WaterNotes

My morning plan for a hike in the coastal hammock was foiled elegantly by the rain. Florida doesn’t usually have rainy days of fog and mist and hours of falling water.  We’re much more inclined to sudden cloud bursts and passionate thunderstorms with lightning strike theatrics and the thunder ad-libbing its lines.  They’re too full of energy to last very long and quickly blow themselves out.

Days like this remind me of the mid-Atlantic climate I left behind; where the sun would be cast over for days or even weeks on end in the late winter and early spring before the world finally woke up and began its new year.  The rain is drizzling just lightly enough to make me feel that I can hazard a walk out to the grocery store and I’m feeling too cooped up in the house to stay inside all day long.  I haven’t taken a walk around my own neighborhood in ages.  I can’t remember the last time I actually walked the half-mile to Publix.

The fallen pine cones smell almost like roasted hazelnuts along the concrete sidewalk. They’re wet, and the clean smooth smell of the rain accentuates the otherwise earthy dark aroma.  Almost like wet coffee grinds.

The orange grove is well set back in this neighborhood, but I go out of my way to walk alongside it.  Whoever owns it hasnt exactly kept the grove up.  The irrigation lines are here but they don’t look as though they’ve really been used much this season, or even last.  There are thousands of windfalls scattered about and the fruit still on the tree is far from the lacquered bright orange perfection of the Navels you see in the market.  I suppose they’re more of the juicing variety than the sort you truly put on the table.  There are brown smears and blemishes all over the pebbled skin, and some of it still clinging to the branches has deep holes in it from unguessed insect visitors.

What is the purpose of an orange grove if no one is eating the fruit? I suppose it certainly offers some habitat space for snakes and anoles, armadillos and cover for birds that would otherwise be rather open prey for the Cooper’s hawks.  But is an orange grove, if unused, a better substitute than the natural scrub habitat that would otherwise stand here?

It seems so wrong to let all of this food go to utter waste.

The detour doesn’t last long; I’m back out on the sidewalk to the main road in moments and walking up to the storefront.  The path is less than scenic.  It seems everyone whose driveway empties out to the main street feels that their lawns end well before the sidewalk begins.  There is an enormity of trash.  Just as much as I find along the shorelines.

Pepsi bottle, cigarette lighter, Mountain Dew can, Dove chocolate wrapper, plastic straw, cigarette pack, bottle cap, AA battery, paper clip, cigar tip, plastic bag, plastic bag, aluminum foil, Wendy’s wrapper, plastic spoon, metal knife.

I wonder how much rain it will take to wash any of this out to the Lagoon less than a mile down the road?

I never considered before that my cleanup projects didn’t have to be on the shoreline; that they could in fact occur much much closer to home.

It was well over a year ago that I first heard Dan Barber, an immense figure in the foodie and chef sustainability circles, expound the virtues of foie gras “with integrity”. At this year’s TED he spoke on a topic even closer to home – sustainable seafood – and a particular fish that he claims to have fallen in love with.

I won’t give away too much of the talk as its a real gem, but I did enjoy his lighthearted moments (“What’s sustainable about feeding chicken to fish?!”) interlaced with serious consideration of what it will take to grow food for the planet in ways that actually benefit habitats and people.  This, certainly, seems like an experiment headed in the right direction for the future of seafood.

The cold weather continues to gravely effect wildlife populations in the state of Florida, especially in the case of manatees. SeaWorld Orlando brought in another cold stressed juvenile today and Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo and the Miami Seaquarium have also been quite active in the past two weeks coordinating with Fish and Wildlife to locate, rescue, and rehabilitate several cases of stressed ‘cows.  In many cases, as Lowry’s press release notes, the turn around for stressed individuals is short and precious space in facilities is freed up by relocating stable patients to veritable half-way houses at state parks and springs.  Some patients stay for the long term though and many are not lucky enough to be reached before it is too late.

The Marine Mammal Pathobiology Lab of FWCC released new preliminary numbers on manatee mortality for the first two months of the year, spanning the worst weeks of the extreme cold weather.  The data is disheartening to say the least.

