Captain Scott Fisher, lead captain for the Conch Republic Marine Army, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the organization.
The Conch Republic Marine Army is a grassroots volunteer organization.
Fisher said, “As everybody down the Keys knows September 10, 2017 changed a lot of people’s lives in the Keys, especially the Lower Keys. So when Hurricane Irma blew through, everybody’s lives were kind of upended, and we were all living in trailers and trying to figure things out. The authorities would come in, state, local, federal authorities, and they would clean the canals up and kind of get them navigable again. But nobody took the time to clean up the debris. We had about a 10 foot storm surge, give or take. So everything that was washed into the mangroves, into our canals, into the ocean, ended up staying there. So we organized a cleanup just of our canal right after Irma, a few months after Irma, and people were starting to finally get out again, and 25 people showed up. So we made a Facebook post about three weeks later to do it again on another canal and a neighbor’s canal, and 125 people showed up. The third time we did a post, 250 people showed up. And on that one, we had traffic jams on Route 1, we had the sheriff involved in Kiki’s. It was quite a heartwarming experience. People got to do something that was kind of fun and productive for a change, to get out of their houses. So we started running trips once a week with volunteers back in 2017, 2018 out of our founders home, we’re a 501c3, nonprofit. We survive totally on donors’ funding and the volunteers never pay for anything when we take them out. So we started with one boat. Since then, in 2017 we’re getting ready to put our third boat in the water this week. So we run weekly trips out of Marathon at the Isla Bella Beach Resort on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We run trips on Saturdays out of the Perry marina on Stock Island in Key West and starting in a couple of weeks, we’re going to be running trips on Thursdays out of the Blue Key, dive resort on Ramrod Key. So we take volunteers out to the nearshore mangroves, and we clean up the debris, we bring it back.”
With three boats, the need for support is growing.
Fisher said, “We had about a year to raise some funds, and we had the money in the bank to buy that third boat. It’s a coastal skiff. We use skiffs because they can float in shallow water. It’s a 27 foot coastal skiff. So I called the dealer in North Carolina, because we had no way to buy it. About a week later, the manufacturer of that boat called me and said, you know what? I’ve heard you’ve been talking to one of my dealers about buying that boat. I would like to offer you that boat for free. So he says, I have a place. This is North Carolina. Says, but I have a second home on Ramrod Key, and I will drop that boat off for you the next time I come down. So we have a lot of really big hearted people down here, but it’s still very, very expensive to run the boat. We use Coast Guard licensed captains, experienced deckhands, to make it a safe experience for everybody.”
Since 2017 more than 6,217 volunteers have helped and 294 tons, that’s 587,588 pounds, of debris has been collected as of September 30, 2025.
Fisher said, “People that donate money to us, they want to see some results. And a lot of these mangrove islands, they’re so critical to our ecosystem down here. They’re the nurseries for all the little fish, the birds nest there. They protect us from storm surge and all that. And they’re just so critical. But nobody sees them because they’re offshore somewhere, and they’re in the back country. So when people donate money to us, it’s hard for them to find a tangible result. So we found it’s very important to show people this is what we’re doing, and it’s 294 tons, 105 refrigerators. We’ve taken out, maybe a dozen or so boats, 3 million feet of trap line, the commercial trap line, we’ve taken out. So it’s a very productive way to spend a Saturday with us. Last week, we went out, we had the storms last week, so we didn’t run as many trips because of the thunderstorms, but we took out about 15 people last week, and we only got about with 15 people. We only got about 250 pounds of debris. And for us, that is a very, very slow day. But we pulled in all buoy balls. They don’t weigh anything, and those little Styrofoam buoy balls break apart, and the fish eat them, and then we eat the fish. And up and up and up the food chain it goes. So sometimes it’s not always about the weight, but it is about getting that stuff out of there that’s going to do damage in the future.”
Volunteers are always needed.
Fisher said, “That third quarter dip is because it’s really hot down here. There’s a lot of people that don’t want to go out there and spend a few hours in the mangroves in the middle of summer down here, but then we have a great mix of people on our boat, because the boat that’s up in Marathon is actually at the resort, and they market our trip like they market offshore fishing or scuba diving, or you can go out with the CRMA and do what we do. So the people that come to resort, they get on the boat, and then you also have locals, and that mix of people is fantastic to watch. The people get to know each other. We’ve had people that met on the boat and got married in the last eight years, so it’s a fun way to spend your day, and we provide everything you need. We’ve had school groups that come every year. We’ve had groups from all over the world, really, international groups. We’ve had them from the international school in Manhattan, which is an international school of all British students in Manhattan, but they come every year. We’re getting ready to work with the Naval Air Station to clean up some federal land of Boca Chica. That’s something we have not been able to do since Hurricane Irma, for obvious reasons. It’s a Naval Air Station, but we’ve been able to make some inroads there. So we’re forming up a clean up there. So that’s kind of exciting.”
There are also a number of sponsors.
Fisher said, “Yamaha motors, that’s their charitable arm. They hang a 300 horsepower motor on the back of every one of our boats for free. Yamaha is a fantastic sponsor. Winn Dixie provides lunch every Saturday for the boat in Key West. We do have some corporate sponsorships, but almost all of our sponsorships come from individual donors, pretty much well.”
It’s not free to run the organization.
