Me At Gatorman1@aaof.usTHE MANGROVE FOREST
By: Glenn Wilsey, Sr.
The Everglades are made up of three major ecosystems. They start as far north as Lake Okeechobee and spread southward to Florida Bay. From the center of the state to the east we have “the river of grass.” From the center of the state to the west we have the cypress forest and from the southeast corner of the coast all the way around to the west coast we have the mangrove forest. In the past we’ve talked about the river of grass and the cypress forest. This month we are going to talk about the mangrove forest.
Our mangrove forest starts on the southeast Atlantic end of Florida at Biscayne Bay and follows the coast, to Flamingo and then around the peninsula to the Ten Thousand Islands area on the west coast of Florida.
When rain falls in the Orlando area, it flows as ground water to the center of the state, then continues south down the Kissimee River and into Lake Okeechobee. Lake Okeechobee spills into The Everglades and the glades flow into the mangrove forest, and on into Florida bay which feeds into the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The mangrove forest is where the fresh water of the Everglades mixes with the salt water of the ocean. This blend of fresh and salt water is called brackish water. The brackish water is very important to the fish population. The fish come here to lay their eggs. They can’t get to the fresh water and would probably die if they did and straight seawater is way too salty for their eggs to hatch in. The brackish water is perfect and mangrove roots give the hatchlings a place to hide.
There are countless rivers that wind through the mangrove islands, forming lakes and ponds. Some of these “rivers” are barely big enough to row a canoe through. As the rivers flow closer to the bay, they get much bigger and the currents flow much faster. The lakes and bays within the mangrove forest are the feeding grounds for all of the birds, animals and fish of the mangrove forest. They can eat their fill of crustaceans and from schools of baitfish in the shallow brackish water. The river of grass and the cypress forest end where the mangrove forest starts.
There are three different types of mangrove trees in South Florida. On the bay side of the mangrove forest are black mangrove trees. We also have white mangroves, but they are not very common and are hard to find. On the inland side of the mangrove forest we have the red mangrove trees. In the mangrove forest the islands are called bay heads, they’re made up of shell islands, with small shrubs and plants that can live in salty ground. The trees found on the bay heads would be mahogany, gumbo-limbo, buttonwood, white mangrove, and black mangrove. Anything that happens south of Orlando eventually effects Florida Bay and the reefs on the Atlantic as well as the grass beds on the gulf side of South Florida. Because all of this area is in The Everglades National Park, the park does all of the ecological studies concerning the mangrove forest and Florida Bay.
For years, we’ve been listening to The National Park Service say, “we don’t have enough fresh water flowing into the park.” So, the Army Corps of Engineers tells the South Florida Water Management District to divert water to the park and the park has plenty of water. Of course, after a couple of years, the park service will have a change of leadership and / or a new handful of grant money and things change again. With the change and / or grant money the park service will say we have too much water in The Everglades and the Army Corps of Engineers will divert the water somewhere else. This process has been going on ever since the park service and the corps of engineers has had their sticky little hands in our everglades. I’m not a scientist, but I know that the water depth has a lot to do with the El Nino` phenomenon.
Every four to seven years or so the glades will have plenty of water and every four to seven years or so they will dry out and burn down. As I mentioned in one of my earlier stories, this natural cycle is very important because when The Everglades dries out it kills aquatic plants, fish and algae which becomes the fertilizer for the next four to seven years. During the dry period, lightning will start fires that will burn the glades to the ground and will even burn the muck that is exposed. Ashes from the fires are an excellent source of minerals for the plants and animals over the next four to seven years. All of the fertilizers and minerals that nature makes in the glades are washed into the mangrove forest and continue into Florida bay. So, it would seem to me, that without these fertilizers and minerals washing into the mangrove forest and into Florida bay it would all eventually die. Most of The Everglades HAS NOT dried out since 1991 and as far as the locals are concerned the water has been too high for too long. Too many new scientists and too much government grant money is going to kill our everglades. If we could fire 70% of the scientists, I’m sure that the other 30% of them would work harder to study things that would help instead of harm the glades.
If we make one big mistake north of Florida Bay we lose anything south of that point. We need to let nature do its job, The Everglades needs to dry out and burn down.
There is a large spot in Florida Bay that they call the dead zone. No plants grow in the sludge of the dead zone except for algae. So far, no organization seems to know what has caused the dead zone. We can’t just blame the dead zone on too much water, I’m sure that agricultural and suburban runoff, industrial wastes and pollutants from the trash we burn in South Florida’s incinerators are also contributing factors to Florida Bay’s dead zone.
Last year, I was standing on the L-67 levee, just south of the tamiami trail. The western side is the national park and to the east is public land. We were watching a fire burn to the west of the levee when a park ranger pulled up on a three wheeled all terrain bike and, of course, asked us what we were doing (like it wasn’t obvious). I asked the ranger how the fire started and she said that they had started it! One week before, there’d been a fire on the public land to the east of the levee and the park service had come and put it out. I asked the ranger why they put one fire out but start another. She said, “because it wasn’t in the park.” I asked her what difference that made and she ignored me, saying; “I have to go.” and she sped away. These are the kind of answers we are all used to hearing. The L-67 levee stretches south for ten miles, through the river of grass west of Miami. If one side is on fire, both sides should be on fire.
