Florida Wildlife

A new and bold regional newsletter designed to serve as a public forum for current and historical wildlife and environmental issues in Southwest Florida.

Established in March 2007 by Charles LeBuff,

 and presented as a public service by Amber Publishing.

Click the link below to find more about the history, format,

 submission guidelines, and editorial policies of this Newsletter.

ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER

ARE YOU A FREQUENT VISITOR?  Scroll down to quickly reach the latest commentary.  We have rearranged our layout and the most recent issue is now positioned near the top.  To easily access articles all one has to do is click and quickly drag the scroll button on the right margin down.  Feedback has now been grouped and delegated to its own category near the bottom of the Newsletter.  The index and archives are also still located at the bottom of this site.  

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Current active contents

•  ON THE SUBJECT OF RED TIDE

• BONITA BEACH FLORIDA.  LATE MAY 1976 (SEA TURTLE RELATED, WITH A SPECIAL VIDEO INCLUDED)

• UNUSUAL BIRDS OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA

  PART 1 — REFLECTIONS of a LIMPKIN

   

Expired volumes and their individual monthly numbers are available in the listed archives at the bottom of this page.

 

Articles that are coming soon, will include the

 following subject matter . . . 

 

PART TWO OF A SERIES ON UNUSUAL REGIONAL BIRDS - Great White Heron,  SEA TURTLE RELATED ESSAYS,  A HUMOROUS WILDLIFE-RELATED TRUE STORY: It Could Only Have Happened to a Wildlife Biologist, & SANIBEL'S "GIANT" LIZARDS.  

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Volume I, Number 10

ON THE SUBJECT OF RED TIDE

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

TODAY, WE FREQUENTLY HEAR AND READ ABOUT "RED TIDE." Information about it comes to us in spurts and the media usually doesn’t provide coverage of a Red Tide "bloom" until about the same time that the ire of coastal residents and visitors is well elevated. When folks begin to complain to the authorities about the arrival of a Red Tide event it’s usually the deathly odor of decaying fish, coupled with apparent human respiratory difficulties caused by the aerosolized brevitoxin, that first gets the attention of the media. Next, the public’s demands are focused on beach cleanup because of reasonable public health concerns. Then comes the voices of area Chambers of Commerce delivering their valid messages about the economic impact and the fact that businesses and resorts may be losing hundred of thousands, if not millions of tourist dollars. This press and other media coverage usually includes a nutshell discourse on the biology of the responsible culprit and its population levels in different coastal areas, and an announcement of a State-mandated closure of shellfish beds. The bloom, or the rapid multiplication of the microscopic culprit, which at its worse reaches an astounding population density per liter of water, is usually used to express the severity of a Red Tide outbreak. From my personal observations, there seems to be general evidence that Red Tide events are today in a trend and becoming more lethal to marine organisms than they were fifty years ago. During the major outbreaks of Red Tides during the decades from 1940 until 1980 it was primarily organisms with gills or filter feeding creatures that succumbed as a result. By 1971, air-breathing marine life was found to be impacted when the first mass mortality of loggerhead turtles recorded in our region were found to be associated with the Red Tide toxin that had condensed in the tissue of this sea turtle’s filter feeding bivalve mollusk prey. In the early 1980s, and several times since, the Red Tide culprit has been documented to kill many, many manatees, but none of these threatened marine mammals were known to have been victims of Red Tide prior to 1982.

    Very little is ever disseminated anymore by the media concerning the history of this phenomenon in Southwest Florida. Red Tides have probably been with us since the time the earliest fishes swam in the sea. Much more recently, our human species, in particular sports fishermen, has grown to consider these periodic events as out of control pollution-related tragedies that decimate fish stocks. Let’s consider for a moment that our Red Tides and other oceanic events that we consider calamities may not really be such, and perhaps we should view them as part of the Earth’s natural environmental processes, like we do tropical cyclones. Red Tides will likely continue to remain part of the complexity of our Earth’s marine systems for eons and will probably still be killing fishes long after humankind has left this planet.

