The Florida Roundup - Encore: Climate change in Florida

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

This week on an encore edition of The Florida Roundup, we featured two reports from the podcast Sea Change, from WWNO/WRKF in Louisiana. First, WLRN's Jenny Staletovich explored how hotter ocean temperatures are affecting a prized and celebrated fish in Florida – the mahi (00:27). Then, WUSF's Jessica Meszaroes looked at the rising cost of climate risk on Florida's home insurance market (19:35). Then, we spoke with both Jenny and Jessica about their reporting for the series (37:30).

Covering Florida Navigator Program provides confidential assistance for Floridians looking to explore health care coverage within the federal health insurance marketplace. Open enrollment ends January 15th. 877-813-9115 or coveringflorida.org. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being along with us this week. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. Thanks for being along with us this week. These facts are indisputable. The ocean water surrounding most of Florida is getting hotter and staying hotter for longer. The water levels are rising and the state's population keeps growing, crowding more people and more risk along our coastline. A warmer ocean has a lot of consequences in the water for marine life and on land, thanks to the effect higher temperatures have on hurricanes and storms. A podcast from WWNO

and WRKF in Louisiana called Sea Change dives into the environmental issues facing coastal communities on the Gulf Coast and beyond. Today, it's an encore presentation of two stories from the podcast. One explores the rising cost of climate risk on Florida's home insurance market. Reporter Jessica Mazaros from our partner station WUSF in Tampa talks with homeowners with an all-too-familiar story here in the Sunshine State. They're having a tough time finding and paying for home insurance. But first, Jenny Stoletovich from our partner station WLRN in Miami spent time on deck of a boat on the Atlantic Ocean

and on a dock in the Florida Keys chasing one of the fish that made Florida's fishing reputation, the mahi, finding out what it is telling us about the changing seas. This summer on a windy Miami morning, I headed out to the Gulf Stream. The sun was just coming up. I was with Martin Grosselle on his fishing boat. We were with his youngest daughter, Camilla. She's 11. Camilla is my, she's my angler today.

She's caught a lot more fish than most in South Florida. Grosselle is an avid fisherman, but he's also an ichthyologist, which is a fancy word that just means he studies fish. He's originally from Denmark, where he grew up fishing in really cold water. Now, he's at the University of Miami Rosensteil School, and he's spent a good part of his career studying mahi, how they swim, how they make babies, and what kinds of water make them happy. It also happens to be one of his daughter's favorite fish to catch and eat. So he headed offshore to the Gulf Stream.

That's this big, fast-moving current that the Mahi really like. As soon as we hit the Gulf Stream, the waters turn a deep royal blue and the chop settles down. Grissel gets his rod set up. And the two begin hunting for one of the ocean's most popular fish that now, because of rising ocean temperatures fueled by climate change, are facing an uncertain future.

Hopefully we find either weed or anything that's floating. And also if we see birds, let me know. Okay. The Gulf Stream was a steamy 88 degrees, too hot for most Mahi. During the six hours we were out, Camilla hooked just two. There we go. Slow and steady, Mark. Let him run. One was a schoolie, so too small to keep.

The second was not a giant, but big enough to go in the ice chest. So I first started talking to Grosselle a decade ago, after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf. Beyond the horrible tarring of seabirds and turtles, he found the oil spill could do widespread damage for years to come. He's the principal investigator for a research group funded by BP. BP set up the research as these massive legal battles swirled around them. It was really about damage control.

The money pays to study the lasting effects on the Gulf. From time to time, I check in with Grosselle about the research. And when I was back in his campus office a little over a year ago... So, let's see, where should we start? He told me something about the warming waters in the Gulf that was pretty stunning. The warmer it gets, the more northern or southern fish will distribute. They basically leave the tropics. The fish are leaving the tropics.

The fish are leaving the tropics, the most biodiverse part of the planet hugging the equator, where the weather is hotter and more humid. Until Grosselle mentioned it, it hadn't really occurred to me that such a sturdy fish like mahi could be impacted by warmer water. And if mahi are being hurt, what about coral, sea turtles, sponges, sharks, and all the other sea life in the ocean? What we're seeing globally now is that due to heating, a lot of animals, fish in particular, exhibit poleward migrations. So their geographical distribution is shifting away from the crater and towards the poles.

