Crowds gathered at Walking Tree Brewery to enjoy a day filled with live music and old-fashioned family fun at the brewery’s sixth anniversary Block Party to benefit the Ocean Research & Conservation Association.
“We’re just so grateful to Walking Tree for doing this. I mean, this is so amazing,” said ORCA CEO Edie Widder, Ph.D. “I’m just thrilled. Everybody is having such a good time.”
Widder said ORCA will soon move its headquarters from Fort Pierce to a building on 16th Street in Vero Beach, next door to Indian River Clay.
“We’re so excited about it. It’s a huge increase in space for us. I was pretty nervous at the outset, but we’ve raised the money so fast. I just feel so welcomed by the community,” said Widder.
“I can’t tell you what a wonderful feeling it is. It’s just been amazing, because we set our goal as $1.2 million to pay for the building and its renovation. And we raised, I think, up to almost $917,000 already and we just started in April.”
Lauren Tracy, ORCA marketing coordinator, said this was the second year that Walking Tree had chosen them to be the nonprofit beneficiary of the anniversary party.
Team ORCA staff and volunteers helped out throughout the day, including coordinating activities around the Dunk Tank, where a number of community leaders took a turn to help raise funds for ORCA. Among the brave souls were Mike Malone, WTB owner/head brewer; Vero Beach Police Chief David Currey; Adam Faust, principal at Rosewood Magnet; Barbara Schlitt Ford, Environmental Learning Center executive director; Linda Moore, Kilted Mermaid owner and City Council candidate; and Kendra Cope, executive director of Coastal Connections.“And then we were also able to get three sponsorships from local companies, the Vero Beach Marine Center, Minute Man Press of Vero Beach and Costa d’Este Beach Resort, so all of those funds also go to us,” said Tracy.
“This will benefit our Pollution Mapping Citizen Science Project, which Walking Tree Brewery is a part of. Their workers come out and participate in the project and test water samples in the lab,” she added.
Missy Weiss, director of Citizen Science and Education, said Walking Tree monitors the C-54 canal which begins in Fellsmere, near the Stick Marsh.
“They monitor that site four times a year, and they’ve done it for over a year at this point,” said Weiss.
“They’re so committed. I mean, this is more than just superficial for them. It’s very obvious that it matters; they really care,” said Widder.
“They are a very community-oriented business. It’s not just about them. It’s about everyone in their community and who they can help,” said Weiss in agreement.
Brooke Malone, WTB office manager and “creative wizard,” said they were hoping to raise $10,000.
“That’s our goal. We’ve adopted ORCA permanently,” said Malone. “From now on, our goal is to partner up every year to try and raise awareness for their pollution mapping.
Really, water is critical to our business, and we all love to play in the water. We’re all kayakers, paddle boarders, surfers, scuba divers and fishermen, so the work that they’re doing is imperative to all of our futures.”
She said that they have all become quite proficient in the mapping process.
“A lot of the equipment that we use to do the water testing is the same equipment that we use to test yeast and strains in the brewery. So we have a lot of mutual oxygen readers and refractometers and all that good stuff,” Malone explained.
“They have lab experience, which makes them excellent volunteers. We’re very lucky on several fronts,” said Widder.
Photos by Joshua Kodis
