Category: environment

I like to play a game called “Before My Time.”

The game involves a lot of imagination and at least a little knowledge.

Round one might require imagining jalopies bouncing across the old wooden bridge from Cortez to Bradenton Beach.

In another round, I might wonder what it was like to place a meat order at the old IGA when it was an old IGA.

More research would go into the game when imagining when Cubans created fish camps on the shores of Sarasota Bay or indigenous peoples harvested shellfish from the bay. For this, I suggest reading the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program’s conservation and management plan, posted in June to the SBEP’s website at sarasotabay.org.

This column is the first in a series on the 208-page document.

The various updates of the plan — from the first in 1995 to versions in 2010, 2014 and now 2021 — focus on science but passion for the bay, curiosity about history and care for writing.

You’ll get a flavor in the 2021 draft: “The bay’s iconic beauty, abundant fish and shellfish, and charismatic birds, dolphins, manatees and sea turtles attracted and sustained residents from early indigenous peoples to Cuban fishers, to post World War II couples and their Baby Boomer kids.”

The plan is a science-based, community-driven blueprint to protect and restore the bay, examining water quality, watershed habitats, fish and wildlife, community role in protecting the bay and, to begin, an introduction to the greater Sarasota Bay estuarian system.

Estuaries — partially enclosed coastal waterbodies where saltwater from the ocean mixes with freshwater from rivers and creeks — provide habitat for 80% of fish and shellfish. They’re vital to ecosystems and economies.

The greater Sarasota Bay Estuarine System is a 50-mile-long coastal lagoon and its interconnected Gulf waters, bays and tidal creeks link a mosaic of habitats — seagrass meadows, hardbottom, oyster reefs, beaches and salty and fresh wetlands.

But the bay, altered by urban and agricultural development, shows signs of stress — wastewater and stormwater pollutants, waterway alterations and disruptions, introduction of invasive and nuisance species, overharvesting and climate change.

I’ll be looking at these stress factors in the weeks ahead, along with examining how SBEP hopes to advance a community vision for the bay that includes “abundant seagrass meadows teeming with fish and shellfish, well-developed oyster reefs filtering water and providing essential habitat for fish and birds, living vegetated coastal wetlands and shorelines filtering runoff and protecting the coast, a mosaic of uplands, freshwater wetlands and tidal creeks … and unimpeded vegetated dunes and sandy shorelines along Gulf beaches.

While I like to play “Before My Time,” it’s vital to engage in this time for “after my time.”

About the SBEP

Sarasota Bay was named an estuary of national significance by the U.S. Congress in 1989. The Sarasota Bay Estuary Program, dedicated to protecting and restoring the bay, is one of 28 such programs in the United States and a member of the Association of National Estuary Programs.

A timeline for the bay

1000s: Indigenous people inhabit the area. Shell middens still shape estuary shorelines.

1800s: Cubans establish fish camps on the bayshore, trading mainly in mullet and mullet roe.

Late 1800s: Dredging of the Intracoastal Waterway begins in Sarasota Bay, leading to the creation of many dredge-spoil islands.

Early to mid-1900s: Large-scale land reclamation projects drain thousands of acres of freshwater marsh across the state and coastal development intensifies.

1972: Congress passes the federal Clean Water Act.

1972: Florida’s Wilson-Grizzle Act requires wastewater treatment plants discharging to southwest Florida estuaries, including Sarasota Bay, to upgrade their standards or divert 100% to reclaimed use.

1982: Florida’s stormwater rule goes into effect, requiring municipal stormwater systems to manage nutrients.

1989: The Environmental Protection Agency recognizes Sarasota Bay as an “estuary of national significance.”

2008: Seagrass acreage surpasses the restoration target.

2011: Nutrient criteria are established for area bays, setting limits to protect Sarasota and Manatee waterways from nutrient over-enrichment.

2018: The last regular, permitted wastewater discharge into the bay — from the Siesta Key Water Reclamation plant — is removed.

— Lisa Neff

Dead fish on the shore get attention — national media devotes coverage, gubernatorial candidates jab and dodge, business owners fret and tourists fear.

But when the dead fish are clear and the red tide dissipates, so does concern for the health of our waters.

All locals might not be fortunate enough to have water views from our homes, but it’s safe to guess that we’re minutes away — by foot or car — from a bay, a river, a canal, the Gulf. I can walk two minutes and stand at the shore of one bay, drive 10 minutes and be at the shore of another bay, add five minutes — during off-hours — and sit on a Gulf beach.

Among my multiple identities, I’m a resident of the Greater Sarasota Bay Watershed and the way I maintain my habitat impacts bay habitats.

The Sarasota Bay Estuary Program earlier this summer published a draft document examining the health of Sarasota Bay, exploring progress and setbacks in bay recovery and identifying goals and actions, including a plan to restore shoreline, wetland and bay habitats.

SBEP reports progress with restoring seagrass, increased numbers of live oysters in tidal creeks, as well as projects to improve freshwater wetlands, restore dunes, remove exotic plant species, establish bird habitats, conserve land and prescribe burns — all to benefit the bay.

But more must be done to improve fisheries, enhance coastal wetlands, improve shoreline resiliency, protect freshwater wetlands and restore seagrass habitat to boost the bay’s health.

“Healthy bay water quality and wildlife require a diversity of interconnected habitats in the watershed … that support the full suite of natural processes to sustain life,” SBEP’s report states.

Goals include:

• Restore creek and canal flowways to mimic natural stream functions.

Naturalizing people-made canals and altered waterways provides better habitat for fish and wildlife.

• Enhance coastal wetlands by installing living shorelines, protecting spoil islands, and reducing or eliminating mangrove trimming.

Historically, marshes were drained and dredged for buildings and seawalls, fragmenting and impairing the bay’s coastal wetlands.

• Increase the upland and freshwater wetland habitat.

Since the 1950s, urban development has degraded, fragmented and replaced upland forests and freshwater wetlands. So today, the SBEP area has just 5,599 acres of freshwater wetlands and 4,648 acres of forested uplands.

• Restore hard bottom and seagrass habitat in the bay by creating new reefs, mapping seagrass and implementing water quality strategies to increase productive and resilient seagrass.

Seagrass meadows provide food and habitat for finfish and shellfish and seagrass is vital in cycling nitrogen and carbon, as well as beneficial to reducing wave action and coastal erosion.

But seagrass acreage did not meet restoration targets in most bay segments in 2020.

• Protect beaches and dunes for wildlife and resiliency.

The barrier island beaches provide critical habitat for the marine life and wildlife of Sarasota Bay but they face threats from erosion, invasive species, pollution, recreation and, yes, the grooming that makes the white sand look so good.

Grooming also eliminates beach wrack and beaches without wrack have diminished habitat — lower species richness and abundance of the invertebrates and fewer shorebirds.

On the web

The Sarasota Bay Estuary Program’s 208-page comprehensive conservation and management plan can be downloaded at sarasotabay.org.

After I wanted to be an architect like Mike Brady in “The Brady Bunch” and before I wanted to be a journalist like Bob Woodward at the Washington Post, I wanted to be a forest ranger.

I don’t know how I got the inspiration, but I was interested enough in the career path to subscribe to a mail-order course for junior rangers.

Each week, a package containing a lesson and a quiz arrived. I graded myself, so I sometimes cheated and always earned an A grade.

I remember a lesson on identifying animal poop, and perhaps that’s when my interest shifted.

Still, on just about any visit to a Manatee County preserve or a Florida state park, I find myself daydreaming about an idyllic life as a ranger, a fire lookout, a campground manager, a trail guide.

Then I swat away at a mosquito, wipe the sweat off my neck and think about the extreme labor in outdoor work, especially in Florida, where “hot summer” is redundant.

The health risks outdoor workers face are real, and with climate change, the health risks and threats to job security will only grow.

In August, the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists released a report, “Too Hot to Work,” an assessment of the threats climate change poses to outdoor workers.

The conclusion in the report: As climate change brings one record-heat decade after another, outdoor workers increasingly will have to choose between risking their lives to go to work or their livelihoods to stay safe.

Already, outdoor workers have up to 35 times the risk of dying from heat exposure than does the general population.

The impacts of heat on health depend on many factors, but the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends employers implement precautions when the heat index exceeds 90 degrees F.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention further recommends reducing work schedules as “adjusted temperatures” rise to 100-108 degrees. Above 108 degrees, outdoor work should be canceled or rescheduled because the risks to health are so grave.

The Union of Concerned Scientists’ analysis found that by midcentury, given slow or no action to reduce global heat-trapping emissions, the increased intensity, frequency and geographic extent of extreme heat would cause a three- to fourfold increase in the exposure of outdoor workers to days with a heat index — or “feels like” temperature — above 100 degrees, the point at which the CDC recommends work hours begin to be reduced.

So outdoor workers will have their health more at risk, but they could lose income as a result of extreme heat.

