What one conservation group and the Mercury Pro Team are doing to help rescue and protect the Florida Everglades
Oct. 28, 2020
MercuryMarine.com
Editor’s note: This is the first article in a series about the efforts of Capt. Benny Blanco, Captains For Clean Water and other conservationists to save the Florida Everglades.
By their nature, all humans are drawn to water. It’s essential to life. But for anglers, the draw is about more than survival. It’s about truly living.
With such love for the water comes the great responsibility to protect it, and anglers regularly shoulder that burden.
A great example is taking place in the Greater Everglades Ecosystem of south Florida, where a group of guides, sportsmen and conservationists have mounted a major defense of their home waters. Among them are members of Captains For Clean Water, a grassroots nonprofit that was founded in 2016 by Capt. Daniel Andrews and Capt. Chris Wittman. The organization and its members’ goal is to untangle decades of destructive water use policies that have led to the degradation of water quality in the region and upset the natural balance within the Everglades.
“Captains For Clean Water is the passionate blue-collar working arm for Everglades restoration, and the goal is to fix the Everglades,” said Mercury Pro Team member Capt. Benny Blanco, an ambassador for the organization. “At the very foundation, they are the fishing community; the fishing guides who’ve just had enough with the way water has been managed in the state. We recognized that if we didn’t speak up for what’s happening to the water, no one would.”