Our Estuaries

Watershed Area
square miles
Watershed Length
miles
Average depth
feet
map of Sarasota and Manatee Counties

Our estuaries are dynamic ecosystems, full of diverse life, with incredible discoveries waiting to be made. Paddlers joyfully spot bottlenose dolphins, manatees, and sea turtles in our bays every day. Fishers delight in pursuing snook, spotted seatrout, and redfish through the bays' lush seagrass meadows. Birders gather here to add roseate spoonbills, white pelicans, and black skimmers to their lifetime species lists.

This is a special place.

An estuary is a partially enclosed body of water where fresh water from land mixes with salt water from the ocean.

Sarasota Bay is a subtropical coastal lagoon enclosed by a necklace of barrier islands to the west and the mainland of Manatee and Sarasota Counties to the east. This estuary, with its unique embayments, tidal tributaries, small creeks, coves, inlets, and passes, is bounded by Anna Maria Sound to the north and Venice Inlet to the south.

The Sarasota Bay region includes 5 embayments. From north to south, these include Anna Maria Sound, Palma Sola Bay, Big Sarasota Bay, Roberts Bay, Little Sarasota Bay, and Blackburn Bay. Each embayment features different characteristics, from the busy bird rookery islands of Roberts Bay to the quiet mangrove-lined shores of Little Sarasota Bay.

The Find Your Watershed tool on this page demonstrates the features of each embayment and watershed. Do you know where the rain that falls on your roof goes?

Find Your Watershed

watershed is the area of land that drains to a particular body of water. Watershed boundaries are determined by elevation differences across land masses. Everyone lives in a watershed, no matter how far their home is from a body of water.

Human activity has greatly altered watersheds in Southwest Florida. Sarasota Bay once received relatively little fresh water, but after large-scale drainage projects to prepare land for agriculture and development, much of the fresh water that once percolated into ground water supplies is now delivered, through tributaries and overland runoff, to Sarasota Bay.

Next time it rains, watch the water run off your driveway. Do you know where it goes after it hits the street? Storm drains carry water to the nearest waterbody. For those of us who live near Sarasota Bay, water flows directly from storm drains into Sarasota Bay. Water from inland neighborhoods usually flows into a tributary before reaching the Bay. To use the Find Your Watershed map, click on your address or other point of interest. You'll see which waterbody receives rainfall that flows from that address.

Remember that stormwater carries more than rain. It picks up oil, trash, fertilizer, and other things in its path, bringing them to Sarasota Bay. Keeping the Bay clean means taking care of its watershed.