Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 814 is my conversation with Capt. Neill Holland, a Tampa Bay charter guide and the founder of Ocean Aid 360, a guide-led nonprofit that pulls derelict crab and lobster traps and other marine debris out of Florida's waters. Neill walks me through what ghost fishing actually is, how a chip-bag habit at a waterfront park turned into a federally funded cleanup operation, and how he convinced commercial watermen that recreational guides were on their side.
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Capt. Neill Holland is a Tampa Bay charter fishing guide who runs GoFishTampaBay and the founder of Ocean Aid 360, a guide-led nonprofit focused on removing abandoned fishing gear and marine debris from Florida's waterways. He has a background in federal grants administration for nonprofits, which he used to fund the organization's first cleanup events in 2018. He now leads cleanup operations from Tampa Bay and the Indian River Lagoon down to the Florida Keys.
Ghost fishing is what happens when a lost or abandoned trap keeps catching and killing marine life long after anyone is tending it. As Neill explains it, a fish or crab gets into a derelict trap, cannot get out, dies, and then becomes bait that draws in the next animal — a cycle that repeats unchecked. Crab traps, lobster traps, and stone crab traps left fishing through closed seasons are the main culprits, which is why Ocean Aid 360 targets them.
The Ghost Trap Rodeo is the tournament-style cleanup format Ocean Aid 360 built around Tampa Bay starting in 2018. After winning its first grant, the organization stood up seven Ghost Trap Rodeo events around the perimeter of Tampa Bay, roughly one every six weeks over the course of a year. Volunteers fan out by boat, kayak, paddleboard, and on foot to recover derelict traps and debris, turning a conservation chore into a competitive community event.
Carefully, and it took time. Neill describes commercial watermen showing up early on to challenge the project online, convinced that recreational anglers did not understand their world. Once they understood that Ocean Aid 360 values working fishing livelihoods and a clean, abundant fishery, many became allies. The group focuses retrieval on closed fishing seasons and only removes gear that is actively fishing when it should not be, and some commercial guys have even asked for a trap buyback program.
Ocean Aid 360 launched on its first grant in 2018 and was later invited by the NOAA Marine Debris Program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to expand. That funding let the group run events from Apalachicola down to Key West and back up to Jacksonville, including the Indian River Lagoon from Titusville to Cocoa and ongoing cleanups around Key Haven near Key West.
Where possible, recovered gear is recycled rather than dumped. Neill describes working with environmental consulting partners such as Young Bear Environmental Consulting on the Florida side to process material. Some gear is harder to handle — stone crab traps carry roughly 35 pounds of concrete that recyclers cannot yet process, and branded or tagged traps create ownership headaches — which is part of why Neill supports a buyback model.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 814 with Capt. Neill Holland is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts. The video version is embedded at the top of this page.
Neill embodies an idea I keep coming back to — leaving the water better than you found it. He is not a full-time activist who wandered into fishing; he is a working Tampa Bay guide who saw a problem, realized he happened to have the grant-writing background to do something about it, and built a real organization out of it. I wanted him on because the ghost fishing problem is invisible to most anglers, and because the way he brought commercial and recreational people to the same table is a model for how conservation actually gets done. Press play in the YouTube player above to hear the whole story.
The origin story is smaller than you would expect. Neill watched someone close to him spend the back half of every lunch break picking up chip bags along the waterfront and stuffing them into a grocery sack. He realized his day-job experience in federal grants administration could turn that instinct into something funded and organized. They wrote their first proposal in 2018 and won it right out of the gate. Hear how that first grant became seven events in his own words.
This is the part most anglers never see. A trap gets lost or abandoned, a fish swims in and cannot get out, it dies, and then it becomes bait for the next animal — over and over, with nobody tending it. Neill explains why stone crab traps, lobster traps, and crab traps left fishing through closed seasons are the worst offenders, and why getting that ghost gear out matters for everything from hogfish to stone crabs. Listen to that section of the episode.
Early on, commercial watermen came into the comment threads under Ocean Aid 360's posts to blow the project up — convinced these recreational guys did not know what they were talking about. Neill does not gloss over that. He walks through how the relationship turned once the commercial side understood the group respects working fishing livelihoods and only pulls gear that is fishing illegally during closed seasons. Some of those same commercial fishermen now ask him for a trap buyback program. Press play in the YouTube player above.
Once the NOAA Marine Debris Program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation got involved, the footprint exploded. Neill describes fanning volunteers out across the Indian River Lagoon from Titusville to Cocoa, running multi-day cleanups around Key Haven near Key West, and covering ground from Apalachicola to Jacksonville. He gets into the logistics of surveying hot spots ahead of time and sending people by boat, kayak, paddleboard, and on foot. Watch the full breakdown in the player above.
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Pulling traps out of the water is only half the battle — what you do with them after is its own puzzle. Neill explains how partners like Young Bear Environmental Consulting help process recovered material in Florida, and why some gear resists recycling entirely. Stone crab traps carry about 35 pounds of concrete that recyclers cannot yet handle, and branded or tagged traps create ownership problems. Hear why he thinks a buyback program is part of the answer.
