clams out — an action.

born and raised on the indian river and its lagoon, blair said for him, it is now dead. he aims to revive it.

this story is part of the uf college of journalism and communications’ series watershed, an investigation into statewide water quality marking the 50th anniversary of the clean water act, supported by the pulitzer center’s nationwide connected coastlines reporting initiative

this story was featured in our series, slipping through our fingers: the future of water.