Island SUNset
Third Place
Features Photography
2018
Tag: awards
Surf grom gallery
Who say you can’t surf Anna Maria Island? Not the kids from the West Coast Surf Shop Surf Camp and the Eternal Summer Surf Camp. Hang 10!
Third Place
Photo series in one issue
2018
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
- Cindy Lane | Sun
To die for
Second Place
Original Local
Editorial Cartoon
2019
Red tide
Second Place
Photo
2017
General Excellence
The Anna Maria Island Sun won the General Excellence award in the Florida Press Association’s 2016 Better Weekly Newspaper Contest, naming it the best weekly newspaper of its size in the state of Florida.
Judges said, “There is a lot to like about this newspaper. The front page design is unusual but very inviting. The paper is chock full of everything – solid, comprehensive coverage of the community, including arts and sports. Love the info graphics and treatment of the editorial page. Paper is well designed – fun and engaging treatment of every page – and loaded with ads. I would subscribe to this paper in a heartbeat. Nice work.”
The Big M
First Place
Editorial
Mike Field
2017
Redemption
First Place
Sports Action
Photography
2017
Soggy Monday Blues
First Place
Breaking News Photography
2017
Ghost tour
Editorial Cartoon
2017
Of tourists and turtles
In a vacation resort like Anna Maria Island, it’s tough to educate people about sea turtles because the audience is a moving target.
Visitors who have learned something about vacationing on a turtle nesting beach are always leaving, and visitors who know nothing about turtles are always arriving.
Third Place
Editorial
2016
Anna Maria Island Turtle Watch and Shorebird Monitoring does a great job of providing educational opportunities for tourists, pitching their tent at art shows and festivals, offering Turtle Talks on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, inviting people to view nests excavations after nests have hatched, and supplying printed information to rental agents, city halls and the chamber of commerce, among other outreach efforts.
Some people plan their vacations around turtle season because they love turtles, Turtle Watch reports.
But others have no idea what leaving their drapes open at night could do to a turtle nest.
The first sea turtle nest of the season that hatched on Anna Maria Island this week was disoriented by lights, meaning the hatchlings probably did not make it to the Gulf of Mexico and died, despite the efforts of dozens of volunteers who get up before dawn to check for tracks and mark new nests and protect the imperiled marine turtles on holiday weekends and throughout the six-month turtle season.
An average 16 disorientations occur each year according to Turtle Watch. That could mean more than 1,000 turtle hatchlings unwittingly killed.
While some rental agents provide information inside their accommodations regarding the laws about sea turtles – such as closing blinds and drapes at night, turning off camera flashes and bringing chairs and umbrella stands in from the beach – some visitors don’t read them, or if they do, they don’t comply.
But some rental agents, as well as some accommodations owners who rent their properties without agents, don’t even bother posting the information for their guests.
It’s very discouraging for Turtle Watch to work so hard to persuade beachfront property owners to provide information, and sometimes even help them install turtle-friendly lighting and windows, then have a nest of hatchlings become disoriented from one person using a cell phone flash at night on the beach because they didn’t know not to.
There’s no excuse not to advise guests about turtle laws on rental websites, in welcome packets and in posted rules. Call Turtle Watch at 941-778-5638. Use the Sun’s “Turtle Tips” and “Live Like a Local” features available in print, on our website and on our Facebook page.
Live like a local – respect wildlife.
Silver Sunset
First Place
Feature
Photograph
Maggie Field
2017
No app for that
First Place
Editorial Cartoon
2016
Tourism slogans, logos evolving
How many ways can you say “Come visit” over 35 years?
Turns out, quite a few.
Third Place
Community History
2016
Manatee County tourism officials have long promoted the county and the communities of Bradenton, Palmetto, Anna Maria, Bradenton Beach, Holmes Beach, Longboat Key and Lakewood Ranch with slogans like “Florida Like It Used to Be” and “The Closer Caribbean.”