The day after talking with Neill, what stuck with me was how ordinary the starting point was. One person picking up trash at lunch. A guy who happened to know how grants work. That is the whole machine that became Ocean Aid 360, and it is a reminder that the people who fix things are usually just the ones who decided to start.
The other thing I keep thinking about is the commercial-recreational divide he closed. Those two groups argue constantly, and Neill found the one thing they both want — a clean, abundant fishery — and built from there.
Listen to the whole conversation, and if you are anywhere near the Keys, he could use the hands.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Capt. Neill Holland is a Tampa Bay charter fishing guide and the founder of Ocean Aid 360, a guide-led nonprofit dedicated to removing derelict fishing gear and marine debris from Florida's waterways. Drawing on a background in federal grants administration, he launched the organization in 2018 and built its signature Ghost Trap Rodeo cleanup events around Tampa Bay before expanding statewide with support from the NOAA Marine Debris Program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. He continues to guide through GoFishTampaBay while leading cleanup operations from the Indian River Lagoon to the Florida Keys.
Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 814: Cleaning Up Our Oceans with Ocean Aid 360, with Capt. Neill Holland.
Tom Rowland: Before we get started, we're gonna hit you with the hot seat. You ready to roll?
Neill Holland: Let's do it, man.
Tom Rowland: Alright. Rock, country, or other?
Neill Holland: Country.
Tom Rowland: Mountains or beaches?
Neill Holland: Beaches.
Tom Rowland: Coffee, tea, or energy drink?
Neill Holland: Coffee.
Tom Rowland: Name a movie that makes you laugh.
Neill Holland: Oh, man.
Tom Rowland: Name a movie that makes you cry.
Neill Holland: Brothers. Brothers.
Tom Rowland: Name a movie that makes you laugh and cry.
Neill Holland: The Place Beyond the Pines, for making me cry.
Tom Rowland: Sunrise or sunset?
Neill Holland: Sunrise.
Tom Rowland: Text or call?
Neill Holland: Text.
Tom Rowland: One thing you're afraid of?
Neill Holland: Oh, having my boat go down underneath me.
Tom Rowland: Good one. Instagram or Twitter?
Neill Holland: Instagram.
Tom Rowland: Winter Olympics or Summer Olympics?
Neill Holland: Winter.
Tom Rowland: Fiction or nonfiction books?
Neill Holland: Fiction.
Tom Rowland: Audiobook, paper, or Kindle?
Neill Holland: Paper.
Tom Rowland: Last book you remember reading?
Neill Holland: That would be Walk the Darkness Down, by Danny McGarriel.
Tom Rowland: Nice. The Office, Friends, or Parks and Rec?
Neill Holland: The Office.
Tom Rowland: Which technological gadget do you rely on most in your daily life?
Neill Holland: Definitely the iPhone.
Tom Rowland: You and everyone else. Something you're proud of?
Neill Holland: 260,000 pounds of traps and garbage out of Florida's coastal fisheries.
Tom Rowland: What an awesome answer, that's fantastic. If you could have a superpower permanently, what would it be?
Neill Holland: Organizing volunteer help.
Tom Rowland: I think you already have that. What's a hidden talent or skill that you possess that people might not know about?
Neill Holland: Oh, man, let's see. I can sing a little bit.
Tom Rowland: Okay. Cats or dogs?
Neill Holland: Dogs. Mine's sitting here next to me.
Tom Rowland: Mine's under my table. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner?
Neill Holland: Breakfast.
Tom Rowland: Spinning rod, fly, or conventional?
Neill Holland: I don't get to fish with it much, but a fly rod.
Tom Rowland: Neill, what's up? How are you, man?
Neill Holland: Hey, Tom. Happy to be here with you. Thanks for having me on.
Tom Rowland: Man, I'm happy to have you on. I just absolutely love what you're doing. I think it's so cool, Ocean Aid 360. You just got off your Space Coast event, 5,000 pounds or more of debris out of the ocean. That's fantastic.
Neill Holland: Thank you so much. Yeah, there was a two day weekend long tournament. We had Captain Blair Wiggins out there with his brand new deck cat, Bad to the Bone bay boat, and a lot of excitement in the air. We had about 75 plus volunteers and took in 5,000 pounds of debris, people scouring all corners of the Indian River Lagoon.
Tom Rowland: That's so awesome. So what was the book you just finished?
Neill Holland: I'm glad you asked. My college roommate, Danny McGarriel, just put out his second novel, to a decent amount of fanfare. He wrote a book called Walk the Darkness Down. It's set in a seaside town in New Jersey. The main character is a commercial fisherman, and it's about his experience and his wife's experience going through the birth of their first child, and trying to make a family life out of being on the water all the time.
Tom Rowland: Is he like Randy Wayne White?