    Red Tide occurrences were probably very mystical to both the aboriginal Floridians and the early European occupants of our region. The massive periodic fish kills continued to be a complete puzzle at least up to the middle of the last century. J. N. "Ding" Darling, the famed Iowan political/conservationist editorial cartoonist that wintered on Florida’s Captiva Island was one person during that period that took more than a sportsman’s interest in Red Tide events. After he had personally seen the effects around Sanibel and Captiva Islands, for the first time in the late Forties, he took action. He used his position as former head of the US Bureau of Biological Survey and his eloquent written word and reached out to kick some butts . . . kick-start some bureaucrats in Washington, DC to get studies implemented that would help us better comprehend these events. With his own funds he brought in the Marine Laboratory of the University of Miami to Sanibel and Captiva to do some fundamental Red Tide research. "Ding" Darling wanted to bring academia and government together to examine the biology of Red Tides and over time his pushing bore fruition.

    Fifty years ago this last March I started my career with the US Fish & Wildlife Service, which ended on Sanibel Island upon my retirement, in 1990. In 1957, I was hired as a Fishery Technician and was based at the Red Tide Field Station that was located in one of the old World War II military barracks at Naples Municipal Airport. The laboratory where I worked had a staff of 12 and was operated by one of the Service’s branches, then known as the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. Later, government reorganization placed this bureau in NOAA, and today it is now known as the National Marine Fisheries Service. The efforts of "Ding" Darling had successfully brought scientific focus and funding to begin long overdue investigations aimed at the goal of trying to help us better understand the causes and possible prevention of Red Tide events.

    Not many people around these parts nowadays remember the genuine effort that was made so long ago by the federal and state governments and some Florida universities as we labored to comprehend the Red Tide phenomena. The organism, the culprit responsible for our regional Red Tide had been scientifically identified and named by the late Forties after a major bloom had stranded "jillions" of dead fish ashore up and down the coast with the heaviest load of carcasses at Venice Beach. It was given the scientific name of Gymnodinium brevis. In those days, any native Floridian you asked on the street in coastal communities like Naples, Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, Boca Grande, Anna Maria or Pass-a-grille "knew" about Red Tides. Most anyone you talked to in those places would tell you, like it were factual, that Red Tide events were caused by the surplus mustard gas canisters and other dangerous chemicals that had been dumped into the Gulf of Mexico by the military at the end of World War I. Most people living in Southwest Florida seriously believed these canisters had rusted through and were leaking the fish-killing gas. Some insisted with fervor that this toxic underwater discharge was causing the periodic massive fish kills that were commonly called Red Tides, so named because seawater turned to a rusty-red color during the most severe and concentrated blooms. The darker red the water becomes in a major bloom indicates that the culprit in the water column has become so numerous, so abundantly over-populated, that the viscosity of the water may reach the density nearly equivalent to that of a thin syrup.

    It’s now 50 years later, and everyone seems to have consolidated his or her knowledge base on the subject. Each native and non-native Floridian that is effected by the stench of floating and stranded dead marine organisms or the peculiar noxious odor of aerosolized brevitoxin borne by the wind now "knows," irrefutably that "nutrients/pollutants" are at fault for what seems to be an increase in Red Tide episodes. In 1957, the scientists I assisted "believed" that radical, but temporary changes in the chemical composition of the water column . . . possibly from natural inland sources . . . and a possible correlation with sudden natural salinity variations, may have been among the causative factors that triggered Red Tide blooms. Frankly, other than improved methods of water collection and faster analysis of that water to determine the culprit’s density, over the last half-century we have made no real headway in understanding Red Tide. Like me, you may have recently read accounts of a possible seasonal correlation between natural upwelling of water in the Gulf of Mexico that may help move the culprit to the Florida Gulf coast and result in Red Tide events. This suggestion is just another "baby step." The only "progress" in Red Tide research has been made by taxonomic splitters, microbiologists who consider the Red Tide culprit, now classified as Karenia brevis, to be an alga rather than a dinoflagellate, as it was classified during my Red Tide training. Otherwise, there has been no progress – everything is basically the same as it was in 1957, with the exception that we have fewer great minds working on the issue. And, we continue to suffer from insufficient funding for serious Red Tide research.

