Tunaskin takeover
Sunday morning, the beach was crawling with Tunaskins.
Tunaskin t-shirts, that is.
Approximately 190 people volunteered with Tunaskin Aquatic Apparel and Keep Lee County Beautiful for the clothing store’s second annual Beach Keeper’s Club Cleanup. These volunteers, from all over – local residents, county residents, and even a few visitors – pitched in to pick up about 250 pounds of trash on Estero Island. As the volunteers combed the beaches, beachgoers spoke up in support of the effort, thanking the volunteers for their efforts.
Mitch Fusek and Bob Bronsord, co-owners of the Fort Myers Beach shop, have plans to make the cleanup a more frequent event, calling those who participate part of the Beach Keepers Club.
“We’re trying to get this going and have more random cleanups,” Fusek said.
Fusek is also trying to help his business be more than aquatic apparel and tie it into the fabric of the community.
“We wanted to have some community outreach and build relationships while doing something good for the community,” he said.
Tunaskin partnered with Tuckaway Bagel Cafe owners Tre and Amy Gillette, who served coffee and bagels to volunteers before the cleanup started. Hooters and Matanzas on the Bay provided the after-party wings, pizza and beer. Norm’s Parking Lot, just up the street, reserved most of the lot for cleanup participants.
“It was cool to see everyone come out,” Fusek said.
Trish Fancher, the executive director of Keep Lee County Beautiful, said these organic, locally-driven cleanups are important to the overall success of keeping our area clean. Having someone local reach out to the community for a cleanup is more accepted than someone from the outside coming and saying the area is a mess, she said.
“When someone is passionate about the community they live in, it’s really important the community sees that and will respect them for it,” she said.
Keep Lee County Beautiful organizes about 10 of its own cleanup-type events a year, but it partners with other organizations and businesses to do far more – in 2016, it partnered with entities around the county to complete 90 different cleanups.
“There can never be too many cleanups,” she said.