WaterNotes

When the programs end, the kids are turned loose into the aquariums with their chaperones, or we send them off to board their buses, I inevitably feel a sense of relief mixed with exhaustion and a dash of hope.   The relief is mostly that all we didn’t lose any students in the chaos that [...]

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 [...]

I chose a different area to cleanup today along the northern IRL and finally ran across enormous evidence of fish kills that were reported from many of Florida’s coastal waterways following the freeze.  On a single 300 ft stretch of beachline (about a football field length) I found 621 dead burrfish, 5 northern pufferfish, 18 [...]

The moment of truth has arrived. Let’s see if my attempts to memorize and list all the ocean going dolphins, all the porpoises, and all the freshwater dolphins have actually paid off. Family Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins) 1.  Atlantic bottlenose 2.  Indopacific bottlenose 3.  Atlantic spotted 4.  Indopacific spotted 5.  Atlantic humpbacked dolphin 6.  Pacific [...]

For the last two months I’ve been attempting to take on personal challenges to locate and erase the high-plastic areas of my life. Right now I’m considering my coffee cups. I live in Florida so I don’t exactly down a lot of hot coffee but I do enjoy it iced. (Just sadly with no sugar [...]

Last month I was so successful in stamping out a serious addiction to soda that I’m feeling encouraged to take on new challenges. For April, I want to continue to reduce my use of plastic by taking a hard look at all of my bath products. Its no secret that we women love our products. [...]

I’ve been keeping tabs on a number of topics covered in previous posts here at WaterNotes that I wanted to update: Rita, one of the celebrity manatees released so far this year, continues to make progress out in the wild. Her satellite tracks show a steady movement around the immediate area near her release point [...]