A third generation Pine Islander, Eddie Barnhill, Jr., owns and operates one of the main fish houses on the island. At age six, he was given his first mullet fishing boat to run around within certain boundaries from his St. James City home. Now, he has a son about that age, but he wouldn’t consider sending him out in his own boat.

“He loves the water but I wouldn’t dare send him out there on his own boat,” he says. “There’s just too many, too many fast boats going around. And, people that don’t have experience on the water.”

While his family has seen a lot of change since his grandfather was one of the first five families on the island, he also sees potential within that change for mullet to become known as a delectable seafood. That’s why he’s an active advocate for getting chefs to try it – in Miami, New York and right across the street in Matlacha at the Blue Dog Bar and Grill.

“It’s just a matter of the people finally getting to where they’ll eat it, and I guess block whatever mental problem it is with mullet out of their mind,” he says. “It’s a good tasting fish. And, that’s the bottom line.”

“I believe truly from my heart and I would give anything for it to happen so I could say ‘Hey guys go fishing, catch all you can catch so then we all make money now.’ Now they’re happy, they’re making money. They’re doing what they love to do. I’m selling it. I‘m making a little money. And now the consumers getting it, and everyone sees that mullet is actually a good fish to eat.”

As a leading expert in sustainable aquaculture methods, Kevan Main has been in charge of Mote Marine’s research programs on ways to produce marine fish, sturgeon, shrimp, abalone and coral since 2001.

“One of the things that we really need in this country is to produce more of the seafood that we consume. Today we import over 91% of the seafood that we eat,” she says. “Today, over 50% of the seafood that’s eaten around the world is produced in aquaculture. And yet in our country we’re currently only producing about 5% of the aquaculture seafood that’s consumed.”

When it comes to mullet, she advocates for aquaculture alongside the historical method of net fishing.

“A fish like mullet could be produced in both ways. We could increase the stocks and fish more and provide more of a great fish. It’s a local species, it’s available in our waters, but there isn’t a lot of it available on our current restaurant menus,” she says.

While aquaculture often gets a bad rap compared to wild caught, Main’s research explores ways to make the “farmed” fish healthy and sustainable.

“Some people think that there’s concerns about the quality of that seafood, that it’s not as clean as say wild caught fisheries or that maybe they’re not being fed a diet that is as good for them as what they’re going to eat in nature,” she says. “What we’re trying to do is recreate the environment that they grow best on in nature.”

“With aquaculture, there’s an opportunity to be able to produce fish anywhere. The key is that you do have to be able to provide the right environmental conditions. So if we’re producing mullet in an area that’s within their home range, for example, they extend clear up into the Carolinas and throughout the Gulf of Mexico. And, so you could produce mullet in any of those coastal states and still get that product to market in the United States.”

Restaurant owner and activist Ed Chiles may be considered the most vocal mullet advocate in Southwest Florida. He’s determined to give what he considers “the ultimate sustainable seafood” a makeover and to make sure that the fish is harvested to its full potential.

Based on Anna Maria Island, Chiles trumpets the need to brand mullet and its roe based on its regional origin.

“We want to be a model for how we are the only area in the country where there are three natural estuaries on our border, where the finest mullet in the world comes from,” he says. “Why do they buy all this mullet from us? Because it’s sandy bottom west Florida mullet. It’s not river mullet. It’s not bay mullet.”

Since he’s been on the mullet bandwagon for the past decade, he’s seen attitudes change.

“People locally – crackers -- they know mullet, and they appreciate mullet. And, Europeans get it. They appreciate it,” he says. “I’m not sure why there’s a disconnect. I just know that we’re beating the drum about it, and we’re excited about it, and we’re making believers out of people and our staff gets it now.”

Chiles teamed up with Mote Marine Laboratory and Health Earth to win a $400,000 Innovation Challenge Grant from the Gulf Coast Community Foundation that aims to build a mullet processing plant in Cortez as a step towards a “billion-dollar sustainable seafood industry based on the production of mullet while emphasizing both environmental and cultural preservation.”

“Wild organic sustainable seafood has tremendous value and that value is growing. That demand is growing. So let’s take the filets off; then let’s take the rest of it and let’s make organic fish meal out of it. Let’s make fish oil out of it. Let’s make fertilizer out of it, and for God’s sake let’s not underutilize it or throw it away.”

Having raised three kids on “mullet money” brought in by her fisherman husband, Pine Island artist Mel Meo developed such a devotion to the fish that she used to cook up mullet dogs and sell them out of her mullet wagon.

“I was raised by the fishing community. And you know, we’re just a really tight, close knit community or we were back in the day,” she says. “In the early days of Pine Island, the fishing community was the hub -- it was the economy, the culture. It was looking out for one another.”

When the net ban proposal threatened to change a way of life that defined that community, Meo took action.

“In ’94 when the net ban was coming around, I went around the state with a mullet wagon just trying to win people over by tasting mullet because unless you’ve actually tasted it you don’t get it,” she said. “Then, I created the “Eat More Mullet” T-shirt and the Mullet dog. I also make a Mullet fritter. I kind of invented that.”

During her many travels and offerings of mullet, she’s seen that it’s tried and true.

“They taste it. And, they’re like wow. That’s mullet? You know it just got a bad rap,” she says.

Aside from seeing mullet as a tasty, healthy and nutritious protein, she also views the fish from an artist’s perspective.

“They’re so cute. They look like a little bird,” she says. “I just put my 25-year-old cat down. She was a big mullet lover. That’s basically all she ate. So 25 years, that’s pretty good for a cat’s life.”

While she’s phasing out the cooking part of her life and has retired her mullet wagon, she’s still a vocal advocate.

“I’m going to hope -- hope to find a future where people recognize mullet’s a good sustainable fish. So we can eat locally and buy locally and shop locally and help the local economy.”