Grosselle says the problem is especially acute for the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf Stream because waters are heating up faster than in other places. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, says the Gulf is warming at twice the rate of the global average. We have to be really careful to not ignore that there could be a lot of negative consequences. This is a shift away from an equilibrium that's been established over the millennia. And if climate change keeps warming waters, that could leave the tropics as kind of a dead zone

as marine life flees or dies. It's yet another dangerous side effect from drilling and fossil fuel use. Oceans are absorbing about 90 percent of the extra heat getting trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. Our oceans are bearing the brunt of climate change. We hear a lot about problems on land. Tonight, the life-threatening heat wave. Hurricane Ian will go down as one of the strongest storms to ever hit Florida. Tonight, fire crews in California are working hard to gain ground. But what about the ocean?

Martin Grosselle has been studying what stresses fish and how they react for decades. And now when he's out with his kids, he's seeing his research play out in real time. That heat wave had fast-tracked what he thought would take years to happen. They have a temperature that they very rarely go below, and they have one that they very rarely go above. Like a lot of marine life, mahi have a temperature sweet spot. Just like goldilocks, they need things to be just right to be able to swim fast and reproduce. Today, the Gulf of Mexico is nearly two degrees warmer than it was a half century ago. Mahi like the water between 77 degrees and about 84 degrees in the Gulf.

But now, the average summer temperature is already just over 85 degrees, just a degree higher, and it's hot enough to be dangerous, even lethal, for mahi. So this has scientists, and not just Grosselle, alarmed. And so we saw that firsthand as anglers that, you know, the mahi behavior

was clearly different because of this high temperature. That would definitely change behavior in these animals, and I'm sure other anglers experienced that also. Mahi could just avoid the heat and swim deeper. In fact, that's what Grosselle saw when he was fishing with his daughters during the heat wave. And in April, the first large-scale study of Atlantic mahi also suggested they may already be changing their behavior to escape hotter water. But that has consequences. The problem is now they are entering a different environment where there are different predatory pressures.

So it is going to change their circumstances and it's going to change their foundation for life. He says that change is enough to turn their fishy existence inside out. So it's not as simple as say, well, they can just go deep and escape the heat. It's like, yes, they can. That's good, certainly in the short term. But it's very likely that that's going to have consequences. Like getting eaten by bigger fish or not finding the food that they need to eat. And I want to say here that, you know, we know this for mahi.

That's just an example. Other species are going to have similar limitations and similar problems. Like sharks and tuna that are migrating sooner and moving north because of warmer water. So what's making the Gulf and waters all around South Florida so much hotter? There's a couple of factors driving that heat, like in oceans everywhere. Radiation from the sun is one, and there's weather patterns like El Ninos. But there's another suspect lurking in the Gulf, this thing called the loop current that winds up from the Caribbean and connects with the Gulf Stream.

It transports heat. When it builds up in the tropics, that's what it does. It's one of its functions. Nick Shea is an oceanographer, also at the University of Miami Rosensteel School. Usually, I talk to him about hurricanes. Around South Florida, summertime hot water is the magic sauce that can sometimes make or break a hurricane season.

It's also becoming clear that as the planet warms, these loop currents play a big part in how increasingly hotter water gets spread around. When they come up from the tropics, they move a lot of warm water. At some point when you actually look at a map of the Gulf, in terms of sea surface temperatures, it's just going to be uniformly warm, hot. You know, so hot that you can take a bath in it, right? I mean, that's how warm the Gulf of Mexico gets. What's ironic is currents are usually one way the planet regulates its temperature.

But now they're like a pipeline for ocean heat. The loop current can also create shallow whirlpools called eddies that can spread that heat even more. When the loop current enters the Gulf it travels clockwise, sometimes meandering like a snake. It can slither deep into the Gulf and spin off these eddies of swirling hot water. They're only about a foot or so deep, but they can stretch more than 100 miles across, and they can stick around for months. They move very slowly, a couple of miles per hour, and that's why it's like Miami traffic. You're in traffic forever, right? Shea says to really understand ocean heat,

you need to understand these currents and eddies. This is what we've been stressing for again three decades, how important currents are in the giant scheme of things. Currents transport heat. And folks doing careful ocean modeling will tell you they really have to get the currents right in order to understand the heat balances. It's not just the ocean that gets hurt if mahi leaves South Florida in the Gulf. There are also impacts on land. Mahi are a major player in the sport fishing industry that has defined Florida for decades. In my state, fishing is like a religion. For those of you who love the heartbeat of the hunt, the jolt of the strike, the magic of the wild,

join us, for this is the show for you. Saltwater fishing in Florida is big, bigger than in any other state. It earns $16 billion every year. People spend money on fishing guides, restaurants, hotels. They buy boats and tackle. The biggest fishing store in the Keys even has a life-size replica of writer Ernest Hemingway's boat, the Pilar, to remind shoppers that they too can live the dream.

