Going under?
Many say they won’t be able to stay afloat if tourism sinks
Boat captains in the Florida Keys say a hurricane-caused drop in tourism could sink their industry.
ISLAMORADA, FLA. John Gargan took one look at the damage left by Hurricane Irma around Whale Harbor Marina and came to a simple conclusion.
“We’re out of business ’til Christmas,” said Gargan, 67, who captains a 22-foot charter fishing boat called Couple-ABucks from the marina on this island in the Florida Keys.
The island chain took a devastating hit from Irma, which made landfall on Cudjoe Key as a Category 4 with 130-mph winds. But residents throughout the Keys worry that the long-term economic impact will be even more painful than the short-term cleanup.
All those sunken and battered boats splashed across TV screens and newspaper front pages aren’t just high-end toys. They are the main source of income for owners, employees and crew members of charter fishing boats, dive shops, jet ski rentals, sunset tours and, of course, booze cruises.
More than half — about 54% — of the 77,000 people who live
“That’s their livelihood. These are all people who followed their dreams down here, and now ...”
Marina operator LeAnn Bruzewski
in Monroe County have jobs that depend on tourism, a $2.7 billion a year industry in the Keys, according to the county. And with the water serving as such a big lure for those tourists, losing so many boats will put a painful dent in that figure.
“That’s their livelihood,” said LeAnn Bruzewski, 52, a marina operator who was preparing to cook meals for her captains on Thursday. “These are all people who followed their dreams down here, and now ...”
Captains who evacuated spent more time this week trying to learn the fate of their boats than the status of their homes. They tried to call
friends who stayed behind and scoured the Internet to catch a glimpse of their vessels, which they left anchored in bays, tied up in marinas or tucked away in mangroves.
Some used a website from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that’s providing detailed satellite images taken post-Irma. Others got lucky elsewhere online.
“I saw mine on a Facebook Live video,” Gargan said. “Somemonths one was driving around my key, and he pulled right into my driveway.”
It’s far too early to know exactly how many boats went down during Irma, but Steven Dobkins believes the final number could reach 10,000.
Dobkins, a Navy veteran who runs Keys Marine Towing and Salvage, fielded a non-stop series of calls Thursday from people asking him to raise their boats from the depths. While responding to a marina on Key Largo to pull out one fishing boat, his team had to spend an hour pulling out another one that was blocking the boat ramp. Dobkins said captains will face another wave of pain in the months to come as tourists struggle to find places to stay.
“All of the hotels are going to be filled,” by emergency crews and construction workers, he said. “And they’re not going to be spending any money. Except on beer.”
Some captains had already been stocking away money to get through a usual lull in business.
Rick Rodriguez, whose 39-foot Sea Horse survived Irma unscathed on Lower Matecumbe Key, said they usually see fewer visitors in September and October as kids return to school and fewer people take vacations. Rodriguez has spent most of his career helping tourists go deep offshore to land big fish such as marlin and mahi-mahi, and he already was prepared to get through these lean months.
But that strategy doesn’t help younger captains who aren’t as established and don’t have that kind of financial security.
Jason Fernandez sold all his DJ equipment two years ago to fulfill his dream of becoming a boat captain. He bought a 16-foot skiff named The Black Sheep that roams the shallows of the Keys hunting for tarpon and bonefish. Irma destroyed all that.
Fernandez was forced to cancel his upcoming reservations, and with no other bookings in sight, he was behind the wheel of a skid-loader Thursday clearing debris from a washed-out marina. He’s planning to do cleanup and maintenance work for a couple of until the tourists return.
“It sucks, it’s hard, but that’s nature,” Fernandez said. “There’s no way around it.”
The lack of work will also hit all the mates, store clerks and other workers who support the boating industry and usually live paycheck to paycheck.
Michael Goldberg, who runs a dive shop called Key Dives on Islamorada, said he has nine people who depend on him to get by. He’s already worried about how they’ll make their rent payments and keep afloat if tourists see news of the destruction in the Keys and decide to head elsewhere come winter vacation.
“The traveling diver, I know how they think. ‘There was a hurricane in the Keys, let’s go somewhere else this year cause the reef is bad,’ ” Goldberg said. “But the reef is fine. We need you now. If you decide to go somewhere else, we might not be here anymore.”
That’s why Keys residents are so upset over the initial claims of cataclysmic destruction put out by the federal government. FEMA estimated 90% of homes in the Keys are either damaged or destroyed. And the Department of Defense initially said they would have to evacuate up to 10,000 people stuck in Irma’s flooding. Goldberg said both figures were wildly exaggerated and wondered why the feds were so quick to drum up panic about the situation in the Keys.
That has left Andy Newman in the all-too-familiar situation of explaining to tourists that the Keys haven’t been wiped away. The spokesman for the Florida Keys tourism council said he’s tired of having to convince travelers that the Keys are alright. He went through it when Hurricane Andrew tore into South Florida in 1992 and rumors erroneously spread that it had torn apart the Keys. “We got 35-mph winds on Key West,” he said.
He went through the same thing after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, when forecasters warned that the island chain would be covered in crude. “We never got a drop of BP oil,” he said.
And now, Keys officials are starting the process all over again. Key West Mayor Craig Cates said they’re targeting the start of Fantasy Fest — the island’s raucous 10-day festival that starts Oct. 20 — as their goal to officially reopen to tourists. Newman said they’ll spend their time until then trying to get the word out that the Keys are still standing.
“There are obviously tremendous impacts from the storm,” Newman said. “But we’re not talking about years (to recover). We’re talking about months.”