Faces Of The Sea: Stock Island - The Florida Keys (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781533426529)

For many years in Key West, Florida, the local economy was dependent on the US Navy base and shrimp boats. Today it is tourism, luxury yachts and cruise ships, the latter often tying up at old Navy docks. There is not one shrimp boat tied up in Key West harbor. Where did they go? I enjoy taking photos of fishing boats, and I had started to visit the Keys in order to get away from the mountains of northeast Pennsylvania in the middle of winter. One day in 2007, after photographing some of the tourist spots on Key West, I left the island on Route 1 and drove east towards Stock Island. As I glanced to my right, I could see large fishing boat outriggers in the distance. I left the highway and worked my way through a series of side streets until I was on a street called Shrimp Road, and there were the remains of the Key West shrimp fleet. I say "remains" because at one time there were between 150 - 200 shrimp boats home ported in Key West and neighboring Stock Island. I saw less than a dozen boats that day. A few days later, I visited this dock again and started to photograph the boats. Gradually I got to know the crews, and began photographing them. For the most part, the crews were older men who had shrimped much of their adult lives. The crews matched the boats-- old and weather-beaten. Few local young people were joining the shrinking ranks of shrimpers, and new boats were not being built for the shrimp in the Keys. The majority of the boats at the dock were wooden construction, often fiber-glassed over. Most of the crewmembers I got to know not only worked on the boats, they lived aboard as well. Some owners had local residences, or at least someplace to crash with a girlfriend, as did a few of the crewmembers. Others just worked away from home for long periods of time. In 2007 the last shrimp dock on Shrimp Road had been sold and was soon to be gentrified; there was more money in yachts than shrimp boats. When I returned in the winter of 2008 the shrimp boats I had previously photographed had moved to the Fishbusterz dock across the harbor. This was the last dock for this dying industry at the end of the Florida Keys. I decided to make a concerted effort when visiting the area to photograph the boats and crews as much as possible. This book is dedicated to the crews of the shrimp boats who still work off the shores of the Florida Keys. This photo essay covers six visits to the area beginning in 2007 and ending in 2015. I only photographed boats and crews from whom I obtained permission, and I did not attempt to photograph everyone on the docks. I enjoyed the time I spent there, and the friendships I made. When I returned in 2015 there were three or four boats that could still be considered working from Stock Island. Other boats occasionally stopped in from other ports on the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Coast, but the shrimping fleet of the Keys had all but disappeared.

Author: John Van Horn
ISBN-10: 153342652X
ISBN-13: 9781533426529
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Language: English
Published: 02/12/2017
Pages: 104
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.58lbs
Size: 11.02h x 8.50w x 0.22d