In Mahi, this big, beautiful deepwater fish has always been a huge draw. If the Mahi go away, it'll cut a huge hole in the local economy. The big money fishermen are out in force around South Florida trying to win some half a million dollars in prizes. This was local TV reporter Al Sunshine out in force around South Florida trying to win some half a million dollars in prizes. This was local TV reporter Al Sunshine covering a fishing tournament in 1984,

the start of the Miami Vice days. Back then, we still called Mahi dolphin before chefs and fish markets rebranded them so people wouldn't think they were eating flipper. And this is what'll get them their money. Dolphin, a prized game fish. Hi, what's up? I snuck up on you. How you doing? Good, good. It's nice to meet you. I am recording if you don't mind. I just walk and roll. I met with John Reynolds this spring at a marina in the Keys, where he was cleaning mahi. When Reynolds was a kid, there was nothing more he wanted to do than fish. I started working at a bait and tackle shop called First Place Bait and Tackle in Cutleridge when I was 11 years old. That was the start of a career that would take him all over the world. After he got his captain's license,

he started crewing on what's called the Billfish Circuit, chasing marlin and sailfish as they migrate around the Atlantic and the Caribbean. It took you away from everything. It was very remote, especially back then. When I was doing it, it was before technology was to the degree that it was now. I remember that was like, you know, you had to have a sat phone if you wanted to talk to anyone.

In 2008, he came home and finally got his own charter boat, the Dropback. It's an old Keys boat that was popular with charter boat captains and smugglers for being a smooth ride. When I asked him to explain the name, he says the Dropback is what you call that magical moment when a giant fish eats a bait and the fish is won or lost by what the crew does. And you are the guy who can't blow it. It's like the world would go away for me and everything would get silent. And those were the moments that I love, you know, because it didn't matter what else was going on in my life or what else was going on in the world.

During the dropback right there, there was no time to think. It was only between me and that fish. But more than a decade after he christened the drop back, fishing is changing. There's still tuna and sailfish and mahi around, but Reynolds says there are fewer. And the big mahi, those trophy fish that helped make him such a successful captain, they're disappearing. Historically, we'd be pulling up to these schools and there would be 300 to 500 fish and you would catch, you know, 20 of the biggest fish out of the front and then leave all the rest. The day we talked, he'd been fishing since early morning with six clients who'd crossed

the state to fish with him. Do you want me to do like a sling top or anything? Yeah, if you've got something to mark it would be cool. date to fish with him. They head off to the bar while I talk to Reynolds. For the next hour or so, he wields a fillet knife like a samurai, cleaning the 25 mahi and half dozen vermilion snapper they caught, slicing, skinning, hosing down the blood, talking and talking and never missing a beat. Nearly all the mahi are just six or so pounds. They're not anywhere close to the 20 or 40, even 50 pound fish that Reynolds says he used to catch. Every recreational angler had an opportunity to catch something giant because stock was so healthy and there were so many large fish. But not anymore. A year-old fish is 20 to 40 pounds and you only catch a couple of those a year now maybe. Reynolds mostly blames overfishing by the commercial

fleet and bad fishing regulations. He sits on a Mahi advisory panel for the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council. But this is how climate change works. When there's a problem, it gets amplified. So if the Mahi population is already struggling, hotter oceans just make things worse. Basically what's going on is these fish are being treated like, and I'm going to use the exact terminology that they're using in these federal meetings that everyone started using is an annual crop. A crop and not a wild animal that Reynolds clearly thinks should be treated with more care

than a field of corn or soybean. Reynolds worries a lot about the future of Florida's fishing industry. In a career he spent building, tying one fishing knot in one fishing line at a time. So what does the future look like for Reynolds and Florida's fishing industry? To find out, I talked to Matt Damiano. He's a NOAA fisheries biologist who models fish populations to help set U.S. fishing rules. He studied the whole Atlantic mahi population, and he found that Reynolds is right. The number of mahi have declined.

