Corporate Member Spotlight:
Salty Scales: Why we support Tampa Bay Watch
With sustainability becoming such a priority worldwide, more and more companies are searching for ways to improve our environment. Continued support of the enhancement of waters we enjoy is the only way our children’s children will experience the beauty as we do. Salty Scales has always been about conservation and ensuring our home waters here in Tampa Bay stay clean. If you watch our YouTube channels, you will regularly see us cleaning up the Bay. We have been looking for ways to impact the community positively, and after some time and research, we found a company that genuinely wanted our support! Tampa Bay Watch has a mission statement to protect and restore the Tampa Bay estuary through scientific and educational programs. That is precisely why Salty Scales has dedicated time and funds to support Tampa Bay Watch.
Salty Scales is a social concourse and eCommerce site. We supply stylish, bright, fun, and functional performance apparel that will make your trip into the wilderness that much more memorable and comfortable. The Salty Scales blog caters to fishing enthusiasts and inspires people to learn, interact, and share ideas about fishing, hunting, and the outdoors. We also pride ourselves on teaching other anglers the knowledge that we have obtained over the years. We have informative content worldwide that can guide the new beginner into becoming a polished angler or teach a longtime captain a new trick or two. The Salty Scales YouTube Channel is 100k subscribers strong! These fishermen range from the latest beginners to the most experienced captains, all of which tune in for fishing and outdoor education, with the occasional (okay, maybe all the time) laughter. We here at Salty Scales are passionate about the outdoors. Our viewers can see this first hand. Being inshore/nearshore captains, we tend to find an abundance of fishing line tangled in our beautiful mangroves. If we see this, we will gladly take our kayaks/boat to the shoreline and remove this entanglement that more than likely a fish or bird will get caught in. This habit is ingrained in our fishing routine!
An avid outdoorsman, Capt Joshua Taylor founded Salty Scales. Capt. Taylor grew-up fishing the waters of South Shore in Tampa Bay. He has personally seen the times where you could go and limit out on redfish, snook, and trout day in and day out. That is not the case anymore! Now, Tampa Bay has had snook closed for ten years; redfish and trout joined that closure in 2018 after a nasty couple of red tide years. Since the closures, the fishery has bounced back, with the population of all three species readily being caught again. We MUST keep this upward trend in Tampa Bay; if we do not, sustainability will be near impossible.
There are too many factors that are against a healthy Tampa Bay. For starters, Tampa and surrounding cities have continuously made the Top 10 places to live in the past couple of years, which have our cities booming in population. Well, the bay does not get any bigger; there are just more people fishing it.
Let’s be honest, 2020 did not go as planned for most of us. We here at Salty Scales had big plans for our relationship with Tampa Bay Watch. We wanted to spread awareness for what they are doing for our waters and their mission statement. The original plan was to donate a percentage of our monthly revenue and get involved with their local clean-ups, educational seminars, and, of course, their oyster restoration. We wanted to document all of this on our social media and make sure that our followers were aware of their impact by coming out and getting involved with these events. Unfortunately, like around the world, COVID-19 forced Tampa Bay Watch to cancel or virtually host their events. So, like most organizations, they have adjusted accordingly and are continuing to make an impact. Now, pertaining to Salty Scales and Tampa Bay Watch, we are still dedicated to spreading awareness of the importance of taking care of our Bay and drive our supporters also to support Tampa Bay Watch and similar foundations. For now, we will continue to donate monthly to have our funds support the conservation of Tampa Bay! We also vow to continue to do our part in cleaning up the water. An excellent motto to go by is, take out more than you leave behind. This is a phrase we consistently follow when we venture out on the water.
Taking care of Tampa Bay is critical in the fishery’s survival! The only way we do that is to focus on how we can positively impact our waters each and every day. Supporting local companies like Salty Scales and Tampa Bay Watch are small ways anyone can contribute to our waters’ conservation. Both companies have shown their dedication to not only cleaning our waters but keeping them clean for the generations to come. Do not stress if you cannot afford to purchase from Salty Scales or donate to Tampa Bay Watch. When you go out, clean the waters on your own time! Just remember, it starts with you!