WaterNotes

Thought some of you might like to see the incredibly technologically advanced methods we have in Florida for restoring red mangrove habitats. (Tongue. In. Cheek.) Behold, the great PVC! In all seriousness, its a good reality check for the plant enthusiasts in the marine aquarium hobby. Even the scientists havent entirely figured out how to make little red mangrove propagules happy [...]

In 2005 I shot this photo of a striped burrfish I found along the edge of the Mosquito Lagoon inside the park boundaries of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.  At the time, I found it peculiar.  Here was a reasonably perfect burrfish specimen completely clear of the high tide mark and several feet from the water.  How [...]

  I stumbled across a really interesting idea detailed in Popular Science that discussed the advantages of using very simple wave-driven pumps to churn up ocean layers beneath the thermocline to attempt to cool surface waters. The big idea?  Cooler ocean surface temperatures mean less fuel for hurricanes.  In fact they report that “models show that even [...]

I wish that these were selected images from several weeks worth of photographs taken while on the shores of the Indian River Lagoon system.  I wish that it were very easy to enforce the $100 fine the sign above suggests.  But the truth is that there is simply too much debris – trash – in [...]

  File this under incredibly scary.  This is the first report I’ve seen of the kind.  Researchers with several institutions in Spain, including the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, published their recent work in PLOS One this past week.  Their project looked at the current accumulation of antibiotics and their residues in wild nestlings from several [...]

EarthOcean is a really interesting video website.  Unlike the front-line amateur videos you can find on YouTube concerning ocean conservation issues, EarthOcean hosts some really professional and entertaining footage on their site.  I’m really impressed by how well the videos are put together as well as the content they shed light on.  Most of the [...]

I was able to see, in person, damaged and restored oyster reef habitat this past weekend while touring areas of Mosquito Lagoon (the northernmost part of the Indian River Lagoon system).  See my previous note on oyster restoration. You can see in these photos that there is a wide white shelf of exposed shells in [...]