SRQ Daily Columnist Teri A Hansen is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation, whose Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge can be found online at www.GulfCoastChallenge.org

Saving our seas, feeding our communities. That’s the theme of the Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge, a $500,000 incentive-grant challenge launched last month by Gulf Coast Community Foundation to spur new, marketable ideas in the marine sciences. A report we released in conjunction with the Challenge outlines a veritable sea of opportunities to expand our region’s marine-sciences sector.

But sometimes, looking outward offers valuable insights on what’s happening—or could be—at home. And after a Gulf Coast staffer spent spring break on Amelia Island, we gained some powerful new perspective on innovation, sustainable seafood and coastal economics. Amelia’s historic town of Fernandina Beach may be 300 miles from here by land—and more than twice that along Florida’s coastline—but it quickly presents potential lessons for our own region.

Fernandina Beach and the waters surrounding Amelia Island gave birth to Florida’s modern shrimping industry a century ago. The change came thanks to innovators like William Burbank, a shrimper who devised new trawl designs (and whose family still hand-makes nets there today—but more on them later). Immigrant boat-builders also designed the modern shrimp boat. The rich combination of human innovation and natural resources led to decades of booming shrimp business, evidenced by photos and memories of boats docked along Front Street in scores.

But take a sightseeing cruise today, and you’ll see just a few working vessels left. One colorful tour captain named “Pajama” Dave says dirt-cheap, farm-raised shrimp imports devastated the local industry over his three decades on the island. Dave’s advice to try local dining spots that serve only wild-caught shrimp from those working boats is spot on: the fresh catch is beyond delicious—enough so to make you seriously rethink your buying habits. But Fernandina’s shrimp fleet is a shadow of its storied past, and whether tourist dining dollars or some other new strategy will sustain it remains to be seen.

A second, somewhat hidden stop for the curious visitor offers further, fascinating insights. The fourth-generation Burbank family net-making business operates amid a small, waterfront clutch of industrial buildings near the island’s northwest corner. Burbank still makes shrimp trawls to order when a local boat can save enough to invest in equipment. But the longtime innovator had to completely reinvent its core business when shrimping declined, and it now operates as Burbank Sport Nets, a leader in manufacturing nets for pro and college sports, like the backstops used in Major League Baseball stadiums. Old-timers there still weave nets (and tales) while teaching their trade to a new generation. Only now the product goes mostly to pro ball parks and college fields.

So why wax nostalgic about the ebb and flow of a northeast Florida community’s fishing industry in a column typically focused on our own region’s economy? Several reasons: Marine-economy challenges felt around our coast are also challenges—or opportunities—for innovators right here. Sustainable seafood production is a global need, but innovative (and potentially lucrative) solutions can be hatched locally. Plus, we have our own great stories of repurpose and reinvention, like the popular new seafood exports being produced in our historic fishing village of Cortez. I invite you to read our Blue Economy report for that story and more like it.

We created the Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge to incite new ideas that will diversify our economy while benefitting our communities. But with many of the same challenges faced by other coastal regions, we believe solutions developed right here can be scaled to impact the world.

SRQ Daily Columnist Teri A Hansen is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Community Foundation, whose Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge can be found online at www.GulfCoastChallenge.org

Read the Blue Economy report at GulfCoastCF.org