Neill Holland: Yeah, exactly. Admittedly there's some tragedy in there, so it doesn't quite have the same feel as a Randy Wayne White book, but I liked it. I thought it was great.
Tom Rowland: Sounds like a good strategy for a writer, to have a character that's interesting enough that you can expand on it, like the Joe Pickett novels.
Neill Holland: And Randy's Doc Ford stuff, of course.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, it's all good. So tell me about Ocean Aid 360 and what you just did on the Space Coast. Where was it held, and how did you rally people to help?
Neill Holland: So I think as some of your listeners know, Ocean Aid 360 is guide led. I'm a charter captain out of St. Petersburg in Tampa Bay, and it was really born out of my familiarity with the fishery, but also my partner. Her name is Danielle. I watched her spend the back half of every lunch hour we'd take down at our local park on the waterfront picking up chip bags and sticking them into her Publix plastic bag. She just felt really passionate about it, it was her thing. So after some amount of time I pitched in, and that was the two of us walking up and down the shoreline. Eventually I looked at her and said, well, in my other career, federal grants administration for a variety of nonprofits, I have some insight into the fact that we could probably get a grant to do this and organize our community members and other folks who are interested in the same thing. So we applied for our first grant in 2018, right out of the gate, our very first proposal, and it gave us the chance to stand up seven tournament events, which we called Ghost Trap Rodeo events, around the perimeter of Tampa Bay, about one every month and a half over the course of a year. We were supposed to collect 15,000 pounds, that was our target over those seven events, and we got 27,000 pounds.
Tom Rowland: Wow.
Neill Holland: So from there, NOAA's Marine Debris Program and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation invited us to consider expanding the project and continue receiving funding to stand up similar tournament events from Apalachicola down to Key West and back up to Jacksonville. Since our first event in October 2018, we're now at 260,000 pounds of predominantly lost and abandoned stone crab, blue crab, and spiny lobster traps and other forms of marine debris, floats, plastic bottles, Styrofoam, rope, all of that. This most recent event, at the Indian River Lagoon, was funded by FWC through a small grant they put out to bid, and we won the award. It was specifically focused on shoreline debris cleanup. As I think you and a lot of your listeners know, the Indian River Lagoon has a lot of natural shoreline, they're blessed with a lot of natural area, whereas in Tampa Bay we're mostly surrounded by residences. Over there they've got a lot of shoreline that's accessible by boat or kayak. So we were able to organize volunteers and get a lot of folks out. Blair Wiggins and his team came out and helped organize their followers, and it led to a really phenomenal event, 5,000 pounds of debris out of the water in a combined eight hours. We incentivize volunteers at each event with good quality prizes from fishing sponsors, a lot of that's organized for us by the Coastal Conservation Association of Florida. It's just phenomenal impact. Actually, I'm talking to you today from Key Haven, down near Key West, where we're going to be doing three more days of cleanup, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week in September, focused on the area of shoreline that's got storm debris, a lot of live aboard debris coming into the shoreline, and boat ramp debris, just human interaction. It's one of the most concentrated areas of garbage along a natural shoreline that we've ever seen in Florida.
Tom Rowland: So explain that. You're going to focus on a certain part, and you're starting in Key Haven, is that where this thing starts, or do you just happen to be staying there?
Neill Holland: Phenomenal question. At the Indian River Lagoon, our circumstance was a bit different, FWC determined our project geography for us. They said they wanted us to fan out around the Indian River Lagoon, from basically Titusville all the way down to the town of Cocoa, and send folks in all directions. We did some survey work ahead of time, mapped some of the hot spots, and then sent our volunteers by boat, kayak, paddleboard, and on foot in all directions to make a good quality impact. Down at Key Haven the circumstance is different, because you have a very localized area around the Key Haven public boat ramp where debris seems to be concentrated and congregating at a rate that's just higher than anywhere else around it. This particular stretch of shoreline runs about 600 yards, and you can literally walk on the bottles for the entire stretch.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, it's tough. I lived on Key Haven for a long time, on Azalea, I don't know what road you're on right now, but that was my boat ramp, that I put in on so much. And yeah, I don't know where all that trash is coming from. I'm assuming from the live aboards, but maybe not entirely, because you've got a tremendous amount of current coming through Boca Chica Channel there, and it could be coming in or out, and that's just a natural collection zone for weeds, plastic bottles, flip flops, or whatever happens to be there. But man, that's such a great thing you're doing there, cleaning all that up.
Neill Holland: Well, we're really fortunate in this case, and down in the Keys we have earned the trust and the respect of a lot of the commercial operators down here, the guides, and the other nonprofits operating locally. For this event we're partnered up with Reef Relief, which is very well known, based out of Key West. We're also going to have some help from the Concrete Public Marine Army, and from others as well, Surfrider Foundation in the Keys too. So everybody's turning out their volunteers to try to make it a success.
