A 21-foot Carolina skiff moves through shallow, clear water in lower Tampa Bay. There isn't a cloud in the sky.
The boat belongs to Reed Smith, owner of Calusa Oyster Company.
"Somebody who's grown up here loves a real briny oyster, and then because of the nature of the bay, we have a sweet finish,” Smith said.
His floating oyster farm, comprised of cages attached to buoys, has been bombarded with setbacks since the start four years ago.
"We were really, really impacted ... because of the storms," Smith said.
Within a week of dropping their first oyster seedlings, Hurricane Ian blew through. Then came Hurricanes Nicole, Idalia, Debby, Helene and Milton.
ALSO READ: Opposition grows against a proposed cruise ship terminal south of the Sunshine Skyway
"We haven't had a normal, straightforward year of growing. This is our first one," he said.
And it's been a successful year at that — about half a million oysters will sell to a dozen local restaurants this harvest.
"We think everything's going well, and then we have the whole port issue," Smith said.
Opposition grows, including harassment
SSA Marine, a cruise port developer, announced its vision for a facility that can hold several larger ships near the south end of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Manatee County.
The Knott-Cowen tract, as it’s called, is over 300 acres of coastal land right beside the ecologically sensitive Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve where people fish and grow oysters and clams.
The local community is reacting to SSA Marine’s proposal in partnership with landowner Slip Knott LLC.
There are multiple petitions against it. Plus, Manatee County said in an email its employees and their children are being harassed over the inquiry.
“No county employee should be harassed for performing their professional duties. No child should ever be targeted because of where their parent works. These actions must stop,” said a county spokesperson.
The port proposal website says this could take 3-5 years to build, including dredging out the sea floor.
"That's just going to have a disastrous effect out here,” Smith said.
Construction would impact the water quality, diminishing the health of his farm and that of his nearby seedling supplier, Bay Shellfish Co.
It’s one of Florida's largest bivalve hatcheries and it's located in Terra Ceia.
"It would devastate most of the supply to the Gulf Coast,” he said, from Pensacola down to Tampa Bay and beyond.
Florida's rising aquaculture economy
Florida’s shellfish aquaculture sector supports $29.4 billion in sales revenue and 434 jobs throughout the state’s economy, according to the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.
Within recent years, Florida aquaculture has been ranking within the top 10 for total domestic production.
ALSO READ: Environmentalists rail against proposal to build a cruise port in Manatee County
Another UF article says Southwest Florida is an important producer of farmed bivalves, like the hard clams, oysters, bay scallops and sunray venus clams harvested in Manatee County.
Calusa Oyster Company's farm isn't too far from SeaPort Manatee, which became operational in 1970.
But Smith says that facility, used for importing and exporting cargo, isn't really busy.
And even if it was, he says, the water near that existing port flows away from his farm — unlike the new proposed port, which would flow polluted water from large cruise ships toward his oyster cages.
Smith's boat passes by a couple fisherman and clam farms before shallow water brings the vessel to a halt.
In the distance, a mile and a half away is the proposed port location.
"Think how shallow it is here ... so you're starting basically from this depth, which right now it's probably 18 inches to get something deep enough to for a cruise ship,” Smith said.
From that spot, you can see a silhouette of dense, bushy mangroves tailing the end of the Skyway.
The port would be on the other side of those trees facing the Gulf.
"Unspoiled and beautiful"
A few days before this voyage, Maya Burke of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program stood in that exact location.
"We're sort of sandwiched on one side by the Sunshine Skyway, but then behind me, it's really sort of the gateway to the Gulf of Mexico,” she said.
Burke said this is one of the last sections of undeveloped shoreline in the Tampa Bay region.
"It's quite unspoiled and beautiful,” she said.
Burke recounts how Tampa Bay only recovered in recent years from seagrass losses due to development and wastewater practices.
"For every part of the bay that we have a lot of worries about, it's hard for me to think about adding this part of lower Tampa Bay into that mix because it's been sort of our rock solid performer,” Burke said.
This area's record-high seagrass coverage helps to offset climate-warming emissions, while the mangroves offer flood protection.
"Habitats like these store 10 times as much carbon as terrestrial habitats, and so it makes it really important to protect these things, so that we don't lose what's already there, and so that those things don't become emissions as well," Burke said.
"If you want to go out in the boat with your family and have a killer day, this is going to deliver every time. And to take that away from folks like that is a sacrifice that we need to think about and value."
Burke said we need to trust the regulatory programs in place for a proposal like this.
Manatee County said in an email there would need to be a technical review, code compliance, and public hearings before county commissioners would ultimately decide — not to mention state permitting.
But from the looks of it, none of that has happened yet.
Back on Reed Smith's boat, he pulls some oysters fresh out of the water.
"The biggest thing is, when you get something that's the size of your fingernail, and you put in a bag, you just hope,” Smith said.
“And all the sudden, we're pulling stuff out today that's like perfect and that people have in the restaurant … and they're like, ‘Oh my God, I've had those. I love those. They're so good.’ There's a sense of pride.”
Smith thinks by the next harvest he'll have 750,000 Calusa oysters and sell to triple the number of local restaurants.
