A crimp in the travel plan

Two days before we're supposed to leave on a trip to Spain, and look what Mother Nature has in store for us. The house will be buttoned up tight so I'm not worried about it, but do you think we can get out of here before Tropical Storm (Hurricane?) Erika arrives?

Smells of summer

Enjoying lots of Caprese salads this summer with our delicious fresh basil plant.... Nothing like the fragrance of fresh, organic basil!

Save the honeybees!

We had a beehive growing under the fill hatch of our in-ground propane tank. Marcus didn't want the gas company to disturb the hive when they come for the next fill-up, so he called a master beekeeper who came by to check out the hive. She said the queen was very pretty and left this "mobile home" sprayed inside with sugar water. Two days later the queen and more than 95% of her workers had transferred over to their new home and were well on their way to building a new honeycomb. The beekeeper collected the box and transported them to a new, permanent location in the country. So happy to have helped successfully relocate these honeybees. So many are of them are dying off now.

It may have been tiny, but it was juicy and delicious - and homegrown! We grew it in the landscaped bed next to the house. So easy to do in the subtropics!

Save our lagoon!

So glad to find two queen conches while snorkeling this weekend in the Indian River Lagoon. It's a sign of good health! Our poor lagoon. It's healthy now, but we're just entering the rainy season. When there's too much water in Lake Okeechobee, they'll start dumping it into the Caloosahatchee (on the west) and St. Lucie (on the east) rivers. The Lake O water is fresh water, which lowers the salinity of the IRL, the most biodiverse estuary in North America, and is not hospitable to local wildlife. And it's also polluted. It's wonderful to see healthy queen conches, but they won't be here for long if they start dumping out of Lake O. We want the Lake O waters to flow south out of the lake to be filtered through the Everglades again, like they originally did. And we also want agricultural land north of the lake to stop polluting the lake waters. It's not too much to ask. It's the way nature designed it.

Birthdays at the beach

I knew there was a reason I retired in Florida. Love the beach in December! We went to Blowing Rocks Nature Reserve in Hobe Sound to watch the wild surf pound against the coquina, then to Sandsprit Park in Port Salerno to look for dolphins. Found them playing just outside Manatee Pocket! On the way home we stopped by our secret manatee-watching spot to see if there were any about. We saw around a dozen feeding just below the surface of the water. That's a manatee nose you see poking out of the water in the last photo!

In my yard...

Get a load of this baby pineapple growing next to our house! That plant has been there since before we moved here four years ago, and I've never seen it produce fruit. I didn't even realize it is a pineapple plant!

Siesta Key

cool solar ring

We love the east coast of Florida--the ocean breezes, tempestuous surf, worm reefs, and snorkeling and diving--but the west coast of Florida is amazing for wildlife, at least it was in April when we spent a week on Siesta Key off of Sarasota.

We didn't take nearly enough photos. I wish I had a video of the crazy sea hares that were everywhere in the bay. Dozens! I was trying to steer the boat around them. I was so afraid I'd hit one.

One day sea urchins started washing up on the beach. Why? I probably shouldn't have messed with Mother Nature, but I started throwing them all back into deep water. They'll die without water.

a fever of manta rays off of Anna Maria Island

SCUBA

The Everglades 2014

River of Grass

baby anhingas

no-good, lazy gators!

endangered wood storks, roseate spoonbills

baby blue herons waiting for breakfast to be delivered

my first good look at a manatee

beware the gator!

I can see all the way down to the tail!

Bald eagle!

We were driving to the grocery store (on our adopted road, of all places) when we saw a woman pulled off the road and taking a photo of something high up in a tree. (I call it a tree loosely. The wetlands around here have these fantastic old trees that are actually dead. No leaves or needles, no bark or branches even. Like nature’s utility poles, just waiting for the next hurricane to take them out. They make great nesting places for birds of prey, however.) Marcus glanced up and saw it, and immediately pulled off the road himself. “An eagle,” he shouted. “A real bald eagle.”

