(serene music) - This segment of WGCU's Untold Stories is underwritten by Lee County Government County Commission and the City of Fort Myers City Council.

(serene music) (upbeat tone) - With a Gillnet you could strike and catch Mullet everyday when the tide was right, but now a boat swell is rolling over it every minute of the day, and they're not there anymore.

Not many places are left for this kind of fishing, and what few places there still are, where you might catch some Mullet, there's someone there trying to catch fish, any kind of fish.

Net fishing's about a thing of the past.

I'm sad (mumbles) to think of it.

- In 1995, fisherfolk lamented the end of the commercial net fishing in Southwest Florida when the state's controversial ban on entanglement nets went into effect.

But long before the ban, pollution, overdevelopment, and a burgeoning population had already begun to take their toll, and fishing traditions, thousands of years old, began to vanish, along with the fish.

- There's too many fishermen; that's part of the game.

Then, the Red Tide kills a lot of fish and the power boats go over these flats where the fish lay their little eggs.

I never thought I would see the day that I could not go out on the head of my dock and get a mess of fish.

- From the ancient Calusa to the cracker pioneers, nets, like a tenuous thread through time, linked the fisherfolk of Southwest Florida.

In 1513, explorer Ponce de Leon landed somewhere in Southwest Florida, and discovered a complex culture that centered on fishing, not farming.

- The Calusa, in the absence of agriculture, which is usually thought of as a prerequisite for civilization, did something that almost no other Southeastern Native American culture was able to achieve and that is, resist Spanish intrusions and create this complex society and persist for a long time and great adversity.

The Calusa fishing was primarily based on net fishing and, also, kind of stationary wares, where they'd have stakes in the estuary, in the (mumbles) shallow water.

- By the early 1700s, the Calusa were nearly wiped out; victims of European diseases and overrun by Creek Indians fleeing the English raiders in Northern Florida and Georgia.

Some of the Calusa fled to the Florida Keys and to the Spanish colony of Cuba, where, perhaps, some of their ancient fish-finding wisdom was preserved for future generations.

- The documents say this, and my strong impression is, that the Cuban fishermen hired some of these Calusa refugees, both living in the Keys and also in Cuba, and they brought them back and learned how to fish these waters from the Calusa.

So I think there's definitely continuity, and, so, to the extent that the Cuban fishermen passed on some of their knowledge into what we know today.

The traditions of today in the way commercial fishermen fish these waters and these estuaries, that living tradition, in a way, represents, a survival of the Calusa culture.

However filtered it may be through those centuries, it still represents something that people, today, are still doing, that is at least a little bit influenced by this culture that is otherwise extinct.

- Unlike the Calusa, the Cubans fished only during the winter, when the Mullet were fat and full of roe.

- The Cuban fishermen were here only for one season of the year.

They didn't live here year-round and they didn't rely, exclusively, on the fish for their subsistence, so they were, strictly speaking, the first truly commercial fishermen in this area.

- Their part-time settlements were primitive and crude, merely makeshift huts, clustered conveniently near the back bays.

- We're on the east side of Useppa Island, which is a beautiful island in Pine Island Sound; it is now a private island, but 100, 150 years ago, and 200 years ago, this was the settlement of some very poor Cuban fishermen and they would build little thatched huts and settlements here and live here for several months as they fished before they brought the fish back to Cuba.

The settlements that the Cuban fishermen had here had an unusual name that most people don't associate with fish, and they were called Ranchos, r-a-n-c-h-o-s.

And the Ranchos were the working settlements of these fishermen that would gather on, not only this island, but the other islands in this area.

If you see some of the islands in the area of Useppa that have Spanish names, like Petricio, Mondongo, Punta Blanca, and some of those places, that's where many of these settlements were, and that's how they got their name.

- Gradually, some of the Cuban fishermen stayed longer and began to intermarry with the Creek Indians.

- We have records of this evolving, ethnic group that didn't even exist before called Spanish Indians, and they were cousins of the Seminoles, but they were in South Florida long before the Seminoles got pushed down here, in the 1800s.

The Cuban fishing period became a really interesting mix of Cuban fishermen using partially Calusa techniques and intermarrying and interacting with Creek Indians, who are the very same ones that shot up the Calusa earlier.

- By the 1830s, many of the Spanish Indians were being pushed out.

Innocent victims of the Seminole Wars.

Under the federal government's Indian Removal Policy, anyone considered Indian, including the Spanish Indians, could be removed to Western reservations.

Many of the wives and children of the Cuban fishermen were swept up in the removals, and the Cuban fishing communities were abandoned in Southwest Florida.

Southwest Florida remained a remote, no man's land until after the Civil War, when another generation of Cubans returned and reestablished the Ranchos.