About 9.2% of outdoor workers annually experience a week with a heat index above 100 degrees.

By midcentury, the estimate grows to 57%.

Also, by midcentury, about 18.2% of outdoor workers annually could experience a month with a heat index above 100 degrees.

The analysis estimates that about a fifth of U.S. workers have outdoor occupations. The focus in the analysis is on public safety, construction, transportation, agriculture and parks, but that seems narrow, overlooking those cleaning pools, maintaining resort grounds, repairing golf carts, tending bar and serving meals.

So this Labor Day, if fortunate enough to celebrate a day off from your labors with an island outing, give consideration and kindness to the first responders, the servers, the caretakers keeping you happy, safe and comfortable.

Did you know?

Oregon was the first state to pass a law recognizing Labor Day, doing so on Feb. 21, 1887. Later that year, four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York — passed laws creating a Labor Day holiday.

By the end of the decade, Connecticut, Nebraska and Pennsylvania had followed suit.

And by 1894, 23 more states had established laws recognizing the holiday.

Congress established the federal Labor Day in 1894, setting the legal holiday on the first Monday in September.

The ghost bird is officially extinct.

A video in 2005 suggesting the ivory-billed woodpecker was in a swamp in Arkansas inspired legions of bird enthusiasts to believe.

We hoped for a comeback story, but there is no comeback for America’s largest woodpecker and 22 other species declared extinct in late September by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The FWS, in a notice Sept. 29, said, “Based on rigorous reviews of the best available science for each of these species, the service has determined these species are extinct and thus no longer require listing under the ESA.

“The purpose of the ESA is to protect and recover imperiled species and the ecosystems upon which they depend. For the species proposed for delisting today, the protections of the ESA came too late.”

Eight species of freshwater mussels, once found in healthy streams and rivers in the Southeast, are also gone, as is the San Marcos gambusia, a freshwater fish once found in Texas, the Scioto madtom fish once found in Ohio and 11 species once found in Hawai’i and the Pacific Islands.

The Bachman’s warbler that flew over Florida during its migration is gone.

And the ivory-billed woodpecker that once thrived in Florida is gone.

Some people might shrug off the news. After all, multiple generations grew up without knowing of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

To those people, I’d say, “Imagine if the Florida manatee were declared extinct, the Florida panther, the American alligator, the loggerhead sea turtle, the monarch butterfly, even the honeybee.”

The demise of the ivory-billed woodpecker tells us such extinctions really could happen, that the animals we see nesting on the beach, swimming in the Gulf, flying overhead might be gone someday.

The ivory-billed was listed as endangered in 1967, but the last commonly agreed-upon sighting was in April 1944 on the Singer Tract in northeast Louisiana.

Deforestation and development destroyed the bird’s habitat,but still, people hoped, listened and looked for the species throughout the second half of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st.

The survey efforts here and in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Alabama resulted in rumored sightings, blurry video, and misidentification.

In the days when ivory-billed swooped down from a long-leaf pine to awe onlookers, the woodpecker was known as the “Lord God bird.”

It became the “ghost bird” after it went missing from North America.

And now it’s a “gone bird.”

There’s a hard lesson for the dreamers and the developers in the declared demise of the ivory-billed woodpecker: Human activity can drive species to decline and extinction. Efforts to conserve species before their declines become irreversible are vital.

Scanning the surface of Sarasota Bay, people see dolphins, pelicans and pleasure boaters.

Those who go below the surface and dive into the research find the hazards to dolphins, other marine life, human life and bay life.

The Sarasota Bay Estuary Program earlier this summer published a draft document examining the status of Sarasota Bay and listing actions to protect and preserve the local waters.

A goal is to improve water quality, as well as the quantity and distribution of freshwater flow in the estuary.

You might be aware of the causes of damage, or at least some of them:

• Excess nutrients;
• Harmful algal blooms;
• High bacteria levels;
• Low dissolved oxygen concentrations;
• Increased sediment loads from excess runoff;
• Toxins;
• Microplastics;
• Alteration of natural hydrology.

The list goes on, but I can narrow it to a single threat: humans. About the only blame we don’t need to shoulder is fecal waste from wildlife.

We’re responsible for wastewater, pet waste and fertilizer runoff that contribute to excess nutrients.

We’re responsible for the microplastics emerging as a pollution of concern, the spasms and bursts of development that altered freshwater flow and we must answer for the climate change causing rising seas and fluctuating precipitation patterns.

We’re responsible for broken infrastructure, population growth and emissions.

We focus a lot on nutrient pollution in watersheds and bays, but don’t just look to power plants or Piney Point. Airborne nitrogen compounds — nitrogen oxides and ammonia — are a significant source of nutrient pollution, deposited directly in the bay by stormwater or groundwater, but also as gas and dust and rainwater.

Mobile sources of nitrogen oxides — cars, boats and yard equipment — create emissions close to the ground, contributing four times more nitrogen deposition to the local watershed than regional power plants releasing nitrogen from stacks. According to the SBEP report, CO2 emissions in the Sarasota-Bradenton metro area are up 61% since 1990.

SBEP’s plan details the destruction and damage to the bay but also notes progress in recovery and charts corrective actions.

The action plan includes:

• Supporting monitoring of water quality;
• Strategizing to surpass water quality standards;
• Improving hydrology for more natural flows;
• Reducing pollutants from stormwaters and wastewaters;
• Reducing atmospheric nitrogen deposition;’
• Supporting measures to better understand, monitor and reduce harmful algal blooms.

As of July 8, more than 80 projects were planned to improve water quality in the Greater Sarasota Bay Estuarine System.

Manatee County was working with the Southwest Florida Water Management District to use federal RESTORE ACT funds to develop watershed management plans and SBEP was advocating for small, green infrastructure practices to reduce polluted stormwater and wastewater from reaching the bay.

Such practices include better managing rainfall, one of our most abundant natural resources, by planting and preserving canopy trees to intercept rain before it hits the ground, connecting rain barrels and cisterns, creating rain gardens to allow rainfall to evaporate or percolate into the ground and establishing stormwater parks.

The objectives and ideas outlined in SBEP’s plan motivate.

We’re responsible for the damage in the bay.

And we’re also responsible for the recovery.

On the web

The Sarasota Bay Estuary Program’s 208-page comprehensive conservation and management plan can be downloaded at sarasotabay.org.

We have our origin stories.

And many of us who’ve moved from place to place have our arrival stories, the recollections of when we arrived to arrange our lives in a new or unfamiliar location.

Some people might remember the year they settled in a new home or a new community. Others might also recall the month. Some might remember the full date.

I remember details of some arrivals better than others. As for my arrival to Anna Maria Island after leaving Chicago, I remember the year, the month, the date and the day of the week I came to live here.

I even remember the hour of my arrival.

I began calling Anna Maria home at 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 2, 2005.

Weeks earlier, I had visited Anna Maria Island by car, at night, for about five minutes before returning to Bradenton to conclude my successful job interview over a meal at a restaurant that no longer exists.

And my wife Connie had never visited.

We had found our landlord and apartment in The Islander classifieds, which is also how Connie found her first job in Anna Maria.

Back then, every square foot on our little island was not digitally mapped for the general public and maybe only the local news and chamber of commerce were publishing chamber-perfect photographs on the internet. So we didn’t know what to expect when we drove north on Gulf Drive past Pine Avenue and turned into the parking outside our duplex.

From the driveway, we could see the Gulf of Mexico and hear the waves.

So we called our landlord to let him know we’d arrived and then walked to the boardwalk leading past the dunes to the beach.

We could have counted our footsteps from the driveway to the beach if we hadn’t been so excited by the natural beauty of our new home.

There were just a few people on the shore and, because everyone knew everyone, our landlord walked right up to us — the newbies, the arrivals but never strangers on AMI — and introduced himself.

He handed us the keys to the one-bedroom apartment where we would live for 13 years and I knew we had won a “luck lottery.”

Connie and I walked north on the beach, as far as we could, as the beach was not as wide as it is today, and then we went “home” to dress for a steak dinner at a waterfront restaurant, followed by our first “sunset.”

I’d seen the sun set, of course.

But the night of Sept. 2, 2005, was the first time I experienced what islanders call “sunset,” a communal happening celebrating the splendor in the sky with the souls on the sand.

I thought then that I’d go to sunset every night, but started a new job on Labor Day 2005 and often didn’t arrive home until after nightfall.

All these years later, I savor each sunset that I catch.

And I still feel like I hit the “luck lottery.”

The idea of creating community gardens on AMI is taking root in Holmes Beach and I dig the enthusiasm.

The Holmes Beach Parks and Beautification Committee is revisiting the concept of creating a community garden in Veterans Park at city hall, 5801 Marina Drive.

The Islander reported Nov. 4 that committee members reached consensus to direct city engineer Sage Kamiya to obtain cost estimates to test the concept of a community garden at the park.

