Father, please bless these boats, please bless their equipment and all who use and sail in them; protect them from the dangers of wind and rain, from all the perils of the deep.
It’s 10 a.m. on a Saturday in Everglades City, and the docks along the Barron River are already 500 deep. Folks step in and out of the morning light, one hand pressed to their brow, as they peer down the inlet and wait. “Can you see them? Are they coming?” voices whisper. Suddenly, a dozen gleaming white boats emerge, like clouds caught between heaven and Earth. For a day in late September, the small town claims a new city center, alongside visitors from as far as Venice and Miami—drawn here for the annual Blessing of the Fleet. The captains sidle their vessels up the inlet before leaning the boats’ metal frames against the narrow wood pilings outside Camellia Street Grill.
Before the first trap is pulled on October 15th for the start of stone crab season, the community gathers to anoint the fleet. For locals, the Blessing signals livelihood. For visitors, it marks the return of a delicacy gathered by hand from Gulf waters and prized in restaurants for up to $50 a pound.
1 of 2
Photography by Brian Tietz
blessing of the fleet stone crab season prayer
Before the traps drop, the prayers rise in Everglades City. Led by Monsignor Tim Naven and Pastor Craig Andrews (pictured here), the Blessing of the Fleet gathers about 1,000 guests for a generational rite that readies the stone crab boats for an arduous season. This year’s ceremony is on September 20.
2 of 2
Photography by Brian Tietz
blessing of the fleet stone crab season prayer petals
Monsignor Tim Naven of San Marco Catholic Church blesses a boat with holy water as Chokoloskee Pastor Craig Andrews moves to the next vessel. With his jeans tucked into white rubber boots and one arm raised to the heavens, the pastor kneels before the boat’s captain. The pastor’s 5-year-old son crouches beside him—one knee, one hand—mimicking his father. For generations, stone crabbing has sustained Gulf Coast families. Today, fewer than 1,000 licensed crabbers remain statewide as the fleet grays and mounting regulations choke off entry for would-be inheritors. Everglades City sits at the industry’s center, with 15 boats hauling 40% of Florida’s harvest from October to May. Storms, cold fronts, rising costs and labor shortages further narrow the season. The Blessing of the Fleet is a moment to honor what endures: a legacy shaped by salt, sacrifice and a claw that regenerates, season after season, if the people hauling it can hold on.
Initiated in 2007, the tradition started as a locals-only midnight gathering before evolving into a regional celebration. Three Everglades women—Holly Dudley, Kelly Kirk and Carrie Doxsee, founders of the Florida Stone Crabbers Association (FLSCA)—took over the event two years ago. They moved it from the Rod and Gun Club to Camellia Street Grill, a community hub run by a local family long known for supporting the traditions and livelihoods of the ’Glades (the owners’ 16-year-old daughter sets her own pots—crab traps—before school). The women cast a wide net, inviting people from one end of the region to the other. The ritual became a way of speaking for fisherfolk who are too busy working the water to speak for themselves.
God, we ask for your blessing upon today. On every boat. On every family. May Christ, who calmed the storm and filled the nets of his disciples, making them fishers of men and women, bring us all to the harbor of light and peace.
1 of 3
Photography by Dan Cutrona
blessing of the fleet stone crab season holly dudley
Pictured in order: Holly Dudley, Carrie Doxsee and Kelly Kirk. After the state proposed cutting five weeks from the October-to-May season, the women formed the Florida Stone Crabbers Association in 2020 to speak for families too busy working the water to speak for themselves. They have been running the Blessing since 2023.
2 of 3
Photography by Anna Nguyen
blessing of the fleet stone crab season carrie doxsee
3 of 3
Photography by Brian Tietz
blessing of the fleet stone crab season kelly kirk
Aboard the High Cotton, Pastor Craig hands fourth-generation stone crabber Capt. ‘Little’ Mac Collins a Bible wrapped in plastic, its scripture now waterproof. Little Mac is 22 years old. His father, ‘Big’ Mac Collins, purchased the vessel as a young man, stepping out of his father’s shadow. The Collins boys believe the families sustaining the industry will carry on. But it’s getting harder to hold the line. “When I was coming up, we drew pictures of crab boats in school. It’s what we dreamed of,” Big Mac says. His gaze settles on his son as saw palms clatter in the distance, a stiff wind whistling off the Barron River. “You just don’t see it anymore. We’re a dying breed, and my son is a rare case.”
The increasing cost of entry (upward of $100,000 before you touch the water), paired with a slew of ever-evolving regulations, causes many to quit before they get started. Still, the Collinses stay the course. Little Mac’s great-grandfather was a pioneer in the industry. His grandfather still works ‘the hill,’ where families repair traps and ready their gear. “It’s a tough way to make a living,” Little Mac says. “You gotta love it, you know.”
There was a time when scenes like this filled the docks. Now, fewer families remain. Fewer boys kneel. Pastor Craig’s eyes close as he speaks, his fingers tapping along to each syllable. Curious, his son places a hand on his shoulder. In the distance, black mangroves rise from the shallows, their roots surfacing and vanishing with the tide. A lone pelican flies overhead. ‘Watch where it dives,’ he whispers to himself. That’s where the bait fish swim. The boy is learning the ways of the water. He knows that, given a thousand lives, the people on these boats would still choose this one—this headlong rush into a stammer of green and blue and then, just blue.
Photography by Brian Tietz
Photography by Brian Tietz
Photography by Dan Cutrona
Photography by Dan Cutrona
Setting out into the sun-glazed expanse alone or with a small crew, there’s ample reason to invoke the blessing of God upon their endeavors, for ‘there are no atheists in foxholes.’ The crabbers practice a livelihood that could maim or kill them, from rough weather to traps, which can weigh 80 pounds each when wet. One misstep can crush a hand or drag a man overboard.
