Building Reefs in Tampa Bay
Tampa Bay is the largest estuary in the state of Florida; an estuary is a bay with one or more rivers and streams flowing into it and a open region connected to the sea where the river and ocean environments mingle. This produces a very diverse and productive ecosystem. The Florida ecosystem is home to several animals found nowhere else in the world and most are now endangered. Thankfully, several volunteer organizations are stepping in to prevent our losing these creatures.
Green Key, once an essential nesting ground for the local water birds has lost much of it’s shoreline to erosion over the years. This past month teens from a Tampa school and volunteers with the Audubon of Florida Gulf Coast Ecosystem staff and Tampa Bay Watch worked on restoring this habitat making man made reefs out of sacks of oyster shells. Tampa Bay Watch uses thousands of volunteers to assist in a variety of habitat restoration and protection projects throughout the year. Individuals of all ages from all communities are welcome to assist, scout troops, schools and others participate in salt marsh plantings, oyster bar creation, coastal cleanups, and wildlife protection each year, demonstrating environmental maintenance in its purest form. When done volunteers will have created several hundred feet of artificial reef they hope will stop the erosion and create an important foraging ground for various tropical wading birds like reddish egrets roseate spoonbills and American oystercatchers.
In the 1960′s construction at Port Redwing drove the birds nesting in Green Key north to Rich T. Paul Alafia Bank Bird Sanctuary Islands, approximately three miles north.The Richard T. Paul Sanctuary includes two man made islands Bird Island to the east and Sunken Island to the west made from the spoil when they dredged the river to deepen it as a shipping channel; the birds quickly took these over as nesting sites. In the future they don’t expect the birds to permanently return to Green key but they hope to boost the rare bird population by providing more available and safe feeding grounds
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