Comparing the numbers from Jan 1st to February 26th for the last five years we find that mortality in the categories of “Cold Stress”, “Undetermined”, and “Unrecovered” are sky high compared to the five-year averages.

(The undetermined category is often used to record manatees whose bodies were too decomposed to necropsy properly to determine a cause of death.  Unrecovered bodies are verified by taking data on size and sex but were not typically sent for necropsy.  See the release on FWCC for full category explanations and the complete data used to make the above table.)

Also sky high for this time of year is the total loss of manatees at 348.  Temper this with the fact that the five year average is 77 for this point in the year and that for the entirety of 2009 – our highest year of mortality ever recorded – the loss was 429!

Barring several miracles between now and December 31st, we are on track to have a rather depressing year in manatee conservation despite the fleeting joy of an also-record-high population count for the aerial survey back in January.

About the only good news coming out of this new data set is that mortality attributed to watercraft strikes is quite low – just 4 individuals or less than 1% of the total loss compared to the five year average of 13.  I can’t help wondering though, if that number is low simply because the harsh weather has kept much of the boating public out of the water and off the shorelines so far this year.

Surfrider Foundation went extreme with their newest PSA video on marine debris for their new Rise Above Plastic campaign. The animation might seem outlandish with its sea of plastics so large it supports the weight of a sperm whale like a swimming pool raft.. but, given all the trash I’ve been cleaning up for One Ton Landed already this year, extreme might be just what we need in our conservation PSAs.

Considering that this week rescue groups have removed plastic debris from a live dolphin calf, a nurse shark, and have brought in manatees for entanglement issues, and the brown pelican body I saw on Thursday.. while we aren’t exactly at Defcon Wall-E with our plastic contamination, we might be heading there.

Today I met up with a good friend, and sometimes editor,  to do a test run for the One Ton Landed cleanups near Titusville. In our brilliance we decided the night before to bring out our kayaks and gear to try for a short paddle and sight additional cleanup spots (as well as look for manatees, turtles, and all the rest).  It was a great plan until we were both delayed by early morning snafoo’s and didn’t manage to meet up until noontime.  By then, the wind had picked up to dramatic gusts along the coast sure to toss us about like toy boats.

Still.. we figured we might as well give it a try. Barely twenty minutes into a herculean effort to keep ahead of the wind I found myself drifting towards a large thicket of red mangrove roots.  As the aerial roots swung at my face and neck and my paddle became caught in the overhead bows a single word came to mind.. trouble.  Within a moment parts of my jacket twisted around a few branches and the nose of the kayak wedged under aerial roots grown low enough to act like dock cleats.  I was officially stuck and hopelessly entangled, pinned up against the roots and the branches and contemplating how I was going to get myself out.  Then I remembered I had a partner on hand who would surely come to my rescue.  Right?

Unfortunately as he paddled into view I didn’t hear any sympathetic exclamations like: “Oh goodness, Sarah!  What happened?  Let me help!”

Nope, I heard peals of laughter. Laughter so complete that I watched him wipe away tears from his eyes once he could actually regain his composure.  This from the guy who wasn’t sure he could climb a tree just three months ago!

After a fifteen minutes of wedging, unwrapping, de-trapping, and disembarking from the kayak into the shallow mud, we managed to unentangle the mess without hurting the tree, losing any of the debris I’d picked up and placed in the kayak, or drowning me.  All in all, a successful rescue.  (And I must say, I now have a better perspective on the situation entangled animals face when they get wrapped up in things they can’t escape on their own.)

Our shoreline walk and cleanup went much more smoothly.  While our efforts also were met by strong wind resistance (and much chasing after floating plastic bits and bags) we managed to pick up twenty-three pounds of trash of an innumerable miscellaneous assortment including one drowned Motorola cell phone.

Today’s biggest accomplishment?  Devising a system of sorts for dividing up recyclable debris items from the non-recyclable.  I think for our cleanup events we’ll use buckets for sorting the recyclables and keep to the plan of using biodegradeable plastic bags for the rest.

Interested in learning more about One Ton Landed projects and cleanup events?  You can find our group on Facebook.  Members, however, must be approved before you can join in on the events.  Feel free to send me an email (notes at seanursery dot com) and tell me where you’re located and why you’re interested!