(Rev. August 6, 2023)
Over-achievers Jody and Dewey Houck were advisers on breaking technology to the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, Jody as professional staff to the House Intelligence Committee and strategist with Raytheon, Dewey in his career peak as VP and leading AI and big data analytics expert with Boeing Defense.
They gave up Beltway living in northern Virginia to be near their children and grandchildren in Tallahassee, where they heard about oyster farming in coastal Wakulla. Intrigued by a retirement business, Dewey says the biggest thing he brought with them was the confidence from his nearly 20 years at Boeing that they could take this on.
They enrolled in an oyster farming program at the Wakulla Environmental Institute and found existing farmers that let them apprentice.
After 3 years at work at their own Cypress Point Oysters in Spring Creek; in Panacea, where they’ve become best buds with Jack Rudloe at his Gulf Marine Specimen Labs, and in Sopchoppy that they call home, Dewey and Jody brighten a collaborative glow across a state darkened by willful avoidance of climate action that comes close to home.
They add to connoisseurship along a coast that’s 85 percent in public ownership where marine science already meets mom-and-pop businesses that reach customers far across America and root conservation principles where they live.
Tourism diddles
Coastal Wakulla is a beacon of how willing minds can adapt to climate action, including how visitors fit in. The region stands out at a time when tourism diddles while threats mount to overturn environmental policy and good sense from Washington to Crawfordville, the Wakulla County seat.
*Mike Pence among other presidential aspirants appeals to many Americans when he calls for canceling all incentives to address climate change and eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency,” Dewey told me by phone.
*At the July directors meeting of Brand USA, the public-private agency partially funded by Congress to market American vacations to the rest of the world, climate action came last after 110 minutes of self-praise for the agency’s 2022 year of post-Covid achievements. In an afterthought, Brand USA President and CEO Chris Thompson suggested it’s time to start telling stories about member contributions to alleviate climate change. Days later, Brand USA announced Thompson’s retirement as of May 31, 2024.
*A 4–1 vote by the Wakulla Board of County Commissioners on May 1 hotly opposed by citizens will be reconsidered August 7. The rehearing will decide which of alternative comp plan amendments will be adopted that will affect crystalline Wakulla Springs, which centers a state park and a top county visitor attraction. One amendment would lead to a gas station and RV park atop a cave system where subsurface waters directly enter the springs. The other would provide greater protection.
** More Americans are splurging as never before to make up for Covid lockdown, nickle-and-dimed by resorts into $1,000 nightly room charges from converting swimming pools into water parks and by capturing wellness for revenue mining.
** The New Yorker depicted the season of “revenge travel” on its July 24 cover as lemmings with their vacation gear jumping off cliffs of an eroding beach into a sea of hot tub temperatures.
Ectourism and the nurturing of community
The Houcks pay a $15 starting wage to their 4 employees. They provide lunch that visitors can also join. Fridays, they tap a growler. They let 9 other farmers use their $35,000 “tumbler” that piles oysters deeply into their shells.
They’ve also developed a radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, a form of wireless that allows them to manage the growth of every oyster they sell and capture its history. The data supply particular confidence among high-end restaurant buyers around the South that pay $3.00 to $4.25 apiece for their Cypress Point brand.
When they acquired their Spring Creek site, a hurricane-battered motel and restaurant came with it. They’re fixing up the motel and turning the restaurant into a meeting and events center. Each acquired a captain’s license for 6 passengers and 2 skiffs for visitor explorations of their marine whereabouts and learning about farming craft oysters.
Dewey says that for a long time Panhandle oystermen treated Gulf waters as a bank. “People who tonged oysters brought more of a hunter mentality. They didn’t want to settle down.” They lost out over time when courts favored Georgia in a tri-state disagreement including Alabama that reduced the flow of fresh water down the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River system needed to balance out the salinity that bay-grown oysters require.
What the Wakulla postings tell climate travelers about climate action
» We should search for destinations that hold themselves out for climate action according to the criteria below (●). Caveat emptor about greenwashing.
