Net camp gets 60-day reprieve. Cortez supporters scramble to save scenic structure
Raymond Leslie Guthrie Jr., who has been been fighting the Florida Department of Environmental Protection since 2017 to save his net camp on Sarasota Bay at Cortez, has received a 60-day stay on removing the structure.
Circuit Judge Ed Nicholas granted the stay Monday afternoon after a hearing conducted on Zoom.
Guthrie and his supporters are looking at their options, including trying to get a long-term lease on the property, or possibly working a deal with county government.
“My preference would be a long-term lease for the Guthrie family,” said Karen Bell, one of the owners of A.P Bell Fish Co. and Star Fish Co. Market.
Net camps, picturesque structures built offshore on stilts to store nets, were once numerous at Cortez, dating back to the 1920s and 1930s. At one time, there may have been as many as 20 net camps. Now there are only two, including Guthrie’s.
His problem started in 2017 when a DEP inspector determined that the 1,211-square-foot structure was built on sovereign submerged property, owned by the state, without approval from the state.
Cortez net camp supporters stepped up to say the commercial fishermen had built net camps in that area for as long as anyone could remember,
“The west camp, known locally as the Guthrie Camp, was rebuilt by Raymond Guthrie Jr. It had been his grandfather’s camp and as mentioned before it had been rebuilt at least three times that I personally recall. When Mr. Guthrie rebuilt the camp this time it was in the same spot as the one before it. In fact, the salvageable pilings were reused. For most of the village this was nothing unusual. Just like the east one having been rebuilt, it was just another camp being repaired,” Bell wrote to Gov. Ron DeSantis in October.
“Cortez today is not only a working fishing village, it is a tourist destination. We have managed to blend both industries by developing a symbiotic relationship between the two,” Bell wrote.
To date, DeSantis has not intervened, but the Manatee County Commission has previously expressed its support for the net camps.
In 2018, the Manatee County Commission sent a letter to the DEP supporting replica historic net camp structures along the Sarasota Bay waterfront, noting that they were an integral part of Cortez’s standing on the National Register of Historic Places.
Kathe Fannon, 59, a tour boat operator and Cortez resident, has also voiced her support for Guthrie’s net camp.
“Number one, it is part of our heritage. Cortez is the last working fishing village left in Florida. I haven’t met one person yet who wants the net camps to go. It is one of the pieces of Cortez that you would never see again,” Fannon previously said.