We got out of our car, pulled out our phones, and started snapping away. Cars, on what we consider to be a not-too-widely-traveled stretch of road, starting pulling off left and right, everyone jumping out of their cars with cell phones in hand. The eagle calmly turned his head from left to right, surveying the crazy people below him. 

I don’t know which excited me more: seeing a bald eagle in the wild or seeing all the people who were excited about seeing a bald eagle in the wild. 

Stop bleeding Lake Okeechobee!

My husband and I left south Florida in 1987, and never planned to return. But a trip to visit family in 2009 accidentally brought us to the Treasure Coast, and we fell in love with the area. In 2010 we came down to find a home. After two weeks of looking and not being able to decide where to live, we decided to pack it in and try again another time.

We reached this decision as were driving south over the Roosevelt Bridge. As we crested the bridge, I looked to the west at the beautiful boats at Sunset Bay Marina, the late afternoon sun shimmering across the river, and the wide expanse of green beyond the river. “This is where I want to live,” I announced. I had never been more sure of anything in my life. Little did we know that from that vantage point, we could see the dock of the house that we would find the next day.

We spent the summer of 2010 exploring our wet backyard - the South Fork, the North Fork, the wide water between downtown Stuart and Rio, Manatee Pocket, the sandbars, the inlet, and the lagoon north to Ft. Pierce and south to Jupiter. This was truly the Treasure Coast, and the waterway was its mother lode. 

I started volunteering at Florida Oceanographic and became fascinated with local marinelife. We took up snorkeling and explored the mangrove islands in the lagoon, delighting in the nursery of fish, crabs, and birds that lived there. On one particularly stellar day at high tide off Sailfish Point, the water was as clear as our swimming pool. A green turtle swam past our boat, and then we spotted a manatee with her calf. We quietly pulled our boat onto the beach of a nearby island, careful not to disturb a flock of roseate spoonbills that rested in the mangroves.

In the summer of 2011, we were surprised when the Corps of Engineers started releasing water from Lake O into the river. The Lake O releases were something we had heard about after we moved here, but we were under the impression that it happened rarely, usually in anticipation of a hurricane. 

We had no desire to swim in water laced with fertilizer and pesticides, and would sit on our dock in the eerie stillness. The baitfish were gone, the birds were gone, and the dolphins, rays, and manatees we often saw from the dock were gone. The oysters at Shepard Park across Frazier Creek were no longer spitting water. It was as quiet as a graveyard.

And now the Corps of Engineers is bleeding the lake again, and every rainy summer promises to bring more of the same. We have only been in the water once this season, and now we have a sickening neon-green algae in the shallows by our dock where our Great Blue Heron used to feed. The view from the Roosevelt Bridge today is one of devastation and loss, laced with a sickening brown foam.

We have to stop the bleeding. As stewards of the most bio-diverse ecosystem in the country, we have a responsibility to protect it.

What can we do? Start by writing a letter and sending it to every one of our Florida legislators. Tell them that it’s time to stop protecting the sugar industry and time to start protecting a unique natural resource. Let our governor know that it’s time to stop ignoring what is happening to our state. It doesn’t have to be eloquent or lengthy. Just put it in an email and send it. It’s time. 

Contact information is on the FOS website (www.floridaocean.org). Click on “Get Involved,” and then “Contact Your Legislators.”

Leatherback!

I was walking the beach Thursday night looking for loggerhead turtles. I was a guest of the Florida Oceanographic Society’s turtle scouts whose job it is to locate nesting loggerheads on the beach two nights a week for a permitted, guided turtle walk. The turtle walk begins with a talk on sea turtles at FOS’s Coastal Center on Hutchinson Island and ends (hopefully) by witnessing the actual laying of eggs on the beach. It’s a marvelous program in my hometown of Stuart, Florida, during the months of June and July.

