November 2, 2022 — Matlacha is among the places in Southwest Florida hit hardest by Hurricane Ian: buildings were destroyed, roads were washed out and debris is everywhere.

Among the wreckage, a small lime-green building – the Island Seafood Market – is somehow still standing. Owner Casey Streeter has had to tear out everything that was once inside.

“The front was washed out,” he recalled first seeing it after the storm. “We came in through the window on this door. Our coolers floated up, tipped over. We had about two-and-a-half feet of mud in the shop.”

But the biggest hit was to what’s behind the shop. Streeter said all of their grouper boats were damaged by Ian, and even worse, they lost their docks and ice house to the hurricane.

Read the full article at NBC

October 14, 2022 — Southwest Florida’s commercial fishing industry has been struggling for some time from the recent red tide and the graying out of the fleet. But now, Hurricane Ian has put the fishing industry on the ropes.

“Lee County’s seafood industry took a major hit,” said Casey Streeter, a commercial fisherman and the owner of Island Seafood Market on Matlacha.

Hurricane Ian’s powerful storm surge destroyed a large portion of Southwest Florida’s fishing industry from boats to docks to fish houses.

“Fort Myers beach, our shrimp fleet is decimated, that’s about a 200-million-dollar loss with what they do,” said Streeter. “Their boats are obviously tanged up onshore…Here on Pine Island, we lost four of our five fish houses. We lost many of the grouper boats. The infrastructure of our fishery is gone.”

Read the full article at Fox 4