Clay Henderson has had a long career as environmental lawyer, educator, and writer. He has served as president of Florida Audubon Society and Florida Trust for Historic Preservation. Until his retirement in 2019, he served as Executive Director of the Institute for Water and Environmental Resilience at Stetson University.  

He was elected to two terms on the Volusia County Council and served on the Florida Constitution Revision Commission.

Henderson is most associated with wildlife and land conservation. He sponsored most of the environmental provisions in Florida's Constitution including the creation of the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and co-authored the Florida Water and Land Legacy Initiative, the largest conservation funding program our nation's history.  

He was also a leader in the development of Florida's signature land acquisition programs including Preservation 2000, Florida Forever, and Florida Communities Trust, and negotiated the acquisition of over 300,000 acres of conservation lands. 

His book "Forces of Nature" (University Press of Florida) is an environmental history of Florida, and winner of the 2023 Stetson Kennedy Book Award. His newest book, "Audubon's Birds of Florida," chronicles John James Audubon's Florida expedition of 1831-32.

Henderson has been recognized for his body of work including the national public service award from The Nature Conservancy, lifetime achievement awards from the Marine Resources Council, Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, and Bill Sadowski Memorial Award from the Environment and Land Use Section of the Florida Bar.

Dr. Christopher Winslow is the director of The Ohio Sea Grant College Program coordinating Ohio Sea Grant's Great Lakes research with agencies and universities, as well as assists in research, curriculum development and student recruitment at The Ohio State University's Stone Laboratory. Earned his doctorate at Bowling Green State University, with research focusing on interaction between the native smallmouth bass and invasive round goby.

Dr. Winslow studied the behavioral differences between largemouth and smallmouth bass to earn his master's degree from BGSU, and he received his bachelor's degree in biological sciences from Ohio University. 

As an instructor at BGSU from 2002-2009 and an assistant professor at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, Winslow taught general biology courses to more than 700 students. 

For the past seven years, Winslow has been a fixture at Stone Laboratory, teaching Aquatic Ecology classes to high school and college students and mentoring college students and their Lake Erie research projects in the lab's Research Experience for Undergraduates Scholarship Program.

Dr. Carrie Simmons has worked as a fishery biologist for the Gulf Council since 2008 and was appointed as the deputy director in 2013. After serving as the deputy for 5 years, she became the executive director in June 2018. 

She is involved with various meetings of the council, such as stock assessments, advisory panels, scientific and statistical committees and council meetings. She continuously looks for ways to improve public involvement and education in the federal fishery management process.

Simmons is a native Floridian who grew up fishing and SCUBA diving on both coasts and still does so as often as possible. During her education, she earned her Ph.D. in fisheries from Auburn University. While working on her degree, she studied gray triggerfish reproductive behavior, early life history and early settlement on bottom habitats, as well as competitive interactions between red snapper and gray triggerfish in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Much of Simmons' work was on artificial habitats in the northern Gulf of Mexico, but she studied natural habitats in St. Croix and the Florida Keys while pursuing her master's degree in coral ecology.

She received her undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and spent summers at the Mt. Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Maine studying the physiology of spiny dogfish sharks.

Susan Boggs prioritizes two things in life: her family and her career. In addition to owning and operating a full-service marina and fuel dock in Orange Beach, Alabama, with her husband, she also manages their for-hire fishing business. If that isn't impressive enough, she also finds time to serve on the local tourism board and act as secretary/treasurer for the Charter Fisherman's Association.

On top of all that, Susan, her husband and their daughter are an incredibly cohesive family unit. When they're not watching their daughter play soccer, they spend time together at their hunting camp and enjoy spur of the moment exploration days, where they jump in the car and head nowhere in particular. 

As a small girl growing up in Texas, she certainly didn't imagine her life revolving around saltwater fishing. She always loved the outdoors, spending countless hours bass fishing from a rickety, homemade barge that sat in a 50-acre pond behind her childhood home. Just before her 30^th birthday, Susan moved to coastal Alabama for a business opportunity, and when it didn't pan out, she got a part-time job booking charters for a local marina. 

That's when Susan's fishing career began in earnest. While working in the charter office, Susan met her husband Randy, a deckhand on one of the charter vessels in the marina. She credits him with broadening her horizons by exposing her to offshore saltwater fishing. A self-described "stickler for the rules," Susan struggled to adhere to the marina's strict "no dating" policy. She eventually had to fess up to her indiscretion and turn down a management position at the marina because of their budding relationship. 

Eventually, Susan and Randy bought a 6-pack charter vessel and moved to another marina. From there, their family business model of "sell out or get bigger" took hold. They upgraded from the 6-pack charter to a 65-foot headboat, and eventually bought a second and third vessel to grow the business even further. They were invited to move their business to the SanRoc Cay Marina in 2009 to revitalize its struggling charter business. After growing their own charter business even more, they purchased the entire marina in 2015.

Elizabeth Boggs is a 19-year-old fishing charter captain who is taking the Gulf Coast by storm. The Alabama Gulf Coast native and Coastal Alabama Community College sophomore has always had a penchant for the water.

"There are pictures of me from when I was little walking around in pink Crocs carrying fish," she says. The newly licensed boat captain received her 100-Ton Master Captain's License in June and is following in the wake of her parents, Randy and Susan Boggs, the husband-wife duo behind Reel Surprise Charters in Orange Beach. 

Elizabeth says it's important to educate people that deep-sea fishing isn't just a guys' sport, and it's not just about catching a world-record marlin. She plans to charter her own deep-sea fishing trips someday, but for now, she's charting Islander, a 6-passenger fishing boat, for her parents' company. 

"The fish are a perk, but providing an experience is even better than the catch," she says. "It's especially rewarding to see people of all ages make their first catch."

"I want to simplify charter and deep-sea fishing as much as possible," she said. "When we're out on the water we see all kinds of cool stuff: blue-winged sea robins, unicorn filefish and pods of spotted dolphins. There was a tattler fish we caught earlier this year that my mom had to send a picture of to a marine biologist to identify-we had never seen on before." 

Rosa H Zirlott is a fourth-generation commercial fisherman with a rich family history in fishing and boat building. Since 2013, she has been the owner and partner of Sandy Bay Oyster Company (also known as Murder Point Oysters) and L3 Hatchery, alongside her husband, Brent, and son, Lane.

With over 40 years of experience, she has managed two Gulf shrimp boats and served as a board member of the Southern Shrimp Alliance, advocating for the domestic shrimp industry. 

Additionally, she played a key role in the restoration efforts following the BP Gulf Oil Spill and was hired by the Organized Seafood Association of Alabama after Hurricane Katrina to oversee the identification of the commercial seafood industrial and restoration of the wild oyster reef, as well as the distribution of federal funds to revitalize the commercial seafood industry.