After years of changes, today’s tourism slogan was coined in 2012. “Real. Authentic. Florida.” It is so popular that the Anna Maria Island city of Bradenton Beach changed its city motto from “Blessed with History, Hospitality, Spirit” to “Real Florida History, Hospitality and Spirit.”
The current tourism logo is “Bradenton, Anna Maria Island, Longboat Key,” in the turquoise and orange colors of Manatee County stationery, benches and park signs. All three destinations are widely known today, thanks in part to decades of memorable slogans and logos.
1981 – “Our little secret” made itself obsolete, working so well that the county now routinely ranks high on national lists of vacation destinations, according to Manatee County Commissioner Carol Whitmore, who chairs the county’s Tourist Development Council. The tourism logo used at the time was “Manatee County and the gulf beaches around Bradenton on the West Coast of Florida,” irritating copy editors and linguaphiles.
1989 – “Crystal Blue Persuasion” was controversial; some opposed the slogan, speculating that the 1968 song title referred to the drug methamphetamine. The period’s logo was “Manatee County – where Tampa Bay Meets the Gulf of Mexico,” giving free publicity to Tampa.
1993 – “Pure Florida, nothing artificial,” reminiscent of orange juice advertisements, was accompanied by a mouthful of a logo, “Bradenton & Florida’s Gulf Island Beaches, including Anna Maria Island, Longboat Key, Bradenton Beach, Holmes Beach and Palmetto.”
Bradenton had replaced Manatee County on the suggestion that cities are more recognizable than counties. As Bradenton Mayor and Tourist Development Council member Wayne Poston said, “Pittsburgh Pirates fans don’t know where Allegheny County is.” But the logo didn’t specifically name the city of Anna Maria, and wrongly implied that Palmetto is a Gulf Island beach. The city was left out of future logos.
1995 – “Florida’s quiet side,” not quite a slogan, according to the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (which changed its name from the Manatee County Convention and Visitors Bureau), appeared on some publications with the logo, “Bradenton & The Gulf Island Beaches Of Longboat Key & Anna Maria Island.” The “side” referred to the southwest coast of Florida, compared to the more densely populated southeast coast of the state.
The logo was changed in 1999 to “Bradenton & Florida’s Gulf Islands of Anna Maria & Longboat Key,” and changed again in 2000 to “Florida’s Gulf Islands – Anna Maria & Longboat Key, The Bradenton Area.”
2005 – “Take me away,” another mini-slogan, appeared on some brochures with the logo, “florida’s Gulf Islands – anna maria, longboat key, bradenton,” which was grammatically problematic because the city of Bradenton is not an island, and prompted objections to lower-case letters on state and city names.
2007 – “Welcome to our world,” another near-slogan, appeared on a brochure with the logo, “florida’s Gulf Islands – anna maria, longboat key, bradenton & lakewood ranch,” which included the unincorporated community of Lakewood Ranch for the first time in a tourism logo, but mistakenly implied that Bradenton and Lakewood Ranch are islands.
2010 – The logo was changed to “Anna Maria Island & Longboat Key, florida’s gulf islands, and on the mainland, Bradenton & Lakewood Ranch,” raising eyebrows of some Anna Maria Island residents who never considered that going into town was quite as adventurous as going to “the mainland.” The reference was removed the following year when the logo was changed to “Anna Maria Island – Longboat Key, florida’s gulf islands, Bradenton & Lakewood Ranch.”
In 2012, the county tourism agency hit on “Real. Authentic. Florida.” Echoing catchphrases popular in business advertisements, including “Old Florida” and “Real Florida,” the reality underlying the slogan has changed since 2012, and is likely to continue changing as Anna Maria Island and the communities of Manatee County continue developing and redeveloping.
Meanwhile, the slogan avoids mislabeling or leaving out any of the area’s communities, has no grammar, and hence no grammar problems, eliminates annoying ampersands and seems to have pleased just about everyone.
