Meet the candidates. 4
Dining with dads. 15 Get in the game. 19
Astheworldterns invite you to P&P. 6
OCT. 3, 2018 FREE
VOLUME 26, NO. 49
HB puts brakes on bike-sharing services. 3
Op-Ed
The Islander editorial, reader letters. 6
10-20 YEARS AGO
From the archives. 7 Good deeds. 7
Bayfest to boost workers impacted by redtide downturn. 8 Make plans, save a date. 10
Happenings
Community announcements, activities. 11 Permitting issues add to BB dock woes. 13 AM, HB adopt budgets, raise taxes. 14
Where’s Tuna Street? 16-17
Gathering. 18
Obituaries. 18 Streetlife. 20
Bright idea: Ambercolored streetlights. 22 A ‘cleanswell’ of support for anti-litter effort. 23 Center hub for sports action. 24 What’s biting and where. 25
ISL BIZ Island business news. 26
The Best News on Anna Maria Island Since 1992
www.islander.org
Tourism stats tell red tide’s toll
By Sandy Ambrogi Islander Reporter Local business owners didn’t need a report from the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau to tell them August revenues were down. They lived the drop. A decline of $4,395,600 in direct visitor spending compared with August 2017 is a 17.5 percent drop from last year’s record high numbers. And, after a stellar year of numbers soaring up, up, up in virtually every
monthly report, red tide crashed the trend. According to Walter Klages, whose Research Data Services Inc. of Tampa compiles the numbers for the BACVB, the bad bloom of red tide translated into a $6,942,000 economic impact deficit in Manatee County in August 2018. Revenues were down. Employees were scrambling. And employers were searching for ways to work through the harmful algae bloom without losing their shirts.
Numbers coming to the BACVB run a month in arrears, so the August impact is just tallying up. September, traditionally the slowest month of the year for beachfront lodgings and businesses, may fare even worse, based on business owners’ observations. In August, as the red tide bloom hugged the coast, reports flooded the national news, keeping Anna Maria Island Chamber of PLEASE SEE TOLL PAGE 8
Privateers party as only pirates can
Susan “Sho Sho” Shoe, left, cuts a rug with Tim “Hammer” Thompson Sept. 29 at the Anna Maria Island Privateer’s Ball at the Center of Anna Maria Island in Anna Maria. Attendees danced and partied to music from past decades, keeping with the Time Travel Extravaganza theme. Privateers and their friends enjoyed food, libations, auctions and raffles throughout the evening. For more, see page 15. Islander Photo: Sandy Ambrogi
Cortez stone crabbers face uncertain future
By Kathy Prucnell Islander Reporter Another stone crab season — Oct. 15-May 15 — and crabbers are optimistic. This year crabbers and researchers wonder how the yearlong red tide could impact the harvest. Cortez crabbers Wayde Campbell and son Jimmy hope for the best, but fear another slow season. Wayde Campbell began crabbing after the 1995 statewide net ban like other commercial fishers forced to switch their focus or leave the industry. Still they’ve invested in this season and will crab with 5,000 traps 8-15 miles offshore, from Englewood to Clearwater. Preseason, the Campbells readied 1,000 traps to replace old ones, adding 4 inches of concrete and rigging ropes and buoys at a cost of $25 per trap. The plastic crates were tagged with their Florida Fish and Wildlife
Conservation Commission license, which costs an annual renewal fee of 50 cents per trap. Wayde Campbell built a new boat for the season, Captain Jim, and expects to spend some $20,000 for bait and gas “to throw them in the water,” he said, referring to the traps. “I was hoping this year they’d waive the (license) fees because I heard they did a test off Boca Grande,” Wayde Campbell said. He’d heard about the FWC’s two-week test ending with “zero catch.” “From the red tide,” added Jimmy. They both said Cortez crabbers haven’t seen a good season in five years.
FWC research Ryan Gandy at the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, the research arm of the FWC, described the Pine Island-Boca Grande-Sanibel Island study that started in
August. “After the red tide intensified in Southwest Florida, FWC began working with commercial stone crab fishermen out of Pine Island to set lines of 20 traps offshore to gauge the impact of red tide on the stone crab population,” he said in a Sept. 19 email. FWC placed four sets of five traps in varying depths in mid-August and will continue collecting data north of Sanibel Island through October, according to Gandy. About the study, Gandy said, while there have been stone crabs caught, it’s been “a very low catch … much lower than what fishers expected.” Scientists will compare the red tide impacts found in the Pine Island location to other catches in locations with no exposure to red tide. The state’s most recent outbreak of high concentrations of Karenia brevis began in PLEASE SEE CRABBERS PAGE 2