    I gaze pessimistically into the future: In 2057, hopefully everyone who has crowded into the urban sprawl of Southwest Florida will know a lot more about Red Tide than we do today. The bottom line: Those who are unfortunate enough to live around these parts in 2057 will have learned little more to help themselves understand, or reduce the environmental and economic impacts, or control the seriousness of all aspects of Red Tide events. If there is proof-positive discovered that the Red Tide blooms are indeed human-created because of artificial nutrient loading (fertilizer runoff and wastewater effluent) as everyone today "knows," it is likely already too late for a speedy and healthy recovery. One can surmise that the damage has been done ¾ unless future technological advances and hydrology/engineering feats really can reduce nutrient loading into the estuaries or the Everglades, if nutrients are really at fault.

    If we find that humans and their chemical concoctions are at fault for Red Tide frequency and we need scapegoats on which to blame Red Tide, let’s put most of the blame where the blame should rest. Over the last 50 years, but predominantly during the two decades of the Sixties and Seventies, the lordly bureaucrats and our pantywaist politicians of those times allowed this environmental degradation in Southwest Florida to happen. Their helter-skelter development attitudes were left unchecked and allowed to go too far by we voters who were here then. If you need examples of their environmental blunders, I suggest that for starters you look at Cape Coral, Golden Gate Estates, and Marco Island and the sprawling subdivisions and golf courses near them. They were forewarned by leading environmentalists of their day exactly what was going to happen, but, almost as a team, they refused to be interactive and responsible, or to fund and support research, or to bravely lead and control growth. So, over time, the delicate balance of our marine and estuarine systems was destroyed along with the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp.

    Retrospectively, isn’t it a crying shame that mustard gas isn’t the cause of Red Tide? By now the gas would probably all have dissipated, or would Congress have allotted billions of dollars for submerged contaminant cleanup and today and into the future the Southwest Florida coast would have been forever Red Tide free. Either would have been much too easy a cure and the latter unlikely.

    Charles LeBuff

    December 1, 2007

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Volume I, Number 9

In the 1970s Sanibel Island-based Caretta Research, Inc., a loggerhead sea turtle conservation and research organization, conducted studies on 14 beaches along Florida's Gulf coast. Jim Vanas of Naples, once the group’s Bonita Beach Unit Leader, submitted the following article to this Newsletter.  Bonita Beach is a barrier island beach located west of Bonita Springs in Lee County, which is about 21 miles south of Fort Myers.

Jim volunteered on Bonita Beach for Caretta Research, Inc. for three years. A landscape contractor in Southwest Florida he specializes in butterfly and wildlife gardens and enjoys photographing tree frogs, snakes, birds and flowers in Central America.

 

Bonita Beach Florida. Late May 1976.

WITH FLASHLIGHTS, CALIPER, NOTE PADS, flipper tags, permits and a dark blue light shinning high above the windshield, I slowly pulled onto the sand and drove my jeep close to the hard water’s edge south for three miles. A close friend was riding shotgun. It was the middle of May.

    Orientation complete, experience none, mission simple — or seemingly so: find nesting loggerhead sea turtles, cautiously wait until they are depositing their eggs, and go to work.

    It was my first year as a volunteer with Caretta Research, a sea turtle conservation program based on Sanibel Island. I could hardly believe that I had been awarded my own six-mile stretch of beach to patrol nightly for three months. "Stay out all night if you like" founder and director Charles LeBuff told us. "You are the only ones allowed to drive on the beach and the Marine Patrol will recognize your blue light. But be careful and don’t be stupid. There will be fisherman, poachers and a host of crazies out there when you least expect them."

    A full week had already gone by — no turtles spotted. The night was ugly: cloudy, moonless and windy. The surf was churning. It seemed like a good night to turn in early, as my day job required a 4:30 AM wake up and a lot of physical labor. At home a wife and three-year-old also required my attention. Still, I sensed this was a rare privilege I had garnered.

    Nothing to the south; turn back north and go home was the plan but plans change. A mile from our exit we both were shocked when we saw the distinctive tracks of a marine goliath pressing her bulk eastward up the beach. We stopped and watched, lights out we waited. Damn, she’s false crawled and is heading back to the Gulf.

