MIAMI -- For many people, visiting the Everglades means staring out the car window at seemingly endless sawgrass marsh in between stops to ride an airboat packed with tourists, stroll a boardwalk or swat mosquitoes.

But millions of others wade deep into pristine sloughs and isolated cypress stands and come face-to-face with all sorts of amazing wildlife, maybe picking up cottonmouths or even swimming with alligators.

They’re not doing this in person, of course. They’re visiting through social media, streaming the exploits of dozens of very Florida characters who have built followings, some of them massive, for their forays into the sprawling marshes, ponds and forests of wild South Florida.

Call them the Everglades influencers.

Let us introduce you to three of the most popular — fans know them as Gator Chris, Luca and the Yoink Guy (a catch phrase uttered when encountering critters). Together, they boast a combined 25-million-plus followers across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. That’s not Kardashian-level clout but it’s a very big social media footprint on environment and climate issues. Everglades National Park, for instance, has 123,000 Facebook followers.

Encounters with wildlife life can be unpredictable and dangerous. One well-known internet snake wrangler made the mainstream news last month when he was bitten by a venomous rattler. But it also can be a lucrative job, with the top influencers pulling in six figures through social media video-view payments as well as ads and even brand deals.

Getting up close and personal with critters is clearly the key to luring audiences and the way one of them in particular — the Yoink Guy, also known as fishingarrett— has sometimes drawn criticism from his audience and wildlife activists. But each, to varying degrees, also explores the impacts of climate change, pollution and other threats to the survival of the River of Grass.

And it’s there, perhaps, where influence is most needed.

Luca Martinez, a 20-year-old who is the youngest of the trio, believes the Everglades might as well be on the moon for too many people, including those who have it in their own backyard. Most don’t know there is an ongoing multibillion dollar project to restore its natural flow, one of the largest environmental restoration projects in history.

Taking people into the Everglades, even online, and showing them the beauty hidden in the swamp might change that. At least, that’s his hope. He believes the biggest threat to the Everglades is how “dangerously disconnected” people feel from an ecosystem that is not only a haven for the wildlife he captures on film but the key to recharging South Florida’s underground water supply.

“It’s only people who love and protect it that will fight for it,” Martinez said.

Luca Martinez

▪ Handle:Instagram and TikTok: lucamartinez.fl

▪ Followers: 1.8 million on TikTok and 675,000 on Instagram

It all started in abuelo’s Kendall backyard. His mom gave young Luca Martinez a camera and he started filming wildlife – squirrels, cardinals, even a fox. He hasn’t stopped since.

On family trips to the Florida Keys, he always packed a GoPro and one day, diving off Key Largo, he found what would become his inspiration. Colorful corals had bleached white, a sign of rising ocean temperatures that threaten reefs in Florida and worldwide. “That’s what motivated me to begin memorializing the beauty I saw left.”

There was no more challenging place to do that than the Everglades. It’s a place under threat from climate change, pollution and expanding development with a landscape, he would discover, that hides its magnificence behind seemingly monotonous shades of green.

“I eventually realized Florida’s beauty rivals any other place in the world,” Martinez said. “But it requires your time, and it requires your attention.”

He began shooting video of birds in 2020 that got some decent social media attention. But it blew up when he took his camera gear underwater in a stand of trees called a cypress dome off a trail near Big Cypress National Preserve. During the wet season, cypress domes are ankle to waist deep in water. The water can be crystal clear – always a surprise to outsiders who think of the Everglades as a dark, muddy swamp. Bromeliads are in full bloom. Light filters softly through the bald cypress trees. It’s like some enchanted forest.

“The first video got 18 million views from this dome right here,” said Martinez, during a tour of that site with the Miami Herald. “People were saying I wasn’t in the Everglades. There’s incredible life beneath the surface that for so long has gone really unseen.”

And just like that, Luca Martinez became the Lorax of the Everglades, a guardian of nature armed with cameras and social media hoping to protect it for generations to come. What sets him apart — and has earned him 2.5 million followers as well as some mainstream TV and magazine profiles and advertising deals with Verizon and the U.S. Postal Service — is an artistic sensibility that belies his youth.

His videos, often set to soft music, capture the Everglades in cinematic splendor – slow-motion footage of streaks of sunlight glittering on gators and schools of gar underwater. While others may post content playing up the dangers, gators in his video are often as still as sculptures or moving through water with languid grace. He gets in with them to shoot those scenes, offering a window into a world seldom visited by people.

“I think being face to face with an alligator is like nothing else you’ll do,” Martinez, the 20-year-old Florida International University student said. “And I don’t think it’s because these animals are so intimidating and massive but because when you understand they’re thriving despite everything we’re doing it’s a humbling experience to be there with them.”

As an influencer, he’s selling his audience on just one thing: that they should help preserve and protect this untamed world. Many followers seem to buy in. “It takes a special talent to make us ‘see’,” one commented on a recent post. Another: “Your video(s) lit a fire in me. Don’t let up.”

Martinez says he aims first to draw people in with beauty then explain why it’s at risk. It’s not easy – particularly on media sites designed for short attention spans – to reduce complex issues in the Everglades into one-minute videos. Just one of his posts might have weeks worth of work behind it, so he puts up content just every month or so.

