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Village of Cortez hosts Commercial Fish Festival while still cleaning up hurricane damage

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Published  February 16, 2025 3:36pm EST
Manatee County
FOX 13 News

The Brief

    • The village of Cortez hosted the Commercial Fish Festival while still cleaning up hurricane damage.
    • Residents banned together and decided to host the 43rd annual commercial fishing festival with a very fitting theme: ‘Swamped but Never Sunk.’
    • Remnants of the damage caused by five feet of storm surge can be seen on the streets months later.

TAMPA - The 2024 hurricane season was undoubtedly a brutal one for Manatee County, especially in places like the village of Cortez.

Remnants of the damage caused by five feet of storm surge can be seen on the streets months later, and after much contemplation on whether to have it, residents banned together and decided to host the 43rd annual commercial fishing festival with a very fitting theme: ‘Swamped but Never Sunk.’

Cortez Fish Festival

What they're saying:

"It feels like it's coming back to life again. I'm seeing all the people out, all my neighbors, the volunteers, it's just a good feeling," said Kris Martinez, with the Cortez Village Historical Society.

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In a celebration of resilience, survival, and the commercial fishing industry that keeps this old Florida community running; guests enjoyed art, music, the taste of fresh seafood from the Gulf and even educational presentations from fishery scientist Angela Collins, who works with the University of Florida and Florida Sea Grant program.

"Everybody wants to know where their local seafood comes from, right?" Collins laughed. "They want to know where that seafood sandwich is coming from, so we've got a lot of our commercially important species on display. We can show people a little bit about their grouper sandwich, their snapper, their stone crab claws, and of course, the mighty mullet, which is the fish that built Cortez."

Cortez Fish Festival

Proceeds from the festival will support a cause very near and dear to Cortezians, a homegrown conservation project, called the FISH Preserve.

"Its 95 acres of undeveloped land just east of this fishing village that the community banded together and purchased, so it's very important to us," Collins stressed.

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The Source: Information for this story was gathered by FOX 13's Regina Gonzalez.

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