In many of the places like Florida and the Caribbean, where we've heard anecdotal reports of there being a lot fewer dolphin fish available, there was a declining trend overall. Remember, mahi are also known as dolphin or dolphin fish. But if you go north to states like North Carolina and Virginia, which have very strong recreational mahi fisheries, a lot of those folks have said the population seems stable. And if you go even further north of that,

folks up there have said that during certain parts of the year, they have more dolphin fish than they know what to do with. That suggests mahi are fleeing hotter waters in the south and moving to cooler waters. And remember what Grosselle said? That alters an ecosystem that's been around for millennia. So where does that leave Florida? That's a question that scientists are taking very much to heart. They're getting out of their labs and working hard to wake up the public to what's going on. That's Jenny Stiletovich reporting for the podcast Sea Change.

And we'll talk with Jenny a little bit later on in this program. Still to come on the Florida Roundup, a changing climate and the escalating price of risk. The home insurance crisis here in the Sunshine State. I have many, many friends that don't have insurance anymore. And this is not like the very poor people. It's everybody. That's next. I'm Tom Hudson.

You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. Covering Florida Navigator Program provides confidential assistance for Floridians looking to explore health care coverage within the federal health insurance marketplace. Open enrollment ends January 15th. 877-813-9115 or coveringflorida.org. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson. You can always get in touch with us by emailing radio at thefloridaroundup.org. We love to hear from you. This week, we're bringing you reporting from the podcast Sea Change. It's produced by Sister Stations in Louisiana, WWNO-WRKF. The podcast dives deep into the environmental issues facing coastal communities on the Gulf Coast and beyond. Earlier, we heard about how warming ocean temperatures are affecting mahi, also known as dolphin fish.

how warming ocean temperatures are affecting mahi, also known as dolphin fish. Like other marine wildlife, they need the waters they swim in to be in a certain temperature range, and those waters around Florida are getting hotter. The warmer ocean temperatures that are affecting mahi also have been credited with helping fuel stronger and wetter storms. Storms are just one important ingredient that has battered Florida's home insurance market for years. Reporter Jessica Mazaros from our partner station WUSF set out to learn more. For this story, I wanted to interview people shouldering the burden of this crisis. So I put a call out to homeowners in the Tampa area along the Gulf Coast. I was inundated.

People seemed desperate to talk to me about what they'd been going through. And everyone I spoke to told me the same thing. Until recently, their home insurance was in the back of their minds. Now, it's blowing up their lives. I'd grabbed the mail on my way in, and I opened a letter and a few expletives came out of my mouth. And it was a notice from the insurance provider basically saying that you're no longer going to be covered. Just like that, no warning. Sarah Haverstick's home insurance was canceled. For Amy Beer, this crisis started with a stranger at her door.

This guy knocked on the door and said, I am here to inspect the exterior of your house. Your insurance company sent me. He wandered around, checked out the house. Weeks later, Amy got a threatening letter. If you don't replace your roof by January 8th, your home insurance will be canceled. A new roof is possibly one of the most expensive repairs a homeowner will ever undertake. Amy's insurer gave her just weeks to get it done. This last year, I was shocked that my insurance all of a sudden was canceled. Maria Lopez says her insurer pulled out of Florida, just refused to sell policies here anymore. She had no say in the matter.

Maria was passed off to another insurance company. They accepted my payment. They sent me a policy. And two months later, they decided they didn't want me either. Why? This stuff will stop your heart. Everyone I spoke to was in fight-or-flight mode, but they didn't have time to feel scared. They had to jump in, figure out how to insure their homes.

Some folks I spoke to haven't been kicked off their insurance outright, but they are being priced out. That's the case for Jeffrey Phillips. Just a few years ago, I was paying around $5,000 a year for my homeowner's insurance. It's now over $15,000 per year. That is a three-fold rate increase. Who can budget for that? My insurance agents don't seem to be able to help. I've looked on the internet to see if there are other options to have, and I just have found I'm stuck. Jeffrey's an eye doctor. He says he'd like to fully retire but can't because of his home

insurance premiums. Maria, by the way, is a graphic designer. Amy's a writer. And Sarah is a company manager. Sarah is raising young kids. She and Amy were both in remission from cancer when that letter or knock at the door came. Also, none of the people you're hearing from had any real damage done by Storms.

No one even filed a claim with their insurers and still kicked off or priced out. It was such a sort of slap in the face. And the idea that all of a sudden I can just get this notice of non-renewal. Now you're not holding up your end of this agreement. end of this agreement. I bought a house in Tampa a few years ago, and honestly, I'm worried too. If I lose my home insurance, I could lose my mortgage. It's an overwhelming thought, so I tend to push it into the back of my mind. Now, Florida isn't the only state where it's getting really expensive or just impossible to insure your home. This is a climate change problem.