Tom Rowland: That's great. Well, that's what I'm hoping too, that people will listen to this, and if they're in the Keys or within driving distance, they could come down and give you a hand. How would somebody do that? If someone's thinking, I'm in Key Largo, that's cool, maybe they'll come to my area, so I'll participate in this one, pay it forward a little bit. How would somebody do that? Do they need to call you in advance, or just show up?
Neill Holland: You know what, we'll take them any way we can get them. But oceanaid360.org has a link to the Eventbrite page, and it's fairly easy to do. Alternatively, if somebody just wants to Google Eventbrite Ocean Aid 360, it'll pop right up, can't miss us.
Tom Rowland: You also have your social media, you've got a good Instagram, that's how I learned about what you were doing, and we were able to put this together real quickly, just from your Instagram. So don't take your foot off the gas there, I think you're touching a lot of people, getting a lot of people familiar with what you're doing.
Tom Rowland: It seems like the best kind of organization, there's no hidden agenda here. You're picking up trash out of the ocean. Do you ever encounter anyone that doesn't support what you're doing? I guess maybe people that like to lobster off of tires or something.
Neill Holland: Yeah, when it's shoreline debris and mixed debris like this, no, I think everybody sees the benefit. On occasion in the past, when we've had events focused on derelict and abandoned traps, crab traps or lobster traps, we do sometimes get some pushback, let's say, from local commercial fishing communities. But once they, it's interesting, we would have people, early on, from the commercial side come into our comment thread underneath our Facebook post and try to blow us up, saying these guys don't know what they're talking about. And they didn't know us at all, they just assumed we were coming in with the floppy hats and the big black socks and sandals. I would say, in the comment thread, call me, can we have a conversation? Here's my number, call me, let's talk. And as soon as they understood the impetus, the motivation behind the project, and understood that we really value fishing livelihoods for working watermen and women, and value a good, clean habitat that supports a healthy and abundant fishery, I think they understand that we're on their side. Folks tend to appreciate that this project is led by somebody who derives income from working on the water as well.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, very cool, bringing people together rather than splitting them apart. That's a powerful move.
Tom Rowland: I think we discussed this last time, but I don't remember the answer. When you're picking up a stone crab trap that's had the line cut by a propeller, or for whatever reason it's just gone, and there's almost no way for the crab fisherman to find it, and your people come across it, you're operating on a permit that allows you to pick this stuff up, because it's not like you should just go out there and mess with someone else's fishing gear. So what happens to these traps? Because a stone crab trap that's had the buoy cut off is still a good trap, right? Is there a way that somebody could get it back?
Neill Holland: Yeah, I'm happy to go over that. I'd say that's one of the lessons learned over the course of our programming since we started in 2018, our trap retrieval events really focus on the closed fishing seasons, so there's no confusion whatsoever about whether a trap should be pulled or not. If it remains in the fishery and it's not a pinfish trap, which is permitted to be out any time of year, but if it's a crab trap or lobster trap and it's fishing during the closed season for that species, then it comes on out. One thing your listeners would find interesting is that our wire mesh blue crab traps get dipped in a concrete slurry by organizations like St. Mary's Riverkeeper, or the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. They dip those wire mesh traps in a concrete slurry, stake them out, and create living shoreline projects with them to recruit larval oysters and clams, reduce shoreline erosion, and contribute to water quality improvement through filtration.
Tom Rowland: Who does that project?
Neill Holland: The South Carolina DNR has taken, so far, I think about 300 blue crab traps from us, and they're looking for more. Here in Florida, we've worked with an environmental consulting company called Young Bear Environmental Consulting, they've worked for the city of Fernandina Beach, up closer to Amelia Island. That's been really exciting, we've had a chance to visit a couple of those projects and see the new oyster reefs that have been piloted with this wire mesh blue crab trap material. I will say that in the case of stone crab traps, that's more challenging, because the 35 pounds or so of concrete poured into the bottom of most of those traps is something recyclers aren't yet capable of processing. If there was no concrete in it, or if we took the time to sledgehammer every single trap, they might be able to deal with it. But so far there's no way for us to efficiently process those traps, or for recyclers to take them with the mixed materials they have.
Tom Rowland: So what happens to them?
Neill Holland: Those go to landfill, which is suboptimal. We really want to find a better way to deal with that, but it's one of the main issues FWC and other fisheries management organizations are trying to work their way around. There's a lot of conversation going on with recyclers about what we could possibly do to recycle these traps, because plenty of them come in.
Tom Rowland: What about putting them back into use, surveying the ones that aren't broken and are still serviceable, and letting commercial fishermen come get them?
Neill Holland: I could not agree with you more. That's actually something, especially in the Keys, a lot of the commercial guys we work with, men and women, have said to us, we would love to see a buyback program for these traps. We agree, we'd think it would be highly sensible to reuse the materials instead of creating new plastics.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, that's the best form of recycling, in my opinion.
Neill Holland: Exactly. So, as you can imagine, FWC's major concern over that is the ownership of the gear. Once a stone crab trap gets branded, or has its tags, or somebody scribes their numbers into the concrete on the bottom, it becomes highly problematic handing those traps over to somebody else.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, that does seem really tough.