But while we were scouting for loggerheads, we came across something even more unique: a leatherback turtle. There are three species of turtle that nest on the Treasure Coast beaches: leatherbacks, loggerheads, and green turtles. The leatherback and green turtles are endangered, so even if you were to see one hauling herself out of the water, which would be rare just given their numbers, you would not be permitted by law to approach her and observe her nesting. The loggerhead, on the other hand, is only “threatened,” and it is possible to observe one nesting on the beach IF you’re in the presence of a permit-carrying turtle guide.

I have seen loggerheads nest before and hawksbill and green turtles while snorkeling in ten feet of water off the coast of St. John, USVI, but I never thought I’d get to see the largest of all sea turtles, the leatherback, the only remaining species in the genus Dermochelys and considered to be the most quickly declining large animal in modern history.

We stood staring at her for several seconds before comprehending what we were staring at. After walking the beach for an hour and a half scrutinizing every dark mass on the beach, it was a surprise when one of the masses materialized into a turtle. And not just any turtle, it was a mama leatherback the size of a chunky coffee table almost at our feet. They are enormous animals, weighing up to a ton; the sheer size of it startled us into stepping back and allowing it to progress up the dunes alone in search of a nesting place.

Animals give birth every day, but watching these giant reptiles emerge from the ocean (its natural habitat), crawl over the sand (not its natural habitat), and dig a hole in which to deposit her eggs is to witness something awe inspiring. Have you ever seen the flippers of a sea turtle? You just try crawling over abandoned sand castles and escarpments left by storm surges on those paddles! Then, try digging a hole with them!! (My turtle scout companion once witnessed a loggerhead with only one rear flipper dig her nest in the sand.) Despite the obstacles, they have an amazing capacity to persevere. And then, by no means the easy part, they give birth, rest for a bit, cover their nests and pack them down to protect them from predators, and make the slow trek back to the ocean, never to see their babies hatch. Thousands of eggs, laid in batches of 50-100, so that one turtle may survive to adulthood. Given the odds, it truly is a miracle!

The birds are back!

We left Stuart last September to spend a couple of weeks in Nevada and California. During that time, the Army Corps of Engineers determined that Lake Okeechobee was approaching dangerous depths - 15 feet - and posed a risk to the surrounding area by threatening to burst its seams (the dikes) and cause devastating flooding. They started bleeding the polluted lake through its two major arteries, the Caloosahatchee River to the west and the St. Lucie River to the east, in order to relieve the pressure. 

When we got home from our trip at the beginning of October, we looked forward to going out on the boat. Friends told us not to bother; the waterways (not only the St. Lucie River, but also the Indian River Lagoon and the St. Lucie inlet) were a disgusting mess, and the Corps was still bleeding the lake.

We waited patiently for the bleeding to stop, but it continued another month. We made frequent trips down to our dock during that time, and what we saw broke our hearts. The bait fish had left the river, and so did the birds and our beloved dolphins who ate them. 

We have no idea what has happened to the oyster beds that locals were working so hard to restore. I read that an adult oyster, which can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, would not survive three months in the freshwater river we now had. (The salinity level, which usually hovers in the teens (parts per thousand), was then around 0.5 - essentially fresh water.)

They finally stopped bleeding the lake during the first week of November. We went out on the boat a month later. The river still felt like a cemetery. 

Last week we went out again. As soon as we got down to the dock, we felt the difference. The birds were back! Huge flocks of terns. We watched a pelican try to swallow a fish that seemed way too big, even for its flexible throat pouch. And - wonder of wonders - our great blue heron was wading along the shore by our dock eyeing the fish in the shallows.

Dolphins? Not yet, but we are hopeful. Where there are bait fish, there is hope.

Reason #1: Nesting Turtles

A couple of weeks ago we went on a guided sea turtle walk on the beach and it was fantastic. We saw a mamma loggerhead lay about 50 eggs, which is a small batch, but it could have been her last one of the season. The females can lay eggs 2-3 times per season. As soon as they lay one batch, they go back out to sea and start working on the next batch. They only mate once a season, and while working on the first batch of eggs can store the sperm for the second and third batches. They don't eat the entire egg-laying season, not until the last batch is in the sand. It amazes me what some females of other species have to go through. I guess it's instinct, and they don't know any different, but I just keep thinking about the multiple servings of chocolate cake I'd have when I was eating for two.

