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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…

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…

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…

Tomorrow, we hope to be briefed by the the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) on the draft 2022 seagrass maps for Sarasota Bay. The maps and the coverage estimates will be publicly released in January of next year, and so we have been asked to keep the results close to our vest until all…

The last Director’s Note summarized the information we collected about the trends in water quality in Sarasota Bay in response to Hurricane Ian. Thanks to our partners at the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD), and in coordination with colleagues with Charlotte County, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FFWCC), the University of Florida…

As you well know, Hurricane Ian had a devastating impact on Southwest Florida. It was the fourth deadliest hurricane to hit our state, but easily the deadliest storm in Florida over the past half a century, mostly due to a storm surge that reached up to 12 to 15 feet in parts of Lee County.…

One of the recent things we’ve done in Sarasota – as far as reporting on bay health – was to include macroalgae occurrence, since it appeared that in some parts of our system (particularly the lower bay) macroalgae could have been an important “destination” for the incoming nutrient loads. We have fairly good data from…

It’s only Tuesday, but already a busy start to this week. This past Sunday, I attended a meeting of the Midnight Pass Society, along with about a hundred local residents. There is a lot of passion involved in this topic, and I was fortunate to be given an opportunity to speak to the group and…

This week should be an interesting one for Sarasota Bay. Right now, we have an algal bloom (mostly offshore) that extends from Anna Maria Island down to Sanibel. The figure below is a composite of multiple days of satellite imagery, up to yesterday. The areas of yellow to red are areas that are experiencing an…

Yesterday, we gave you an update on the health of Sarasota Bay, with a focus on both bacteria levels and levels of dissolved oxygen. The data we’ve collected (along with our partners) suggest a recovery is underway in the bay, with salinity and oxygen levels increasing from the very low values we recorded in the…

It has now been almost a month since Hurricane Ian slammed ashore just south of us. Most of our watershed was impacted by winds that reflected either strong tropical storm or Category 1 hurricane conditions. We also experienced between 5 to 15 inches of rainfall, but some locations had more than that. We did not…

Yesterday, we had our first meeting with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) staff in Tallahassee, related to our proposed approach for developing the Reasonable Assurance Plan (RAP) for Sarasota Bay. As you likely know, a RAP is a locally led version of a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). A TMDL is an effort…

On Wednesday, October 12th, Jay and I were joined by staff from the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD) for our second sampling effort for Sarasota Bay. This effort is meant to enhance, not substitute for, existing monitoring efforts. It also focuses on the lower bay, since that is the area hit hardest by the…

We may be seeing a bit of a good news / bad news scenario playing out, in response to Hurricane Ian. First, a few bits of data. The image on the right is the plot of winds across Florida, and the image below it is a plot of rainfall across the Southwest Florida Water Management…

Over the weekend, I spent time down in North Port with a friend, delivering gasoline and water to folks who didn’t or couldn’t leave their houses. While out there (in my dinghy) we noticed failed septic tanks, porta potties tipped over and submerged in floodwaters, as well as loads of submerged cars and trucks. Dead…

First off, I hope everyone came through Ian without too much damage. Our thoughts go out to Jennifer Carpenter, a member of our Policy Board who represents FDEP from their Fort Myers office. As you know by now, impacts increased from north to south, and while my neighborhood had damage from hours of tropical storm…

It is WAY too early to know what is going to happen with what is now “Tropical Depression 9”. But things can change quickly, and it’s important to know that a storm that people were blasé about can change into a very scary hurricane – like Charley and Punta Gorda in 2004. As well, very…