Neill Holland: Yeah, so it's something I can at least report is an ongoing conversation, and everybody recognizes there's low hanging fruit there. But that ownership issue is a major one, especially within the commercial fishing group. Nobody wants to see your traps on somebody else's boat.
Tom Rowland: Right, for sure. I haven't even mentioned the lobster traps, because they're generally made out of wood, and if those are in the water for a long time, I'd imagine there's a lifespan on them.
Neill Holland: They do, they get a few years.
Tom Rowland: One of the things maybe not everybody realizes about traps is that they keep working even when they're not baited. That's one of the things that's most damaging about losing a trap. If a fish or crab gets in there and can't get out and ends up dying in there, well, now it's bait, and the trap just continues to rebait itself and continues to catch, which is tough.
Neill Holland: Yeah, exactly right. That's the phenomenon your listeners will know as ghost fishing. Not every trap, but many of the traps that come up through our cleanups have the carapace of the catch before, and a few live ones scrambling around in there. It's very cyclical, when they die and decompose they put off a smell and rebait the trap. So it's something that's important to address, to get ghost gear, as we call it, out of the fisheries, and ensure that any marine resource, whether it's stone crabs or hogfish or whatever, isn't dying in unchecked gear. We want it living its best life, and available to us as anglers, or to the coastal economy.
Tom Rowland: So what are your plans after the Keys? It seems like you're on a run here, you've got the Space Coast you just finished, 5,000 pounds there, you brought in some good partners. I saw Salt Strong was part of that, good guys over there. Who else did you have in that?
Neill Holland: Yeah, thanks for asking. Another one of our big partners on that event is an organization called Current Problems.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I saw that, I didn't know what that is.
Neill Holland: Yeah, a lot of people haven't heard of them, but they've actually been around for about thirty years. They're based out of Gainesville, and they're one of the few organizations focused specifically on freshwater lakes and river systems, and the kind of outflows to saltwater environments. FWC thought we might have some synergy between what we do and what they do, and have an opportunity to learn from each other, that's kind of how that partnership was forged. They're great to work with, and they're really good at taking the collected debris that comes in and cataloging every bit of it, this is how many bottles, this is how many cigarette butts, this kind of thing. They're actually able to gather a lot of data and metrics and start to get a concept of the origin of some of the debris coming into the watershed.
Tom Rowland: They're counting every cigarette butt, every wrapper, every bottle that comes in? How many flip flops did they get?
Neill Holland: I don't know, crocs, I'm sure it was plenty.
Tom Rowland: There would be some interesting data there, to look at that over time and see how many flip flops there are, and which foot. You're always finding the left one in this hemisphere, and the other one goes to the other hemisphere, I don't know if that's true, but it's kind of funny, when you see a flip flop, it's like, yep, there's a left one.
Neill Holland: It's like if it falls on this side of the coastal divide, the left one floats over there, and the right one, I don't know. But I will say, I think your listeners will be interested to know we're going to be putting out a report about what was found at Indian River Lagoon, and the composition of the debris that came in, Current Problems is working on that right now.
Tom Rowland: For them to be putting that kind of time and effort into counting up the type of trash, they obviously have been able to do something with that data in the past, right? Do you have any idea what they've been able to determine or solve by cataloging the trash?
Neill Holland: That's a great question. I think it would begin to give you some concept of the origins of the debris going into your watershed, but to get specifics on that, you'd have to have one of them on.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, I'd like to, I'm gonna put them on my list, because that's very cool. I wouldn't even think about that, let's count up every bottle and every cigarette butt because maybe we could determine where it's coming from. That's obviously a very simple thing to draw a conclusion from, and I'm more along the lines of, let's just get it all off the shoreline and in a can. But if they could come up with some solution of where it came from, then maybe they could prevent it from happening in the future. That's super cool.
Neill Holland: I think you'll know this, but within the last five years or so, within the coastal cleanup space, there's been somewhat of a move to try to bring attention to it, if it's mostly Pepsi bottles, or mostly Nestle wrappers, to say, hey Nestle, here's your handiwork in the field, what can we do about this, how can we get you guys to pitch in and exhibit some social responsibility? So it's kind of a starting point for some of those conversations.
Tom Rowland: Have you noticed a particular brand that shows up more than others?
Neill Holland: Well, all of the single use plastic water bottles are everywhere. We're routinely seeing bait boxes and that kind of stuff.
Tom Rowland: There's a thing about offshore fishermen for a long time, they just felt like, oh, it's cardboard, it'll be gone in no time. It probably would be if it was just regular cardboard, but that cardboard's covered in wax or some chemical that keeps it okay in the freezer, and those don't go away. That's not a good practice, to throw that in.
