Crabbers Helping Crabbers 

Coming two days after Hurricane Helene, the 14th Blessing of the Stone Crab Fleet, held  Saturday in Everglades City, was probably more meaningful than ever. Event organizer Kelly Kirk questioned whether they should pull the plug on this year’s event. Instead, she decided to navigate a different course.

“We weren't sure if we should hold the event,” Kirk said, "or cancel it last minute because of the weather. We've had so many people donate so much time here at Camilla Street Grill. We didn't want to lose the whole blessing. So, we decided to make it a donation event, a fundraiser. All profit here today is going to go right up to North Florida."

Holly Dudley, who organized the event with Kirk, is part of a multi-generational stone crabbing family. She and Kirk are directors of the Florida Stone Crabbers Association (FLSCA). Kirk is a fifth-generation Floridian fisherman whose family owns Kirk Fish Company on Goodland. They empathize with their north Florida brethren. 

“We lived through Irma,” said Dudley of the 2017 Category Five hurricane that hit the area as a Category Four hurricane. "Irma was bad here. It was bad in Marco. It was bad everywhere around us. Ian, just north of us, was horrible. But we walked in and we, for the most part, had structures standing - and they don't up there. They don't have buildings left. They're all in pieces. They're in shambles. We're hearing reports of stone crabbers up in that area that have lost all of their gear. None of the gear was even deployed yet and it's all missing. We're going to do everything we can to rally behind them and support them because that's what they did for us down here.”

A good-sized crowd tiptoed through heavily saturated turf and the heavily puddled roads of Everglades City to support the crabbers.

"I feel like it's been a good turnout,” Kirk said. “The food is all free, and the drinks are just a donation. And we have a donation basket going around. Anything that we can raise, we're going to send as a donation, whether it's $100 or $2,000, it'll help someone. It'll make a difference. We've got a lot of fishermen hurting all up in the Big Bend area, Steinhatchee, Keaton Beach, Cedar Key. There's a lot of families hurting right now, so we're going to do everything we can because we've all been there. We know what it's like.”

Three clergy presided over the actual blessing of the fleet, Jesse Wilson, lead pastor of the Chokoloskee Family Church, Craig Daniels, associate pastor and seventh-generation Floridian, and Father Tim Navin of San Marco Catholic Church.

Locals are finding out how their friends fared Helene's wrath via the Coconut Telegraph, as Jimmy Buffett would say. While locals only experienced tropical storm force winds from Helene, the hurricane's storm surge caught many by surprise. With the proliferation of hurricanes in recent years, it’s only natural for locals to compare the destruction each left behind.

“Everybody in Goodland flooded,” Kirk said of Helene. “Fortunately, in Goodland, it wasn't as bad as Ian (2022). Not nearly as bad as Irma.”

“We had flood waters down here,” Dudley said of Everglades City. "It went into some of the businesses and some of the homes, but we've been very fortunate that it wasn't as bad as the previous hurricanes or as bad as what happened to everybody north of us."