Get My Drift?

Imagine one day you go into your bathroom and there's a patch of mildew growing on the shower tiles. Gross right? But it's part of nature. You wipe it away and think nothing more of it. But the next morning not only has the mildew returned, it's now covering twice the area as the day before. So you clean it with a non-toxic, environmentally friendly, orange-blossom scented cleaner and hope it doesn't happen again. But guess what happens the next morning? The entire bathroom is covered in mildew and now it smells like rotten eggs, peaches and dog breath. What would you do now? (If you're eating breakfast and have a weak stomach, I probably should have stopped you at "mildew".)

Red Drift Algae is a naturally occurring red-brown seaweed found in warm shallow waters in the Gulf of Mexico. It washes up from time to time and the tide takes it away a few days later. A few years ago, a massive Red Drift Algae bloom occurred off the Florida coast, later piling up on beaches several feet high. From Sanibel to Naples, the seaweed, which had trapped unfortunate sea creatures like crabs, sea slugs and seashells of all sorts began to decompose along with the dead sea life it ensnared. It smelled. Horrifically. And the sight of the seaweed all along the pristine coastline had tourists appalled. They couldn't just step over the piles as they might a homeless person in the street, they would have to walk 40 feet over the stuff in some places and then swim through it once they reached the surf. Nasty messes like this belonged on the cigarette butt-lined street corners and litter filled storm drainage ditches. Not on the beach!

Some towns brought in earth movers to clean the stuff up. Some towns said it was natural and left it. And some tourists naturally left. No one did the rational thing until it happened again. A year later the algae drifted up again and finally someone asked why. Why had mildew invaded your hypothetical bathroom? Asking and answering that question might fix your problem. Well - my problem that I put in your head. But anyway. Scientists were being enlisted and town meetings were planned to ask why this was happening and what could be done. (About the algae, not the mildew problem I put in your head).

Nutrient runoff from agricultural areas is usually the first to be blamed for the problems in the Everglades. So it was a natural scapegoat here. In some sense deservedly so. All of the excess nitrogen and phosphorus that is used to make things grow better, along with cow poop often washes into the Everglades watershed or downstream and into the ocean. Red Drift Algae thrives with these added nutrients so there's the problem right? The massive blooms occurred right after the busy hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 when trillions of gallons of rainwater overflowed Lake Okeechobee and were sent out to see. The Gulf of Mexico was warm, fresh water mixed with salt water and the nutrients created the perfect Red Drift Algae soup. But not so fast with the blame. While much of the nutrients washed out to sea could be blamed on the agricultural areas, scientists were able to trace the nitrogen back to its main source. Sewage runoff from leaky septic tanks (are you still eating? I warned you.) and waste water that had not been 100% treated was found to be the main culprit. Water treatment plants are not required to release 100% treated water, but "mostly treated waste water" is not something you'll see on the tourism brochure. What it comes down to is warmer temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, possibly closed by global warming (or "warmings" if you chose the plural form as our President does), a variety of human caused nutrient inputs and poorly managed water supplies.

How easy is this to fix? We'll see over the next ten years. But it must be fixed, because no one wants to swim in massive floating mats of stinky seaweed (even with a hint of peach smell), and the supposed lack of risk may become a health concern sooner than later. (More on that when the flesh-eating bacteria become a media sensation). It's funny how people are not concerned with environmental issues until it has an economic impact. Businesses reacted only when the tourists began to leave.

The underlying issue is most tragic. The seabeds that that Red Drift Algae naturally grows on have become smothered with the stuff. From the coastline to at least 30 miles out, there is a layer of algae covering the sea beds and blocking the sunlight for a multitude of living things under the sea. It's not enough to simply clean the beaches or leave the algae and let "nature take care of it". If we don't solve this problem, a huge portion of the gulf will die and the pristine, seashell-lined beaches people come from the around the world to visit will be no more. Get my drift?

Tomorrow - The big three month review!

Not in My Backyard

Oh this title could mean so many things today. I said to MaLe that I would go write and she said in her adorable Ecuadorian accent "Will you write about the perpetual fart smell outside?" The insideous smell has returned this evening after a few week hiatus and you would think people would be up in arms over a smell so foul. But I guess we all did move in to a place where a sewage treatment plant is in our backyard.

People don't seem to mind much in their backyards here. Malls, limestone quarries, nuclear power plants, golf courses. Build it and they will come. Oddly, Panthers, Crocodiles, Alligators and Manatees are objectionable to those that find their presence intrusive and a damper to a certain lifestyle.

The South Florida Water Management District just warned all communities in and around the Everglades that no more water will be drawn from the Everglades, which would seem like a good thing. People are still coming. Nearly 1000 people a day move here and communities are being told - Find another source of water. Desalinization - Recycle Water - Reduced Consumption. Heck - I know where they can get some partially treated waste water. Many have their eyes set on the Florida aquifer - the largest aquifer in the world that lies quietly 1000 feet below the limestone, fun parks and interstates.

