DELAND, Fla. – Joe Balog wades into the murky shallows of Lake Woodruff, his boots sinking slightly into the soft, silty bottom. There are no other boats on the lake. No anglers. No duck hunters.
On a sun-soaked spring morning in Central Florida, the 22,000-acre Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge is almost eerily quiet - and to Balog, that silence says everything.
“In the 1980s, this was the greatest trophy bass fishing lake in the world,” said Balog, executive director of Mighty River Recovery. “There were hundreds of people every day of the year fishing here. Today there are zero people on this lake but us.”,
The St. John’s River stretches more than 300 miles through Florida - the state’s largest freshwater resource - running from southern Brevard County north to Jacksonville. But beneath its scenic surface lies a troubling reality: The nonprofit, St. John’s Riverkeeper, says over 95% of all submerged aquatic vegetation along the entire river has disappeared, most of it lost in the last 20 years.
“If you saw videos or pictures of this body of water 20 years ago, as far as you could see is fish and wildlife habitat,” Balog said. “All different types of vegetation, birds, ducks, everything flying - the whole bit. And today, it’s just a wide open lake with nothing in it.”
That loss of vegetation, Balog explains, is not just a scenic problem - it’s an ecological one. Submerged bottom-rooted plants are the foundation of the entire river ecosystem, supporting fish populations, manatees, migratory waterfowl, and water quality. Without them, the system begins to unravel.
“Vegetation is kind of like a marker,” he said. “It’s the most important component you can have to reduce nutrient pollution, to help fish and wildlife habitat, to drive the ecosystem. All that relies on vegetation.”
Chris Newman has been fishing these waters since he was a kid. Now he brings his own son out to volunteer with Mighty River Recovery - and the contrast between then and now is not lost on him.
“This lake was full of vegetation when I was a kid. Not even in the same category as what you see now,” Newman said. “Me and my dad would go fishing after school two, three times a week. We’d catch 10, 15 fish in an afternoon like it was nothing. Now it’s very hard to go catch fish like that, especially here, because there’s just no habitat.”
Newman says he felt compelled to get involved and do something about the decline.
“I just wanted to make a difference,” he said. “I got my son to help. Just trying to make a difference, trying to grow some habitat.”
Balog founded Mighty River Recovery - a 501(c)3 nonprofit - alongside partners from Highland Park Fish Camp in DeLand, Florida, after recognizing there was no unified advocacy group working specifically on St. John’s River fish and wildlife habitat restoration. He brought a unique background to the effort: a fishery science degree from Michigan State University, decades in the fishing industry, and a lifelong personal connection to central Florida waterways.
“When I came to this part of Florida when I was 10 years old, I immediately knew I wanted to live here,” Balog said. “And when I came here to live and saw how bad the resource was - and combined that with my knowledge of fisheries and biology - it was obvious that everybody felt hopeless to do anything about it.”
The organization’s flagship effort is the Citizens Enclosure Project, or CEP - a series of research stations built and maintained by volunteers across the waterways of the Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge. The stations are fenced, 20-by-20-foot enclosures set up in areas where vegetation historically thrived. Their purpose: to isolate variables, control outside impacts, and find out what it will take to grow native plants again.
“Setting up a fenced enclosure in the middle of a lake, in the middle of a wildlife refuge in central Florida - it’s not as easy as it sounds,” Balog said with a laugh. “You’ve got impacts from wildlife, you’ve got impacts from storms.”
The CEP stations have already yielded some encouraging - and instructive - results. At some locations, native vegetation grows back on its own once grazing animals like turtles, manatees, and invasive tilapia are kept out. At others, like the north side of Lake Woodruff, the challenges run deeper.
“Different water bodies seem to be affected differently,” Balog said. “We’re leaning towards some issues with water quality, with turbidity, with muck buildup in the system as being a major component.”
To address those variables, the organization is now using two different mesh sizes within each enclosure - one to keep out small invasive fish like tilapia, one to allow them in - and adding underwater cameras, including AI-powered trail-cam units, to monitor activity around the clock.
Mexican water lilies have already returned naturally inside one of the enclosures on the north end of Lake Woodruff - a promising sign.
“It one time this went 400 yards off the shoreline all the way around this lake, and it’s wonderful habitat - food for manatees and everything,” Balog said. “It’s trying to regrow, but it’s not able to. The fence is allowing that to happen.”
Despite the scale of the problem, the St. John’s River has received virtually no dedicated state restoration funding. Balog points out that billions of dollars flow annually to Everglades restoration, and hundreds of millions go to the Indian River Lagoon - while the St. John’s River has zero dollars as a line item in the state budget.
“Something is wrong. Someone’s not raising their hand or squeaking the wheel,” he said. “We have the most polluted freshwater resources in the country. Our freshwater resources in Florida are in terrible condition.”
Balog also notes the river’s decline went largely unnoticed because it lacked a single dramatic catalyst - no red tide events, no mass manatee die-offs, no obvious catastrophe.
“There wasn’t that sounding alarm,” he said. “And there has not been a really unified advocacy group to work on issues like this. So it’s kind of been ignored and just accepted that it’s just gonna decline and be that way.”
By the time the crew wraps up for the morning - cold, wet, and tired from rebuilding the battered north-side enclosure - Balog surveys the water with quiet optimism. He sees proof of concept in the water lily pads pushing up inside the fence. He sees it in the volunteers, including Newman and his son, who showed up on their own time to work.
“Mighty River Recovery was just an idea a couple of years ago,” Balog said. “For us to pull up here and see volunteers of all different walks of life - as enthusiastic about it as I am, out here on their own time, getting in the water to freeze and put this thing up - that says a lot. Nobody’s getting paid. This is all people that want to see a better St. John’s River.”
Newman shares that optimism.
“I do see a better future,” he said. “I feel like our organization is hopefully going to lead the way. That’s the whole point of what we’re doing.”
For Balog, the stakes go beyond fish counts and vegetation surveys. This is his Florida - the one he fell in love with as a 10-year-old boy and has spent his career fighting to protect.
“As Florida gets more and more compressed and we’re losing wild Florida everywhere we look - right now we’re in a wildlife refuge and right over there is a national forest,” he said. “This is a preserved, conserved area. It’s too valuable to just allow it to fall apart. We have to bring it back.”