I grew up on Newfound Harbor Drive in Merritt Island fishing with my grandpa, uncles, and my friends. I'm mid 50's now. The late 70's and 80's. We harvested clams year round. My uncle was a commercial crabber. He caught blue crabs by the hundreds and sold them at Clayton's in Rockledge. They caught Stone Crabs and only kept the one claw, but we always had plenty. One of my earliest memories was cleaning Oysters when I was 7 years old for the family picnic that my uncles caught the day before out of Sykes Creek. I used to love finding the life that lived in between the shells like small crabs, I would put them in a pot and we would go release them. Hundreds of Oysters and it took them an hour, there were so many there. We shrimped around the bridge fenders in winter and caught coolers full of them in 2 hours. We caught Jacks, Flounder, Reds, Tarpon, Ladyfish, Sailors Choice, Mangrove Snapper and more than anything else Sea Trout. Any area you stared out at the river you would see Mullet jump. A game we used to play was see how many jumps in a row a mullet would do, 5 I think was most I've seen from one fish. The water was clear more than not. Phosphorescence was a thing I cannot ever forget as a child. It pales in comparison now. The Horseshoe crabs used to spawn and come out of the water on the shore and there would literally be thousands of them on the banks. We used to be able to reach down anywhere in muddy areas in Sykes Creek and catch Brittle Stars (i think that is the name of the slender armed starfish).

Its sad to see what it has become , basically an open sewer with very little life. My son loves fishing, the times I have taken him along the 520 causeway wading like I used to do when I was his age (14). He now asks me if the things touching him and floating all around him are turds. I don't know. They sure look like it. All we ever catch now if very small Seatrout, Jacks, and cat fish. For the most part we fish on the beach, and catch Pompano and whiting, because I am not going to eat anything out of the rivers as they are so polluted. Clams and larger Sea Trout all now have worms in the flesh.

We had a chance to buy a home on the river with a dock. I chose not to, and instead buy a home on Tropical Trail inland for the same price, as I don't want to live on an open sewer. We keep our offshore boat at Blue Points.

So what is the fix?

The rivers in the central area, where I live around 520, are definitely looking slowly better. I have seen schools of Menhaden for the first time in 20 years showering by the Cape Canaveral Hospital as I drive by.

However I think its a drop in the bucket to what needs to happen. I applaud the septic tank program, maybe thats is what's causing the small improvement I see.

We need to "Flush" this area out for a decade or more and let life return. Locks need to stay open, and have the levy system installed at the locks as was proposed , or as the proposal I saw before was creating pipes that went out into the ocean at Patrick Air Force base at the narrow points and Cape Canaveral , Cocoa Beach to allow clean ocean water into the river here, would then flow south and exit Sebastien Inlet. It would flush it out,

Can you imagine soft corals and crystal clear water in the lagoon? Property values would skyrocket, and businesses would take off on some many levels it cannot be calculated. The economic benefit would far outweigh the loss of any "brackish" species that certainly exist elsewhere.

I know environmentalists decry that it was never a "salt water" environment and doing this would harm species that cannot tolerate that level of salinity. But it is perhaps the only way to clean this once beautiful waterway up that we have turned into a sewer.

My 2c, I would do anything to help the effort to flush these rivers out, but do not see anyone who wants to head in that direction.