Yesterday the 6th "Florida Panther" in 2007 was hit and killed by a vehicle on Interstate-75. (Click here for a map I'm working on of Panther fatalities) There is an estimated population of around 80-100 cats in the Everglades. They have been dubbed the most Endangered mammal on the planet. The thing is, the Florida Panther has long been considered a subspecies of the Mountain Lion Puma concolor (aka Cougar, Puma, Painter, Catamount (shout out to the cats in VT), Screamer and Nittany Lion.) The population had dropped to around 20-30 just 20 years ago and they were so inbred that they had numerous physical and physiological mutations. A cowlick on the nape of the neck, a kinked tail, leaky valves in the heart and males with testicles that did not descend. (stop giggling little sister) Fish & Wildlife introduced 10 Texas Cougars into the population a few years ago to expand the gene pool. They are the same species, but when mixed, would the Florida Panther cease to exist? In truth, the Texas Cougar and Florida Panther are essentially the same animal, with very few distinct genes, so the answer is no. But many found the transplants to be an abomination. Funny thing was, in 1993 when they studied the genes of cats in the Everglades National Park and the Big Cypress National Preserve, the Park cats had DNA from a South American Puma! Biologists knew something was odd. No cat would range that far. They determined that these "non-native" genes had entered the population about 40 years earlier. Apparently, an owner of a roadside zoo back in the 50's had released his cat into the wild. He refused to admit it but decades later, the evidence is still present in the Florida Panther population.

The cats are the natural heritage of the Everglades. The landscape would be severely diminished without them and while the species would still survive from Alaska down to Tierra Del Fuego under other names, the loss of the Florida Panther subspecies would be disheartening. So 6 cats in 3 months is terrible, regardless of their genetic stock. 16 in 18 months is even worse.

There is less and less room for the panthers to roam. A male requires about 200 square miles and refuses to share with another male, often leading to confrontations and occasionally death of one cat. The steady erosion of habitat continues and as people continue to relocate and expand their habitat it would seem soon there will be none left for the cats. Sadly and certainly, not in my backyard.

Right in My Backyard! Otter MANIA!

A few weeks ago when I spotted otters in the Everglades I about had to drag a boy away from the pond as he stood watching a mother and her pups play. The father attempted to verbally pry him away from this naturalist's oasis by suggesting with all seriousness "we see otters all the time at home". Turns out he was thinking of beavers - but anyway.

Sitting here in my hive like home of an apartment complex - I looked out the window into the little sludge pond (with fountain!), ringed by the rest of the honeycomb homes and spotted an undulating creature bounding about the Muscovey Ducks and splashing in the water. OTTER!

I darted out to see if I could get a glimpse and watched as a mother and her four pups fished and played for 30 minutes before deciding to beat the traffic and head down the road. I've seen Otter slide down a mud or snow embankment but had never seen one slide up. Mama pushed herself up the grass as easy as if she were sliding down

and led her pups through the breezeway, across the parking lot and into the sludge canal (that probably comes from the sewage treatment plant. yaaay!) Next time I see Otters in the Everglades I can dismiss them and say "I have those in my backyard"

You Can't Go Home Again

Thomas Wolfe wrote "You Can't Go Home Again". It's a book with a lot of words and no pictures except for the abridged 9th printing that has a picture on the cover. I haven't read it. But judging by the title I would assume that someone did something really bad and probably was not allowed to come home. It was also the first American novel to use the contraction "Can't". I just made that last part up.

In my case, it's not that I can't go home but I probably should not have. Or at least, I should not have returned to the same apartment complex (or "hive") that I lived in in 1999. Things change, and returning can be complicated, which I hear is what Wolfe may have been actually talking about if I had ever read his book.

If you plan to move somewhere that you haven't been in a while, check out Google Earth. It's an amazing program that shows hyper-detailed satellite photos of just about anywhere on Earth. And had I done so, I might have noticed, not only the 4 baseball fields they've built a mere 100 feet from the complex, complete with megawatt light towers that could illuminate the dark side of the moon, but just to the west (and I mean by another 100 feet) is a huge sewer treatment plant!




Even if I could interpret satellite photos I may not have been able to discern the function of these buildings from Google orbit. But what the eyes can not make out in the photos, the nose can however (not from photos...or my computer screen...that smells like the cat who likes to sleep on the laptop when I walk away). On gusty nights when the wind blows to the south your olfactory senses are greeted with a none-too-pleasant fecal breeze. It's not something you can complain to management about. Well, you can, but what can they do? Maybe Glade can make a mammoth "SeaBreeze Plugin"? I would employ my tried and true motto - "When life gives you lemons, find someone to throw lemons at", but it doesn't seem to work in the case of raw sewage. Or I can just count down the days till the end of my lease and spin the amenities provided here at the hive to any guests that "fully-treated waste water is generated right next door!"

You can go home again, just make sure you scour the satellite photos next time for abattoirs, shooting ranges, clown colleges and bunny catapults. They'd all be deal breakers for me.