Seafood Festival Brings Funds to Community

The 55th Annual Everglades Seafood Festival wrapped up Sunday afternoon after three days of music, carnival rides, local seafood, and classic fair foods, drawing tens of thousands of visitors. 

“It’s over but our reason behind it is just beginning because now we have the funds for the community,” said Kelly Kirk, who co-leads the Florida Stone Crabbers Association, which organizes the event.  

Kirk, Carrie Doxsee, and Holly Dudley are leaders of the FLSCA, which advocates and educates for fishing families to which they each belong. They work with hundreds of volunteers to coordinate everything from the smallest details to attracting new crowd favorites like the drone light show that wowed visitors Friday night with images including a stone crab, skunk ape, alligator, fish, and others lighting the night sky over Everglades City.  

Fishing Captain Matthew Mitchell was among the vendors and he embodies not just the culture of the event but also of the industry, marine life, and families that the FLSCA is designed to protect. 

His smoked mullet was as characteristic of old Florida fare as it gets.  

“Smoked mullet is known as a local delicacy. It’s what the locals grew up eating,” said Mitchell.  

Dennis Noble shared how fishing and related laws deeply affected the community over the years. 

“In 1992, after a net ban, fishing mullet was restricted to smaller cast nets and going farther offshore,” Noble said.  

Because of how mullet travel closer to shore, especially when they have fish eggs or highly profitable roe, this had a dramatic financial hit to Everglades City, which at the time didn’t have much other industry to draw income from, she said. 

“Smuggling came in after the net bans,” said Mitchell. 
The idea was to protect the fish populations. However, the humans reliant upon them at that time didn’t have an immediate plan, which left them vulnerable to the lure of offshore drug smugglers - including marijuana and cocaine - long-time residents recall. 

“Everglades City goes much deeper than that, though,” said Dudley. “We are beyond that hoopla now,” she said.  

Dudley is a community leader when it comes to recovery. She takes her own recovery from substance abuse and uses it as a powerful force for positive change through her nonprofit Holly’s Hope, founded in 2017, to assist other people who are in the addiction recovery process. 

Now, much of the area is dependent upon tourism and events such as Seafood Fest to provide a big draw. Though event participants estimated a smaller crowd than the 50,000 to 70,000 attendees at previous years’ events, it was still meaningful to get together and support each other, they said. 

“We’re really pleased with the turnout of the event. Our crowd was amazing. We had a very positive, vibrant crowd,” said Kirk.  

She and Doxsee describe Dudley as the powerhouse behind the work, which now just begins as the nonprofit distributes the proceeds to hurricane relief in Florida and North Carolina, animal rescues, and support to Everglades City School students as well as Friday night’s food donations to Our Daily Bread Food Pantry of Marco Island.  

The three women thanked attendees, family, the community, and local businesses of which many closed temporarily for the event, emergency services, and sponsors, including Everglades Isles. 

They invite people to come back to Everglades City to visit the businesses that had to close to make way for the Festival, including Wildman’s Pizza, Pasta and Pythons, as well as others.