» For an honest if rosy look at how the travel industry wants leisure travelers to help solve its still weak commitment to climate action: https://www.thetravelfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/EnvisionTourism_Full_FINAL.pdf Also (name says it all) https://sustainabletravel.org/how-to-reduce-travel-carbon-footprint/.
» For background on the right questions to be asking of hotels and others, including cruise ships, about their commitments to climate action, https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-travel-industry-has-ambitious-climate-goals-how-will-it-meet-them. Also, about hotels: https://www.travelperk.com/blog/10-ways-hotels-can-reduce-their-impact-on-the-environment/
» In the U.S., search for National Heritage Areas of which there are 62 that all celebrate “local”. Look for links to heritage tourism: https://www.nps.gov/subjects/heritageareas/discover-nhas.htm#:~:text=There%20are%2062%20designated%20National,%2C%20education%2C%20and%20preservation%20activities.
» Look at the Trail Towns website of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy — a mother lode: https://www.railstotrails.org/build-trails/trail-building-toolbox/planning/trail-towns/
» Search among agritourism, glamping, hostels, ostensibly net-zero hotels, e.g., at https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/best-net-zero-hotels-cmd/index.html; also https://blog.pressreader.com/hotels/sustainability-in-luxury-hotels
» For trustworthy influentials about travel and climate change, https://www.google.com/search?q=infllueencers+about+leisure+travel+and+climate+change&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS951US951&oq=infllueencers+about+leisure+travel+and+climate+change&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i299.34335j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
For climate destinations as initiators of climate action
● Use the presence of visitors to strengthen community.
● Collaborate.
● Organize everything possible at local scale.
● Encourage/incentivize businesses that serve residents and visitors alike.
● Avoid chains. This is not meant to discourage restaurants or other businesses so long as each is distinctive in its vicinity. E.g., Trident in Panacea and Backwoods Crossing in Tallahassee.
● Better than build new, restore.
● Keep behemoth cruise ships out. Expeditionary ships may be okay.
● If you organize events, choose events that renew heritage and nature.
● Encourage apprenticeships that will tend to keep the young from moving away or if they do move for education or other purposes, raise them so they want to return.
● Build trails so that locals can get many places they want without getting in cars. Create overlooks. Allow signage for local businesses so long as signs abide by a local aesthetic.
● Accordingly, restore what you need downtown or in the neighborhood.
● Everywhere, train people for sustainable livelihoods, and especially for cultivating gardens and experimenting for added uses of native foods.
● Develop crafts from locally renewable resources.
● Expand eligibility for serving on boards of destination marketing organizations. Include scientists, ethicists, artists, placemakers, and others. Where legislation limits membership to hotels and others directly engaged in tourism (as well as government representatives), change the laws. In a time of climate action, this will help align a destination with markets that seek to reduce adverse impacts from their travels.
● Invest marketing dollars in places where government, nonprofits and for-profits prioritize climate action.
NOTES
https://www.oystersouth.com/stories/2022/6/22/bivalve-bites-tune-in-to-this-farm-tech. I also interviewed and exchanged messages with Dewey Houck.
https://www.thebrandusa.com/system/files/Meetings/Website%20Post%20FINAL%20PUBLIC%20JULY%20BOD%20MEETING_0.pdf I logged onto all of it. I have not yet found minutes of the meeting available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23WXzTDiFNc. https://www.facebook.com/RalphThomasCountyCommissioner/ Contra: https://floridaphoenix.com/2021/07/15/down-under-fls-wakulla-county-flirting-with-disaster-with-our-biggest-spring/ https://news.yahoo.com/former-dep-secretary-gas-station-150003304.html Also, 2 phone talks with dissenter in the BOCC decision, Chuck Hess, Ph.D., the only scientist and environmentalist on the board.
Visit Wakulla, https://www.visitwakulla.com/things-to-do/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304746604577379944042575320
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/142%20orig_h3ci.pdf; also, https://bittersoutherner.com/feature/2022/the-last-oyster-tongers-of-apalachicola#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20state%20of,by%20Hurricane%20Michael%20in%202018.
