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man snorkeling in Sarasota Bay

Director’s Note: Good news on bay recovery

September 19, 2023

Yesterday, I spent the day on the bay with colleagues from Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) (Dr. Chris Anastasiou and Mark Walton) and Tom Ries (private consultant) looking into areas that Jay Leverone and I have been tracking for 3 years now. In the upper part of the bay, southeast of Sister Keys, we…

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Manatee stranded out of water during Hurricane Irma

Director’s Note: Bacteria levels after Idalia

September 15, 2023

My last email update spoke about the impacts of Idalia on our bay and watershed. In contrast to Irma and Ian, we were on the strong side (it passed to the west of us) of this storm, in terms of storm surge. Irma and Ian brough us lots of rain, but the prevailing winds (which…

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Cortez Wrack Line in the road after hurrican Idalia 8 31 2023 Edt

Director’s Note: Preliminary findings on Idalia

August 31, 2023

Our staff spent today out along the bay’s shorelines trying to find wrack lines that could help local governments determine the accuracy of flood models. Basically, two of the main components of a flooding susceptibility model are the water level information that is input, and the land elevation that the water interacts with. If for…

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Manatee on turquiose background for National Estuaries Week 2023

2023 National Estuaries Week

August 23, 2023

Join us as we celebrate National Estuaries Week 2023! Throughout September, we will be offering various events and opportunities to #WadeIn to your local bays and waterways! National Estuaries Week is celebrated every year around the U.S. to showcase the value our bays and estuaries provide to our local communities. An estuary is an area…

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Dead Flounder In PSB 8 8 23 Square

Director’s Note: Fish kill in Palma Sola Bay

August 9, 2023

Last time I wrote you all, I included a picture of a live gag grouper (Mycteroperca microlepis) which I used to make the point that Sarasota Bay acts as a nursery for species of fish that are caught as adults out in the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Well, I’ve got another fish…

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Juvenile Gag Grouper Edt

Director’s Note: Interconnectedness of Sarasota Bay and other coastal waters

August 2, 2023

The SBEP and its stakeholders are working hard to improve the health of Sarasota Bay, by acting on pollutant loads from wastewater and stormwater, by working to better inform the public about things they can do on their own to help with bay recovery, by deploying more oysters and artificial reefs into the bay, and…

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aerial of Palma Sola Bay

Director’s Note: Seawater temperatures

July 11, 2023

It’s not your imagination – it is really hot out there. Let’s put aside (for now) the causes of what we’ll be discussing here, and just focus on the outcomes – which is that our air and water temperatures are increasing. For us to discuss temperature trends, it’s important to keep in mind the data…

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FISH Preserve from above

Director’s Note: Restoration projects and vinyl seawalls

June 29, 2023

At our Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) meeting today, we had two main topics to go over.  The first one related to the ongoing and planned habitat restoration and stormwater retrofit projects that we plan on implementing with funds allocated to the SBEP via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). As we’ve pointed out before, our intent…

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aerial view of the ponds at Piney Point

Director’s Note: How big of an area was impacted by Piney Point?

May 24, 2023

Successful resource management efforts have to be grounded in solid science. Both in Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay, we have the privilege of working with talented individuals doing great science. The paper linked here and to the right is an example of this type of management-relevant science. Our colleagues at the University of Florida (UF)…

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SFWMD Caloosahatchee River Estuary Mouth Edt

Director’s Note: Influence of sources outside of SB on regional water quality issues (including red tide)

April 27, 2023

Thought it was important to point out that we continue to make progress in refining the Reasonable Assurance Plan (RAP) for Sarasota Bay. The RAP is meant to be a detailed plan for our local governments to identify and then implement projects and programs that reduce our watershed-wide nutrient loads by something close to 20%.…

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Clump of sargassum seaweed underwater

Director’s Note: The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt and potential impacts to our region

April 19, 2023

There has been quite a bit of news lately about the Sargassum “blob” that is currently impacting portions of the Caribbean, the Florida Keys, and Florida’s east coast. To understand this in greater detail, it’s important to differentiate between the Sargasso Sea and the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt. The graphic below can help you understand…

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aerial of Midhtnight Pass

Midnight Pass: what does the science say?

April 18, 2023

There has been much discussion recently around the proposal of opening Midnight Pass. So, what would that mean from a water quality and habitat standpoint? The short answer is it’s complicated. SBEP is not in favor of one solution over another. However, we are here to help share what we know so that all alternatives…

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2022 Report Card

Director’s Note: Report card update & meetings in Washington, DC

March 27, 2023

I wanted to bring you up to speed on two topics – we now have all the data we need to update our Ecosystem Health Report Card for 2022, and I wanted to pass along a few highlights of last week, when I went up to DC for the annual meeting of National Estuary Program…

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dead fish on a beach

Director’s Note: Red tide mitigation – potential involvement in field trial

March 7, 2023

As you are likely aware, we now have a very strong red tide affecting us, not only along our Gulf beaches, but within the bay itself. We know that red tides are “natural” in the sense that the Calusa and Conquistadors both described something like red tide impacts – the discolored water and dead fish.…

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Selby Snokelers

Eyes on Seagrass Citizen Science

March 6, 2023

The 2024 Eyes on Seagrass sampling window will be from April 15 – 29.  Click Here to Register What is Eyes on Seagrass? The Eyes on Seagrass Program is a bi-annual citizen science event in partnership with Florida Sea Grant, Mote Marine Laboratory, and Sarasota and Manatee counties to measure macroalgae and seagrass coverage. The…

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underwater macroalgae from Longbar

Director’s Note: Bad news and good news

February 21, 2023

As many of you know, we stay in touch with a number of people who spend more time on the water than we do, such as recreational fishing guides and people who work in waterfront businesses (such as boat rental operators). Last week, a few of them told us that there appeared to be quite…

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Director’s Note: Seagrass losses in SW Florida

February 17, 2023

We haven’t yet turned the corner on recovering the ecological health of Sarasota Bay. We lost 5% of our seagrass coverage these past two years, which is not great – at all. But the prior two-year period saw a loss of 18%, so at least those losses don’t appear to be accelerating. I do not…

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Satellite Image Of Tampa Bay

Director’s Note: Extent of impacts from Piney Point – an update

January 13, 2023

Our last communication was intended to prepare everyone for the results of the 2022 seagrass maps for Sarasota Bay. Unfortunately, our bay-wide coverage declined by 5% between 2020 and 2022. If there is some good news, it is that that rate of decline is much lower than the 18% decrease we saw between 2018 and…

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Seagrass from underwater

Director’s Note: 2022 seagrass map results – how are we doing?

January 10, 2023

Earlier this morning, the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) released its preliminary seagrass map results for 2022. These results are used by the SBEP as a holistic biological indicator of ecosystem health, similar to how seagrass maps are used in Tampa Bay, the Indian River Lagoon, the Chesapeake Bay, and worldwide, actually. A big…

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aerial view of the ponds at Piney Point

Director’s Note: Just how bad was Piney Point?

December 26, 2022

Over the past week, I’ve received news that a paper I put together – “Impacts to Sarasota Bay from Piney Point: Examining the evidence” passed the peer review process and has been accepted for publication in the scientific journal “Florida Scientist”. Very proud of that, since it laid out evidence that the massive macroalgae blooms…

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