If the committee goes forward and sees success in the small space in the shade of city hall and the Island Library, another community garden may be created on city-owned land abutting Grassy Point Preserve, 3021 Avenue C.

Both locations present challenges and opportunities.

It’s fitting to create the test garden at Veterans Park, as today’s community garden campaigns seem in the spirit of the Victory Gardens planted during World War I and World War II.

With those gardens, communities grew their own produce so other resources could go toward the war effort.

Today’s community gardens serve different purposes but still create resilient communities, encourage healthy ecosystems, celebrate a connection to the cycle of life and, yes, yield good, nutritious food.

When working as a reporter in Milwaukee, I covered environmental efforts and organizations, including the budding Victory Garden Initiative launched in 2009.

VGI operates under the slogan, “This is a grassroots movement. Move grass. Grow food.”

Their campaign has led volunteers to grow community gardens, launch an urban farm, create fruit orchards, train growers, establish nutritional education programs and inspire similar work in other Wisconsin cities and beyond that state’s borders.

The Holmes Beach committee is in the conceptual stage of planning and the first community plots may be butterfly gardens that provide direct sustenance for pollinators rather than people.

But I do hope the island community can rally around the old concept of Victory Gardens, as growing food reminds us of the earth, reintegrates us with ecology and guides our culture toward a sustainable, abundant future.

I’ve noticed in the supermarkets the higher prices on produce and also observed a scarcity of some fresh food.

I’ve also heard the old stories of islanders providing for themselves — fresh fish and shellfish from the Gulf and bays, fruit and nuts from trees and bushes, vegetables growing in plots on the southeast sides of AMI cottages.

Let’s rally around the cause.

My three treasure chests line a wall in my living room.

They’re wooden, stand about 6 feet tall and have five shelves each.

And they’re filled with all types of jewels.

The value of my treasure is immeasurable, priceless, even though the insurance payout on any loss might amount to less than $100.

My treasure consists of about 500 books — paperback and hardcover, fiction and nonfiction, classic literature and easy beach reads.

One bit of treasure cost 75 cents in 1972. The old Scholastic Inc. version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” sits on a top shelf, with other collectibles from childhood.

I need only to see the paperback’s spine to remember Jim Hawkin’s tale and to think, “Treasure, books are treasure.”

I wouldn’t exchange my old, tattered copy of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” for cold cash.

I’d rather have my new copy of Philip Kennedy’s “The Bird: The Great Age of Avian Illustration” than a strand of pearls.

This time of year, my treasure grows. For at least a decade, my wife has given me a “Christmas book.”

Usually, I identify my “Christmas book” while reading the books section in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, tear out the page and give Connie “the clue.”

But this year, I struggled to choose one title.

“The Bird” isn’t on my Christmas list because that gem of a hardcover got added to the treasure shelves earlier in the year, but finalists included:

• “Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life: The Plants and Places that Inspired the Classic Children’s Tales,” by Marta McDowell and full of watercolors and sketches, letters and notes by a blossoming writer and gardener.
• “Southeast Foraging: 120 Wild and Flavorful Edibles from Angelic to Wild Plums” by Chris Bennett and providing a seasonal guide to identifying safe plants for harvest.
• “The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of our Most Essential Native Trees” by Douglas W. Tallamy and about the champions of carbon sequestration, soil stabilization and watershed management.
• “Botanical Art Techniques” by the American Society of Botanical Artists and about illustrating flowers and other plants.

But ultimately, I shouted, “This is the book!” to Connie when I heard an NPR story about “The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses.”

Author Kevin Birmingham’s prize-winning story is about the creation and publication of a masterpiece, a revolutionary novel, about a day in the life of Leopold Bloom and so very much more.

Yes, there will be treasure under my Christmas tree.

“Why can’t we pet him?” my nephew John asked.

The man who’s now 22 was then an 8-year-old boy, standing at a railing around Snooty the manatee’s pool at a Bradenton aquarium.

John would return year after year, visiting Anna Maria Island from Grayslake, Illinois, for family vacations and he came to understand why a boy can’t pet a manatee.

He and his sister, Jackie, and their cousin Pippa had the good fortune of weeklong stays with the extended family in an island rental before hectic schedules disrupted the tradition. Their younger cousins Georgie and Gavin didn’t experience those good times, those inspiring times.

John is now a Purdue University grad and is working his first real job. Jackie is a sophomore at Loyola University in New Orleans, pursuing a major in environmental studies. And Pip is a teen with a middle-school life.

I know they learned to respect nature during their stays on Anna Maria Island and visits to wild places like Myakka River State Park.

They encountered alligators — and ran.

They celebrated sightings of dolphins and manatees and hoped every holiday to see a shark.

They turned for a week from selfie photography to shooting seascapes and landscapes.

They laughed at diving pelicans and waddling royal terns.

Through trial and error, they understood how the wind carries their kites from the beach.

They figured out how to catch anoles and also learned the first rule of being in nature — look, don’t touch.

And they eavesdropped on their wine-sipping grownups searching for a green flash at sunset.

For all that those kids experienced in our natural spaces on their Thanksgiving holidays, I’m thankful.

I’m also thankful for the people who provided guidance and instruction to young vacationers on AMI, especially my niblings.

Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch’s Suzi Fox introduced the kids to the ways of sea turtles.

They learned from Keep Manatee Beautiful volunteers about fun activities like sand-sculpting but also the necessity of recycling and coastal cleanups.

They spent time on the old Anna Maria City Pier, where bait shop worker Jesus Rosario became a pal, talking with them about the way fish move and the heroics of Roberto Clemente.

At the FISH Preserve, they learned from a couple of Cortezians that sweet tea makes everything better, including heat and humidity and the sting of no-see-ums and mosquitoes.

And at Island Gallery West, painters provided them lessons in capturing the colors of the sky and water and a sculptor talked about clay and earth.

Yes, so thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The objectives are stated in bold, capital letters and numbered, so there’s no mistaking their importance.

OBJECTIVE 1: PROTECT, RESTORE AND ENHANCE THE DIVERSITY AND ABUNDANCE OF NATIVE FISH.

OBJECTIVE 2: PROTECT, RESTORE AND ENHANCE THE DIVERSITY AND ABUNDANCE OF NATIVE SHELLFISH.

OBJECTIVE 3: MONITOR AND PROTECT THREATENED, ENDANGERED AND VULNERABLE WILDLIFE.

Consider these objectives for Sarasota Bay when you read the next report on a record number of manatee mortalities in Florida or catch the news on local red tide blooms.

Consider these objectives when you come across a dead stingray on the beach or see a dead pelican entangled in fishing line at a pier.

Until the end of the month, the Sarasota Bay Estuary Program is collecting public comments on its draft comprehensive conservation and management plan, which can be downloaded at sarasotabay.org.

The plan identifies progress and failure in revitalizing the bay, listing threats and identifying strategies related to water quality, watershed habitats, and fish and wildlife.

Diverse bay habitats — wetlands, reefs, seagrass meadows and tidal tributaries — teem with fish, dolphins, manatees, sea turtles and crustaceans.

For years — 10,000 years — the bay’s population has sustained human life.

In return, we’ve overdeveloped and overharvested, polluted the water, introduced invasive species and spurred climate change.

Now we’re called on to deliver better returns to the bay.

SBEP’s draft plan calls for the following to protect and restore the diversity and abundance of native fish:

• Research to fill fisheries data gaps, including information on migration barriers, harmful algal blooms and climate change impact;
• Explore the effectiveness of stock enhancement — the raising of fish in a hatchery and releasing them to supplement existing populations;
• Promote angling practices that increase conservation and prevent marine waste.

SBEP’s draft plan calls for the following to protect, restore and enhance the diversity and abundance of native shellfish:

• Research on shellfish habitat needs and vulnerabilities to climate change;
• Research to understand the benefits of shellfish stock enhancement to improve water quality, habitat and native populations.

Sarasota Bay and tidal tributaries support oysters, scallops, crabs, shrimp, lobsters and clams, all of which benefit ecosystems.

To protect threatened, endangered and vulnerable wildlife, SBEP’s draft plan calls for continued monitoring of dolphins and manatees, as well as strengthening and enforcing protections.

The bay is home to about 160 resident bottlenose dolphins threatened by natural predators, such as sharks, but also boat collisions, illegal feeding, entanglement and ingestion of fishing gear and pollution.

The bay is home to Florida manatees threatened by cold snaps but also boat collisions, entanglement, habitat loss and pollution.

Fourteen islands in the bay system support 18 colonial-nesting species of birds — herons, egrets, spoonbills — threatened by entanglement and fishing hooks, human disturbance, pollution and habitat loss due to erosion from boat wakes, storms and sea level rise.

Audubon Florida keeps population counts of these birds and documented a decline in nesting pairs in the bay area from 2015 to 2019: 95 nesting pairs of snowy egrets in 2015 compared with 70 in 2019, 65 nesting pairs of little blue herons in 2015 and 15 in 2019; 75 nesting pairs of cattle egret in 2015 and 14 in 2019; 120 nesting pairs of white ibis in 2015 and zero in 2019.