What the ranger didn’t want to say is that the national park doesn’t own all of the eastern side of the levee, so, they won’t use any of their funds to help it. When they do acquire the public land east of the levee, we won’t be allowed to go see it. They will ban airboats from the area, like they did west of the levee. What good is an ecosystem if we can’t go see it? By not letting all of it burn, they prevent the natural cycle from replenishing everything to the south.
Growing up in South Florida, I was able to experience the best of all of our fishing from the Atlantic Ocean to the mangrove forest and Florida Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. When I think of my past fishing trips, I always have to think of my life long friends and best fishing buddies, Charley Brand and Dennis Wilkerson. We were inseparable when it came to going fishing.
The three of us fished Florida Bay on many occasions. On one morning before the sun came up we headed for Flamingo, the southern most point of mainland Florida. To get to Flamingo you must take a 35-mile trip through Everglades National Park. At the park entrance you have to pay an entry fee to get in (I am a tax paying Florida resident, I shouldn’t have to PAY to get into something that I already paid for). However, the 35-mile drive is very scenic. After you PAY to get in, you start out driving through a pine forest with thick vegetation and slash pines. When driving through the national park I don’t see as many animals as when I’m traveling through our open, public recreational lands, but once in a while we spot a deer on the way to Flamingo. When leaving the pine forest it turns into open grass prairie. You won’t have a hard time seeing birds out in the open. When you’re in South Florida you never have to look hard for the birds, they’re everywhere.
All you have to do is look around. Leaving the grass prairie you drive into a cypress forest which is mostly under water. The trees grow up out of the water and I believe the cypress forest is the most beautiful part of The Everglades. As you leave the cypress forest the landscape opens back up into an even more beautiful grass prairie. Looking across this prairie you can now see the coastal prairie, the beginning of the mangrove forest. This area is called The Nine-mile Pond. It’s not by accident. It’s about nine miles to Flamingo. Now, The Everglades turns into winding streams, rivers, lakes and ponds of brackish water.
As we pulled into the parking lot at Flamingo we got everything ready so we could back the boat into the water, park the truck and trailer and make a mad dash for the boat and a quick getaway. While at the dock at Flamingo you have to move fast, because the mosquitoes, our unofficial State bird, are unbelievably thick.
Leaving the dock, we start motoring up the manmade channel toward Coot Bay. Here’s where we see what you don’t get to see in other parts of the glades, crocodiles! While in Florida you may see many, many alligators, but finding crocodiles is a lot harder. The crocodiles stay in the salt and brackish waters at the southern most tip of Florida and until recent years they were very hard to find. Quite a few of them may be found at Flamingo, because they know they can get an easy meal from a fisherman or a tourist at the dock. I feel it’s important that I remind everyone again, feeding alligators (or crocodiles) is a bad idea. They are not tame and they become even more dangerous when we try to make them tame by feeding them.
I know one place in Coot Bay where the trout fishing is usually good, so we went there but only caught some small trout and some jacks. Leaving Coot Bay we headed for Whitewater Bay.
The scenery along the way is inspirational, with thick mangrove heads (forests of mangrove trees). The birds were everywhere in the trees and flying around in the air. We could see Greenback herons, White ibis, Great blue herons, American woodstorks and rare Roseate spoonbills. Some of the birds were nesting in the thick mangrove branches, others were crouched down close to edge of the water trying to catch a meal and other taller birds were standing in knee deep water out on the open flats. The water in Whitewater Bay is very shallow in some places and the birds can walk right in the middle. It’s wide-open, with small mangrove islands everywhere and awesome fishing. We had a great day. We caught mangrove snapper, redfish, saltwater trout, grunts, ladyfish, jacks and snook. It really was a great day for fishing.
On our way back, we saw a mother osprey land in her nest with a fish to feed her babies. Back in Coot Bay, we saw three swallow tail kites circling above us. We didn’t see a Bald Eagle on this trip. Florida has the second largest population of nesting pairs of Bald Eagles in the United States. There’s one island on the north side of Whitewater Bay where a nesting pair of eagles stays but they were not sitting in their nest on that day. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t see an eagle but it was still great to see all of the other birds on our trip that day. Returning to the dock at Flamingo, we had everything ready so we could trailer the boat and get away in a hurry. It was getting dark, and, believe me; the mosquitoes are even worse at night. With this story over,
I have completed my stories of the three ecosystems that make up The Florida Everglades. If any of you have any questions about our everglades, please, e-mail me and I’ll be glad to answer them, or maybe write another story to answer your questions if need be.
Now that I’ve finished my explanation of the local vision of “the glades,” I’ll get into the politics of The Everglades as I did with last month’s story about the park service’s idea of a “soundscape!” For example: Some organizations tend to use good and simple words to make things sound so good and simple that the majority of us will go along with whatever they say, without having examined any other options or anyone else’s’ opinions. I tell everyone to check into ALL of the opinions before making up their own minds concerning any environmental issues. Well, that’s just a bit of what you’re going to get over the next few months. Keep reading my stories and I’ll keep writing them. Thanks again for taking an interest in my “Stories of an Airboat Guide.”
NATURE RULES!!!
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