FORT MYERS BEACH
A Fort Myers Beach man is on a mission to help people in Southwest Florida find belongings and boats lost in Hurricane Ian.
Benjamin Taber has been going into the mangroves to get any salvageable valuables he can off boats. What often looks like trash is his treasure.
“There’s a lot of good that came out of this,” Taber said. “I got here, and I realized that 100% of my business was out in the mangroves.”
Before Ian, Taber did everything under the water.
“I would clean the boat holes, recover items, change propellers, change sinks,” Taber said.
But after all the flooding, the importance of Taber’s work in the water rose to the surface.
“I saw a need for the boat owners whose boats were out in the mangroves to be able to get to them,” Taber said.
He trekked through the mangroves and the mud, refusing the let people’s hopes sink.
“Being able to reunite those people with the boats was… it’s pretty rewarding, for sure,” Taber said.
Weeks ago, WINK interviewed a Fort Myers Beach couple in search of their boat. For months, they posted on Facebook, hoping for word of their vessel, only for Ben Taber to come through with its location.
“It was just a nice, kind of heartwarming way of, like, reuniting somebody with something that was still whole to a certain extent,” Taber said. “We all need to do a better job of being better humans. And I think society as a whole would be a better place. You know, that kind of was, has, and will be my mantra for the rest of my life.”
Taber helped reunite many people with their boats through the Facebook page, and he created a catalog of boats that people are still missing.
WINK NEWS