Neill Holland: It's certainly not, not when it's so easy to stuff it in a hatch and throw it away when you get back in. But I wanted to mention, you kind of alluded to it, that we've had a really busy couple of months. In June we were at Cedar Key, then in July we were at Tampa Bay for two events, Biscayne Bay for an event, and the Keys for three days of events. In just those events I named, we took in 81,000 pounds, plus the Indian River Lagoon, and now we're down in the Keys for three days this week. Up next, we're going to be in Harbor Island in the Bahamas, doing what I think will be our third event there with that community. They've taken a really strong interest, the local stakeholders and community leadership there, in replicating the model we came up with, to hold an annual event that they run themselves, which is the best case scenario for us.
Tom Rowland: Well, for sure, because the whole point isn't necessarily that you pick up all the trash, it's that the trash gets picked up, right?
Neill Holland: Exactly. There are so many areas that need attention that helping to train and build capacity among local communities so they can do it themselves is the entire objective, to hand it over to them, so we can move on and work on other areas, and continue to support them as needed with technical assistance.
Tom Rowland: I'm not sure how it works in the Bahamas, but it would be interesting to talk about, if there's a community that sees the value in this and wants to do it themselves, it might not be as easy as just organizing people and going out to pick it up, because there's a permit you need to get, right? Can you touch on that, if somebody was interested in doing that, what's the best way to go about it? Obviously we love their motivation to go pick up trash, and that's fantastic, and there's some types of trash you could just go pick up, but there's other types you maybe want to be a little more careful about.
Neill Holland: That's exactly right. A shoreline cleanup, anybody can do that anytime, and we encourage it. A cleanup dedicated to derelict and abandoned traps, crab traps or lobster traps, does require a permit. But we're very interested in adding other organizations, whether it's a homeowners association, the local Salt Strong chapter, whatever it may be, into what we do. The reason is that when there's a seasonal closure, say for blue crabs, that closure may run from Pasco County, just north of Tampa Bay, all the way down around to Biscayne Bay, and it'll only last ten days. There's a tremendous amount of coverage area that needs attention, and Ocean Aid 360 can only be in so many places at one time. That means, and there are a couple of other organizations that might pull a permit to do this kind of work, and yes, FWC does have an annual bit of programming they run for trap collection, but even still, there's a wide open gap in the amount of environmental services and organizations pulling permits to go out and collect abandoned gear versus the amount of coverage area needed. So what we always do is invite folks who want to lead something like this, or take it up with their community group, to reach out to us and let us help them with all of the learning curve we went through, we can speed somebody else's process up very quickly, help them understand how to get through the permit process with ease, and the essentials to stand up a good, clean event in their community that folks will really enjoy. We connect them with our industry sponsors that provide prizes and such, and that's it, we don't ask for anything, we're just trying to share the information.
Tom Rowland: Super cool. One of the things I'd think would be important to set up in advance is who's going to take this stuff away, how does that work? When you set up at a new place you've never been, do you know how much you're going to get? How do you plan for that?
Neill Holland: That's a great question. We've worked through all of those different modalities. We've had occasions where so much debris was coming ashore, like our event in 2022 at the Indian River Lagoon, that we had to make an emergency call for a private waste management contractor to come drop off another 20 or 30 foot roll off dumpster, and we filled that one as well. A lot of times we work with municipal waste management, and they'll drop off a bin for us, they'll charge us something for the dump fees, but reduce the rate because they share our mission. In the case of the Indian River Lagoon, just this past weekend, we had a guy and his wife, he's a paramedic for one of the local municipalities, with plenty of off days each week, who started a company called Dumpster Daddy. They go around with a small dump trailer, a hydraulic dump trailer, and he brought it both days, helped us load all of that stuff, and just charged us the dump fees, basically sharing the mission. He gave us his time and his resource for free, and only charged us for the dump fees at the city dump.
Tom Rowland: Awesome.
Neill Holland: These events are grassroots, and you never know exactly where the resourcing is going to come from, but people always band together. This is a mission people love and support, they see the value in it for their area and their fishery, and we've been really blessed in that regard. We've got a lot of expansion going on, in 2024 we're doing our first events at Charleston and up in Long Island Sound in New York. I'm headed up there in October to participate in the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust banquet, which is going to bestow a real nice award on one of our benefactors, his name's Chad Pike, and he's the benefactor for the Grassy Creek Foundation. He's receiving the Lefty Kreh Award for conservation support from Bonefish and Tarpon Trust, and he's going to use part of his time on stage in front of all the other folks who support BTT to explain his affiliation with Ocean Aid 360, and how he thinks other folks should be getting involved with our work.
Tom Rowland: That's awesome. A lot of these, Cedar Key, Tampa, Biscayne, the Keys, obviously hurricane areas. Most of them, if they haven't been hit lately, they will be in the future, unfortunately. I was wondering how you plan around that, like Cedar Key, and we just had a hurricane come through Horseshoe Beach. How does that fit into the plan? A hurricane almost always puts a tremendous amount of debris into the water, how do you use those to set your schedule?