    We ran, sprinted actually, and caught her at the breaking surf . . . advantage turtle! As the waves washed over the three of us, the disadvantaged struggled to apply the metal marker to her right flipper. Forget the measurements or the joy of watching her dig, drop and cover her precious clutch. No time to marvel at her girth, color, patience or raw determination. This was turtle number one for me and she had to be on record.

    Then it happened! As she was thrashing so were the waves. Waist high in water we somehow affixed the tag. During the struggle a wave, a flipper or both came over our heads and swept my glasses off my salty face. Eyeglasses were very expensive to me in 1976, one week’s salary, and I did not have a second pair. The drive home was as thrilling as the experience of tagging my first loggerhead sea turtle!

    The next night my co-worker and good friend Kenny was along for the ride. Needless to say he drove. Kenny, a nature lover and keen observer, told me I was crazy to think I could find my glasses as I came to a stop at the infamous spot where they were swept off my face 20 long hours ago. I conceded to him that it was probably a ridiculous idea but what the heck — we had all night and a few beers in the cooler. Jeep lights out, flashlights on — within ten seconds a reflection in the sand revealed my scratched but otherwise intact eyewear buried vertically in the sand just one inch visible. A good night for me but no turtles for Kenny.

    Night three — it just keeps getting better. A volunteer babysitter offered my wife, Pam, and I a rare opportunity to turtle together. A calm, peaceful, cloudless night greeted us as we drove down the beach. Great blue herons fished. Snook swam parallel to the shoreline with their fins exposed above the gentle breakers. No great expectations, just a rare, quiet night together — but fortunately — no such luck! On our second pass to the south we saw the deep bulldozer-like tracks leading up the beach towards the vegetation line. A single set in the sand meant she was up there. Jeep turned off, we settled in and waited. We had time to be patient, to let her dig her nest and begin laying her eggs. Being inexperienced and cautious, we waited ten minutes then ten more. Finally comfortable that the time was right, we walked in total darkness toward the mass that was flinging sand all over the beach. She was still excavating, a good sign, and we crouched low — well behind so as not to scare her and watched in silence and amazement. In her trance she paid no attention to us. She dug deeper and deeper. Huge rear flippers brought to the surface incredibly minute quantities of sand. She alternated sides and when she felt the nest was right, she paused. Even though this was our first experience, that pause was an obvious signal that she was ready to lay. Her efforts in digging such a fine cavity were valiant but her position on the beach tragic. She chose to nest below the high tide line, which meant that her eggs would flood and die. Damn again! Was this ever going to be easy?

    I checked her right flipper as she was dropping eggs and saw that she had been tagged. I was a novice, afraid to scare her from her duties, but it became apparent that she was resolved to finish and almost comatose. The number on the tag read CR 1956. My number one! The turtle from two nights ago had returned to display her magic for us.

    Back to orientation class 101. We knew what had to be done and immediately dug a nest 10 meters east of hers above the high tide line under an Australian pine. As she laid, we caught her eggs and two by two carried them to the artificial nest. Laborious! My hat became a better vessel, holding 16 to 20 eggs. Would she ever stop? We were so consumed with the transfer that we were not entirely able to enjoy the beauty of the ancient ritual. But there was work that had to be done and besides, this was the first turtle of the season and hopefully many more would come.

    By the time she left her nest, having covered what she thought was a perfect egg chamber; we had moved 152 eggs further inland. Now she was measured, recorded, admired and respected. We walked her down to the water’s edge and watched her swim away after a long and tiring ordeal. Would we ever see her again?

    Fast forward fifty plus days. My work, family, turtle patrolling and life were going along well. It was very rewarding being on the beach at night tagging and protecting some 50 turtles that nested that year. Pam was very patient and we had not been out together again since that eventful evening. Another volunteer babysitter.

    Lightning, rain and a leaky jeep! The sky was alive and the night was threatening and scary. We knew that turtles didn’t care too much about the weather but we were not comfortable about the current conditions. As we headed south towards Wiggins Pass, I suggested we check our makeshift nest where we had buried 152 eggs early in the season.

    Turtle researchers will tell you that seeing, observing and recording the nesting ritual of sea turtles is an amazing but not uncommon experience. However, seeing hatching turtles crawl to the water in Florida or on other sub tropic beaches is a rare and special treat.