“Efforts to reverse declines and stabilize populations of these and other birds include critical habitat protection and restoration,” reads the draft report.

To achieve this goal, the town of Longboat Key placed Whale Key and Town Islands in the conservation care of the Audubon Society.

“No trespassing” signs went up.

And, yes, birds came down to roost.

Tacked to my office bulletin board is a gift certificate to a beachside restaurant.

The sticky note attached reads: “Use for Florida anniversary.”

The anniversary — marking the day my wife and I moved from Chicago to Anna Maria Island — arrives Sept. 2.

Weeks earlier in 2005, I landed an editing job at a local newspaper and resigned my position at a paper in Chicago, where at my sendoff party an Elvis impersonator performed “Always on My Mind,” and my coworkers gave me an iPod classic — advertised as “1,000 songs in your pocket.”

Connie and I left Chicago Aug. 29, 2005, the trunk of our Saturn packed with keepsakes and clothes and the back seat holding three cats in their carriers and aquarium fish in a bucket of water.

The day we left, Hurricane Katrina hit with devastating force on the Gulf coast in Mississippi and Louisiana.

So we traveled southeast, through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and into Florida, stopping to say “hello” and “goodbye” to family along the way.

I think of us traveling with real speed on the interstates, but my datebook suggests otherwise. Now, when we make the trip from Chicago, we accomplish in three days what took five days to drive in 2005.

We made our arrival at the new Gulf Drive apartment in the late afternoon on a Friday, with time enough to settle the cats and fish before enjoying a steak dinner at a beach restaurant and then catching the first of many sunsets on Anna Maria Island.

I’d seen other sunsets in other states.

But that night was the first night I experienced what islanders call “sunset,” a communal happening celebrating the splendor in the sky with the souls on the sand.

A lot has changed since Sept. 2, 2005 — on the island and in my life, for better, for worse.

I came to The Islander about a year after my move to Anna Maria Island and since then, I’ve helped publish about 780 issues of this paper, reporting on changes, developments, news.

A few weeks ago, the paper contained an obituary for Jay Erickson, the very man who handed my wife and me the keys to our Anna Maria apartment and, as our landlord, the first person to welcome us to the island.

He was a man who traveled and knew the world, an accomplished man.

He was a family man, with relations who established their own lives and made their memories on Anna Maria Island.

And he was an islander. He walked the beach, watched the sunsets, traveled by bicycle, talked about ecology and shook a fist at the three-story “monstrosity” across the street from our apartment that went up where a cottage once stood.

As I approach my next Florida anniversary, I’m thinking about then and now, tracing the change and looking for what’s the same.

“Sunset” is the same on AMI, even as every sunset is different.

I pulled the blanket up to my chin and watched the shadows on the bedroom wall as the seconds ticked toward midnight.

It’s been years since I’ve been too frightened to close my eyes and fall asleep, but the screaming at the end of episode five of “Midnight Mass” spooked me.

If we still gathered around water coolers at work, I’d be talking about the binge-worthy Netflix horror show that arrived for streaming the month before Halloween.

Curious?

The terror takes place on Crockett Island, a small, isolated island accessible only by ferry.

The characters include a charismatic priest, a religious fanatic, a host of fishing families, a disillusioned sheriff and an “angel” that looks a lot like the demonic vampire creatures of myth, with claws, fangs and massive batlike wings.

“Midnight Mass” is a supernatural tale influenced by nature, like so much we associate with Halloween — great pumpkins, a silvery full moon, crying ravens, howling wolves, blood-sucking bats and prowling black cats.

A couple of years ago, to celebrate Halloween, I took a road trip to the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge in Chiefland after reading about Swamp Ape sightings.

Florida’s answer to Bigfoot, the Swamp Ape, is a human-animal hybrid said to be about 8 feet tall, smelly and an inhabitant of Suwannee’s pine forests and swamps.

I didn’t come across the Swamp Ape, and, honestly, I need not travel any distance to find some of the state’s scarier critters and creatures.

They can be found here in Manatee County.

• Flesh-eating bacteria. Vibrio vulnificus is a naturally occurring bacteria found in warm, salty waters such as the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding bays.

Concentrations of the bacteria are higher when the water is warmer.

Necrotizing fasciitis and severe infections with Vibrio vulnificus are rare, but they do occur and can be fatal in humans.

• Cane toad. Invasive cane toads are reddish-brown to grayish-brown with a light-yellow or beige belly.

They have enlarged glands behind the eyes, which angle downward on the shoulders. These glands secrete a potent milky-white toxin — bufotoxin.

The toxin can kill animals that bite or feed on the toads, including pets, as well as irritate the skin and burn the eyes of people who handle the animals.

• New Guinea flatworm. The nonnative New Guinea flatworm is a predatory, terrestrial flatworm that averages 1.5 to 5 inches in length and has a shiny, dark brown/black body with a pale stripe running down the middle.

They are a potential host for the rat lungworm parasite that can be transmitted to humans.

Also, the flatworms regurgitate stomach contents upon handling, causing skin irritation.

Ick.

• Vultures. I’m amused by turkey and black vultures — protected at the state and federal levels — but I know some people are afraid of the birds.

The vultures, bigger than raptors, can chew porch screens and shingles as easily as they can tear at carrion along the causeway.

They also can spew projectile vomit as a defense mechanism.

• Alligator. A sign at a stormwater retention area in Bradenton Beach warns of alligators, but you won’t find the reptiles on Anna Maria Island.

You will find the opportunistic feeders inland, especially at east county preserves and parks.

And, while you probably know about the alligator’s big bite and death roll, are you aware that the alligator’s mouth is full of microorganisms that contain life-threatening bacteria?

Of course, the likelihood of being attacked is slim. We pose greater harm to the American alligator than the federally protected “threatened” species poses to people.

• Fire ant. My feet are scarred from an attack of red imported fire ants by the beach in Anna Maria about a decade ago.

The ants may nest under patio slabs, in lawns, under edges of sidewalks, foundations, concrete driveways and electrical boxes.

After a rain, the colony might move to higher ground to take refuge from saturated soil.

In my case, the ants moved from the soggy ground to my feet, delivering the bite and sting of a venom that exhibits potent necrotoxic activity.

Ask yourself: Would you rather come across a black cat under a full moon or fire ants at high noon?

Many in America observe July 4 customs — picnics, parades and fireworks orchestrated to the “1812 Overture.”

And some keep a July 5 tradition. They walk a section of beach or circle a parking lot at a boat ramp to collect litter. The cleanups may be organized by a city or a nonprofit in some communities or they may be conducted by individuals equipped with gloves, garbage bags and litter sticks.

Litter increases on holiday weekends on Anna Maria Island, but litter is a problem every day, here and elsewhere. We’ve probably plagued the planet with our litter since the beginning of our time, and today, according to a new Keep America Beautiful study, about 90% of people in the United States agree that litter is a problem in their community.

Letters to The Islander and complaints at Anna Maria, Bradenton Beach and Holmes Beach city halls support the public opinion survey. Even when parking or tourism is said to be the concern, litter usually is a factor in the complaint: Ban parking on residential roads because people throw their garbage in our yards. Stop bringing so many tourists to AMI because they trash the beach.

But why do people litter?

KAB’s study provides an understanding of the behavior of litters as well as documents the quantity, composition and sources of litter across the United States. The report follows up on a 2009 study and builds on a history of science-based research started in 1969 by KAB, which has 700 affiliates, including our own Keep Manatee Beautiful.

Some positive findings in the study:

• The amount of roadside litter is down 54% since 2009.
• The amount of fast-food packaging, soda containers and construction debris dumped along roadsides has decreased since 2009.
• The cigarette butt continues to be the most littered item but the number of littered butts is down 70% since 2009.

Some negative findings:

• Littered beer containers, water bottles and cardboard increased since 2009.
• There was twice as much litter from alcoholic beverage containers as from non-alcoholic beverage containers.
• Each mile of road or waterway in the United States contains about 2,000 pieces of litter.

“Litter” is improperly managed waste.

And “littering” is a person’s behavior that results in misplaced waste.

To deal with litter in America — or just on AMI — requires changing behavior but also changing infrastructure, business operations, services and legislation.

KAB’s research found that states where deposits must be paid on bottles outperformed other states in reducing litter. Take a cue, Florida.

KAB asked in a survey, “When have you seen people litter?” and about 59% of respondents answered, “When there is no trash can nearby.”

I can tell you, I’ve been in public spaces on the island and walked many steps in unsuccessful searches for trash or recycling cans.

And take a look at the litter along the Palma Sola Causeway, the Kingfish Boat Ramp or Bayfront Park on a Sunday evening. A lot of what becomes litter often was garbage bagged and set beside an already overflowing trash can.