Fisher said, “It’s a little more challenging for our kind of charity, at least what I found anyway, like for us, many other charities, have issues with getting volunteers to come help. I think we offer such a unique product that we don’t have a problem with volunteers. Now don’t take that the wrong way. We want more volunteers, but what we do have a problem with this funding, because when people donate to us, it goes into fuel, it goes into salaries for the captain. It doesn’t go into buying a boat, typically, or something they can say, I bought that and gave that to them. So we find it a challenge sometimes with fundraising because of that, but we still most of our funds are raised individually.”
How much of the Keys’ mangroves have been touched by CRMA?
Fisher said, “Well, there’s 900 and something islands in the Keys, because we’re not just working on the Keys that everybody lives on. We’re out in the back country working on the ones that nobody sees for the most part. We’ve probably done about, I would say somewhere around 100 miles of shoreline, and there are tens of thousands. Our goal is to station boats throughout the Keys. We have a boat in Key West. We’re going to have a boat in Ramrod in the next couple of weeks, we have a boat Marathon. So we have three boats between mile marker zero and 50. Our next boats, if we can somehow pull it off and get funding for it, we’ll go north of Marathon up to Grassy Key, Layton in that area, and we’re trying to work our way up the entire Keys so that we can eventually have boats stationed everywhere, and we can clean the entire Keys at least one time. That’s the goal.”
There is really nobody else doing this on an organized basis in the Florida Keys.
Fisher said, “We’ve gotten some good assistance from our federal partners and state partners. We have permits from FWC for derelict trap removal. We have permits from NOAA that allow us to work in the sanctuary, because you’re not allowed to set foot on the seabed in the sanctuary. Well, it’s kind of hard to clean up without setting foot on the sea bed. So we’ve gotten exceptions from United States Fish and Wildlife Service to work their land from NOAA and from FWC. So even if people had big hearts and wanted to do it, they either don’t have the boats, they can float in like six inches of water like ours do to get to these mangrove islands, or they’re not allowed. I mean, these are protected areas that we don’t want people just tramping through there, even if their hearts are in the right place. These are turtle nesting areas. There are archeological finds from Native Americans that we found in some of these places. So it is critical that people work with local authorities to be able to access it, and we’re just now getting to a point where they’re recognizing the work we do and allowing us to continue it on their lands.”
Are there other organizations nationally or internationally that do the same thing?
Fisher said, “There’s a really kind of a mentor for us has been a group called Living Lands and Waters there on the Mississippi, and a guy there has kind of mentored us into the structure of the crews and that kind of stuff. But there’s nobody doing what we do anywhere that I know of. People do beach cleanups and there’s the ploggers in Key West that meet every week and clean up the streets, which is fantastic, but there’s nobody that does what we do, and especially on our industrial scale level, like we do it, 300 tons of trash, we’ve taken out 6,000 volunteers. There’s nobody making that kind of an impact in our community here.”
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Department has also been a big help.
Fisher said, “They’ve donated two different vehicles to us over the years. That was fantastic. So, yeah, they’ve been a great partner. FWC, Captain Dave Dupree just retired, but they’ve been a fantastic partner because they see us out there and we’re traipsing around the mangroves, and we’re not supposed to be in those mangroves. But yes, we are, because we’re who we are. So it’s been great to get to work with those guys too. Justin Nels is the general manager at the Isla Bella resort on Marathon, and is a fantastic partner. We run different sorts of trips out of Isla Bella. We run two trips a day, Wednesdays and Saturdays. So we do a 9:30 to 12 and a 12:30 to 3, because it allows the guests time to do other things in the afternoon, in the morning, they don’t want to go out for a whole day. They go out for half a day with us. So we clean up Boot Key right off of Marathon there, and we’ve taken 40 tons off of Boot Key with that boat that they sponsor at Isla Bella. They pay the expenses pretty much to make that boat available to the public, which is fantastic. We can do like a 10 minute boat ride to get there, 15 minute boat ride and get them back by noon. So it works out really well. We get the international trash too, that comes in. We found a message in a bottle one time from two lovebirds in the Cayman Islands. Then we called them and they were married. So yeah, everything floats in here and the other islands and the other countries. We take pretty good care of the environment here compared to other countries in the Caribbean.”
What’s the most unique thing that has been pulled out of the water?
Fisher said, “We found a couple square groupers. That’s kind of fun. I have a sword hanging on the wall that we found. That’s pretty cool. Wow. We found a brass, it was a patent that somebody had, like, plated and put on a wall, and we put it on Facebook, and the guy’s grandson contacted us. That was pretty cool. We found wedding albums, like, right after Hurricane Irma, when that happens, I mean, picture everything in your house that’s below 15 feet getting washed into the mangroves. So everything that was out there, we found boats, people with liveaboards and their boats are washed up on the end of the mangroves. So we found a lot of personal belongings. But for the most part, it’s commercial trash. The marine debris from our fishing industry is the big culprit down here. There’s, say a million traps in Monroe County, lobster and stone crab traps they put out. If they lose 10% a year, well there’s 100,000 traps gone. Well, they’re not gone. They’re still out there somewhere, and they end up in the mangroves with their lines tangling the roots and all that. So, it’s an ongoing issue.”
For more information, click here: https://www.conchrepublicmarinearmy.org/