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Coast Lines: Happy Earth Day from Anna Maria Island

Coast Lines: Happy Earth Day from Anna Maria Island

Written by Cindy Lane on . Posted in Coast Lines, Outdoors.

As the COVID-19 pandemic progresses, the Florida Department of Health is no longer monitoring water quality at local beaches because they are closed. Likewise, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is reducing its water testing for red tide.Coast Lines logo

But local waters have been unusually clear this month, a great reason to get outside and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22.

One Florida event is #GetTrashed, a challenge to take a walk outside with gloves and a plastic bag and pick up enough trash to fill a bag. But wear your mask and stay at least 6 feet from anyone else. Check out more events here.

Arbor Day is also still being celebrated on Friday, April 24. Organizers suggest virtual celebrations, like live-streaming a reading of the poem, “Trees,” by Joyce Kilmer on your Facebook page. Check out more virtual celebration suggestions.

And if you do nothing else environmental this week, resolve to learn enough about federal oil spill policy to help you decide whom to vote for in the next presidential election, in honor of the 11 people killed in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which happened 10 years ago April 20.

The spill poisoned the Gulf of Mexico and its marine life with 200 million gallons of oil for nearly three months, some washing up on beaches from Texas to Florida.

The Washington, D.C.-based environmental group Oceana says that the federal government’s proposal to expand offshore drilling to nearly all U.S. waters will result in more spills.

“Offshore drilling is still as dirty and dangerous as it was 10 years ago,” said Diane Hoskins, Oceana campaign director. “If anything, another disaster is more likely today as the oil industry drills deeper and farther offshore… When they drill, they spill. The BP disaster devastated the Gulf, and we cannot afford to repeat it. Protecting our environment has never been more important than it is today. President Trump’s plan is still a preventable disaster if we stand together to protect our coasts.”

In a recent report, Oceana found the Gulf coast suffered significant economic losses following the Deepwater Horizon disaster:

  • The recreation industry lost more than $500 million, and more than 10 million user-days of beach, fishing and boating activity.
  • Fisheries closed and demand for Gulf seafood plummeted, costing the seafood industry nearly $1 billion.
  • Housing markets across the region experienced a decline in prices between 4% and 8% that lasted for at least five years.

Oceana also found the environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf was unprecedented:

  • For five years, more than 75% of all dolphin pregnancies failed in the oiled area.
  • Bryde’s whales, one of the most endangered whales in the world, decreased by about 22%.
  • As many as 800,000 birds died, including up to 32% of laughing gulls and 12% of brown pelicans.
  • Up to 170,000 sea turtles were killed by the spill.
  • About 8.3 million oysters were killed, and certain populations of fish, shrimp and squid decreased by as much as 85%.

See Oceana’s full report here.

Then turn off your computer, go outside and celebrate the Earth.

Earthy ideas from The Sun

Earthy ideas from The Sun

Written by Cindy Lane on . Posted in Awards, Awards 2019, Coast Lines, Outdoors, Special Sections, Third Place.

Odette Katrak was sitting at her computer in Bengaluru, India Googling “Imagine There’s No Plastic,” a song based on John Lennon’s “Imagine” that she had recently recorded and posted on YouTube.Coast Lines logo - border

What popped up was The Anna Maria Island Sun’s Coast Lines column headlined “Imagine there’s no plastic,” published July 24, 2018.

She reached out from the other side of the Earth and wrote to us.

We both noted how interesting it is that ideas often pop up at the same time across the universe.

“So delighted to read your article titled ‘Imagine there’s no plastic’ which I chanced upon just now,” she wrote. “I too am bothered about the untold amounts of plastic in our lives.”

Third Place
Commentary
2019

While Bengaluru (Bangalore) and Bradenton Beach are quite different – the former has 12 million people, for starters, and it only seems like that many here during tourist season – it turns out that we also have quite a lot in common.

Earthy ideas from The Sun
Odette Katrak, co-founder of Beautiful Bengaluru.