Insurers are pulling out of states where they're losing money. In Louisiana, they're losing money because of hurricanes. In California, wildfires. In the Midwest, severe storms and tornadoes. Google it. Wherever you live, you'll likely find stories in your neck of the woods about home insurance rates going up. But in Florida, home insurance is in a full-blown crisis. It's worse here than any other state. And it's been brewing here longer. If Florida

is where the rest of the country is headed, then we should all pay attention. then we should all pay attention. This cycle we're in, we've seen it all happen before. Florida seems to be kind of stuck in this kind of terrible loop of insurance crises that have never really resolved themselves. And frankly, I don't know if they ever will. I don't think I know as much about anything as Lawrence Maurer knows about property insurance in Florida. He covers the statehouse for the Tampa Bay Times and the Miami Herald. I interviewed him three times for this story, and he was endlessly patient. Lawrence says to understand Florida's chronic cycle of home insurance crises, you have to go back to where it started.

Hurricane Andrew in 1992. This is incredible. It has just flattened this area. This can only be described as total devastation. At the time, Hurricane Andrew was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. It came ashore as a Category 5 and destroyed tens of thousands of homes in South Florida. Residents filed about 650,000 insurance claims. Insurance companies, big ones, were not ready for this. State Farm, Allstate, Travelers, Prudential. Some dropped hundreds of thousands of policies. Others just abandoned the state.

A lot of Floridians were left with this situation where they couldn't find insurance for their homes. And housing fuels Florida's economy. This was an existential threat. State lawmakers had to do something. So they came up with a couple big solutions. Solutions that would actually become even bigger problems. Here's the first solution we'll talk about. Citizens, a brand new home insurance company created by lawmakers and run by the state. It's basically socialized home insurance for people who can't find coverage on the private market.

Citizens is supposed to act like an accordion. Lawmakers set up Citizens in the years following Hurricane Andrew. And because of high demand from people dumped by commercial insurers, And because of high demand from people dumped by commercial insurers, citizens expanded. It took on hundreds of thousands of homeowners. Lawmakers freaked out. It violates Republicans' idea of the government and the free market. When it gets big, there becomes this panic among politicians to get rid of citizens' policies. Get rid of these policies, put them back on the private market. Lawmakers squeezed the accordion.

They caked a bunch of homeowners off of citizens. So where did all those people go? If the state couldn't cover them and big insurers fled, how did they find home insurance? Here's another solution that became a problem. Florida lawmakers encouraged entrepreneurs, people with no insurance experience, to open new, very small insurance companies. Citizens dumped tons of its policies directly into the hands of these small companies. So let's talk about these small, sometimes sketchy insurers.

So there's probably a lot of ways to describe how bad they are. I'm just curious, like, how would you describe these insurers? Basically, these companies are vehicles to do one thing, and that is to extract as much money out of the insurance market as possible for their investors. Here's something that blew my mind. In the same market where big insurance companies had lost money, the CEOs of these tiny companies started making 20 plus million dollars a year. These guys are making more than the CEOs of State Farm nationally, Allstate, Progressive. These guys were getting filthy rich. Here's how that's possible. Let's say

I want to make a bunch of money in Florida's insurance market. Insurance companies are highly regulated. States actually limit how much profit I can skim off of all those monthly premiums that homeowners pay me. But I'm greedy, so here's what I do. I open an insurance company that's only a shell. I don't hire anyone to work there. You'll never deal with somebody literally from the insurance company because the insurance company often will employ no one. At the same time, I open a string of sister companies. You'll deal with a sister company of the insurance company, one that charges the insurance company a ton of money for these services.

My sister companies do all the work for my shell insurance company. One of them handles claims, another does my marketing. I use my sister companies to charge my shell company crazy inflated prices for these basic services. And the financial regulations do not apply to my sister companies. So my shell insurance company does okay, but my sister companies, they do great. And what it's done to the interest market is, you know, about a third of every premium dollar goes, gets extracted out of the company and goes to profits. While lawmakers scrambled to prop up Florida's shaky home insurance market, you know what they didn't plan for? Climate change. In the years after Hurricane Andrew, the oceans warmed up.