Neill Holland: Yeah, that's a great question. Your listeners will know that when we have major storm activity come through along our shoreline, those trap lines, whether lobster traps, stone crab traps, or blue crab traps, will oftentimes walk quite far, miles, from the original location where the angler set them. That creates a circumstance where the fisherman who set the trap can't relocate it. A lot of times that gear becomes tangled and bundled in such a fashion that nobody's prepared to get it with anything other than a dive knife and scuba equipment. At Cedar Key, something that's on all our minds right now, considering those folks up in the Big Bend region suffered such a dramatic hit a couple of weeks ago, we were there in June, and we were focused specifically on aquaculture debris, because they're doing a lot of clam aquaculture in that area. What we found is that the plastic cover netting used for a lot of those clam leases can become detached and go missing, it ends up in the trees, tangled around everything. A lot of the guys running boats through that area report having it tangled up in their props. Each location that's impacted presents a different series of factors, at Cedar Key it's aquaculture gear. We're always looking at what the factors are at play for each location, and when a major storm event comes, we plan our next opportunity to get to that municipality, and we go. It also means state and federal funds oftentimes become dedicated to those areas, so fortunately we've been able to tap into resources to help respond to some of those spots. It's something we watch very closely, when those storms happen, the onshore debris that makes it into the water is definitely elevated, and the fisheries debris is elevated as well.
Tom Rowland: Man, after Irma, there was a lot of traps and trap lines right out in front of Hawk's Cay, right in front of the headpins there, it was 40 feet across, a knot, like if you imagine your fly line coming up and making a knot, imagine that tight bundle of fly line, 40 feet across, both sides. There must have been 20 different traps just getting spun like a washing machine. I've seen that out in the Marquesas too, after a big storm, I don't know what happens to it out there. At Hawk's Cay at least you're right by a boat ramp, and somebody came and got it, I never saw who got it.
Neill Holland: Well, I can report that some of our counterparts from FWC just got back from the Marquesas today, they were on a multi day dive down there doing survey and cleanup work, and they pulled over two miles of trap line.
Tom Rowland: Wow, that's awesome. That trap line, it's especially rough when they lose the buoy, and it's not the fisherman's fault, right? Somebody ran over your buoy, or a storm rips it apart, or something hits it.
Neill Holland: Boat strike is most common, I'd say.
Tom Rowland: For sure.
Tom Rowland: So you mentioned a bunch of things you've got going, all the way up to Long Island Sound, anything after that, or any goals for the next couple of years for Ocean Aid 360?
Neill Holland: We're working on finalizing, I try not to talk about stuff before it's done, but I think this one's pretty close, we're finalizing a memorandum of understanding with the government of the Bahamas to start exporting the model we've done at Harbor Island to other islands, like Abaco and Bimini, and show that model to other communities, and start to involve local schools, local municipal leadership, residents, and businesses in our process, and try to stand up some other annual events that would, over time, become sustainable and be handed over to those communities as well. That's something I'm really excited about.
Tom Rowland: That's fantastic. What would you say is the comparison of the commercial fishing and the gear in the Bahamas versus the United States? I think we do a lot more trapping, I see commercial lobster divers over there, diving for lobster, but I don't know that I've ever really seen trap boats. Maybe I have, I don't know.
Neill Holland: You're exactly right, the amount of trapping that goes on is, I'd say, dramatically smaller as a percentage of their fishery than we experience in Florida. The other thing that's kind of interesting is that a lot of the traps are makeshift, as opposed to standardized traps like you'd find around the coast of Florida, Louisiana, or South Carolina. We experience the same thing in Puerto Rico, where traps are made out of all kinds of different materials and designs, we've seen a little bit of that in south Florida too. The event we just did in Biscayne Bay, somebody had made a lobster trap out of a Home Depot shopping cart, you've got to appreciate the ingenuity.
Tom Rowland: Sooner or later, somebody will make a better trap.
Neill Holland: Yeah, exactly.
Tom Rowland: You keep messing around with it, and, fishermen are smart, they are smart, and sooner or later everything gets improved.
Neill Holland: You're exactly right.
Tom Rowland: And it could come from a shopping cart, seems silly, but who knows. I know a lot of the crab guys, the traps obviously catch better when they don't have marine growth on them, so they all have the pressure washer. You watch them, they get the crabs out, and they pressure wash that trap before it goes right back in. And then there's other traps that don't catch as good when they're super bright and shiny.
Neill Holland: Yeah, that's right.
Tom Rowland: Everybody figures that out. As soon as you put the trap in the water it catches the best, and then once it gets all this growth on it, the first guy that put a pressure washer on his boat, they probably thought he was crazy. What are you doing? And then every time he comes in full.
Neill Holland: His numbers are better.
Tom Rowland: And then here goes another pressure washer, and another, and another. It's the same way with tournaments, if you change a rule in a tournament, they'll figure out how to fish around that rule and create a new technique that works better than what the rule went in to prevent. Fishermen are just good like that, they're always good like that.
