Conservation Partner: Captains for Clean Water
Florida Fishing Products is based on three pillars: Customer Service, Community, and Conservation. As a company founded by Christian anglers, FFP is extremely passionate about protecting God's Creation; in particular, the water that its founders and FFP's anglers love to fish. In an effort to help spread awareness of the issues our estuaries face and to help find solutions for theses problems, FFP has teamed up with a number of conservation organizations who also share the desire to protect and conserve the areas we ALL love to fish.
Captains for Clean Water is a grassroots 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that advocates for the elimination of harmful, large-scale Lake Okeechobee discharges into the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie River Estuaries by restoring the natural flow of Lake Okeechobee water south into the Everglades and Florida Bay. Restoring the natural southern flow of Lake Okeechobee water is essential to the survival of our estuaries, the health of the Everglades, and the long-term viability of South Florida’s largest drinking water source (the Biscayne Aquifer).
Captains for Clean Water started out as a group of fishing guides from Fort Myers, FL that “had enough” of Florida’s poor water management practices. We have witnessed the long-term decline of estuaries across south Florida – and we have seen the acceleration of that decline over just the last ten years. Inexplicably, no significant progress has been made to solve this enormous problem – and that is simply not acceptable to us.
Given the destruction we have seen firsthand, we are convinced that if everyone knew what we knew, this problem would have been fixed already. Unfortunately, the solution to this problem has been obstructed by large corporate agricultural interests and government mismanagement. The science has been proven time and time again- the state needs to acquire land south of Lake Okeechobee to store, treat and convey water south. This consensus solution has been delayed decades because our state’s lawmakers have enjoyed large-scale campaign contributions from agricultural corporations seeking to benefit from the status-quo, combined with a lack of public awareness. We’re here to fix that.
