Category:Estuary: Difference between revisions

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From The Gulf by Jack E. Davis

Cradles of Life

The Florida peninsula, a case study in the immense, incalculable value of water bio-regions and 'living coastlines'

Estuary: Latin antecedent, Aestuarium, which means "tidal place". Central to these marine systems is a dynamic exchange between seawater and freshwater, the latter pouring in from a stream, river, or overland runoff.

The sixty-five rivers that turndle of the the US into the Gulf collaborate in the cultivation of a nearly sold band of estuaries that runs its shores. Bearing nutrient-provisioned sediment, the flowing freshwater stirs its charge into the salty sea tide. This brackish broth stimulates spectacular vegetable and animal growth, setting a table for hungry wildlife...

The Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest estuarine regions in the world, with more than two hundred estuaries (more than one quarter of all North American estuaries) occupying nearly eight million acres around its shores...

bays

bayous

coves

deltas

inland waterways

inlets

islands

lagoons

littoral zones

marshes

peninsulas

seas of grass

sounds

tidal pools

underground springs

wetlands

the Gulf region has no shortage of these eco-regions...

among the world's most productive habitats.... estuaries

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A Model of Green Best Practices; the Tampa Bay Estuary Program

Protecting and Preserving Living Estuaries

Living Coastlines, Living Shorelines

GreenPolicy360: Let's look now at the Tampa Bay estuaries, a system of waterways connected along the west central coast of Florida. The terrestrial home base of GreenPolicy360 is in Clearwater, a few meters from Bay waters and although the city's name is "clearwater", a regional struggle to clean the polluted water then protect the coastal waterways and the Bay with its estuaries has been a decades-long fight. Fortunately, due to environmental activism that has been led by forward-looking local citizens and public interest organizations like the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, a model of eco-activism.

Keep Tampa Bay on the Road to Recovery

• https://tbep.org

The Tarpon Tag

* https://tbep.org/get-involved/tarpon-tag/

Tampa Bay Estuary specialty Florida license plate

GreenPolicy360 siterunner:

I was told by two old fisherman as they fished estuary waters outside our office alongside Tampa Bay that "Tarpon used to grow up here".

”[Doc Ford] noticed something in the distance—something glittering, energized, rolling across the calm like a boat wake: a school of tarpon coming toward him; a dozen or more fish moving in a tight pod. Their big tails were throwing water; their chromium scales threw sunlight…. Ford stood watching, loving it.” -- Randy Wayne White, 'Sanibel Flats'

"The tarpon changed the destiny of this coast." --Randy Wayne White

"The fish is Megalops atlanticus, an archaic, cow-eyed, thick-jawed feeding machine that can reach eight feet in length and weigh 250 pounds. Tourists call it “tar-pon.” The rest of us say “tarp-in.”"

Remember that, in the old days before the deluge of humans, the west coast of Florida was the richest imaginable natural wonderland...

Wherever one looked, wherever one went there was a treasure of life, biodiversity we call it know, myriad interconnected species and ecosystems.

Jack E. Davis, in the Pulitzer-award winning book The Gulf chronicles this early history of Florida.

Davis explains how the wildlife was everywhere... the estuaries, the wetlands, the near-shore waters, the inlets, the intercoastal tidal ecosystems were teeming with life.

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Photo: Advertisement offering kayaking adventures through 'rich in life' intercoastal waters surrounding the tip of the Florida peninsula

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