George Goode conducted surveys of the fishing operations in Charlotte Harbor in the 1870s, and found major ranches on Captiva, Gasparilla Island, and two on Cayo Costa, including one on the Northern tip of the island, operated by Toribio Padilla, and his wife, Juanita, whose descendants continued to live, and fish, on the island until the 1970s.

Padilla's granddaughter, Esperanza Woodring recalled what life was like on the island.

- Mullet were caught in the Winter, when they were spawning.

It would last about three months out of the year: November, December, and January.

They probably made what they could in those three months and then they survived with whatever they could rake and scrape out of the water; clams, oysters, and they ate a lot of fish.

I don't remember seeing any money until I was grown.

Money; nobody knew what that was.

They just traded back and forth whatever they had.

- By the late 1800s, railroads and fish ice revolutionized Southwest Florida's fishing industry.

- When the railroad was built by Henry Plant, to Tampa, in 1883, you started the Americanization of the fishing industry in Southwest Florida.

- Fish companies opened near the railheads and fish ice made drying and salting fish a thing of the past.

Company fish houses were built in the back bays from Chokoloskee to Charlotte Harbor.

- This is the last remaining section of the old fish houses, here, in Pine Island Sound, that are over 100 years old, in some cases.

In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, this whole area was dotted with these fish houses and there's only about half a dozen left right here, and these fish houses were a combination bunkhouse and icehouse.

The fishermen in this area would bring their catch to these houses and the catch would be put into the icehouses.

- Company runboats picked up the catch several times a week and dropped off ice and supplies for the fishermen.

Perry Pete Golding fished with his father, Joseph, in the early 1900s, and recalled how the fish were packed for shipment.

- Fancy fish, Pompano, Trout, Mackerel, and King were packed in wooden barrels made in the cooperage right on the dock.

These went to Northern cities.

Bottom fish or Mullet were placed in bins constructed in box cars with alternating layers of fish and crushed ice.

- Some fishermen set up temporary fish camps near the fish houses.

Others, like the Padilla family on Cayo Costa, were situated right on the runboat route.

- We had a runboat that used to come up there, in Tarpon Bay, and pick up our fish.

If we wanted groceries or shoes or anything, we would just write up an order and send it back on the fish boat.

The next boat would bring it down.

One of the big shots at the Punta Gorda Fish Company used to brag that he knew the bra sizes of every fisherman's wife because he handled their orders to Sears Roebuck.

- Some of the old Rancho sites became small fishing settlements, including Punta Blanca.

- And where we're sitting right now is the location of the old settler fishing village, here, from the turn of the century.

The late 1800s and the early 1900s, all the way up until the 1930s, people lived here, and these foundations are the foundations of their homes, and their workshops, here.

There was also a repair shop, a building, a marine railway that extended down into the water.

- Nets continued to be the mainstay of the, now, booming fishing industry.

But the natural fiber nets required constant care.

- We first started out with cotton nets; all the twine was cotton.

And the old-timers, way back, would take, build, make lime out of fire, burning fire, the ash and everything, and they made lime.

And when you got through fishing that day, you had this limey water mixed up; looked like white paint and you would wash down your nets with that.

- Most of them stop nets were cotton and they took and put them in tar to preserve them.

Crabs ate them anyway, but not quite as bad.

- A net wheel at Gasparilla Village was used to haul heavy nets from the fishing boats to lime and dry the vulnerable fibers.

- I hate hanging nets and mending nets.

If you have a net, you have to keep working on it.

We had nets, one for every size fish in every season.

- Nets ranged from Stop and Gillnets to large Seine nets, most likely similar in form and function to the nets used by the Calusa centuries before.

- They had, what they called, stop netting.

You probably can see it, now, behind me.

The tides go real low here, and it goes dry for miles, in some places.

You put your net out to where you know the water's gonna stop.

Now, that tide falls and fish move off them banks and they'll run into your net.

And that was called stop net.

- They would strike bunches of Mullet in the Fall, with stop nets, and would get two or 300,000 pounds.

- Stop nets were so effective, they were outlawed in Florida, in the 1930s.

Mind-boggling catches were still possible, however, with large Seine nets.

- About sunup, three schools began to come through into one school.

We put four nets around them and six in the center.

I've never seen such a bunch of Mullet, and what a sight it was when they found they were inside of a net fence.

In a few minutes, every net was full as it could hold.

We estimated 10,000 head.

There were so many fish in this school, in a few minutes, all our nets were sunk down with Mullet and water was muddy as soup.

- I used mostly Seine fish.

That's were you strike on the beach and pull them ashore.

Then you just bail them in the boat.

I've done quite a bit of Gillnetting, but it was so much easier with that Seine.

- Gillnets were specifically designed in various mesh sizes to catch, or gill, only certain sizes of fish.