Bengaluru has water shortages, just as we do in Florida.

Called an eco-warrior by her local newspaper, the Deccan Chronicle, Odette’s response to water shortages was to send out one message a day during March about saving water.

India also has plastics washing up on the beaches of the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, just as we do on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico and Palma Sola Bay, including plastic pieces of an oil rig that appeared on Bradenton Beach in 2015.

That was the year Odette co-founded Beautiful Bengaluru, a group working for “a clean, green, safe city and a greener planet.”

She’s a lot like the subject of The Sun’s story, Capt. Bill Brooker, who picks up plastic from Sarasota Bay during his lessons and charters.

“Today, one of my core raison d’etre’s is to eliminate plastic  – not from my life (it’s gone already and we are a zero-waste family) – but from the lives of people who don’t even realize it is harming them,” she wrote.

Beautiful Bengaluru will be publishing a new website soon that will include a startling poster with a piece of plastic covering a bird’s head and long neck. The photo was taken by American photographer John Calcolosi, who gave Odette permission for it to be used for the “Imagine there’s no plastic” video.

“This is fortunate, as this stunning visual sends out a powerful message on a vital worldwide environment theme. It will be one of many teaching tools “relevant to any city in the world,” she wrote.

Earthy ideas from The Sun
This “Imagine There’s No Plastic” poster will be one of many on the forthcoming Beautiful Bengaluru website.

Maybe someday we can keep our plastic trash from washing up on each other’s shores, with a little help from our friends.

Earth Day

A good day to pick up plastic trash from the beach is Monday, April 22, Earth Day.

Back in 1970 when Earth Day was founded, few had any earthly idea about the things that were about to happen to the Earth. Climate change. The Exxon Valdez. Melting glaciers. Fracking. Repetitive red tides. Blue-green algae.

Deepwater Horizon.

April 20 marks the ninth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, the worst environmental disaster in the history of the Gulf, which killed 11 people, injured 17, and killed millions of fish, marine mammals, sea turtles and shorebirds. An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, treated with a chemical dispersant that broke down the oil, but did not eliminate it.

While we didn’t see any oil wash up on local beaches, Manatee County qualified for RESTORE Act funding, fines that BP paid for the disaster.

Local RESTORE Act projects include the Gulf Shellfish Institute Sea Farm to Table project for research on shellfish production and the Coastal Watershed Management Program to address flooding and drainage problems, including nutrient runoff in local waters that worsens red tide.

To observe the Deepwater Horizon anniversary and Earth Day, help “restore” a beach and pick up some plastic from a local patch of sand.

And enjoy the Earth.

Chiles Earth Day

Culinary Celebration to help build oyster reefs

Written by Joe Hendricks on . Posted in Environment, Outdoors.

ANNA MARIA – Tickets are now on sale for the START (Solutions to Avoid Red Tide) Culinary Celebration at The Studio at Gulf and Pine in Anna Maria on Sunday, April 22.

The public is invited to attend the culinary celebration taking place from 5-7 p.m. at 10101 Gulf Dr.

Attendees can mix and mingle while sampling culinary creations and tropical libations created by chefs and staff from The Sandbar, BeachHouse and Mar Vista restaurants. Local art will serve as the backdrop, and there will be plenty of free parking.

Tickets are $30 each and can be purchased online or by phone at 941-713-3105. There will be a special door prize and the opportunity to bid on silent auction items that include Anna Maria Island products, gourmet meals and vacation opportunities.

The Earth Day event will help support the local Gulf Coast Oyster Recycling and Renewal (GCORR) program taking place in Manatee County’s coastal waters. Oyster shells from local area restaurants are recycled and turned into new oyster reefs.

“Since more than 90 percent of the oyster beds in our area have been destroyed, START and its partners are working on this important project to build new reefs to restore our coastal waters,” according to the Chiles Group press release.

“The idea is to keep used oyster shells out of landfills and use them instead as the hard bottom base needed to grow new oyster reefs. This reduces the shells going to landfills and the need to dig up fossil shells as a base for new oyster reefs.

