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…
Continue ReadingMy 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…
Continue ReadingOur 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…
Continue ReadingJoin 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…
Continue ReadingLast 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…
Continue ReadingThe 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…
Continue ReadingIt’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…
Continue ReadingAt 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…
Continue ReadingSuccessful 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)…
Continue ReadingThought 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%.…
Continue ReadingThere 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…
Continue ReadingThere 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…
Continue ReadingI 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…
Continue ReadingAs 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.…
Continue ReadingThe 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…
Continue ReadingAs 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…
Continue ReadingWe 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…
Continue ReadingOur 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…
Continue ReadingEarlier 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…
Continue ReadingOver 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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