November 10, 2022 — Jimmy Driggers, 85, got into the fishing business when he was just 13 years old. He’s a shrimper in Fort Myers, Fla.
“I was a mullet fisherman, [a] commercial fisherman in my younger days,” he said.
Driggers walks with a prosthetic leg from an injury he sustained on his boat about a decade ago. It’s decorated with a sea lighthouse.
He owns one shrimping boat — the Miz Shirley — named after his wife. It can carry 50,000 pounds of shrimp.
Driggers said the industry has been hurting for decades, and that he was paid more back in the 1980’s than he is today. Fuel prices have skyrocketed.
“You have to produce a lot of shrimp to stay afloat,” Driggers said. “And that’s what we were doing for the last year — just staying afloat, not making enough to fix anything that broke. It was tough.”
Then came Hurricane Ian. It pushed The Miz Shirley half onto a seawall and half was left in the water –- unusable.
When Ian made landfall in Florida in late September, it hit the shrimp fishing industry particularly hard. For decades, it’s been an important part of the economy in Fort Myers — integral to the region’s culture and identity. Now, it’s at a standstill.
“We thought about selling out, but I don’t want to do that, if we can hold on,” Driggers said. “If we can get the boat off and get it repaired, and back in working order.” He acknowledges that it’s going to take a lot of work.
Driggers’ home, which backs a water channel, will have to be demolished. It got four inches of water during the storm and mold is growing everywhere. He and Shirley don’t have flood insurance.
The couple has been sleeping in a donated camper in their front lawn. They’re hoping the insurance on the boat will cover enough of the repairs to keep them in business — but they haven’t been able to assess the damage yet.