By JOE BALOG
For more than a century, Florida’s St. Johns River was the epicenter of freshwater fun in the Sunshine State. The 310-mile waterway attracted visitors from across North America to enjoy world-class fishing and outdoor recreation. Local economies boomed.
Unfortunately, the St. Johns River of today maintains just a fraction of its once-storied appeal. Suffering from habitat loss and declining fish stocks, much of the St. Johns now lies quiet, tourists and their dollars heading elsewhere.
Data – comprised of results from electrofishing surveys – report the lowest gamefish numbers and total biomass for many areas of the river basin. Yet, despite significant funding and attention going to other environmental recovery efforts throughout Florida, the St. Johns River continues to struggle with no discernable management plan in place.
In early 2024, I joined a group of concerned St. Johns River advocates seeking real change, forming Mighty River Recovery. Based in DeLand, this nonprofit is the first of its kind in Florida, bringing to light the issues outdoor enthusiasts have been dealing with for decades.
Mighty River Recovery includes representatives of the fishing community, biologists and fisheries scientists, tourism professionals, and area business members. Together, the organization seeks to engage and build a like-minded community focused on ending the decline of the St. Johns River.
Addressing habitat loss is the first order of business for Mighty River Recovery. In the case of the St. Johns River, managers routinely point to weather events and the highwater levels in 2017 and 2018 as the reason for losses in submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and corresponding poor fish stocks. However, Mighty River Recovery has shown that numerous challenges facing the St. Johns River, including SAV loss, nutrient loading within the watershed and dangerous algae blooms, have been occurring for decades. In fact, several storied fisheries within the river’s middle and upper basin have been essentially written off since the late 1990s.
The impacts of these challenges are broad and complex. Exotic fish numbers, including tilapia and plecos catfish, have exploded in number, with impacts yet to be fully understood. Management of invasive plants continues to be driven primarily with the use of herbicide spraying, the long-term effects of which have never been impartially studied.
While users and scientists alike track the decline, management strategies remain unchanged. Recent climatic events like hurricanes have led to the highest water levels on record, signaling further loss. Despite that, we have yet to see a plan to increase the resilience of the St. Johns River.
Through organization and a desire to act, Mighty River Recovery is moving forward with efforts to restore this fabulous waterway.
Initial projects include SAV enclosure builds – aiding a state-run project and expanding to private efforts through partnerships. These units help regrow vital native vegetation but, even more importantly, provide a real-world study opportunity. Water and sediment characteristics are of special concern, including nutrient levels, pesticide presence, and organic accumulation.
Moreover, Mighty River Recovery insists that more be done to understand the long-term impacts of herbicide use on the resource and advocate for alternative methods of invasive plant control. While effects have been dismissed or downplayed, there is ample reason to believe that the use of these chemicals is causing significant harm to the natural system. Through this practice, the basic building blocks of the ecosystem are routinely destroyed, sinking to the bottom of the river as lifeless muck.
Mighty River Recovery is committed to partnering with groups and institutions determined to learn more, view the big picture, and advocate for change. These include academic institutions, numerous multinational fishing and outdoor organizations, and other non-governmental organizations. With a lack of hard data for the river, and an overwhelming dissatisfaction among users, more must be done to understand and save this imperiled ecosystem before it’s too late.
Sadly, many outdoor enthusiasts have come to accept the decline of the St. Johns River as status-quo. Mighty River Recovery has not, and we’re rapidly organizing a group advocating for change that’s long overdue. If you’d like to get involved, we can be found at mightyriverrecovery.org.
Joe Balog is Executive Director of Mighty River Recovery
