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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

world

Florida Bay’s ecology on the brink of collapse

ISLAMORADA, Fla. – Florida Bay is a sprawling estuary at the state’s southern tip, covering about three times the area of New York City.

The headwaters of the Everglades – starting some 300 miles north near Orlando – used to end up here after flowing south in a shallow sheet like a broad, slow-moving river, filtering through miles of muck, marsh and sawgrass.

Historically, the bay thrived on the perfect mix of freshwater from the Everglades and saltwater from the adjacent Gulf of Mexico. It was a virtual Garden of Eden, home to numerous wading birds, fish, sea grasses and sponges.

But to the north of the bay, man’s unforgiving push to develop South Florida has left the land dissected with roads, dikes and miles of flood control canals to make way for homes and farms, choking off the freshwater flow and slowly killing the bay.

Experts fear a collapse of the entire ecosystem, threatening not only some of the nation’s most popular tourism destinations – Everglades National Park and the Florida Keys – but a commercial and recreational fishery worth millions of dollars.

The ill effects extend across the narrow spit of land that makes up the Florida Keys to the shallow coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean. Many popular commercial fish like grouper and snapper begin their lives in the bay before migrating into the ocean to the reefs.

“If Florida Bay heads south and there’s a lot less fish in there, well, when that’s done, it’s all over down here,” said Tad Burke, commodore of the Florida Keys Fishing Guides Association. “When that goes, your reefs are going to go, too, and it’ll just be a chain reaction.

“You could argue that the bay has already collapsed,” he added.

Attempts to fix the Everglades by constructing water treatment marshes and reservoirs, among other things, have been dogged by politics, funding shortfalls, and contentious, litigation-filled disagreements over the best solutions. And while land has been purchased and some projects completed, key restoration components are unfinished.

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