Keep America Beautiful calculated that there are about 50 billion pieces of litter on the ground in the United States.

So if everyone ventured outside and picked up 152 pieces of litter, there’d be no litter left and we’d have a more beautiful America, but that’s provided we invest in the education needed to change behavior and the infrastructure needed to accommodate more conscientious citizens.

About Keep America Beautiful

The nonprofit, established in 1953, aims to improve and beautify communities, with a goal to end littering and improve recycling.

The affiliate Keep Manatee Beautiful conducts regular cleanups on Anna Maria Island, as well as promotes special events and activities, including National and Florida Arbor Day observances.

“Life’s a beach” is one motto on Anna Maria Island.

So is “get ’er done,” a saying I’d not heard until I went to work for The Islander about 15 years ago.

A lot of folks I know are more in the “get ’er done” mindset these days.

They’re righting a struggling business or organization more than a year into the coronavirus pandemic.

They’re lining up for their vaccines or arranging for friends and family to get a shot.

They’re balancing, juggling, striving.

And, looking out for the best interests of Anna Maria Island and the surrounding waters, they’re rallying to act in response to an environmental crisis at Piney Point.

Piney Point in northeast Manatee County is the site of a defunct phosphate production operation. The plant ceased operations in 1999 and has since been managed to maintain and monitor the pollution left behind — a radioactive phosphogypsum stack and wastewater containment system.

In late March, the site management found a leak in the containment system and, seeking to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the system, asked the state to authorize the release of polluted water — a mix of seawater, rainwater and wastewater that contains phosphorous, nitrogen and other materials.

You’ll hear and read references to this water being “nutrient-rich,” but pollution isn’t like fresh produce and nutrient-rich is no bonus.

So island officials are ready and on watch. Anna Maria commissioners voted April 8 to declare a local state of emergency while Holmes Beach officials are creating a water quality committee.

The Anna Maria Island Chamber of Commerce is sending out updates regarding Piney Point just as it stepped up to disseminate information last spring when the pandemic hit.

Island businesses are providing assistance, lobbying, and educating.

How many of us watched via Twitter as Chuck Wolfe, CEO of the Chiles Group of restaurants on Anna Maria Island and Longboat Key and a Parrish farm, guided Florida Agriculture Nikki Fried on Piney Point and the importance of water quality to “Fresh from Florida” business.

“We’re watching the water rise. We’re watching the quality change,” Wolfe said. “We’re doing our part. …The involvement of business, the involvement of the government, the involvement to making sure that for the entire state this is important.”

Local charter captains and conservationists are on the water, guiding clients to great catches but also keeping watch.

Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring is stepping up — as always. The nonprofit monitors for nesting activity — sea turtles and shorebirds – on the island May 1-Oct. 31, but volunteers are watching our beaches now for signs of sick or dead animals.

The Center of Anna Maria Island — known for its sports leagues, fitness classes, children’s camps and fun days — also runs a green initiative.

The center recently formed the Blue Waters Coalition and invites people to help “defend our waters” by installing mini-reefs at their docks or volunteering to collect and analyze water samples or submit beach conditions observations.

Most recently, in response to the Piney Point crisis, the center offered to help monitor water quality around the island in cooperation with a student-driven research program at Eckerd College.

“We stand ready,” center director of development Jim McDaniel said April 8 in an email to The Islander.

We stand ready.

All this movement is taking place, so perhaps someday we can get back to more of “life’s a beach” — and “it’s 5 o’clock somewhere,” too.

Petition in circulation

Sierra Club Florida is circulating a petition asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to do more to address the threat of phosphate mining and the waste that’s produced.

The chapter launched the petition drive as polluted wastewater from the defunct Piney Point phosphate site was being discharged into Tampa Bay to avoid a large-scale breach and collapse of the phosphogypsum stack system.

The EPA and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection maintain the wastewater meets water quality standards and is not radioactive.

However, phosphogypsum is radioactive and the stack system remains a threat.

The petition is online at sierraclub.org.

My family celebrates rainbows in June.

We fly rainbow flags.

We wear rainbow-themed T-shirts.

And we go looking for rainbows.

We’re just over the moon for rainbows in June.

So I found myself wishing for rain the day after Memorial Day and every day since.

Rainbows inspire pride, dreams, imagination, curiosity and artistry. To quote a singing frog named Kermit: “Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection/The lovers, the dreamers and me.”

One of my most thoughtful conversations with a young niece was about a rainbow.

“Have you ever touched a rainbow? I have,” she confided.

Now that she’s on summer break, I hope she gets the opportunity to search for many rainbows, chase her shadow, scour the shore for shells and tell a ghostly tale at a campfire.

June is Great Outdoors Month in the United States, an opportunity for exploration, recreation and rejuvenation and, for children, a time to learn outside the classroom or Zoom space.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children offers guidance on getting outdoors with kids:

• Join children in the fun if they want you to but always keep an eye on them. Simplicity is the key to establishing safety rules and there is usually no need to restrict children.
• Let children choose what to explore and see what they do on their own, without offering suggestions. Do they dig? Build? Climb?
• Ask open-ended questions. Ask kids about their discoveries and don’t pretend to know all the answers. You might even learn something.
• Any walk can become a nature walk.
• And shadow play can entertain for hours, provided there’s light to create shadows.

I’ve walked along Gulf Drive with a crowd of nieces and nephews and our shadows and traced their shadow outlines on sidewalks.

Next time we’re together, I might ask my youngest niece if she can feel her shadow.

And, apart more than a year because of the pandemic, I certainly hope I don’t find that she’s grown too old to touch a rainbow.

About rainbows

A traditional rainbow is sunlight spread out into its spectrum of colors and diverted to the eye of the observer by water droplets.

To see a rainbow:

• You need to be standing with the sun to your back and the rain in front of you;
• The sun needs to be less than 42 degrees above the horizon;
• The sun’s rays must be hitting the raindrops to create the rainbow.

The colors of the rainbow are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

When the sun is lower, the rainbow will be higher in the sky.

Earth is the only planet in the solar system where rainbows occur.

On Mom’s holiday, we picnicked in a field of wildflowers at Myakka River State Park.

On Dad’s day, June 20, we’ll fire up the grill in the park.

She said: Pâte, please.

He prefers barbecued brisket with a side of steak.

So Father’s Day will involve turning up the heat on our grill for his protein of choice, corn on the cob, roasted potatoes, seared asparagus, and, to finish, s’mores.

And we’ll do our best to green the cookout.

My dad is not what I would call a tree-hugger, but he sends money to the World Wildlife Fund and Sierra Club.

He grew up on a small farm in western Illinois, where he learned to appreciate what nature can provide and to love his land.

There was a charcoal grill outside the farmhouse where he grew up and where I visited as a kid during school breaks. Some nights, we roasted hot dogs and toasted marshmallows over the charcoal flames.

In the backyard of my childhood home, we had a gas grill big enough to cook hot dogs for the high school football team that my dad coached. In the pre-season, after morning practice, the players and coaches gathered in the back yard for lunch — chips, dogs, salads, fruit and soda pop.

Two grills lasted my entire childhood, but my parents are on their fourth grill in 15 years after buying their condo on the Gulf coast.

On Father’s Day, we’ll be at my portable, propane-fueled camping grill because we’re heading to a bayfront park.

I prefer propane to charcoal because it burns cleaner and more efficiently.

One study from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory concluded that a burner on a gas grill emits about 5.6 pounds of carbon dioxide per hour, contrasted with 11 pounds per hour from cooking over charcoal.

An argument could be made for using all-natural, lump charcoal, which lacks additives and, made from wood, is a renewable energy source.

But the easy-to-use instant briquettes release volatile organic compounds and particulate matter into the air, as well as ground-level ozone. They’re made of sawdust, starch, borax, petroleum solvents and sodium nitrate. They’re no-nos.

So we’ll get cooking with propane, as well as reduce waste by ditching disposables in favor of reusable cutlery, plates and glassware and buy in season.

Does anyone know where to find locally sourced marshmallows?

Love doesn’t keep them together.

But sex does.

Yes, lovebugs are at it again, coupling in the air and on window screens, patio furniture and especially vehicles.

The bugs — a march fly now common to the southeastern United States and Central America — show up in large numbers in late April and May and again in September.

Lovebugs dig humid spaces and hot surfaces.

They don’t bite or sting and do us no physical harm.

Actually, the bugs can be beneficial to us — their pollinators and the larvae feed on decaying vegetation in the landscape.

Still, people generally don’t show the love for the bugs that can remain paired for days.

The exceptions might be carwash operators, who get the business generated in the spring and fall, when lovebugs swarm and splatter windshields, clog radiator grills and leave a slightly acidic residue.

The purveyors of fake news like them, too.

Lovebugs are native to Central America and likely arrived to the Gulf Coast on ships. Research documents their presence in Louisiana in 1911 and Florida in the late 1940s.