Saving seashells on the seashore
Third Place
Outdoor and Recreation
2016
Under Egmont 4: Egmont cemetery mysteries put to rest
BRADENTON – Mark Green stands at a grave marker at the Fogartyville cemetery, refers to an old, hand-drawn map and walks a few paces, ducks under a moss-draped tree, passes a bench and several headstones, finally reaching a patch of grass near the roadway that meanders through the historic graveyard.
There are no flowers, no inscriptions, not even a headstone or marker, but according to the map, it must be the place.
Third Place
Investigative Reporting
2015
Green, the family historian for the Cortez Green and Fulford families, thinks it’s the grave of several Fulford family members, including Capt. Carl William Bahrt, a ship captain from Key West, born in Denmark in 1835.
It’s been a long road to Fogartyville, beginning at a historic cemetery on Egmont Key, an island off the north end of Anna Maria Island that was once a military fort, but is sparsely inhabited today by a lighthouse keeper and on-duty Tampa Bay harbor pilots.
Earlier this year, the Anna Maria Island Sun uncovered the history of many of the people buried on Egmont Key in the late 1800s whose remains were relocated in 1909 to the St. Augustine National Cemetery in northeast Florida. They included “Indian (Unknown),” thought to be a Seminole chief, one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, so-called “colored” military hospital workers, a Tampa man’s formerly long-lost great-great-grandfather, Azaline M. Bahrt, the daughter of an Egmont Key lighthouse keeper named Coons, and her daughters, Marie Bahrt and infant Carlotte Bahrt.
Online in Washington state, William Bahrt saw the names of the three Bahrt family members in one of the stories in the series, prompting a call to The Sun and a renewed effort to learn more about his family history, including sorting out the identities of the family’s two Azaline Bahrts.
Related coverage
“Azaline Bahrt is a mystery, and I have been looking since 2007 and can find hardly anything about her or her family,” William Bahrt wrote in an e-mail to his relative, Mark Green.
“One mystery is exactly who the Azaline Bahrt was that had daughters buried on Egmont Key,” Green wrote.
The Sun shared evidence uncovered in the series that Azaline Bahrt and her two girls likely died from yellow fever on Egmont Key, where William Bahrt fondly recalls spending his childhood summers in the 1930s with his harbor pilot father and their family.
Grateful for the new information, Bahrt was inspired to resume researching the whereabouts of the grave of the man he thinks was Adaline’s husband, Capt. Carl William Bahrt.
“I am still mystified by the story of Carl Bahrt and his connection with Azaline Marie Coons, the daughter of the Egmont Key lighthouse keeper,” he wrote Green, who shouldered the quest this year during visits to Cortez to see his mother, Mary Fulford Green.
After some research, Green concluded that the captain was buried at his home in 1899 and his remains later relocated to the Fogartyville cemetery in Bradenton, along with several other family members. But none of the graves in the Fogartyville cemetery list the Bahrt name.
Green located a 1920s survey map of the cemetery that showed a plot for the Bahrt family near some plots that are marked with early Bradenton family names, including Fogarty.
He invited The Sun to help him canvass the graveyard, following the map like Indiana Jones.
“This must be it,” he said, pointing to an empty area that corresponds with the Bahrt plot on the survey map, bringing to rest the search for the captain’s grave, at least until more information is uncovered.
In a nutshell years in the making, “We think Capt. Bahrt married Azaline Coons, she got sick from yellow fever and died with her two girls on Egmont Key, they were buried on Egmont and moved to the St. Augustine cemetery. He later married my grandmother, Catherine Davison, and they had a daughter they named Azaline Marie, after the first Azaline, and he and Catherine were buried in Fogartyville,” Bahrt said from his Washington home last week. “That second Azaline Marie Bahrt is my aunt, who ended up an O’Brien in California, and that’s all I know. I would love to be able to follow up on that line in the family.”
But it’s Christmas, and the doorbell is ringing, and the dog is barking, and as the descendants of the Bahrts of Egmont Key gather for their holiday celebrations, there’s no time to dwell on Auld Lang Syne just yet.
“Gotta go, the family’s here,” Bahrt said. “Merry Christmas!”