“I think dreaming up these stories and how to tell them is the most challenging part of what I do. I can come out here and get incredible videos and shots. But how do I use them to motivate and how do I use them to educate people?”

His latest videos recognize the continuing threat of turning wild Florida land into concrete and shopping malls.

“The hardest thing is going somewhere for the last time knowing its sold to someone who will destroy it”

His narration often takes a poetic tone. In what he called a “reflection,” Martinez spoke of the right of wildlife to exist and the intrinsic value of preserving their world.

“We realized Miami and Florida depend on the Glades for drinking water and economic value. That’s the reason billions of dollars are spent on its restoration,” he said. “We’re valuing nature for its economic benefits, reducing it to just another commodity.”

He still films on weekends when he can but his work has made him so popular that his schedule is booked for traveling and speaking across the U.S. and beyond. In October, he spoke to students in Egypt — who, he chuckled, of course also asked him about the king of Everglades social media, the Yoink Guy. He’s not sure the label of influencer fits him but feels rewarded when his social media work resonates in the real world.

“Hearing after my presentation a student come up to me and say, ‘What camera should I get? You inspired me to go and photograph my local forest.’ That’s what’s motivating.”

Garrett Galvin

▪ Social media handle:fishingarrett

▪ Followers: 7.6 million on TikTok, 7.6 million on Instagram, 2.1 million on YouTube, 373,000 on Facebook.

He walks barefoot through the swamp and wrestles snakes, from native cottonmouths to invasive pythons. He swims with “swamp puppies” – better known as alligators to most people – and sometimes even pets their toothy maws. He grabs opossums, lizards and spiders in his bare hands, along with assorted other Everglades and coastal critters.

And with every snatch of something wild comes his catch phrase. “Yoink.”

That’s the formula that has turned Garrett Galvin into a viral sensation, among the most followed of all social media figures in South Florida. He boasts 7.7 million followers on TikTok alone. That’s even more than TikTok’s “it” girl, Alix Earle, a University of Miami graduate turned model and podcaster famed for partying with A-List celebrities.

Galvin’s pursuit of a different kind of wild nightlife — many of his posts take place in the deep dark when the critters come out — has elevated him from just another Florida man posting fishing videos (origin of his social media handle) into the internet-famous “Everglades Yoink guy.” His initial snook and wildlife rescue content didn’t catch fire. Then he posted himself petting an opossum and his audience exploded.

The 25-year-old is modest about his success, kind of.

“I’m far from being a celebrity, I tell people I’m like a caveman with a phone,” Galvin said during a phone call with the Herald. “This is going to sound cocky or whatever but I always knew I was going to grow on social media.”

More than the other two top Everglades influences and most others working in the wild, Galvin embraces what social media seems to want. He’s an entertainer first, playing for excitement and laughs for an ever-growing following waiting for the next “yoink.”

The critters are, to some extent, co-stars but also props to show off in each episode. He’s even got a running bit about his quest to capture a 20-foot python that has spawned dozens of other social media accounts named after the elusive target, sometimes trolling him with comments like, “You’ll never find me!”

His fans from far away might get the impression that Everglades is a teeming menagerie, with a critter under every cabbage palm or a gator or croc in every pond. The reality, he says, is that one of his videos might take several visits and countless hours to put together.

“It takes a lot of experience and a lot of time to find these animals,” said Galvin, a fifth-generation Floridian who lives in Englewood, just north of Fort Myers. He’s always been drawn to creatures that might scare others and his countless interactions with them make him confident in doing stuff that might seem and often is kind of dangerous.

When he was 8-years-old he befriended a small alligator and would take him everywhere with his mouth taped shut. When little Galvin decided to free him, it was the first time he got bit. He’s learned a lot since,

“I was little doing crazy stuff,” Galvin said. “At like eight years old I could still do everything I’m doing now, I’m just a little stronger. I grew up and catch bigger snakes now.”

Social media has become a lucrative six-figure full-time gig that’s taken him to Texas, Australia, Columbia and Peru and bought him a new truck. It also keeps him very busy. Despite months of requests, he could never find time to meet in person with The Herald.

Galvin is also the most controversial of the Everglades’ social media stars. Some wildlife advocates and critics have accused him of harassing critters, shining a flashlight in their eye or picking them up for the camera. Lately, he’s posted screenshots warning that some of his content may get taken down on his TikTok over allegations of “animal abuse” and “dangerous activities and challenges.”

But Galvin insists he never harms wild animals (with the exception of captured pythons, which are removed) and he said he’s always looking out for them. He won’t touch birds, for instance, but did remove a screech owl from a road and he once “yoinked” a gator too close to the road to rescue it.

“I don’t want people to think I’m negatively impacting the animals. Like I wouldn’t shine a flashlight on an owl in a general scenario. If it’s a non-native, I’m not hurting it whatsoever but I am removing it.”

Yes, he does funny voice over and “yoinks” but also believes his videos are educational and they are designed to appeal to an audience with a short-attention span and endless options.