We got to the Florida Oceanographic Society’s Coastal Center on Hutchinson Island in Stuart at 9:00pm. Michelle, an educator at Florida Oceanographic, is a certified marine turtle nesting guide. (People are only allowed to watch loggerheads nest in the presence of a certified guide.) She gave us an interesting talk on sea turtles while her scouts (four of them) were out on the beaches watching for turtles coming out of the water. At 10:15 she got the radio call that there was a loggerhead digging a nest on the beach. The leatherbacks are still nesting too, but we're not allowed to watch them because they're endangered. The loggerheads are only "threatened," so we can watch them in the presence of a guide. The green turtles will nest starting in a month or so, and they are endangered too, so, guide or no, we can’t watch them either. 90% of the loggerheads in the U.S. nest on Florida’s beaches. Cool!

We all jumped into our cars and drove up the island about a mile and parked at a public beach. Then, very carefully and escorted by scouts equipped with night-vision binoculars and red filters on their flashlights so as not to disturb the turtles, we walked a little north of the boardwalk to where the turtle was spotted. Her nest was already dug and she was already in labor when we got there. She was in “the zone", as they say, so she wasn’t really aware of us being there as long as we weren’t too loud and didn’t flash any lights in her eyes. One of the scouts, Leslie, had propped up a flashlight in the sand behind her so we could see what was happening. Ellie, as we chose to call the turtle, dropped a couple of eggs in the hole right after we got there, and then nothing happened for about an hour. Sometimes they actually fall asleep in the process, but Leslie said she was awake; she was just having a little difficulty. Leslie said Ellie’s eggs were larger than most. 

Leslie, a volunteer at Florida Oceanographic, was so knowledgeable. She talked for the full hour that Ellie was in labor, telling us so many fascinating things about turtles. It makes all the difference in the world to be witnessing the nesting with someone like that.

After an hour, the eggs started dropping at about two per minute.We expected the usual 80 to 150 eggs, but Ellie seemed satisfied with the (approximately) 50 that we counted. When she was done, she started carefully packing sand on top of the eggs with her hind flippers. They have to pack it just right so the eggs don't get crushed, but they're safe from predators. In between flipping sand onto the nest, she's packing it down with her abdomen. It is something to see. 

After about 15-20 minutes of this, she turned back toward the ocean and headed out to sea. I almost cried when she went back into the water. I had just witnessed this beautiful animal giving birth, so to speak, and I couldn’t help thinking what a hard life her hatchlings will have. The ocean and beach will be teeming with predators waiting to have a turtle hatchling meal in 45-60 days. Leslie says the sharks will be waiting offshore. (Remind me not to swim in the ocean in 45-60 days!) The few hatchlings that survive, out of every 1000-10,000 eggs that are laid, are fated to lead the same life as their mother - migrating in the sea grass beds of the Atlantic Ocean for twenty or so years, until they are mature enough to mate, and then the females returning to the beach where they hatched to make their own nests. 

Such an incredible experience. Just to see a wild sea turtle on the beach was exciting. She was beautiful - her carapace (shell) was about 2.5-3 feet long. Fortunately she had no visible scars from damage by boats or other hazards. Witnessing a loggerhead nesting is one of the unique advantages of living in Florida. When we lived here before, I never much cared for the natural wildlife, either flora or fauna - mostly out of ignorance. I guess I was too preoccupied with day-to-day life to notice what was around me. 

The habitat and climate may not be for everyone, but there are some amazing things that go on here. Florida is unique in the U.S. in many ways. It's a good thing it's attached because I can't imagine why the U.S. would have wanted it back in the early days. Not difficult to understand why it wasn't settled until the late 1800's. Understandably Americans chose to occupy the more desirable areas of the country before they mustered up the courage to tackle Florida. But those who have the fortitude to tolerate the mosquitos and humidity of summer have the advantage of such rare opportunities as this.