But check social media forums and you’ll find plenty of posts circulating about “lovebugs” being the result of a genetic experiment gone awry, usually at the University of Florida.

One variation of the false post reads, “Lovebugs are actually manmade. Scientists were genetically engineering females of a species of insect that would mate with the male mosquito but be sterile and produce no offspring. Unfortunately, they accidentally also created a male lovebug and a pair somehow escaped into the wild. Since the bugs had no natural predators, their numbers quickly exploded into the millions.”

Another claim plays on historic school rivalry along with false news: “Back when I was a student at Florida State, I was told that lovebugs were accidentally released from a biological experiment station at the University of Florida.”

A couple of years ago, the Orlando Sentinel reported on the lovebug rumors and quoted a professor who said if the University of Florida had engineered lovebugs, they wouldn’t be black and red. They’d be blue and orange.

This is interesting, because just yesterday I saw a two-headed spider and can you guess its color?

Spring just arrived on March 20, but for weeks I’ve been sweeping away signs of the season.

Tree pollen — yellow, powdery and sticky — is layered so thick on my patio that it looks like splotches of oil paint.

The live oak flowers on the ground in my backyard are piled so thick they look like the shag carpet popular about the time my condo was built in the 1980s.

Someone, who would scowl if I used her name, blew her nose the other day and, I’m not April fooling, her nose was filled with tree pollen.

I suspect we have what’s called a “trigger tree” in the backyard, which can expose an allergy sufferer to 10 times more pollen than another similar tree down the block.

I asked my allergist about changing my prescription for the season and he replied, “Allergy season is like tourist season in Florida. It’s year-round.”

Consider this: We endure pollen from oaks and pines October through May, grass pollen April to October and ragweed May through December.

I guess that covers all 12 months.

But really, in March and April, the pollen season peaks, providing a reason other than the pandemic to wear face masks.

The forecast at pollen.com March 25 showed pollen levels at medium-high for the island that day and the day before, with oak, juniper and nettle as top allergens.

Other culprits this time of year include bayberry and maple.

Even the beaches aren’t safe havens for hay fever sufferers, as airborne pollen can travel hundreds of miles, and the wild grasses on the shore can contribute to allergies.

The island’s pollen level throughout March? Not a day below medium-high.

And the five-day forecast? “High” times five.

Before moving to Florida from Chicago, I didn’t experience any seasonal allergies. My Florida hay fever may be due to exposure to unfamiliar allergens or simply the onset of seasonal allergies in adulthood, which can occur with rapidity.

Despite the runny nose, scratchy throat and allergic shiners under my eyes, I do love springtime on and around the island.

The tabebuia tree, showering bright yellow blooms, is nothing to sneeze at, while the bougainvillea, flaunting pink flowers, and the jacaranda, stunning in a showy purple, can stop me in my tracks.

Happy spring.

Did you know?

Rainy days can provide some relief for allergy sufferers but thunderstorms can intensify pollen levels. Pollen grains can be carried by wind produced in storms and rupture, leading to increased allergic reactions during storms, known as “thunderstorm asthma.”

Arbor Day ahead

National Arbor Day is celebrated Friday, April 30.

The island cities, in partnership with the state and Keep Manatee Beautiful, usually hold tree-planting ceremonies.

Also, the Arbor Day Foundation offers 10 trees to new members to plant at home or donate to a forest. Species for the area include Eastern red cedar, Eastern redbud, live oak, bald cypress, river birch, white dogwood and crape myrtle.

For more information, go online to arborday.org.

Birds do it.

Birds fall in love, so goes the popular song by Cole Porter and so says the poem by Geoffrey Chaucer that preceded “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)” by about 550 years.

Chaucer wrote “Parlement of Foules” — “Parliament of Fowls” — in 1382 to honor the anniversary of King Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia.

An excerpt from the poem of 699 lines:

For this was on Saint Valentine’s Day

       When every bird comes there to choose his match

       (Of every kind that men may think of!),

       And that so huge a noise they began to make

       That earth and air and tree and every lake

       Was so full, that not easily was there space

       For me to stand — so full was all the place.

The poem is the first record associating Valentine’s Day with romantic love and it takes inspiration from amorous birds.

There’s an old belief — based on the ancient practice of ornithomancy — that the first bird a single person sees or hears on Valentine’s Day represents a soul mate, symbolizes a life partner.

The practice also has led to the beliefs that goldfinches represent wealth, blackbirds symbolize kindness and nuthatches epitomize knowledge.

So pay attention to the birds you see Feb. 14.

That day, you might even consider joining the 24th annual Great Backyard Bird Count.

“Birds are everywhere and can be counted in backyards, neighborhoods, suburban parks, wild areas and cities,” says David Bonter, co-director of the Center for Engagement in Science and Nature at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. “Scientists need the eyes of the world to collect information about where the birds are.”

The count, coordinated by the Cornell Lab, National Audubon Society and Birds Canada, occurs Feb. 12-15, with people around the world counting the birds they see for at least 15 minutes on one or more days and entering their checklists using either the Merlin Bird ID app or the eBird online platform.

The data gathered in the GBBC and other survey projects can reveal changes in the numbers and distribution of wild birds over time.

In last year’s count, birdwatchers set records:

• 268,674 estimated participants in 194 countries;
• 27,270,156 birds counted;
• 6,942 species identified;

“Why not try something new? If you’re an experienced birder, set yourself a challenge to see how many new birders you can get interested in counting on their own patch,” says Steven Price of Birds Canada. “If you are just beginning to learn about the birds in your yard, see if you can identify three new birds — or five new birds or 10 new birds.”

Who knows? Maybe you’ll see a lovebird — or a goldfinch, depending on your heart’s desire.

Staying safe

Great Backyard Bird Count organizers ask that participants watch birds safely in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. This means following public health and safety protocols, avoiding large gatherings, wearing face masks and staying at least 6 feet from people outside your household.

To learn more about how to take part in the count, go online to birdcount.org.

Helicopter parent?

Not my mom.

Free-range parent?

Not my mom either.

I grew up with a lot of nurture and also abundant freedom to better my nature. So maybe you could say I grew more like a whale calf than a loggerhead hatchling.

Loggerheads are totally free-range. They mate. The male swims. The female nests and the hatchlings emerge from the nest to fend for themselves and, if triumphant, repeat the cycle.

This concept in Mother Nature, alien to my experience, fascinates me.

As a kid playing with my siblings, I acted out adventures of fending for ourselves in a forest, on a river, or atop a mountain, but we only went so far before the dinner call sounded and brought us back home.

Now I imagine the lives of loggerhead sea turtles, the nesting female and the emerging hatchling.

The loggerhead may be the most abundant sea turtle species in the United States but the species, depending on the region, is threatened and protected.

Threats include incidental capture in longline fishing, shrimp trawling, pollution, predation of nests and human disturbances such as coastal lighting and housing development.  Another major threat is the loss of nesting habitat due to coastal development, which makes safeguarding our shoreline vital.

On Anna Maria Island, the nesting activity seems so abundant that it might be easy to overlook the fact that there are only 40,000-50,000 nesting females in the world, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, which lists loggerheads as “vulnerable,” facing a high risk of extinction in the wild in the near future.

The turtles feed primarily on shellfish, and the females nest every two to four years.

A nest, typically dug in the sand between the dune front and high tide line, contains an average 100-126 eggs that incubate for about 60 days.

When hatchlings emerge from nests, usually at night, they scramble across the sand, avoiding predators, to reach the water and swim for their survival.

The mama turtle’s “parenting” is done when the nest gets covered with sand.

But to protect the survival of the species, the loggerhead lays numerous clutches of eggs in locations miles apart.

A recent University of South Florida study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found that some female loggerheads lay as many as six clutches as far as 6 miles apart during the same breeding season.

“Nesting females don’t lay all their eggs in one basket,” USF-St. Petersburg professor Deby Cassill said. She’s the author of the study. “Their reproductive strategy is like investing in a mutual fund. Females divide their resources among many stocks rather than investing in a single stock.”

In a lifetime, one mama loggerhead might produce 4,200 eggs and place them at 40 sites on a single barrier island, according to Cassill’s research based on 17 years of data from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

The strategy reduces the risk of reproductive failure due to storms that could wash out clutches and improves the hatchling survival rate.

Free-range parenting?

Totally.

Maternal instinct?

Yep.

“We’re surrounded by water.”

A former public works boss on Anna Maria Island would offer the remark, responding to inquiries about flooded roads, parking lots and buildings.

Without question, the island is surrounded by water, but we can plan and adjust to be more resilient and need to create a stronger community to deal with rising seas.

We can’t ignore the physical and economic risks of wind, water and extreme weather.

We can’t bury our heads in the sand.

We should be like the ostrich, which, contrary to myth, doesn’t bury its head in the sand but has adapted to compensate for its inability to fly.

The ostrich deals with risk.