“In the first year of the program, we recycled 20 tons of used oyster shells. Because GCORR began as a one-year pilot program, START is now raising additional funding to support the program through 2018 and beyond.”

Restaurant employees remove used oyster shells from the tables, store them in bins and transport them to Perico Preserve. The Manatee County Parks and Natural Resources Department stores the shells and enlists local volunteers to bag and affix the shells to mats for planting in the designated reef area.

The Sun is the media sponsor of the event. For more information on START, contact Colleen at 941-951-3400 or colleen@start1.org.

Coast Lines logo - border

Earth Day cloudy, with silver lining

Written by Cindy Lane on . Posted in Coast Lines, Outdoors.

A few storm clouds are gathering over Earth Day this year, but there’s a silver lining.

Manatees

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service downlisted manatees under the U.S. Endangered Species Act from endangered to threatened status in March.

Florida manatees should have been exempted from this downlisting, which was based on studies of manatees in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Central America, northern South America and the Greater and Lesser Antilles.

Florida survey counts show increasing population numbers, but ignore the inequitable comparison of single day/single aircraft counts in years past with multi-day/multi-aircraft counts in recent years, which likely resulted in counting animals moreEarth Day than once, both by the same and different spotters.

The agency also did not consider the anticipated loss of artificial winter warm water habitat – primarily power plant closures – on which more than 60 percent of the Florida manatee population depends, nor did it consider the increasing popularity of recreational boating in Florida that further endangers the animals, few of which escape propeller cuts in their lifetimes.

EPA cuts

The Environmental Protection Agency will have less ability to protect the environment with budget cuts announced in March that will reduce staff and cut funding for programs including water and air quality programs, environmental education programs, environmental law enforcement and five programs affecting Florida and the Gulf of Mexico, “returning the responsibility for funding local environmental efforts and programs to state and local entities,” according to a March 21 EPA memo.

BP oil spill

April 20 is the seventh anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which killed 11 people and spilled 200 million gallons of oil over three months into the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to Texas.

The 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersant used to break up the oil into microscopic particles did not remove the oil from the Gulf, but made it invisible, and is thought by some scientists to be causing as much damage to marine life reproduction and health as the oil itself.

But one light on the horizon is a program by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, funded with restoration money provided by BP.

Seven Louisiana longline fishermen were chosen from about half of the 45 eligible vessel owners in the Gulf, some from Florida, who applied for a pilot project to voluntarily use alternative gear for a four-month pilot period ending June 30. If the gear works, a voluntary ban on longline fishing with traditional gear will be implemented six months of each year for the next 5-10 years to allow affected fish species to recover from the disaster.

A silver lining

Local folks have taken to heart the idea of Earth Day founder David Brower in 1970, “Think globally, act locally,” by planting trees and cleaning up Manatee County.

Keep Manatee Beautiful (KMB) is keeping the torch lit with the Great American Cleanup from 9 a.m. to noon on Earth Day, Saturday, April 22, in several locations, including Anna Maria City Hall, 10005 Gulf Drive, Kingfish Boat Ramp on State Road 64 West at the drawbridge in Holmes Beach, and the FISH Preserve, 11601 Cortez Road W. Adopt-A-Highway, Road and Shore groups will be doing cleanups at their adopted sites, including Palma Sola Causeway and Anna Maria Island beaches.

Volunteers on the Island, in Cortez and on the causeway will be thanked with an Earth Day Party at Manatee Public Beach, 4000 Gulf Drive, Holmes Beach, compliments of the Anna Maria Island Beach Café.

KMB also will host National Arbor Day ceremonies on Friday, April 28, when it will plant trees countywide.

In Pope Francis’ encyclical, “Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home,” he writes that in damaging the environment, we damage each other and future generations, and invites everyone to make a difference in small ways such as these.

To volunteer, visit https://manateebeautiful.com and www.arborday.org.