Father, we ask you for your guidance. Please watch over these boats. We ask for a hedge of protection around them, Father. We ask that your wisdom, knowledge, and understanding be given to the captains, Father, as they go forth, and that an abundance be given.
As each vessel is blessed, the daughters of crabbers scatter petals—orchids and lilies shaped by the swamp’s sheer heat. Errant sprays of holy water mist the blooms and crinkled fan edges as the assembled lean in to hear the pastor’s prayers. Gilded stone crabs glitter around the necks of locals, people who mouth the blessed words while making way for out-of-towners. Benedictions of joy emerge between each pass, and the captains stare down the line, waiting for their turn. Buddy Grimm—brother of Everglades City Mayor Howie Grimm—leans against his boat’s cabin door as Pastor Craig lifts his leg over the gunwale. Sunlight fills the space between them. The flower girls touch their fingers to the petals, focused but beaming, each one born to people who were born to people who were born here.
Getty Images
blessing of the fleet stone crab season everglades aerial view
Many families gathered here are survivors of decades of storms, regulation and slow erasure. Over the last half-century, much of the territory and tradition that sustained the Calusa, Seminole, Miccosukee and generations of families has been lost. The 1985 federal ban on commercial fishing inside Everglades National Park severed ties to ancestral waters. A decade later, the 1994 gill net ban—introduced as a conservation measure—upended the mullet fishery. Working waterfronts across the region were dismantled or redeveloped. Families found themselves criminalized overnight—their gear outlawed, their livelihoods erased. Mullet men, long-time sentinels of the water, had adapted their practices to match the rhythms of the ecosystem, refining net sizes to catch mature fish while allowing juveniles to pass through. If balance had been disrupted, they argued, the real culprits were the water mismanagement and unchecked coastal development that had long plagued the region—gated communities rising along the shoreline, named for the flora and fauna in decline. Communities named for near-ghosts.
In the aftermath, some left the water. Others adapted. Many of today’s stone crabbers are former mullet fishers, or their sons and daughters, raised aboard crab boats because it was all that remained—a way to stay on the water, to hold onto a heritage. The trauma still echoes. Holly turned 16 the day the gill net ban passed. She knew many of the fishermen who ended up taking their lives—men whose hands cast nets in their sleep, yearning as all things do, to be restored. “We weren’t criminals,” she says. “They made us criminals.” When a new threat emerged in 2020, this time to the stone crab trade, Holly joined forces with Kelly and Carrie to form the FLSCA. The state had proposed a five-week reduction in the season, which would have devastated the families who depend upon a handful of months to earn a living. Within a year, the group lobbied successfully to reduce the proposed cut to two weeks—a win that rippled across the docks.
At the beginning of creation, Lord, your spirit hovered over the deep. You called forth every creature, and the seas teemed with life.
Photography by Dan Cutrona
blessing of the fleet stone crab season participants
“It’s my lifeblood, stone crabbing … To see folks gathered here to celebrate that, and us, is a beautiful thing,” says Cole Dudley—Holly’s son and a fourth-generation crabber. His grandfather, Ernest Hamilton, is credited with bringing Florida’s most prized delicacy to market.
As the Blessing concludes, the Jack Shealy Band kicks in—sons of the swamp grinding out Southern soul while crabbers tap their boots on planks above the river. Locals pull folding chairs into the shade; visitors follow. Babies are rocked to and fro as mamas scan for their family’s names scrawled somewhere between an engine and an outboard.
Old-timers talk boats by the bar while eyeing a procession of coconut-guava cakes. Part of the Blessing’s annual baking contest, the confections are a nod to centuries-old recipes. The flower girls drop their baskets and rush the food line, where people thank the crabbers before loading up plates with buttered grits and pulled pork. Among the crowd, Holly, Carrie and Kelly weave through the wharf with ease—this time not as daughters and wives, but as organizers, advocates, stewards. “If we don’t organize, they’re going to take this from us, too,” Holly says. Aboard her husband’s boat, Strictly Business, her two sons, Cole and Shannon Jr., fourth-generation stone crabbers, look out over the crowd and shake their heads in disbelief. “It’s my lifeblood, stone crabbing. I graduated from high school and jumped on this boat to work alongside my dad. To see these folks gathered here to celebrate that, and us, is a beautiful thing,” Cole says. Their great-grandfather, Ernest Hamilton, is credited with bringing stone crabs to market. Carrie waves to the boys as she looks for her husband. Her hands are marked by years of helping on the water and the hill—knuckles swollen, fingertips bent like bald cypress roots. Kelly, born on the opening day of stone crab season, works with many of the crabbers as the next-generation steward of the iconic Kirk Fish Company in Goodland. She brokers their catch and often represents their interests before state officials.
Sixth-generation native Bart Stokes beckons to the girls. He lost nearly half his traps to Irma and remembers the stone crabbers who couldn’t recover—forced to leave behind a heritage and an identity once more. “I saw the net ban coming and didn’t use my voice. I didn’t fight. I swore I’d never be silent again,” Bart says, and points to the FLSCA as a megaphone for them all. His son Colton stands beside him. On their boat, Bart’s infant granddaughter coos—the newest generation already blessed and doused in holy water. The Barron River rises, as if in greeting, time and tide calling the boats back to the deep—each vessel marked with a promise to return.
Heavenly Father, may all who rely on the sea for their livelihood remain in your care. Grant them your protection. And when they journey across the water, always lead them safely home. Amen.
Photography by Dan Cutrona
blessing of the fleet stone crab season camellia street food
What started as a locals-only midnight ritual has become a regional celebration, taking place at Camellia Street Grill. At the event, multigenerational fishing families break bread with visitors coming from as far as Venice and Miami.