    Here we were, our second date on the beach and in the darkness, thunder, rain and total chaos, we watched our little charges burst from their nest and head toward the water where their lives were in danger but their ultimate reward was waiting.

    Jim Vanas

    November 1, 2007

 

SPECIAL VIDEO

 

Turn up your sound

 

The following video clip was transferred from a 16 mm film entitled Project Loggerhead. The original 30-minute silent movie was filmed on Sanibel Island by Charles LeBuff, in 1969.  It was produced and used as an educational tool by Caretta Research, Inc. The themes of this film are the biology and life history of the loggerhead sea turtle and the early conservation efforts that were developed to enhance the survival of this species forty years ago.  Through the years, Project Loggerhead, was viewed and an accompanying speaker's oral message was heard, by thousands of students and members of civic organizations throughout Florida. The footage that's been selected from the movie is a composite, and includes nest excavation, egg deposition, and covering of the eggs by loggerhead turtles on the beautiful, seashell-cluttered, white beach of Sanibel Island.

The imbedded music clip, "Sea Turtle Tears," ideally fits this video and was downloaded from the Internet. The artist is Amy Carol Webb. Her song is among the tracks of the wonderful CD of Florida environmental songs from various artists "These Diamonds," © 2005 Will McLean Foundation. To order this CD, click here.

See feedback related to the above article in the Feedback Section at the bottom of the site.

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Volume I, Number 8

 

 

UNUSUAL BIRDS OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA

PART 1 — REFLECTIONS of a LIMPKIN

 

THE ECOSYSTEMS OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA are specialized hosting habitats for a variety of unusual resident non-migratory birds. During my 55 years of tromping through these habitats I had the opportunity to interact with many unique species. I never met a native non-migratory bird I didn’t like, and in this intermittent series I’ll randomly draw on my personal memories of some of my favorite regional birds and present those recollections in an anecdotal format.

IT WAS MY THIRD TREK INTO A CYPRESS SWAMP, and only my second during daylight. My first time ever was with Ralph Curtis and long-time Florida cattleman and woodsman Stanley Whidden (1912-1995) of Bonita Springs, in December of 1952. At the time I was 16 years old, and it was a special event in my life. That day I watched in awe as Stanley stalked an enormous feral hog with nothing more than a pocketknife. The lucky pig evaded Stanley’s sharp knife and disappeared into the luxuriant vegetation.

    My second excursion into the amazing world of the bald cypress would take place a few weeks later and in the dark of night. Harry Metts (1920-1978), Ralph Curtis, Warren Boutchia, my brother Laban, and I had waded through chest-deep chilly water to reach the open edge of Mossy Lake, a beautiful cypress head situated east of Bonita Springs. At the time, Boutchia, Curtis, and Metts were employees of the Everglades Wonder Gardens. 

    It was 1953, and in those days you could toss a small lighter knot east of U.S. 41 and it would land in the wilds and vastness of the Big Cypress Swamp. The famous Corkscrew Swamp had just been penetrated a few months earlier by the opposing forces of conservationists and logging surveyors. Within a few years, a growing movement, one initiated and championed by Ernest Taylor of Tampa, would save the Swamp and its virgin cypress timber from the loggers. Ralph Curtis, and two of his colleagues from Illinois, had reconnoitered the Corkscrew with Taylor the previous year. Bob Garrison and Ray Barnes, both residents of Bonita Springs and employees of the Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission had provided logistical help to this expedition.

    Led by Harry Metts who owned an old high-wheeled cut-down jeep, the five of us were out afield for an evening of snake hunting. We soon stood with our eyes nearly level in the water with the reflective red eyes of a dozen or so large alligators that were floating in the center of the pond. They were wary, frightened because of our presence and the lights we panned in their direction. They were probably trying to figure out just what we were and what we were doing invading their security zone. In retrospect, and reviewing what can be perceived as some challenging changes in alligator behavior over the last 50 years, I’m sure those alligators thought we were all crazy. Looking back, all of us who survive agree, indeed we were!

