Seagrasses, Manatees, And The Florida Legislature
By Katie Tripp, Ph.D.
Director of Science & Conservation, Save the Manatee Club
Opinion-Editorial
For Immediate Release: March 7, 2013
March is Seagrass Awareness Month - you might not know that. March also marks the start of Florida’s legislative session - hopefully you know that. Much work has been done in recent decades to restore seagrass beds degraded by coastal runoff, other pollutant discharges, propeller damage, and dredging. Overall, Florida’s seagrasses have been bouncing back in most areas as a result of extensive study, monitoring, and protective regulations.
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Seagrasses are crucial habitat, providing food, shelter, and ultimately survival for many species. (Photo by Lauren M. Hall, St. John's River Water Management District)
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One area whose seagrasses were seeing the fruits of such intensive labor was the Indian River Lagoon (IRL), which spans 156 miles from Volusia to Martin County along Florida’s Atlantic Coast. The IRL can support 113,000 acres of seagrasses in its submerged sediments. The IRL experienced a large scale brown algal bloom in 2012 that resulted in the death of huge expanses of seagrass. This occurred on the heels of an algal bloom in 2011 that lingered for months and claimed 30,000 acres of seagrass. Drought and/or historically cold temperatures in 2010 may have triggered the blooms, but once the grasses were gone, the sediments lost their protective lid and the legacy load of nutrients from years of stormwater runoff and other pollution locked in the sediments were released, feeding the algae and sealing the sad fate of the grasses. What took decades to recover was devastated in a couple of seasons. Seagrasses grow in the warmer months, so scientists will be searching for signs of life as the temperatures warm this spring. Just how many years it will take to recover the seagrass in the IRL after this most recent assault is anyone’s guess, and will also depend on what other surprises Mother Nature has in store in terms of future algal blooms and temperature extremes. The amount of nutrient “fuel” left in the sediment from decades of ignorance or bad decisions will also play a major role in recovery.
The significance of this loss in the IRL reaches far beyond the fate of the seagrasses themselves, as these plants are a crucial habitat providing food, shelter, and ultimately survival for so many species. The IRL seagrasses are an important year-round manatee feeding ground. Several dozen manatees have died in Brevard County from a natural but unknown cause since July 2012. The commonality among all the deaths is the ingestion of a red algae found in the lagoon. Whether the red algae is toxic to manatees on its own, is carrying a hitchhiker that is toxic, is toxic in the larger quantities manatees may be eating in the absence of more traditional food sources, or has nothing to do with the deaths and is coincidental, are all unknown. Also unknown is whether these unusual deaths will continue, to what extent, and how it might affect the population.
What we do know is that as a state, we are not where we need to be with regard to truly restoring and fortifying our natural systems to safeguard them from collapse. We look at the tree sapling growing through the concrete or the manatee with all those scars on his back and think how resilient nature is. And this is where our story becomes a parable for the legislative session. The state of affairs in the IRL reminds us how fragile nature is and how the actions of long ago, in this case, our mistreatment of the IRL, can wreak havoc long into the future. This story of unintended consequences and remembering that it’s easier to prevent a mess than clean one up later is something our legislators ought to keep in mind as they tinker with our state’s future in the coming weeks. Are you listening, Tallahassee?
Dr. Tripp has been Save the Manatee Club’s Director of Science and Conservation since May of 2008. She received her Ph.D. in Veterinary Medical Sciences from the University of Florida, where she conducted research on manatee physiology.
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