“I could sit there for 10 minutes and explain all the facts about one little animal and it just doesn’t work. People get bored and they swipe away,” Galvin said. “I keep it short and sweet. You’re better off saying one fact about the animal and moving on, and over time people will catch on to it. Maybe they’d remember from one of my videos whether a snake is venomous, invasive, or not.”

He’ll sometimes make a cameo in videos with girlfriend, Laura Ericksen, a park ranger who specializes in marine content with her own “yoink” dialogue. They have filmed in the Everglades for date night. Some people on the internet call them Mr. and Mrs. Yoink.

When the Herald called Garrett this week, he was in Columbia with a research group catching anacondas. His plan is to eventually post long-form videos on YouTube that are more educational than his viral one-minute TikTok videos — he said he might even team up with Luca Martinez to do it.

Galvin doesn’t post about it on his TikTok but he spoke to the Herald about how after all the time he spends in the Everglades, he sees much bigger threats than the invasive pythons he pulls from the marsh. “A lot of these natural habitats and large properties are getting developed and made into big developments like cookie-cutter developments.”

Chris Gillette

▪ Social media handle:Instagram: gatorboys_chris, TikTok: gatorchris1 YouTube: FloridasWildest and GatorChris Facebook: GilletteChris

▪ Followers:5 million followers on TikTok, 822,000 on YouTube and 1.5 million on Facebook

Few people in the world are comfortable floating in a pond full of alligators. Chris Gillette is. Well, maybe comfortable is a bit strong.

“I don’t trust them at all. I trust my ability to predict their behavior and put myself in the proper position to prevent an accident from happening.”

Through years of wrestling and wrangling, Gillette — a veteran animal trainer with an environmental science degree from Florida International University — got so good at reading their moods and manners that he found himself getting paid to swim with alligators at the Everglades Outpost attraction in Homestead. As videos of his aquatic interactions with one particular gator – a 10-foot, 250-pound charmer named Casper – spread on the internet, Gillette felt he was on to something big.

“I made a conscious decision with Casper that I wanted him to be the star,” Gillette said. “I literally looked at it like Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse.”

It worked. Casper went viral. And Gillette, 37, has since collected some 8 million followers across social media platforms. That’s enough support for him to fulfill a lifelong dream of opening his own wildlife sanctuary, a place called Bellowing Acres in Ocala.

He wasn’t an overnight social media sensation. Gillette, who grew up in Palm Bay and came to FIU because it was the closest school to the Everglades, started behind the camera, as a wildlife photographer. There were points where he worked five jobs within a week, including wrestling gators for tip money, running a shark dive, leading airboat tours and taking adventurous tourists on gator swims. He found a bit of media celebrity along the way, appearing in a handful of 2012 episodes of a reality TV show called Gator Boys, which he uses in one of his social media handles.

Comments on his videos often compare him to the late and larger-than-life Steve Irwin, which Gillette takes pride in. He admires how the enthusiastic Australian blended entertainment and education to get the world to care more deeply about not only the big reptiles but all the smaller animals that are part of the ecosystem.

Gillette is cut from the mold of old-school TV wildlife adventurer. He doesn’t play for laughs like Garrett Galvin, the “Yoink” guy, and doesn’t slip into poetic environmental advocacy like Luca Martinez. But he understands what draws many social media viewers — a human up close and personal with a massive reptile capable of snapping bones like twigs.

“I’m able to take this bizarre interest people have in wanting to watch me get eaten alive on camera, monetize that, and save over 200 animals across the sanctuary already and we’re just one year into it,” Gillette said.

He’s had some close calls over the years, he says, but hasn’t posted those videos. “I’d make money because people would click and watch it. But then the only takeaway would be this animal is a monster which doesn’t incite anyone to care. It incites fear.”

His aim instead is to get people to appreciate them for what they are — formidable creatures that predate Florida’s human residents, ecologically critical apex predators and iconic Florida symbols that absolutely captivate people.

Though he has millions of followers, “I don’t consider myself an influencer, really, at all. I don’t have brand deals. I’m just trying to get you to care about animals.”

He would, however, appreciate continued support for his sanctuary, which he and his fiancé, Gabby Scampone, aim to open to the public for guided tours sometime in 2025. Scampone,who does the filming for Gillette, has a social media following of her own as well. They’ve been steadily adding critters to Bellowing Acres (gators, very vocal, do bellow). There are already eight alligators, a Nile crocodile, a 19-year-old tortoise named Jumanji, red and white fur foxes, Asami the skunk and a porcupine Scampone used to care for at Miami’s Jungle Island.

Gillette still does swim tours in South Florida with Casper about once a month now (it will cost you $250) but he’s training his Ocala gators with hopes of doing the same there.

This new bunch were caught in the wild in places they shouldn’t be (meaning near people) and would otherwise been killed if not brought to Bellowing Acres or another sanctuary. The state kills 8,000 “nuisance” gators every year. Saving some is a nice payback for the reptiles that have made him a social media star.

“I realized I’m kind of decent at this,” he said. ”And I could reach a larger audience to try to get them actually to care about these animals.”

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This climate report is funded by the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Family Foundation in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. The Miami Herald retains editorial control of all content.

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