There’s a book titled “The Ostrich Paradox” — it’s not on everyone’s bedside table, I’m sure.

Authors Robert Meyer and Howard Kunreuther — both of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania — write about “why we underprepare for disasters.”

They list six reasons:

• Myopia, focusing on short horizons;
• Amnesia, quickly forgetting lessons of past disasters;
• Optimism, underestimating the likelihood of losses;
• Inertia, tending to maintain the status quo due to uncertainties;
• Simplification, selectively focusing on only part of an issue;
• And herding, basing choices on the actions of others.

The book is a must-read for policymakers, emergency management professionals, risk managers and “anyone who wants to understand why we consistently underprepare for disasters,” according to Jay Neal, president and CEO of the Federal Association for Insurance Reform.

FAIR is focused on reducing uninsured risk and promoting wind and flood mitigation and, last fall, hosted a program on “The Ostrich Paradox.”

More recently, on Feb. 24, the foundation hosted a virtual, Zoom-based town hall on the relationship between extreme weather and rising property insurance costs.

Panelists included Neal, meteorologist John Morales, insurance expert Fred Karlinsky and former FEMA administrator Craig Fugate, who reminded attendees that “Florida is the sore thumb that sticks out in hurricane alley.”

Morales spoke about more days with intense heat and stronger storms delivering more intense winds and more water, as well as nuisance events, such as sunny day floods caused by high tides.

How prepared are we? he asked.

The consensus was not prepared enough, as the panelists shared their goals of promoting resiliency through mitigation, improving disaster preparedness and addressing a multitude of concerns: underinsurance, premium costs, the debt-burdened government flood insurance program.

New research from the First Street Foundation quantifies the financial impacts of flood risk carried by U.S. homeowners and how those impacts are growing as flood risks worsen due to a rapidly changing climate.

The foundation found that there are nearly 4.3 million residential homes with substantial flood risk that would result in financial loss.

Furthermore, the research demonstrates that if all of the homes were to be insured against flood risk through the National Flood Insurance Program, rates would need to increase 4.5 times to cover the risk today.

The new research comes as FEMA is working on the “Risk Rating 2.0” initiative, which would set new premiums for properties inside and outside of Special Flood Hazard Areas based on their individual flood risk.

Politicians, planners and property owners face challenges now: escalating insurance rates, keeping the flood program solvent and revising zoning and building codes, infrastructure plans and management to minimize new risk and correct existing ones.

The town hall panelists warned of a perfect storm but, in this case, cautioned against ducking down and burying heads in the sand.

Do as the ostrich does?

Scientists identified a new whale species in the Gulf of Mexico.

The animal now known as Rice’s whale was formerly known as the Bryde’s whale.

The name change doesn’t change the species status — the whale remains endangered.

News of the new species broke this winter, with publication of an article in the Marina Mammal Science journal and circulation of news releases and press statements from key players, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The lead author of the article titled “A new species of baleen whale from the Gulf of Mexico, with a review of its geographic distribution” works for NOAA.

Fisheries scientist Patricia Rosel started the journey toward identifying Rice’s whale in collaboration with NOAA scientists Keith Mullin and Lynsey Wilcox.

Mullin had been studying Gulf whales since the 1990s and believed they were rare and needed protection.

Rosel and Wilcox were examining genetic data obtained from whale samples collected on a NOAA vessel in the Gulf from 2008, when they recognized genetic material that looked different from that of other whales.

Further, Rosel identified diagnostic characteristics that distinguished the Gulf whale she was interested in from other closely related baleen whale species.

Integral to identifying the new species was the examination of a whale skull in 2020.

The skull came from a whale that had stranded in Florida off Everglades National Park in 2019.

The dead animal was examined, then buried at Fort DeSoto Park in Pinellas County and then exhumed for more research, including body measurements of the whale to compare with those from other strandings.

“The morphological differences, when combined with the genetic data Rosel and Wilcox had collected, were enough to distinguish this as a new species of baleen whale,” according to NOAA, whose partners in the lengthy research effort include Sarasota-based Mote Marine Laboratory, Everglades National Park Service, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and others.

The Rice’s whale is considered one of the rarest in the world and only about 50-100 exist in the Gulf, their primary habitat being offshore of the Florida coast.

The species faces multiple threats — vessel strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, proposed aquaculture activities, exploration for oil and gas and pollution — and extinction is not out of the question.

What killed the whale stranded at the Everglades park and exhumed from Fort DeSoto?

A necropsy revealed a 3-inch hunk of plastic lodged in its gut that may have contributed to its demise.

A sad end for the hero of this whale tale.

About Rice’s whale

Rice’s whales can weigh up to 60,000 pounds, which is about five times as heavy as an elephant.

The whales can grow up to 42 feet long.

Not much is known about their life expectancy, but closely related species reach sexual maturity at 9-years-old and can live about 60 years.

The biggest threats to the species include vessel strikes, ocean noise, energy exploration, development and production, oil spills and responses, entanglement in fishing gear and ocean debris.

The new name honors biologist David Rice, the first researcher to recognize that Bryde’s whales exist in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Latin name for Rice’s whale is Balaenoptera ricei.

For now, the whale remains protected as the “Gulf of Mexico Bryde’s whale” under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

NOAA will need to follow a regulatory process to update the name in the listing once the “Rice’s whale” is accepted by the Society for Marine Mammalogy Committee on Taxonomy.

“We remember.”

Across the country, religious groups and community organizations, artists and activists, neighbors remembering neighbors, families mourning family are creating COVID-19 memorials.

Some memorials display wooden crosses, some contain paper butterflies, others incorporate videos and photographs.

White flags surround a church in Greenwich, Connecticut.

American flags fill a lawn in Grafton, Massachusetts.

Green ribbons line a fence outside a home in Vancouver, Washington.

And in Anna Maria Feb. 16, colorful ribbons tied to a cord were stretched along the beach near the Sandbar Restaurant. The ribbons numbered more than 29,000 and represented the number of Floridians who’ve died of COVID-19 in the past year.

At about 11 a.m. that day, islanders and others gathered — in masks and socially distanced — to raise the ribbon of ribbons and reflect on the lives lost and the push through the coronavirus pandemic. Many of them wore buttons with “We Remember.”

Wind whistled in the microphone, sometimes drowning out the words from memorial creator Cathy Tobias and others.

But the raising of the COVID-19 Memorial in Anna Maria was not about words.

Waves crashed at the shore.

Sunlight pushed through clouds.

We faced the Gulf, lifted our arms and looked skyward — not to follow the drone documenting the moment but to stand on the shore for 10 minutes and find solace, peace and even joy.

On a ribbon, with a black marker, I wrote “Jane J,” for a friend of the family who died late last year of COVID-19.

“We remember.”

I realized, as I let go of my section of ribbons, how often I go to the beach and turn to the Gulf to find solace, peace and joy.

Studies and science help to document the power of nature for mental and physical healing, especially during a crisis, and we’re in the midst of a crisis.

Have you heard of a “sense of coherence” score?

SOC comprises the triad of meaningfulness — finding a sense of meaning, recognizing and understanding stress and feeling equipped to cope.

A new study published in Public Health in Practice shows that regularly taking a walk in nature can lead to a higher sense of coherence.

Another study, published in November 2020 in the journal Ecological Applications, focuses on green spaces and suggests that nature near one’s home can help mitigate some of the negative mental health effects of the pandemic.

A survey of 3,000 adults in Tokyo quantified the link between five mental-health outcomes — depression, life satisfaction, subjective happiness, self-esteem and loneliness — and two measures of nature experiences — and the frequency of greenspace use and green views through windows.

More frequent visits in nature and the existence of “green” window views from the home were associated with increased levels of self-esteem, life satisfaction and subjective happiness, as well as decreased levels of depression and loneliness.

Other new studies confirm that during the coronavirus crisis, more people have ventured into nature and experienced the outdoors.

For one project, University of Vermont researchers surveyed visitors to 25 parks and natural areas.

As public health protocols — including social distancing and travel restrictions — were introduced, nearly 70% of park users increased their visits to local nature.

About 81% said these areas held increased importance for them.

The most common reasons for visiting natural areas? Getting outside, exercising, connecting to nature, and finding peace and quiet.

Researchers found that 66% of people used natural areas to find peace and quiet, and 32% as spaces for contemplation.

Back to the beach.

Chipped beef on toast served with a side of Tater Tots, black coffee and tomato juice.

I placed that breakfast order at a local cafe March 15, 2020. How can I remember the date for such a breakfast? Because that meal with my wife and parents was the last time I dined inside a restaurant.

Later that Sunday, I attended a neighbor’s open house. We abstained from hugs but I remember being more concerned about the comingling of vegan and nonvegan potluck offerings on the table than germs.

Since that afternoon, I haven’t been inside another person’s home for longer than 10 minutes and always wearing a face mask.