    Later that night our group became seriously lost at Mossy Lake and wandered aimlessly through the flooded cypress until we nearly exhausted our headlamp batteries and ourselves. Luckily, we stumbled on a pasture fence at the Collier-Lee County line and followed it westward, found U.S. 41, and the way back to our homes in Bonita Springs, and our concerned families. Harry’s jeep would be retrieved the next day.

    My third time in the cypress was early on a sunny Saturday morning in late February 1953 when my friend Don McKeown (1937-2003) led the way as we waded into Jug Lake, east of Estero, and south of what is now Corkscrew Road. This was another impressive unspoiled cypress dome with a typical large body of black water at its center. The morning mist was rising into the atmosphere with the ascent of the sun. As we approached the margin of the open water, pairs of frightened mottled ducks exploded from the surface. Their wings whistled as they zigged and zagged while skillfully maneuvering through the tall pond cypress to escape our intrusion. Somewhere, concealed by the thickly draped Spanish moss, a red-shouldered hawk called out, its high-pitched notes bouncing back and forth off the dense cypress. It was virtually warning its neighbors we were there. Suddenly, a stranger sound echoed through the flooded timber – kreow, kreow, kreoow! (To hear this actual sound, and more on the biology and life history of this unusual noisemaker, visit http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Limpkin_dtl.html#sound, turn up your volume and activate the hyperlink Listen to Songs of This Species).

    My first reaction was one of puzzlement; I had never heard such a weird call, but when I thought about it, I remembered I had heard such a sound a few times that had been dubbed into Tarzan movies. I asked Don what was making the odd noise. He laughed and told me it was coming from a "crying bird" – a limpkin.

Limpkin loafing in cypress. Photo by Warren Boutchia — you can see more of Warren’s outstanding art and photographic work at:

www.pbase.com/wboutchia/root&view=recent

    Don and I continued to explore the cypress. More squawking sounds were soon bouncing off the trees and then a flurry of movement near a clump of pickerelweed caught our attention. What appeared to be a severely injured bird was noisily making its way through the emergent plants, splashing, trailing an open wing, and generally trying to both evade and attract us. We suddenly realized why. It was a female limpkin. She was intent on attracting our attention to her apparent plight, hoping to draw us away and prevent us from finding her five eggs which were nestled in a floating nest that bobbed up and down from the wavelets we pushed out in advance of our approach. This scene stuck with me, and nearly 50 years later I would incorporate it into my novel, The Calusan, when I wrote about the honeymoon journey of Panti and his bride through the flooded "Land of the Big Trees."

Apple snail in the Six-Mile Cypress Slough Preserve — a Lee County facility.  This large freshwater snail is the chief prey item of both the limpkin and the snail kite.  Photo by Gary Johnson.

    It’s evident that my young mind was positively influenced by this particular swamp trek because on March 3, 1953 I wrote and submitted some rhyme for an English class (Fort Myers High School) assignment titled "The Cypress Swamp." I’ve saved it all these years and perhaps one day I’ll revisit it and publish my "poem" to this page.

    Charles LeBuff

    October 1, 2007

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SPECIAL REPORT

History of the Sanibel-Captiva Audubon Society

Click Here

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   Number 4 (June)               SANIBEL-CAPTIVA AUDUBON SOCIETY HISTORY   –  PART TWO

                                                 SANIBEL'S TREE SNAILS  

    Number 5 (July)              SANIBEL-CAPTIVA AUDUBON SOCIETY HISTORY   –  PART THREE

                                                  MANATEE STATUS – A CONFUSED STATE , OR A STATE OF CONFUSION?

    Number 6 (August)         NO ISSUE

    Number 7 (September)    MORE ON SANIBEL'S TREE SNAILS

                                         SANIBEL-CAPTIVA AUDUBON SOCIETY HISTORY   –  PART FOUR

    Number 8 (October)        YOUR VOTE IS NEEDED

                                                   UNUSUAL BIRDS OF SOUTHWEST FLORIDA 

                                               PART 1 — REFLECTIONS of a LIMPKIN

                                                    BOOK REVIEW -- THE CREATION

    Number 9 (November)        BONITA BEACH FLORIDA.  LATE MAY 1976

    Number 10 (December)      ON THE SUBJECT OF RED TIDE

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