Hurricane help for Florida Bay. I'm Kevin Pierce with the Florida Environment. Scientists concerned about years of decline in Florida Bay, south of the Everglades, have noted a dramatic improvement as tropical weather has cleaned out dead seagrasses and increased the freshwater flow from the everglades. It has a substantial amount of fresh water coming in along one perimeter and then there's kind of a gradient going out toward marine conditions all the way out as it's diluted by seawater. And that's there, pretty much year round because of the tremendous amount of water held up in the big sponge that is south Florida.
Estuaries are among the most productive parts of the marine ecosystem.
They're larval fish nurseries, they support enormous amounts of invertebrates. It's much closer to being the kind of estuary it was before the high point of man's management activities in the late 80s early 90s, which coincided with a period of drought. With help from its Environmental Studies Program, we're produced at the Whitaker Center at Florida Gulf Coast University, and funded by the Southwest Florida Council for Environment Education. I'm Kevin Pierce with the Florida Environment. Right now, it's second only to spiny lobster.