Neill Holland: You're making me think of the breakaway jigs.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, you could take it anywhere, in bass fishing, in trout fly fishing, in any sort of tournament. I'm sure marlin and sailfish tournaments too, they made them use the circle hook, and they didn't want to at first, and now it's like, well, of course, let's use them. Who would want to do it the other way? They figure it out. Fishermen are smart, man, they have a lot of ingenuity, and everybody likes to catch easier rather than harder. So everything gets better.
Neill Holland: I want to mention something really quick, I don't want to gloss over the question you asked about our focus in the tropical fisheries. I'd say that down there, what we're focused on predominantly, and what we're seeing the most of, is large ocean plastics, large ship rope, big buoys, and things like that, and construction materials. What we're focused on in the Bahamas, and what we're looking at in Puerto Rico, on our last visit down there to meet with a local partner named Conservacion Ciencia, is storm debris mostly, stuff that gets carried to their shores from across the Atlantic, that may not originate with them at all.
Tom Rowland: What did you think of Puerto Rico? How many times have you been there?
Neill Holland: I've been there three times.
Tom Rowland: Wow, it's a place I want to go. I think it would be fantastic. I don't know why I've never been, but I've never been to Puerto Rico. It looks amazing.
Neill Holland: Yeah, I haven't had much opportunity to fish there, but I know some of the lagoons and bays can be incredible for tarpon. I'd invite your listeners to check out another organization, Conservacion Ciencia, they're like Ocean Aid 360, but really focused on Puerto Rico, the island and its waters, and a lot of the storm debris after the hurricane that came through there. They've done a phenomenal job organizing commercial fishermen, and they've taught us some things we've brought back here to the Florida mainland. Well worth looking at. I think it just speaks to the fact that there are a lot of reasons to feel positive about what's going on in the fisheries, and about local groups making a positive, bright impact that's growing.
Neill Holland: A lot of times people expect that, as a nonprofit, all we're going to ask for is money, give us money, or something like that. The cash certainly helps, but honestly, the biggest thing is turning up to an event and getting boots on the ground, helping us focus on watersheds and habitat improvement. Believe it or not, one of the biggest things that all of our large industry sponsors and fishing companies want to see nowadays is a social media following. They want to see that people are watching your work, so that when Mercury, one of our sponsors, comes online, other folks are going to know about it as well. So, believe it or not, as corny as it sounds, liking and following the social media accounts for Ocean Aid 360, and other nonprofits you care about, actually does have a real, positive impact on our work and our ability to continue operating.
Tom Rowland: Oh, yeah, for sure, we've seen that with lots of other conservation organizations as well.
Tom Rowland: So this is your chance, you've got, now am I reading this correctly, it says the thirteenth through the fifteenth, is that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday? I'm not always great with dates and days, coming from a guy who just fishes for a living. So Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday this week, because this is going to come out tomorrow, this comes out on the thirteenth of September, which is a Wednesday. If you're listening to this on the thirteenth, you'd have tomorrow and Friday to go down to Key Haven, which is right above Key West, and you'd have an opportunity to help in this cleanup.
Neill Holland: Yeah, and the event's going to be hosted by Beach Weekend Marina, which is right there on the same shoreline at Key Haven.
Tom Rowland: People that are more familiar with that, that used to be Boog Powell's marina, and then the Merchant boys had it, and now it's the new owners.
Neill Holland: We're gonna have all the supplies, free lunch brought in, and prizes each day of the cleanup, make it a nice experience for people. So anybody that's got the time available, and shares our mission, and wants to see a cleaner, healthier fishery here, please come on out. We could use your help.
Tom Rowland: For sure. I wish I could come, I'm not going to be in town, but are you going to be set up at the marina, or at the boat ramp?
Neill Holland: We're gonna be set up at the marina. We're gonna have a couple of tents set up, refreshments, our supplies station, and all of that. We're accepting folks who want to come by skiff, use a boat to work the shoreline, or folks who want to come by foot or kayak. Our rendezvous point is Beach Weekend Marina.
Tom Rowland: Alright. Well, Neill, good job, congratulations and kudos to you, and thank you for what you're doing and what Ocean Aid 360 is doing. Everybody wants a cleaner ocean, nobody wants to look at trash, and that's what you're doing. You're cleaning it all up, and doing it in a fun way that's inclusive and gets a lot of people involved. I love it, I couldn't be more in support of anything. Oceanaid360.org is the website, and Captain Neill Holland right here with us, you can probably just reach out to him if you have questions. Either way, I fully support it. If you're around, you can go down to the old Murray Marine, or the new, what's it called, Beach Weekend. Pick up a few bottles, and I'm sure you'll find lots of other stuff. Well, Neill, thanks again for what you're doing, I really appreciate it, and hope some people listening go down and help out.
Neill Holland: Thank you, Tom, we sure appreciate that. And look forward to coming back on when we hit 300,000 pounds.
Tom Rowland: Let's do it. Let's do it. Alright, we'll set it up.
Neill Holland: Rock and roll.
Tom Rowland: Alright, thanks, Neill.
Neill Holland: See you, bud.
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