Fish too small could swim through the mesh and fish too large would bounce off the net.

It took skill and stealth to slowly lower a gillnet over the side of a sailboat or pull skiff and quietly circle the net around a school, or pod, of Mullet.

(serene music) - They rowed everywhere in this country can pull off the back with one oar sculling and it's called and then you could row with your back or you'd face forward and you could work the oars like that and they did most their fishing at night because the fish would settle on banks and bars and stuff.

And you could hear them flipping, and you'd row up there and you'd ease your net out and then you'd start making racket, drive them into the nets.

- We would pull the nets out in about 18-foot skiffs.

They really are quieter.

You cannot strike out there in the middle very well with just one net because the fish would outrun you.

If you had two boats, you could let go.

You would put rubber on the back of the stern of your boat because that lead line hitting the boat would scare them.

With that lead pounding on the stern, man, they'd take off.

- As the fishing industry boomed, so did another industry; clamming.

- It was back in the turn of the century.

E.C.

Burnham, which was a company down on Marco Island, had started first and then Doxsee, in about 1911, came down.

- About 25 clamdiggers camped while digging clams on Little Pavilion Key at every low tide.

This was done for several years and furnished all the clams for the Burnham factory at Caxambas, then for the Doxsee canning at Marco.

A good digger could dig about 25 bushels on one tide for 25 cents a bushel.

- Business really was a manual labor business until a fellow by the name of William Collier, no relation to Barron Collier, by the way, invented a dredge, and steam power replaced muscle power.

Nobody foresaw the amount of bushels that they were going to be able to harvest and Doxsee, in his factory, were harvesting up to 6,000 bushels of clams a day, and processing them and shipping them out.

- This clam digging dredge could dig more clams per hour than 25 men could by hand, but it broke up lots of clams.

Now, the clams are gone, only dead shells where there were millions of good clams.

- Eventually, the process in itself diminished the clam beds to a point where they couldn't regenerate anymore, and Burnham went out of business first, in 1929, and Doxsee took the plant over for a little while, and, eventually, Doxsee, himself, had to go out of business in 1947.

Doxsee took the plant down; on the spot where the plant was, by the way, he built a trailer park, for about 90 spaces, but the name lives on.

If you go into your store, you will see, somewhere between the tuna fish, the salmon, Doxsee clams.

- Other fisheries continued to flourish, but one fish dominated the market: Mullet.

Caught almost entirely by nets, this important fishery was revolutionized in the early 1940s, when see-through Nylon nets, dubbed Glass nets by the fisherfolk were introduced.

- I know a Mullet's pretty smart, but I don't think he could see that glass net in the water.

Why that old 920 cotton net, it looked like a fence hanging out there.

- Fisherfolk received another boost in 1945, when Naples fisherman Rob Storder invented a new kind of boat with ironic results.

- I was gonna invent something that was gonna be beneficial to fishermen or ruin a good skiff.

I designed an inboard/outboard; a wonderful treat to fisherman.

By cutting out the center of the skiff and putting the motor in the middle, the net can run itself out.

All Mullet fishermen soon had one.

Oars and oarlocks were not used anymore.

It sure helped the fishermen, but not the fish.

It helped make fish harder to find.

Fish will not tolerate traffic.

- Just after World War II, Chokoloskee fisherman Loren Totch Brown forever changed Southwest Florida's commercial fishing industry by creating a market for the bothersome bycatch that sometimes clogged Mullet fishermen's nets: Stone Crabs.

- We started on a lot of Pompano and, along the coastline, about three miles out, with Pompano nets.

And when our net touched the bottom, I noticed we catching a lot of stone crabs, so I got the idea there must be some way to commercial.

- Working with his uncle, Dollar Bill, Brown built eight experimental traps and set them out along Chokoloskee's coastline.

They returned a week later to find a disappointing catch: two crabs.

Through trial and error, however, Brown learned how to catch the crabs no one had every tried to catch commercially before.

- At that time, you took the whole crab and you kept it alive.

And he would truck it over to Miami, and peddle it out and try to get sales.

Stone Crab Joe was his first customer and that's where Stone Crab Joe got his name.

It's a big booming industry, today, but the cost of fuels and labor and everything, people say, why does the crab have to cost so much?

But if you knew what it cost just for one of these big crab boats to leave the dock, and come back, you'd understand.

- Soon after Brown began marketing stone crabs, another crustacean was making headlines in Southwest Florida, nicknamed Pink Gold.

In January 1950, the Collier County News heralded the discovery of jumbo shrimp, just 35 miles offshore from Naples.

- Hundreds of spectators turned out Wednesday to watch six big trawlers unload more than 29,000 pounds of shrimp.

The first catch is to be landed at the (mumbles) fish docks in Naples.