And then the Atlantic started pumping out hurricanes like never before. Hurricane Charlie brushed the Florida Keys and then plowed into the Gulf Coast near Fort Myers. Winds were clocked at 145 miles an hour, making it a Category 4 hurricane, and the strongest to hit the U.S. since Andrew in 1992. In 2004 and 2005, eight hurricanes hit Florida. Eight hurricanes in two years. And when Florida started getting hit by storms, these little companies started going out of business. They couldn't handle it. Small insurers went bankrupt left and right, although

the CEOs tend to do just fine as these small insurers go bankrupt. Take former mayor of Tampa, Bill Poe Sr. This powerful politician opened his own little insurance company. And in 2008, state regulators sued him, his wife, and five of his children. The family and other executives were accused of pocketing $140 million as their web of companies were going bankrupt. Anyway, after all those hurricanes, more insurers pull out or close shop. New ones replace them. And for a while, also pull in crazy profits. And then it happens all over again.

Hurricane Irma is right over us right now. One of Hurricane Michael's survivors. Hell on earth. As Hurricane Ian slams. Hurricane Indalia making landfall just moments ago. Four massive hurricanes have hit Florida in recent years. The coastal water is now so warm that storms rapidly intensify just before they come ashore. There may never be a Hurricane Lowell here again.

Here's where things stand. Florida's insurance market is in the worst shape it's ever been. Citizens is under investigation by the U.S. Senate for allegedly not having enough money to pay out if a big disaster hits. But at the same time, Citizens has been expanding like crazy. In just the last five years, it has more than tripled the number of homeowners it covers, from about 420,000 people up to 1.4 million. Meanwhile, private home insurance here is super chaotic. Farmers pulled out of the state last year,

and there's this constant churn of small insurers going bankrupt and being replaced by others just like them. Still, the sketchy guys control the market. A few dozen small companies hold 70% of home insurance policies in Florida. These companies will turn around and give millions of dollars to Florida politicians to finance their campaigns. And when there have been serious efforts to reform the market, these little companies have stood in the way.

Florida lawmakers recently made it harder for consumers to sue their insurance companies and mandated roof inspections for homes over 15 years old. Every time they pass some kind of reform, it seems like their priority is protecting insurers, not homeowners. Florida is an example of what happened when that risk hit a tipping point. The way Florida dealt with that is basically a lesson for everyone else because, you know, we're already starting to see insurance companies in other parts of the country pull out. We're already starting to see more natural disasters in places

that did not see them before. And insurance companies are very good about shedding risk. I asked all of the homeowners I interviewed, what are you going to do? None of them had a clear answer. Some might stay in Florida. Some might leave. Maria Lopez, the graphic designer, wants to stay right here in Tampa. Her daughter lives next door. She loves her little home.

But... I think it's a mess. I'm not like a government takeover, you know, person. I have my own company. I'm all for independent people and having their own thing. But definitely there's an abuse to the citizen. There's an abuse to people. But there's a lot of people. Maria got passed around from one insurer to another. Eventually, she got covered for more than she

was paying before. It has been so frustrating for her. But what really got me through all this, you know, when I spoke to friends, is that I have many, many friends that don't have insurance anymore. And this is not like the very poor people. It's everybody. It's not just Maria's friends. There's data on this. One in five Floridians are now going without home insurance. For years, I've been hearing anecdotes and reading headlines about Florida's broken home insurance system. Now that I understand exactly how climate change is breaking it, it only leaves me with more questions. What will happen after the next big storm?

Who will be able to afford to live in my home state? And if Florida is the canary in the coal mine, what will that mean for the rest of the country? That's Jessica Mazaros reporting for the podcast Sea Change. Now coming up, she and reporter Jenny Stoletovich will join us talking about the impact of the changing climate on the sea and on the land. Warmer water that's causing fish to flee or seek different areas is the same warmer water that's making hurricanes more intense. 15 inches of rain during Debbie, 7 to 8 feet of storm surge during Helene, and 10 to 15 inches during Milton. I'm Tom Hudson. You're listening to the Florida Roundup from your Florida Public Radio station. This is the Florida Roundup. I'm Tom Hudson.

