It may take a village to raise a child, but to clean out all 950 miles of mangrove coastline in the Florida Keys and restore the essential ecosystem to what it once was? That takes an army — the Conch Republic Marine Army — and it’s now rallying the troops for battle in Key West and Stock Island.
The nonprofit, grassroots operation launched in Big Pine in 2017 after Hurricane Irma devastated homes and businesses, disassembled roofs and scattered the contents of living rooms and garages into nearby canals and nearshore waters.
Neighbors stepped in and started helping anyone who needed it, donating clothing, furniture and funds to help residents rebuild their lives. After some of the land-based work was well underway, Capt. Brian Vest started looking at the waters that surround the island chain, and the crucial mangroves that line our coastal edges. Both were filled with debris — some deposited by the storm and some unceremoniously, and illegally, dumped by ignorant chuckleheads.
Vest decided to do something in the wake of Hurricane Irma, and he hasn’t stopped for seven years.
In May, Vest was invited to speak at a Key West Rotary lunch.
“Brian told the Rotary crowd that he wanted to set up operations down here in Key West, but his biggest problem was finding a slip for a Conch Republic Marine Army boat,” Rotarian Scott Mayer told the Keys Weekly on April 30. “He said he couldn’t even get a marina to call him back. I started thinking, ‘Holy shit, here’s a guy who has made it his mission to clean the marine environment with volunteers in boats and kayaks. Maybe I could help.’”
Mayer has been friends with Mitch Walsh, general manager of the Perry Marina, for years, since Walsh was a dockhand and dockmaster at the marina, which has 288 slips. Within a month, the three had arranged for the Perry to donate a slip to the Conch Republic Marine Army.
Vest will bring one of the army’s boats — a 27-footer called the K2 — down from Big Pine, temporarily, to the Perry Marina on Stock Island. The army’s other boat operates out of Isla Bella Resort in Marathon, conducting weekly volunteer cleanup trips to the mangroves.
But getting the slip in place down here was just the beginning. Now the real work begins, Vest told the Keys Weekly on Aug. 6.
“We need to raise about $200,000 to get a permanent boat operating out of Key West and Stock Island. And we need to do it quickly.”
Vest has already surveyed the waters around the area, and has noted refrigerators, couches, TVs, paint cans, appliances, boat parts, gas cans, plastics and lots and lots of rope.
Since 2017, the CRMA has removed 250 tons – yes, TONS – of trash from the mangroves.
“We’ve done 54 miles of shoreline between, say, Big Pine and Marathon, but there’s another 900 miles to go,” he said.
The army of volunteers has removed 2.6 MILLION feet — 492 miles — of rope from the mangroves, or roughly the distance from Key West to Jacksonville.
“We’ve hauled out 94 refrigerators and I’ve already spotted number 95 off Key West,” Vest said.
Saturday cleanup trips will begin in the coming weeks from the Perry Hotel. About 10 people per trip can sign up online or by emailing Vest to book a date. The four-hour trip involves wading into shallow water and hauling out anything that doesn’t belong. A lunch follows, along with a weigh-in of the trash.
“We’ve had 5,000 volunteers help so far, and 1,000 volunteers just this year alone,” he said. “But now we need cash to keep this going in Key West and we don’t have all the time in the world.”
Visit conchrepublicmarinearmy.org for information and donation links, or email Vest at brian@conchrepublicmarinearmy.com.
It takes an army, but Key West has never backed down from a challenge.