At 51 cents per pound, the total paid out to the boats was better than $15,000 dollars.

- The shallow entrance into Naples, however, soon forced most of the new shrimping fleet to move North to Fort Myers Beach, where, today, the boats still unload their precious cargo of Pink shrimp.

- On the earlier days, I guess, there was probably an export alone, there was two or 300 hundred boats and a lot of boats, offshore, fishing and when you come in, you know, you sometimes long lines waiting to unload and there was just more boats; there was a lot more money into it because of the fuel prices were low and shrimp prices were higher than what they are today.

- Fort Myers Beach became the center of Southwest Florida's new shrimping industry but there was a dark side, to harvesting the Pink Gold, called bycatch.

The large trawl nets proved too efficient pulling in everything in their path, including sea turtles.

By the 1980s, new nets were designed with Turtle Excluder Devices, or TEDS, that allowed large fish and sea turtles to escape.

- In my opinion, if the turtle issue went away most of the boats would pull the turtle excluders anyway because of the bycatch.

Really, they don't wanna catch the bycatch.

It tears the shrimp up and, you know, you gotta deal with it when it gets aboard.

- Today, tons of shrimp are still processed in Fort Myers Beach, but imports of foreign, farm-raised shrimp, and the value of waterfront property threaten this once booming industry in Southwest Florida.

- Shrimping's gonna be around forever.

It's gonna go through a lot more changes.

It probably, in this area, here, maybe even downsize a little bit more.

The main factor, the land is so expensive that fishing, you know, if you're somebody that owned a piece of land and somebody come in and offer you $10 million dollars for it, they usually sell it, so, it makes it hard.

If we lose all the land for the fishery, I don't know what'd happen.

I'd guess they'd have to go to the Northern Gulf, and maybe come down here and fish and go back up there.

- Not all threats to Southwest Florida's fishing industries are new.

For centuries, a mysterious malady has caused extensive fish kills throughout the region.

- The earliest reporting of Red Tide, or poison water as it was frequently called; on the West Coast to Florida would have been between 1530 and 1550.

In 1946 and 47, it was estimated that the Red Tide killed over a billion fish.

- When I was a kid, they called it the poison water.

They did not know what it was, and it killed tons of fish.

In 1947, that Red Tide was the worst I ever saw.

The fish were knee-deep, all along the beaches, piled up, dead.

- In 1947, fisherfolk in the Ten Thousand Islands faced another challenge when President Truman dedicated the new Everglades National Park.

- When Truman came, and sat up there, I was just a small child, but I do remember that.

And Truman was sincere and he promised the people, here, if we would let the park come in, it would not interfere with our lifestyle and our ways of making a living.

For as long as he was in office, that was so, see, but, of course, as they changed, then the park began taking more and more land from us and started putting more laws and more bans and it was devastating.

- Tourists and Tin Canners, the mocking name locals gave to campers, began to compete with the commercial fishermen for a diminishing supply of fish and increasing regulations earned the ire of the fisherfolk.

- Someone told me that old Tee Wee was gonna have to quit fishing.

He just couldn't make enough money to carry (mumbles) along with him in the boat and tell him where, when, and how to fish.

- Granddaddy gave me my fist net, and that was one of his rules.

You don't fish, (mumbles) there's fish there, but you always gonna have fish there if you just take a little here and you go somewhere else and take a little there.

You just don't sit there and wipe them out, like these sportfishermen like to do.

We had to make a living at it, so we weren't out to try to catch every little wiggling thing 'cause we had to make a check the next week.

- Declining catches prompted a blame game between commercial fisherfolk and sportfishermen, resulting in the passage of the Constitutional Amendment that created a statewide ban on entanglement nets in 1995.

- Whether this was a conservation effort, or not, it's certainly questionable; you had a, a basic conflict between the commercial net fishing industry and the commercial sportfishing industry.

And the sportfishing industry won.

In my lifetime, Florida has grown from a slightly over one million people to about 17 million people, and the projection is that it grow even faster in the future.

The more people that you have the more pressure that there is on the fish that are out there in our bays and inlets and rivers and creeks, and the commercial fishing industry I don't think has any chance whatever of surviving under an urbanized Florida.

It's the loss of a very important industry and it certainly is a cultural loss to the state.

- For every fish you take out of the sea there's one less fish in the sea.

It don't matter if he jumps in the boat, he's not out there anymore.

It comes down to one thing: it's people.

There's just too many people now.

- The reason we have the Everglades Island airboat tours is because we were all commercial fishermen and a way of making a life had ended.

When you stop from use of nets and say you can catch 50 head a day, or whatever, that is not an income.

It really emotionally, it's very disturbing to me because all of my heritage and all that is just going down the tube.

- One of the reasons that it's so important all our fisheries to survive.

If they can't survive, the question is, can we?

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