There was so much we didn’t know or comprehend a year ago, in the days before we could recite the definitions for coronavirus, pandemic, vaccine efficacy, herd immunity and variants.

The last time I shopped inside a supermarket — March 27, 2020 — I remember turning away from people crowded in the freezer aisle and holding my breath in the checkout lane.

In a mid-march 2020 column headlined “Sunny, hot and keep your distance,” I naively wrote: “I’ll probably continue to avoid crowds — given the cancellations taking place, I might not have a choice.”

I also optimistically wrote, “On the sunny side, there’s no reason to avoid long walks in the neighborhood, hikes in our nature preserves and late afternoons on the beach, where I can catch the Gulf breeze and soak up the sun’s rays to boost my melatonin and Vitamin D.

“Blue skies and sunny days lie ahead.”

The past year brought such loss and hardship, but through it all, there were many blue skies and sunny days.

So I ramped up my strolls around the block to mile-long walks around the neighborhood five times a day.

I bought a kite to fly from the Palma Sola Causeway.

I played croquet — a perfect game for social distancing — with my parents in the park near their condo in Madeira Beach.

I masked up as needed to hike through Perico, Neal and Robinson preserves and went birdwatching at the Audubon Society’s sanctuaries.

I walked on Gulf beaches and on the boards of bayside piers.

Gardening in the area outside my kitchen window occupied time and several nurseries became Saturday morning destinations.

Bicycling became even more exhilarating — a way to go, go, go without concern for crowds or invasions of my space.

I took occasional drives for Florida daytrips — to picnic by the Atlantic Ocean in Eatonville and read a book in the shade at Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales.

Some days were spent strolling around St. Petersburg and Tampa, looking at murals, learning new neighborhoods and lunching outside a food truck.

The new St. Petersburg Pier, until the heady tourist season arrived, became an outdoor oasis.

Getting into the great outdoors didn’t always prove a great time or guarantee safety, particularly at events where promoters made promises they didn’t or couldn’t keep in terms of pandemic precautions.

Still, there were many blue skies, sunny days and good times.

Here’s to many more.

My family tree?

A crabapple, which blossomed with bright purplish flowers and blanketed the backyard with tiny, wormy fruit.

The tree stood at my childhood home when we moved into the house in 1971 and remained standing until 1982, the year I graduated high school.

A blight of some kind forced my parents to take down the tree, but for more than a decade, the crabapple provided work and recreation and sparked my imagination.

Saturday mornings, I joined my siblings in the backyard to pick up spoiled fruit — we competed to see who could chuck a crabapple in the garbage can from the greatest distance and occasionally flung crabapples at one another — a warm-weather substitution of a snowball fight.

We climbed the trunk and hung from branches until one brother fell and broke an arm.

At my youngest, I played at being Johnny Appleseed and planted the crabapples to grow more trees around the neighborhood.

I learned about Johnny “Appleseed” Chapman, the nomadic orchardist of the 1800s, from a Walt Disney cartoon series that also told the tall tales of Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan and, more recently, John Henry.

The children’s tale is that Johnny Appleseed randomly spread seeds everywhere he traveled, but the reality is that he established nurseries from Pennsylvania to Illinois.

I hadn’t thought of Johnny Appleseed in years, but he came to mind when I contemplated how I wanted to celebrate National Arbor Day, which is Friday, April 30.

The Arbor Day Foundation encourages us to attend a planting celebration or plant a tree on the holiday observed the last Friday in April.

Arbor Day’s origins is on the Great Plains — in Nebraska — where, in April 1872, a man named J. Sterling Morton called for setting aside a day for planting and calling attention to trees.

Nebraskans are said to have planted a million trees on the first Arbor Day.

Later, in Lisle, Illinois, Morton’s daughter Joy founded the Morton Arboretum, a destination for many students in the Chicago suburbs, including myself decades ago.

Children learn about oaks and acorns, how to plant seedlings and make tree jokes —What’s a tree’s worst month? Sep-timber.

Kids also learn about the value of trees using a tree benefit calculator.

The live oak outside my home, with a trunk measuring about 22 inches in circumference, provides overall benefits of about $231 a year, including:

• Intercepting about 12,281 gallons of stormwater runoff;
• Raising the property value by $163 a year;
• Conserving 141 kilowatt hours of electricity for cooling;
• Absorbing pollutants like ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide through leaves;
• Intercepting particulate matter like dust, ash and smoke;
• Releasing oxygen through photosynthesis
• Reducing atmospheric carbon by 1,240 pounds.

As for my family tree, if the crabapple still stood, the annual estimated value would be about $165.

But I’d put the estimated value much higher.

Happy Arbor Day!

Vroom, vroom

Shhh, don’t tell Speedy.

Speedy is my sparkling blue 2011 Ford Fiesta that I determined years ago I’d drive forever.

Yet another car has caught my eye, or rather, another type of car has caught my eye.

I’m proud to say Speedy is no gas-guzzler, as she gets about 37-40 miles to the gallon.

Still, she’s powered by gasoline and lately I’ve taken to noticing the electric vehicles cruising along on Manatee Avenue and Gulf Drive.

I’m also reading financial forecasts that say electric cars could be less expensive than gasoline-powered cars as soon as 2025 and trends reports that all gas-powered cars could be antiques in 20 years.

UBS investment bank, for example, is predicting the end of the internal combustion engine age, saying new cars would be 20% electric in 2025, 50% in 2030 and 100% in 2040.

Back in 2011, before acquiring Speedy, my wife and I considered the environmental benefits of electric vehicles.

Cost was a concern, but we also wondered about access to charging ports on the island.

At the time, I was aware of only one AMI site — at the Historic Green Village on Pine Avenue, which also was ahead of the eco-curve with solar water heaters, solar panels and recycled rainwater.

I can’t say EV charging ports are abundant on the island since the last decade ago, when I worried about running out of juice and getting stranded. However, there are at least a few more ports, particularly in Bradenton Beach.

And we’re likely to see more as a result of consumer demand, government incentives and commitments from the auto and energy sectors.

Earlier this spring, the Holmes Beach City Commission agreed to an arrangement with Florida Power and Light to host an EV charging station at city hall, 5801 Marina Drive.

FPL representative Ashley Fogg Shutz told The Islander the new station would include four charging ports.

“Anna Maria Island is an area we are looking at closely,” she also said. “But at this time, do not have any upcoming locations to share.”

FPL launched its EVolution pilot program in 2019 with a goal of installing more than 1,000 charging ports at 100 locations statewide, increasing the availability of ports in Florida by 50%.

The EVolution chargers work with most automobiles, including Teslas with an adapter, but are not compatible with golf carts.

And use is free for EV drivers to power up at a station.

So should Speedy need a sibling — or seek retirement — I might be looking for something sparkly blue that gets 250 miles per charge.

This month, you’ll read and hear a lot about hurricane readiness.

Be prepared with enough supplies to last seven days.

Be prepared to evacuate.

Be prepared to shelter with a hotelier, family, friends, with a hot tub.

Be prepared to weather the peculiarities of those with whom you may be confined.

Be prepared to drink water without ice.

And be prepared to eat Spam?

I looked up “Spam” in the dictionary and chuckled to see the first listing for a noun defines spam as “unwanted or intrusive advertising on the internet.”

The second listing: A trademarked brand of canned meat product made mainly from ham.

The dictionary’s example of Spam in a sentence reads, “Sammy Leslie and Ultan Bannon know that wine lovers want good wines first and good trimmings after, so there are no stray tins of Spam here.”

I got my first taste of Spam at a surfer-inspired restaurant on Gulf Drive in Anna Maria, located where Harry’s Grill now operates. They served an island-style Spam fried rice, and I think the island influence was Hawaiian rather than AMI.

I thought the dish tasty and added Spam, a product with a long shelf life, to my hurricane kit.

Don’t mock the stockpile.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit and hoarders packed the grocery aisles despite early cautions about social distancing, Spam sales were setting annual records.

Why?

Affordability, stability and also versatility. Did you know that you can use the lid from the can to warm Spam over a fire?

So Spam remains a staple in my readiness kit, which should contain enough nonperishable food to sustain a household for a week.

My kit also includes jarred olives, bread-and-butter pickles, raspberry jam, creamy peanut butter, Pop-Tarts, crackers, Swedish fish, coffee and soda pop.

Meanwhile, wife Connie’s additions include canned pears and peaches, jarred kale, beans, teas and freeze-dried cherries, green beans, carrots and celery.

Someone might guess I’m packing for summer camp and she’s preparing for “Survivor.”

The Islander asked readers via social media what they keep in their kits to sustain them through and after.

Some replies:

• “We keep dehydrated food on hand that will still be usable long after we’re dead … and liquor.”
• “Duct tape. And beer.”
• “Trail mix is a must.”
• “Pudding, please.”
• “Steak sauce so you can pretend.”

One more: “Not Spam, that’s for sure!”

But whether Spam or jam goes in the kit, be prepared.