Today we brought you reporting from the podcast Sea Change. It's produced by Sister Stations in Louisiana, WWNO-WRKF. The podcast dives deep into environmental issues facing coastal communities on the Gulf Coast and beyond. Jenny Stiletovich reported on the effects of warmer ocean temperatures on Mahi. Jessica Mazaros waded into the home insurance crisis here in Florida, both impacted by the effects of climate change. Jessica and Jenny, thanks so much for sharing all your reporting with us. Jessica, let me start with you because Florida was hit by three major hurricanes this year, Debbie, Helene, and Milton. The homeowners that you spoke to before the storms, how did their homes fare during this hurricane season? Yeah, I reached out to each one of them. Thankfully, everything's fine. They

haven't had to file claims, just tree debris and things like that. 15 inches of rain during Debbie, seven to eight feet of storm surge during Helene, and 10 to 15 inches during Milton. One expert actually told me for comparison that the water that came down from Milton across Hillsborough was like a third of Tampa Bay falling onto the county. And so all of this rainfall and all this surge happened within about a two month period or so. So a lot of people were caught by surprise at flooding when they weren't expecting it. They're not in flood zones. So I have done a lot of reporting speaking to storm victims from Manatee, Pinellas, and Hillsborough counties that are just devastated, living out of hotels, Airbnbs while their homes get fixed up, and then

scary events, you know, specifically the night of Helene with water rising and people running for their lives, packing up their trucks, piling in neighbors and pets into the bed of a truck. But I did speak to one elderly woman who in the town and country neighborhood of Tampa, it's a primarily Hispanic neighborhood, and she had just recently let go of her property insurance because it was so expensive. And so then she had what she was calling Rio, a river coming through her home. I've been hearing a lot about people who are retired, just not letting go of their insurance because it's too expensive, but then we're going to be having more and more flooding. So that's a problem. It's this euphemism, Jessica, of self-insured,

right? Self-insured. It means that you, the homeowner, is bearing all the risk. Right. And then possibly relying on the federal government to pay out, and that's not always something that might happen. That's not for sure. Our colleague, Jenny Stiletovich, reported part of this podcast as well, looking at the warm ocean temperatures and its effect on marine life, specifically mahi. Jenny, a lot has been reported on coral reefs. You've done that report and you focus on mahi for this Sea Change podcast. What are the conditions the fish are facing that lead to the impacts that the homeowners that Jessica reported with are facing? Right. So that warmer water that's causing

fish to flee or, you know, seek different areas is the same warmer water that's making hurricanes more intense. For the story, I talked to a University of Miami professor who specializes in ocean currents and specifically the loop current. And he has said to me many times over the years, watch out for the loop current and eddies during hurricane season, because when storms pass over those, they tend to intensify very rapidly. And that rapid intensification is certainly impactful on land, Jessica. And the insurance industry has been set up in a way to deal with hurricanes, but perhaps not the kind of fast, rapidly developing and intensifying hurricanes and rain events that we've seen here in Florida. Yeah. And I think that's why we've seen, you know,

as I mentioned before, it is a cycle, the 2004-2005 storms after Irma in 2017, these small insurers not being able to withstand the amount of claims filed after major disasters like this. Because basically these big insurers pull out and then the state of Florida is trying to lure small insurers to fill the gap so citizens' property insurance doesn't have to take on so much of these policies. And so, yeah, we have seen this cycle over and over again. Insurance regulators and lawmakers have changed rules, Jessica, around insurance lawsuits and cancellations and other kinds of regulations in hopes of slowing price increases down and attracting new companies to the state. But your reporting, Jessica, really highlights the ability of insurance companies to structure themselves to be profitable. Is there any regulatory focus on the financial structure of insurance companies in Florida?

The short answer from what I have found is that there is none. The small insurance companies, they're essentially shell companies, and they are regulated. But they outsource really important things like call centers and marketing to their own sister companies. And so those are not regulated. So about a third of every premium dollar is going to profit. And so as long as they can stay open and not go bankrupt from having to pay out after disasters, like what we've been seeing, then they're able to make money in those cases. And Jenny, I want to go from the land back to the sea with your reporting. You've said that oceans are bearing the brunt of climate change, but you point out that the

effects on land get much of the attention, as Jessica reports, certainly with home insurance. And we see that video and hear the stories of people who are affected by the strong winds and the storm surges and the unbelievable, remarkable flooding. How does the focus, do you think, of the effects of climate change on land affect our understanding of really what's behind it and what's affecting the sea, which is fueling some of this change? I don't think people appreciate how much the ocean influences climate change and the atmosphere until they understand that the health of the ocean is what's really driving climate change, it absorbs 90% of the carbon, that's the additional carbon we're putting into the atmosphere, then we're not going to put the resources and the research and everything

we need to understand how the ocean is being impacted. And, you know, we really only understand what's happening in shallow waters, reefs, seagrasses, the things that are close to land. The ocean is 70% of the earth. The deep oceans are hardly explored. There's sort of the middle range where 80% of fish live is just starting to be understood. These fish migrate. They play a big role in carbon cycling. Those things to really get a handle

on what we're doing to the planet as we live here, we need to get a handle on those. So what do you think marine life and how marine life is considered in talking about climate change and in dealing and how even the insurance industry is trying to prepare itself for climate change and in dealing and how even the insurance industry is trying to prepare itself for climate change. Right, well, it all comes down to money and value

and where our investments are. And right now the ocean is valuable as a food supply, as an oil supply, as a transportation avenue. It's very commoditized, right? I mean, there was one fisherman in your story who talked about how they've changed the language of talking about mahi as an annual crop. I grew up in Iowa. I know what annual crops are.

It comes from the soil. An annual crop usually isn't some living, breathing animal under the ocean. Right, right. And an animal can't be managed like a crop. You can't just water it and replant it every year. That was his point. And that there need to be safeguards put in place about water quality and overfishing if we're going to really keep that crop healthy.

And it's not just mahi. I focused on mahi because here in Florida, dolphin, which is the other name for mahi, on mahi because here in florida dolphin which is the other name for mahi until the chefs changed it um are hugely valuable not just as a food supply um but culturally you know we dolphin helped make us the fishing capital of the world and there are um charter boat captains and um there's a huge industry surrounding um that that fish any of those seafront restaurants, the old Florida restaurants that are still around, Mahi or Dolphin is going to likely be on the menu. Grilled dolphin sandwich. Yeah, yeah. Jessica, I want to bring it back to the land because climate permeates everything that Jenny's talking about.

It permeates certainly the business side of home insurance. certainly the business side of home insurance. Yet it's something that regulations and regulators have been slow to acknowledge on the insurance side, like building codes, where to rebuild, or just whether or not to retreat. Is that conversation evolving in a way that is finally recognizing the true threats of these rapid intensification and stronger and wetter storms? I think as far as the state of Florida goes, you know, Florida does offer its resilient Florida program. It encourages some building adaptation and funding for that. But statewide, I'd kind of agree that there's not much for thinking long term about what's being called the climate crisis.

I mean, just this past year, the governor removed the term climate change from state law. I spoke to an expert out of the Climate Adaptation Center in Sarasota who told me that pretty much people just patch up whatever got broken from the last storm instead of adapting to what is happening with the flooding. which soaks up floodwaters like a sponge and leads to mold and, you know, elevating electrical services. So these are some things that need to be thought of. And then just, of course, just lifting buildings and making sure that they're tall enough if you want to build there at all. You know, the homeowners, if they have insurance or have the wherewithal, they can rebuild, Jenny. But, of course, the fishermen, the sport fishing and the fish themselves, they can't rebuild. They don't necessarily return after the eddies have slowed down, the currents have slowed down, and the temperatures have risen.

Right. And one of the reasons we focused on the Gulf of Mexico, too, is that it's heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the ocean. It's about two degrees warmer, two degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was just 50 years ago. That's a huge jump in temperature. 50 years ago. That's a huge jump in temperature. Mahi and other fish, not just mahi, but tuna, which are hugely valuable as well, have ranges of temperature that they prefer. Mahi, it's important because they're one of the fastest fish in the ocean. And when the temperatures get too high, there's less oxygen, they slow down. That means they're more vulnerable to prey. They don't like to spawn in warmer water. So these rich fishing grounds are migrating.

NOAA just did a survey that they released in April. It looked at 35 years worth of data. It's the first time they did this kind of wide-ranging survey. And they found that the dolphin are actually moving north. They're going up the East Coast. So while numbers are dropping, for the first time since 2019, the numbers are dropping in South Florida and in the Gulf. They're actually sort of increasing further up the coast.

Overall, though, they are declining. Remarkable reporting from both of you, and we appreciate you sharing it with us. Jenny Stiletovich, environmental reporter at our partner station WLRN. Jessica Mazaros, a reporter with our partner station WUSF. To each of you, thanks so much. Thanks, Tom. Thank you. And that's our program for today. The Florida Roundup is produced by WLRN Public Media in

Miami and WUSF in Tampa by Bridget O'Brien and Grayson Docter. WLRN's Vice President of Radio is Peter Merz. Engineering help each and every week from Doug Peterson, Ernesto Jay, and Jackson Hart. Our theme music is provided by Miami jazz guitarist Aaron Leibos at aaronleibos.com. And special thanks to WWNOWRKF in Louisiana, which produces the podcast Sea Change. Search Sea Change wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening and supporting public media. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend. I'm Tom Hudson. Have a terrific weekend.